96. Paul VI, Rome: Acta 0.5.4. XVII (1973): 11-12. (continued)
Introductory Note. The City of God provides a theological view of history. The first five books argue against the pagan opinion that polytheism accounted for the temporal prosperity of the Roman State. The next five books argue against the pagan position that polytheism leads to eternal happiness, a position taken by some Greek Neoplatonic philosophers. The final twelve books place history within the perspective of salvation. Books XI-XIV discuss the Scriptural facts of the origin of man, the rise of two cities or societies (heavenly and earthly), and human secular history until A.D. 425. Books XV-X VIII discuss the progress of the two Cities, while books XIX-XXII describe their ends or eschatology, the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, hell. Only at the end of the world will it be evident who belongs to the City of God, the society of good men and good angels, and who belongs to the city of the devil, the society of the fallen angels and wicked men.
The pagan accusation that the Christian prohibition of polytheism removed the source of Rome's prosperity was made on the occasion of the sack of Rome by Alaric in A.D. 410. Augustine responded by proving the accusation false in the first books, but the greater part of The City of God describes the four pillars of civilization—Roman, Greek, Hebrew, and Christian—and demonstrates the destiny of mankind: heaven or hell according to the objects of one's love: "Two loves have built two cities, self-love in contempt of God has built the earthly city; love of God in contempt of oneself has built the heavenly city."
The struggle between these two cities is the substance of history. The two cities are also commingled in each person, where they are struggling for possession. The consummation of history will be the separation of the two cities into heaven and hell. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body 1s central to this view. In arguing for it from faith, Augustine clearly manifested his conviction that the body is essential to
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the human reality. His insistence on personal immortality, made possible by the Resurrection of Christ, separated his views from those of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Porphyry.
Here we present Book XIX, on the secular and Christian notions of happiness. Augustine returns to the theme of human desire for God which he had set forth in the first book of the Confessions and in The Happy Life. He opposes the miseries and passing pleasures of temporal life to the certain happiness of eternal life for those who live by faith. This happiness is peace—peace in eternity or eternity in peace. Peace is the presence of God. His presence in the universe was manifested in the Incarnation, which restored order, the order of love. God is Love and by the gift of Himself to mankind it is now possible to make the ascent to God by Love. Happiness, therefore, does not consist in rejecting the world but in learning to love it as it should be loved, for earthly goods can indeed contribute to human peace and to eternal life. Peace with oneself is a true love of self, that 1s, preferring God to self; this is the model for loving the*neighbor. Authorities have much to do with peace. To be themselves happy authorities are to secure the peace of those whom they serve. In this we recognize that Augustine highly valued the State and saw it able to bring peace to citizens when the rulers themselves were at peace with God. Christian families produced the best rulers and the best citizens. Each city seeks its own peace, yet the citizens of the City of God (an invisible, mystical city) can make use of the intelligent organization of the earthly State as long as the State does not forbid the worship of the One God. After all, the City of God, like the Church, is supranational. Christians are one in mind and heart, a Christian community. No Augustinian theory of the relation between Church and State is given, but Church members have two allegiances—to God and country, with the allegiance to God having priority. As citizens, Christians have responsibilities to their fellow citizens, owing positive charity to pagan neighbors and obligated to promote public concord. A Christian "must not be all for himself, but sociable in his life and actions," so that if asked to assume public office, the law and charity require this.
Augustine's famous charge that there never was a Roman
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Republic was made because Cicero's definition of a State suggested a people united for justice, and since justice required that God be given due worship, the Romans who substituted for God a legion of devils were not a true Republic. This highlights the Augustinian position that all legal rules are subordinated to justice and conscience. ''Put justice aside then and what are kingdoms but great piracies?" "Now to war against one's neighbors, and to proceed to the harm of those who do not harm you, for greedy desire of rule and sovereignty, what is this but flat thievery in a greater excess and quantity than usual?" (IV.6)
The thrust of Book XIX is not political but eschatologtcal. Everyone seeks happiness and all seek it in some good that they choose. There 1s no evil reality in itself but only a good proudly preferred to God. Political power is not an evil, only inordinate love of power. The vestige of God in every good thing calls on us to transcend it and allow the infinite longing of the human heart to find its true happiness in the Infinite God. Unless love for God has priority in our lives the realities. we seek—wealth, power, honor, pleasure—become idols. As false gods they cannot give peace to persons who are "made toward" God. All peoples seek happiness, and complete happiness is to be found only in the supreme good, which is eternal life "where God shall be all in all, where eternity shall be firm, and peace most perfect and absolute" (XIX. 20).
This happiness is visible only to the eyes of faith and 1s to be received from God for the asking. y J 2th yi) nh cn oF bare, a 5 iG ; . ¢ Ve. - ro. re h ye : "~ jy; in s teal ly & Mott. 2) Sone a ), np) Veo, pn hivgsey oe bh = Ss c Caation | ae i} fo, oS, yl ont to SHG, SINT fw Piya ashy $ "Et Women TERR DANE ati SO 3a) iA pearisin, SWIAES, Ms , eet, ie Po corny Are ate ay ag Bey Maint ae see Ganad satay cues Bt Lean 5 Ae oe 3 PON APNG? a aes 7
Book Nineteen
Chapter One ae I see that next I have to discuss the appointed destinies of both cities, the earthly and the heavenly, I first have to explain, within the limits of this work, the arguments by which men have struggled to make themselves happy in the midst of the unhappiness of this life, so that it may become evident for the benefit of unbelievers not only by divine authority but also through the use of reason how different from this vain thinking is our hope which God has given us and that very reality, which is true happiness, which he will give us. The philosophers have held many disputes among themselves concerning the ends of good and evil, and by seriously considering the question they tried to discover what makes a human being happy. Our final good is that for the sake of which other things are to be desired, but it itself is to be desired for its own sake, and the final evil is that for the sake of which other things are to be avoided while it itself is to be avoided on its own account. So by the end of the good we presently mean not the end whereby good is exhausted so that it no longer exists, but the end state in which it is brought to total perfection; and by the end of evil we mean not that which puts an end to it but that which brings about total harm. These two ends, therefore, are the supreme good and the supreme evil. The effort to discover these and to attain in this life the supreme good while avoiding the supreme evil has been the work of those who have devoted themselves in the midst of the vanity of the world to the quest for wisdom. And although they erred in diverse ways, yet natural insight has prevented their deviating from the path of truth, so that there is none who did not place the supreme good or evil in the soul, or in the body, or in both. From this triple division in the general classification of sects, Marcus Varro in his book De Philosophia has by a
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careful and subtle analysis noted such a great variety of opinions that he arrived at 288 sects—not that these actually existed, but they could have existed.
To indicate this briefly I should begin with what he points out in this book, that there are four things sought by men naturally, without a teacher, without the help of any instruction, without effort and without the art of living which is called virtue and is certainly learned: that is, pleasure, an agreeable moment of the bodily senses; or repose, whereby one suffers no bodily discomfort; or both these, given the single name of pleasure by Epicurus; or the primary goods of nature, among which are these and others, whether bodily, such as the health and the safety and the integrity of the members, or spiritual, such as the natural qualities, great or small, which are found in human beings. Therefore, these four —-pleasure, repose, both together, the primary goods of nature—so exist in us that we have to desire virtue which will be for their sake, or them for the sake of virtue, or both of them for their own sake; and from this distinction there arise twelve sects, for each by this principle of classification is tripled. Once I have demonstrated this in one case, it will not be difficult to find it in others. Insofar as bodily pleasure is subjected, preferred, or joined to virtue, there are three sects. It is subjected to virtue when it is taken into the service of virtue. Here it is a duty of virtue to live for one's country, and for the sake of one's country to beget sons, neither of which can be done without bodily pleasure; for without pleasure neither food nor drink can be taken to sustain life, nor without it can sexual intercourse occur for the sake of procreation. But when pleasure is preferred to virtue, it is desired for its own sake and virtue chosen only for its sake and it is thought that virtue should serve pleasure so that there should be no virtuous act except to attain or preserve bodily pleasure. But this is a deformed kind of life, for where virtue serves the tyrant pleasure it no longer deserves the name of virtue. Yet this horrible deformity has had some philosophers as its patrons and defenders. Then virtue is joined to pleasure when neither is desired for the sake of the other, but both for their own sakes. Therefore, just as pleasure insofar as it is subjected, preferred, or joined to virtue makes three sects, so likewise repose, and repose combined with pleasure, and the primary natural goods make three more sects. Because human
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opinions vary, these four things are sometimes subjected to virtue, sometimes preferred, sometimes joined with it; so we reach the number of twelve sects. But this number is again doubled by the addition of one difference, that of social life, since whoever follows one of these sects does so either for only his own sake, or for the sake of a companion, for whom he ought to wish what he desires for himself. So there are twelve sects of those who believe that a certain philosophic position should be held only for one's own Sake, and twelve others of those who take the view that they should follow this or that philosophy not merely for their own sakes but for the sake of others also whose good they seek as their own. These twenty-four sects are again doubled, and become forty-eight, by adding a difference taken from the New Academy. For any man can hold and defend any one of the twelve sects as certain, as the Stoics defended their position that the good of man which makes him happy consists solely in moral excellence; or they can be held as probable, but not certain, as the New Academy did. So there are twenty-four sects of those holding their views to be certainly true, and twenty-four others of those holding their views as being probable, but not certain. Again, because each one who attaches himself to any of these sects may adopt the mode of life either of the Cynics or of the other philosophers, this difference will double the number, and it becomes ninety-six. Finally, because each of these sects may be favored and followed by men who for themselves prefer a life of leisure, as those who by choice or necessity have dedicated themselves to studies, or by men who dedicate themselves to business, as those who while philosophizing are engaged in public administration and state affairs, or by those who choose a mixed life, as did those who gave their time partly to learned leisure and partly to necessary business: by these differences the number of the sects is tripled, becoming two hundred and eighty-eight.
I have thus put in my own words, as briefly and clearly as I could, the opinions found in Varro's book. But how he refutes all the other sects, choosing one and claiming that that one is the Old Academy, begun by Plato and continuing to Polemo, the fourth teacher of that school called the Academy which held that their teaching was certain, by which he distinguished it from the New Academy which began with Arcesilaus, the successor of Polemo,
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and held that all things are uncertain, and how he tries to establish that the Old Academy was as free from error as from doubt: to explain all this in detail would take too long; yet it may not be wholly omitted.
Varro, therefore, removes all those differences which had led to the multiplication of sects because they are not differences about the supreme good. For he maintains that no sect of philosophy should be recognized unless it differs from others by having its own view concerning final good and evil. For man's only reason for philosophizing is to be happy, but that which makes him happy is precisely the final good. So, when a sect has no sectarian view about the final good, it should not be cailed a sect. When, therefore, it is questioned whether a wise man will support social life by desiring and trying to achieve for his friend as well as for himself the supreme good which makes man happy or whether he does all that he does merely for the sake of his own happiness, this is not a question concerning the supreme good itself but about sharing or not sharing the supreme good with a friend not for his own sake but for his friend's sake in whose good he delights as in his own. Likewise, where there is question concerning the New Academy, for whom all things are uncertain, whether these are true philosophic views or whether we should hold that philosophic views are certain, which was a view acceptable to other philosophers, this question is not concerned with the final good itself, but is concerned with whether or not we are to doubt of the certainty of the truth of the good which apparently should be pursued; or to speak more plainly, whether the pursuit of the final good demands that the pursuer ought to assert that his view of the final good is true, or whether he is to assert that it seems true to him, although perhaps it is false, although the one same good is pursued. Also in regard to that difference deriving from the manners and customs of the Cynics, this is not a question about the final good, but it is about whether the pursuer of that which to him seems to be the final good, whatever it is, and to be the proper object of pursuit, should live according to the manners and customs of the Cynics. There were indeed men pursuing different final goods, some virtue, others pleasure, who nevertheless followed the same manners and customs which gave the Cynics their name. So whatever differentiates the Cynics from other philosophers has nothing to
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do with the choice and adherence to the good which was to make them happy. For if it would make a difference, surely the same manners would imply the pursuit of the same end, and diverse manners would rule out the pursuit of the same end.
Chapter Two And in regard to those three kinds of life, namely, the one which, though not slothful, is nevertheless a life of leisure passed in contemplating or inquiring into truth, the other life spent in the active administration of human affairs, and the third which is a combination of the two others, when it is asked which of them should be chosen, this is not a controversy about the final good; the question raised here is which of these three hinders or facilitates attaining or preserving the final good. When any one reaches the final good it immediately makes him happy, whereas a life spent in learned leisure or in public affairs or in both by turns does not make him happy immediately. Doubtless there are many who may be living any one of these lives and who go astray in their search for the final good which makes man happy.
So the question concerning the final good and the final evil which differentiates sects of philosophy is one question; and those questions concerning social life, the doubt of the Academy, the dress and food of the Cynics, or the three kinds of life, the contemplative, the active, and a combination of both, are quite other: none of these entails an argument about the final good and final evil. Hence, Marcus Varro, once he has used these four differences either from social life, from the New Academy, from the Cynics, and from that triple classification of life to reach the figure of two-hundred-and-eighty-eight sects or any larger figure reached the same kind of way, so by removing these differences as unrelated to the final good, and therefore not constituting what can properly be called sects, returns to those twelve schools which are concerned with inquiring what that good is which makes man happy, and shows that only one of them is true, the others false. By the removal of any differentiation based on the three kinds of life, two-thirds of the total number are subtracted, and ninety-six sects remain. Remove again any differentiation based on the Cynics, and the number is reduced to a half, or forty-eight. Let us also take away the difference which was gotten from the New Acade-
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my, and again only half remain, or twenty-four. Also remove the question raised about social life; twelve remain which this difference had doubled to make twenty-four.
As for these twelve, nothing can be said against their being recognized as sects. For they seek nothing other than the final good and final evil, that is, the final good, for once this is found, the contrary, evil, is also found. But to make these twelve sects, four things are multiplied three times: pleasure, repose, the combination of the two, and the primary natural goods which Varro calls primigenia. Indeed these four things, one by one, are sometimes subordinated to virtue so that they seem to be desired not for their own sakes but for the sake of virtue, and are sometimes preferred to it, so that virtue is thought to be needed not for its own sake but in order to attain or preserve these things, and sometimes joined with it so that both they and virtue are believed desirable for their own sakes—we must multiply the four by three, and so we get twelve sects. But from these four things Varro takes away three: pleasure, repose, and the two combined, not because he disapproves of them but because the primary natural goods include pleasure and repose. And what is the use of making three out of these two ends, pleasure and repose taken first singly and then together, since both are comprised within the primary natural goods and included also are many other things as well? It was Varro's opinion that the three remaining sects should be studied carefully to see which one is to be chosen. For true reason does not allow more than one to be true, whether it is one of these three, or another, as we shall later see. Meanwhile let us explain as briefly and clearly as possible how Varro chooses one of these three. Surely this division into three sects comes from their holding that the primary natural goods are to be sought for the sake of virtue, or virtue for their sake, or both, that is, both virtue and the primary natural goods, for their own sake.
Chapter Three
Varro tries to show which of these three sects is true and to be followed in this way. Because philosophy seeks the supreme good not of the tree, nor of a beast, nor of God, but of man, he thinks that the answer to the question of what man himself is should be sought. He feels that there are two parts in his nature, body and soul, and he does not doubt that of these two the soul is
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the better and the far more excellent part. But is the soul alone, the man so that the body is to him as the horse to the horseman (for the horseman is not a man and a horse but only a man, yet he is called horseman because he has a certain relation to the horse)? Or is the body alone the man, having some relation to the soul like that of the cup to the drink (for not the cup and the drink it contains are together called the cup, but the cup alone; yet it is so called because it is designed to hold the drink), or again does neither the soul alone nor the body alone but both together constitute man of whom the soul and the body are each a part whereas the whole man consists of both (as we call two horses yoked together a pair, though we do not call the left or the right horse however related to the other, a pair, but only both together)?
Of these three positions Varro chose the third, that man is neither soul alone nor body alone but soul and body together. And, therefore, he says that the supreme good of man which makes him happy consists of a combination of bodily and spiritual goods. And so he thinks that primary natural goods are to be sought for their own sake and that virtue which is the art of living well and is communicated by instruction is the most excellent of spiritual goods. For this reason virtue or the art of regulating life when it receives the primary natural goods which exist independently of virtue and prior to any instruction whatever seeks them all and itself also for its own sake. Virtue uses them as it also uses itself so that it may take delight in and have enjoyment in all of them, greater or less according as they are themselves greater or less, and while enjoying all of them it despises the less so that it may attain or retain the greater, if necessity demands it.
Of all the bodily or spiritual goods none is preferable to virtue itself. For virtue uses well both itself and those other goods that make man happy. But without virtue no matter how many goods a man has they do him no good and so should not be called good things as long as they belong to a man who uses them ill. Therefore that life of man is called happy when it enjoys virtue and the other spiritual and bodily good things without which virtue is impossible. Life is called happier if it enjoys some or many other good things not essential to virtue, and the happiest life lacks not one of the good things pertaining to soul or body.
For life is not the same thing as virtue since not every life but only the wisely led life is virtue: for there can be some kind of life
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without any virtue, but there cannot be virtue without life. I might say the same of memory and reason and other such human powers. For these exist prior to instruction and without these there can be no instruction and on that account no virtue since virtue is learned. But swiftness of foot, physical beauty, and contests won by unusual strength and the like can exist without virtue as virtue can exist without them; yet they are goods, and according to these philosophers virtue seeks even these goods for their own sake and uses and enjoys them appropriately.
They say that this happy life is also social and loves the good of friends as its own good and wishes for them for their own sakes what it wishes for itself, whether such friends live in the family like wife or children or domestics, or are in the same locality like citizens of the same town, or in the entire world such as nations bound in common human brotherhood, or in the universe itself, designated by the name heaven and earth such as those whom they name gods and consider as friends of the wise men, those whom we more familiarly call angels. Moreover they assert that with reference to the final good and evil, there is no room for doubt and that this distinguishes them from the New Academy and they do not care whether a philosopher pursues those ends thought to be true in the Cynic dress or manner of life, or in some other. Finally, of these three kinds of life, the contemplative, the active, and the combination, they declare in favor of the third. That the Old Academy held and taught these doctrines Varro states on the authority of Antiochus, Cicero's master and his own, although Cicero on many points describes him as more in accord with the Stoic than with the Old Academy. But what is that to us who ought to pass judgment on the things themselves rather than to know what opinion each man held about them?
Chapter Four
If, therefore, we are asked what the City of God replies when asked about these various points and, first, its opinion about the final good and evil, it will reply that the supreme good is eternal life and that the supreme evil is eternal death and to obtain the one and escape the other we must live rightly. Thus it is written: "The just man lives by faith" (Hb 2:4). Since we do not yet see our good so it is appropriate for us to seek it by believing; neither have we in ourselves power to live rightly unless He who has given us
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faith to believe that we must ask help from him shall help us when we believe and pray. But those who have thought that the final good and final evil are to be had in the present life, whether placing the supreme good in the body or in the soul or in both, or, more explicitly, either in pleasure or in virtue or in both, in repose or in virtue or in both, in primary natural goods or in virtue or in both, all these have sought with a marvelous vanity to be happy in this life and to achieve happiness by their own efforts. Truth ridiculed these people through the words of the Prophet: "The Lord knows the thoughts of men" (Ps 94:11) or as the Apostle Paul testified: ""The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain" (1 Cor 3:9).
For what torrent of eloquence suffices to explain the miseries of this life? Cicero lamented them as best he could in the Consolation on the death of his daughter, but how inadequate was his best! For when, where, how in this life can the so-called primary natural goods be so possessed as not to be threatened by unforeseen accidents? Why, what pain is there, the contrary of pleasure, what disquiet is there, the contrary of repose, that cannot befall the body of the wise man? Certainly amputation or weakening destroys its integrity; deformity destroys its beauty; weakness, its health; lassitude, its vigor; sleepiness or sluggishness, its activity—and which of these may not attack the flesh of the wise man? Comely fitting positions and movements of the body are also numbered among the primary natural goods; but suppose some disease makes the limbs quake and tremble? Suppose a man's spine is so curved that his hands reach the ground, making of him a quadruped, so to speak? Will this not ruin all beauty and grace of bodily stance or of movement?
What of the so-called primary natural goods of the mind itself, the sense and intellect, the first of the two for perception and the other for the comprehension of truth? But what kind of perception remains where a man becomes deaf and blind, to say nothing of other defects? And where do reason and intelligence withdraw, where do they sleep when a man is crazed by some disease? When the insane say or do many absurd things that are mostly alien to their own aims and characters—and are even contrary to their good aims and characters, when we consider or see the actions and words of these insane people we can scarcely refrain from tears, or perhaps we cannot. What shall I say of those
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afflicted by demonic possession? Where is their own intelligence hidden or buried while the evil spirit is using their souls and bodies according to his own will? And who can be confident that this evil will not befall the wise man in this life? Then as to the perception of truth, what kind can we hope for in this flesh and how much when, as we read in the truthful book of wisdom: "The corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly frame lies heavy on a mind that ponders many things" (Wis 9:15)? And eagerness or an impulse to act, if either is the correct meaning for what the Greeks call hormé, is also considered to be among the primary natural goods. Yet, is not impulse itself accountable for those miserable movements and actions of the insane which horrify us, when sensation is deceived and reason deranged?
Finally, as to virtue itself, which is not among the primary natural goods, since it is added later through instruction, although it claims the highest place among human goods, what does it do here but make perpetual war with vices, not external but internal, not alien but plainly our own, a war waged especially by the virtue called sdphrosyné in Greek and temperance in Latin which checks the lusts of the flesh lest they win the mind's consent and drag it into every kind of crime?
For we must not suppose that there is no vice in us when, as the Apostle says, ""The flesh lusts against the spirit" (Gal 5:17); for there is a virtue contrary to this vice, when, as the same Apostle says: "The spirit lusts against the flesh. For these two," he says, 'are opposed one to the other, so that you do not what you would" (Gal 5:17). But what do we will to do when we wish to be made perfect by the Supreme Good unless that the flesh should not lust against the spirit, and that there should be in us no vice for the spirit to lust against? And since we cannot achieve this in the present life, no matter how much we desire it, let us with God's help achieve at least this, to restrain the soul from succumbing and yielding to the flesh lusting against it and to deny our consent to the commitment of sin. Far be it from us, therefore, to believe that as long as we are engaged in this internal war that we have already attained the happiness which we seek to reach by victory. And who is there so wise that he has no battle at all to wage against his vices?
What is to be said of that virtue called prudence? Is it not totally vigilant in discerning good from evil, so that in seeking the A472
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one and avoiding the other no error or mistake may occur about good and evil? Thus it is itself a witness to the existence of evil and of evils in us. For prudence itself teaches that it is evil to consent to sin and good to refuse this consent. Yet that evil to which prudence teaches us not to consent and temperance enables us not to consent is neither by prudence nor by temperance removed from this life. What is to be said of justice, whose task is to assign to each man his due, whence there exists in man a certain just order of nature so that the soul is subject to God, and flesh to the soul, and consequently both soul and flesh to God? Does justice not thereby demonstrate that she is still laboring at her task rather than reposing at the end of her labors? For the soul is so much the less subjected to God the less it keeps mindful of God; and flesh is so much the less subjected to the spirit as it lusts more strongly against the spirit. Hence as long as we are beset by this weakness, this plague, this sickness, how shall we dare to say that we are saved, and if not saved, how dare we say that we are already blessed with final happiness? Then truly that virtue called fortitude, though present with however great widsom, testifies very clearly to' human evils which it is compelled to endure with patience.
And I am amazed that the Stoic philosophers have the gall to argue that these are not evils although they admit that if they are so great that the wise man cannot endure them, he is allowed to commit suicide, and to depart this life. But such is the stupid pride of these men who suppose that the final good is to be possessed in this life and that they can achieve their own happiness that their wise man, that is, the one they describe as such with amazing vanity, whom, even when blinded, deaf, and dumb, having lost the use of his limbs, tortured with pain, and suffering every evil tongue can tell or mind conceive, whereby he is forced to commit suicide, they are not ashamed to call happy. Oh, happy life which seeks the help of death to end it! If it is happy, let the wise man remain alive. How can those things not be evil which overcome the good of fortitude, and force it not only to yield to them but so to rave that it simultaneously calls that life happy and urges that it be escaped? Who is so blind as not to see that if it were happy, it should not be escaped? But in using the word "escape" they openly admit the weakness of their argument. What reason keeps them from admitting, their stiff-necked pride shattered, that it is a
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miserable life? Was it, I ask, patience or rather impatience which prompted Cato to take his own life? For he would not have done it unless he lacked the patience to endure the victory of Caesar. Where then is his fortitude? It yielded, succumbed, was so thoroughly overcome that he gave up, abandoned, escaped this happy life. Or was it no longer happy? Then it was miserable. How, therefore, were those not evils which made life miserable and something to be escaped?
And therefore those who admit that these are evils, as do the Peripatetics and the Old Academy, the sect that Varro defends, speak more intelligibly, but their error is also surprising since they argue that this is a happy life in the midst of these evils even when they are so great that he who suffers them should commit suicide to escape them. "Bodily pains and torments," Varro says, 'are evils, and so much the worse in proportion to their severity; and to avoid them one must escape this life." What life, pray? "This life," he says, "that is oppressed by such great evils." Then it is definitely happy in the midst of those evils which you say one ought to escape? Or do you call it happy because it is permissible to escape these evils by death? What, then, if by some divine judgment you were held among them and not permitted either to die or to be freed from them? Doubtless you would then say that such a life was miserable? So it is not nonmiserable because it is soon relinquished since if it were everlasting even you would call it miserable; and so it ought not to be seen as free from all misery because the misery is brief, or, what is more absurd, because the misery is brief should it therefore be called a state of happiness.
There is a mighty power in these evils which force a man, and force even a wise man, according to these philosophers, to deprive himself of his own human existence; although they say and truly say that the first and greatest law of nature is that a man should cherish himself and therefore naturally avoid death and that he be a friend to himself so that he is strongly determined and eager to continue existing as a living being in this union of soul and body. There is a mighty power in these evils to overcome this natural instinct by which death is by every means and with all the effort of man avoided, and to overcome it so entirely that what was avoided is desired, looked for, and if in no other way can it be obtained, is inflicted on himself by the man himself. There is a mighty power in these evils which make fortitude a homicide, if
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that still should be called fortitude which is so totally overcome by these evils that it not only cannot by its patience not protect and govern man-but is itself forced to kill him. Certainly the wise man ought patiently to endure even death, but a death inflicted by another. But if, according to these philosophers, he is compelled to inflict it on himself, certainly it should be admitted that those things which forced him to commit this crime were not only evils but in fact intolerable evils.
The life, therefore, that is oppressed by the weight of such great and grave evils or subject to chance would in no way be called happy if the men who use that word had condescended to yield to the truth and be conquered by sound arguments when inquiring after the happy life, as they are conquered by overwhelming evils and in the act of committing suicide, yield to misfortune, by having fancied that the supreme good was to be found in this mortal life. For the very virtues of this life, which are surely the best and most useful of man's possessions, testify more faithfully to life's miseries insofar as they are helpful against its dangers, toils, and woes. For if our virtues are genuine—which is only the ease in those who have true piety—they do not claim to deliver those who possess them from all miseries (for true virtues are not so fraudulent as to profess such a thing), but they assert that human life, though forced by ail the great evils of this age to be unhappy, is happy in the expectation of a future life insofar as it also enjoys the expectation of salvation. For can there be a happy life where there is no salvation? So the Apostle Paul, speaking not of men who lacked prudence, patience, temperance, and justice but of those who lived according to true piety, and who therefore had genuine virtues, says: "For we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. For how should a man hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, then we look forward with patience" (Rom 8:24-25). Therefore, just as we are saved by hope, so by hope we are made happy; and just as we "have no hold on present salvation, so we have no hold on present happiness but look to the future, a happiness to be attained with patience." We are among evils and so we ought patiently to tolerate them until we come to the ineffable enjoyment of unmixed good; then there will be nothing to be tolerated. Such is the salvation which in the future life will itself be also final happiness. But those philosophers, unwilling to believe in a
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happiness they do not see, strive to fabricate for themselves a very false happiness based upon virtue as fraudulent as it is proud.
Chapter Five
But that they wish the life of the wise man to be social, we approve much more fully. For how could that City of God, about which we are already engaged in writing the nineteenth book, have a beginning or progress or reach its proper destiny if the life of the saints were not a social life? But who can enumerate the great woes abounding in human society in the midst of our mortal state? Who can assess them? Listen to one of their comic writers expressing through a character the common feelings of all men in this matter: "I am married, what misery I have seen through this. Children were born; another anxiety" (Terence, Adelph 5.4.13f.). What is to be said of the miseries of love which Terence also recounts—''slights, suspicions, quarrels, war today, peace tomorrow" (Terence, Eunuch. 1.1.14)? Are not human affairs filled with such things? Do they not often happen even when friends are united in a noble love? On all sides human history is filled with slights, suspicions, enmities, and war, all of which are certainly evil; whereas peace is only a doubtful good, since we do not know the hearts of those with whom we want to be at peace, and even if we knew them today, we could not be sure what they would be like tomorrow. Who ought to be or who are more friendly than those living in the same home? And yet who is even secure there, since from their hidden treachery great woes have often arisen, woes the more bitter as the peace was sweeter that was considered genuine when it was most cleverly feigned?
For that reason the words of Cicero so touch all hearts that we are forced to lament: ""No ambushed foes are harder to detect than those who hide their aim with a counterfeit loyalty or in the name of some necessity. For you would be on guard against an open adversary and easily able to escape him; but this hidden evil, internal and domestic, not only arises but even overwhelms you before you have a chance to observe and investigate it" (Cicero, In Verrem 2.1.15). That is why there is the divine saying: '"'"A man's enemies are even those of his own household" (Mt 10:36), a saying that is heard with great sorrow of heart, because even if a man is strong enough to bear it with equanimity, or vigilant enough to guard against the designs of a pretended friend, yet, if he himself
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is a good man, he must seriously suffer when he finds that they are wicked, whether they were always wicked and feigned goodness, or whether they changed from goodness to evil. If then the home, our common refuge from the evils of human life, is not safe, what of the city, which, as it is larger, is so much the more filled with both civil and criminal lawsuits, and is never free from the fear and sometimes from the actual bloodshed of sedition and civil wars?
Chapter Six What is to be said of those judgments pronounced by men on their fellowmen which are necessary in cities whatever outward peace they enjoy? How sad, how lamentable we find them, since those who pronounce them cannot discern the consciences of those whom they judge, and are therefore frequently compelled to torture innocent witnesses to discover the truth concerning the crimes of other men. What is to be said of torturing the accused man himself to discover whether he is guilty? He is tortured even if he is innocent, and for a doubtful crime he suffers a punishment far from doubtful, not because he was proven to have committed it but because it is not known that he did not commit it. And thus the ignorance of the judge is a calamity for the innocent. And what is more intolerable and more to be deplored and, if possible, purged by floods of tears is that the judge in the act of torturing the accused in order to avoid the unwitting execution of an innocent man, through wretched ignorance puts to death both tortured and innocent, the very man whom he has tortured in order not to execute him if innocent.
For if he has chosen, according to the wisdom of the philosophers, to escape this life rather than endure those torments any longer, he pleads guilty to a crime he did not commit. And after he has been condemned and killed, the judge still does not know whether he has killed a guilty or an innocent man whom he tortured so that he might not unwittingly execute an innocent man; and so he has both tortured an innocent man in order to learn the truth and put him to death without learning it. If such darkness exists in social life, will a wise judge sit on the bench, or will he not dare to do so? Clearly he will. For human society which he thinks it wicked to forsake constrains him and draws him to this office. ay,
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For he does not think it to be wicked that innocent witnesses are tortured regarding other men's crimes; or that the accused are often overcome by the pain of torture and therefore confess falsely and are punished though innocent; or that, though not condemned to death, they often die under torture or as a consequence of torture, or that the accusers, perhaps moved by the desire to help society by not letting crimes go unpunished, are themselves condemned by an ignorant judge if the witnesses give false evidence and the defendant strongly resisting torture confesses no guilt so that the accusers have no way to prove their charges, although their charges are true. He does not consider these many great evils to be sins; for the wise judge does not do these things because of any will to do harm but by the necessity of his ignorance and by the necessity of judging, which human society compels him to do. This is certainly an example of the misery of man, of which we spoke, even if there is no malice in the judge. But if by ignorance and by office he is constrained to torture and to punish the innocent is it not sufficient for us to acquit him of guilt? Must he be happy as well? Would he not be more considerate and worthy as a human being if he were to recognize the misery of this necessity and shrink from his own part in it and as a wise and religious man cry to God: "From my necessities deliver me!" (Ps 25:17)?
Chapter Seven
After the state or city comes the world, to which they assign the third level of human society, beginning with the household, then progressively coming to the city, and then the world which as larger is fuller of dangers, as the greater sea is the more dangerous. In the first place, the diversity of languages separates one man from another. For if two men, each one ignorant of the other's language, meet and by some necessity must remain together, then it is easier for dumb animals, even of different species, to socialize together than for them, though both are human beings. For when they cannot communicate what they feel to each other, merely on account of the diversity of languages, their likeness of nature so little promotes their union that a man would rather have his dog for company than a foreigner. But the imperial city has struggled to impose on conquered people not only her yoke but her language as a bond of peace so that interpreters, far from
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being scarce, are numerous. This is true, but how many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed have provided this unity! ; And though the wars are past, there is no end to the miseries. For although foreign foes have not been, and are not, lacking, against whom there have always been and always are wars being waged, yet the very extent of the empire has begotten wars of a worse kind—social and civil wars—by which the whole human race is more wretchedly shaken either by the actual conflict or the fear of a renewed outbreak. If I attempted adequately to describe these many disasters, these hard and harsh necessities, though I am quite unequal to the task, where would my argument end? But the wise man, they say, will wage just wars. As if he, if he remembered his humanity, would not sorrow over the necessity of just wars; because unless they were just he would not have to wage them and so a wise man would have no wars. For it is the wickedness of the opposing group which compels the wise man to wage just wars; and this wickedness, even though it led to no war, would still be lamented by a human being because human beings do it. Let everyone, then, who reflects in sorrow upon all these great evils, so horrible and so ruthless, confess his misery. But whoever endures or thinks of them without mental anguish is far more miserable insofar as he thinks himself happy because he has lost all human feeling.
Chapter Eight
If we are not subject to a kind of ignorance, akin to madness, which often overtakes men in the wretched condition of this life so that they mistake a foe for a friend or a friend for a foe, what is there to console us in this human society full of misunderstand- 'ings and calamities except the unfeigned faith and mutual affection of true and good friends? But the more friends we have, and the more widely scattered they are, the greater is our fear that they will be affected by some of the accumulated evils of this age.
For we are worried not only lest they suffer from famine, war, disease, captivity, or the inconceivable horrors of slavery but by the far more painful fear that friendship may be changed into treachery, malice, and injustice. And when these possibilities do occur (the more frequently, the more numerous our friends) and we are made aware of it, who except the one experiencing them
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can conceive with what pangs the heart is torn? Indeed, we would prefer to hear of their death, although this also could not be heard without sorrow. For if their life has delighted us with the comfort of friendship, how could it happen that their death should bring us no sadness? Whoever would prohibit such sadness must prohibit, if he can, all friendly conversation, must forbid or extinguish all friendly affection, must break with harsh insensibility the bonds of all human relationships or else presume that they should be so entered into that no pleasure from them might fill the mind. But if this is completely impossible, how can it be that someone's death will not be bitter to us if his life is sweet to us? Thus there comes that grief affecting the tender heart like a wound or a bruise for which we use kindly consolations to heal. Nor should we presume there is nothing to be healed simply because the better the soul the more easily is healing accomplished. For although the life of mortals is afflicted, sometimes more mildly, sometimes more painfully by the death of those very dear to us, and especially of officials whose work is necessary for human society, yet we would prefer to learn of or behold their death than to learn or perceive that they have fallen from faith or from virtue—in other words, that they were spiritually dead. Of this vast material for misery the earth is full, for which it is written: "Is human life on earth anything but a trial?" (Jb 7:1). And therefore the Lord Himself says: 'Woe to the world because of scandals" (Mt 17:7), and again, "Because wickedness shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold" (Mt 24:12). And so we manifest our gratitude when our good friends die; and, although their death saddens us, it more certainly consoles us because they escaped those evils in this life by which even good men are crushed or corrupted or could be.
Chapter Nine
Indeed, in the society of the holy angels which those philosophers who taught that the gods are our friends ranked as the fourth level, as it were, passing from the earth to the universe in order to embrace in some way heaven itself, we have no fears that such friends will sadden us by their death or destruction. But because they do not mingle with us as familiarly as men (which itself is one of the griefs of this life) and because, as we read (2 Cor
11:14), Satan sometimes transfigures himself as an angel of light in
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order to tempt those who need the discipline or deserve to be deceived, there is great need of God's mercy lest someone, thinking he is enjoying the friendship of good angels, is really enjoying the feigned friendship of evil demons and suffering from their enmity which is the more harmful, the more shrewd and deceitful they are. And for whom is the great mercy of God necessary except for human beings of great misery, so weighed down by ignorance as easily deceived by the deceptions of these demons? And indeed it is very certain that those philosophers in the godless city who claimed that the gods were their friends have fallen a prey to the malignant demons to whom that city itself is entirely subject and whose everlasting punishment will be shared by them.
For the nature of these demons is shown by those beings who are worshiped by them in the sacred or rather sacrilegious rites, and by the filthy games in which their crimes are celebrated and which they themselves originated and required from their worshipers as fitting propriation.
Chapter Ten
But not even the saints and the faithful worshipers of the one true and most high God are secure against the manifold temptations and deceptions of the demons. For in this abode of weakness and in these evil days such anxiety is not useless, since it makes us seek with more fervent desire for that security where peace is fullest and most certain. There the gifts of nature given by the Creator of all nature will be not only good but everlasting, not only in respect to the spirit, which is healed through wisdom, but also in respect to the body, which will be renewed by resurrection; there the virtues, no longer struggling against any vice or evil whatsoever, will have as the reward of victory eternal peace which no adversary may disquiet. For this is the final blessedness, this the ultimate perfection, the unending end. Here, surely we are called blessed when we have peace, however small a portion can be had in a good life; but this blessedness when compared to that final blessedness is discovered to be mere misery. So when we mortals possess such peace as this mortal life can provide, virtue, if we live rightly, makes the right use of good things; but when we have no peace, virtue makes good use even of the evils a man suffers. But true virtue is to subordinate all the good things it uses and everything it does in making good use of good and evil things
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and itself as well, to that end where our peace will be so excellent and so great that it cannot be improved or increased.
Chapter Eleven
So we might say as we have said of eternal life that peace is the end of all our good, especially since the sacred psalmist says of the City of God, the subject of this most laborious inquiry: 'Praise the Lord, Jerusalem, praise your God, O Zion; for He has strengthened the bars of your gates: He has blessed your children within you, He has made your borders peace" (Ps 147:12-14). For when the bars of her gates are strengthened, none shall enter or leave her. So we ought to understand that her borders are that peace whose finality we wish to demonstrate. For even the mystical name of the city itself, Jerusalem, as we previously said, means 'vision of peace." But since the word "peace" is frequently applied in relation to earthly matters where there is no eternal life, we have chosen to call the end of this city, its supreme good, eternal life rather than peace. Of this end the Apostle Says: "But now being freed from sin and having become servants to God, you have your fruit unto holiness, truly the end, everlasting life" (Rom 6:22). But again because the life of the wicked may also be considered everlasting life by those unfamiliar with the holy Scriptures, either in accord with certain philosophers or in accord with our own belief in the endless punishment of the wicked who certainly cannot be punished forever unless they live forever, it is better to say, so that all may more easily understand our meaning, that the end of this city, whereby it will possess its supreme good, may be spoken of either way, as peace in everlasting life or everlasting life in peace. For peace is such a great good that even in respect to earthly and mortal matters no other word is heard with more pleasure, nothing is desired with greater longing, and finally nothing more gratifying can be discovered. So if we linger on this topic, we shall not be, I think, tedious to our readers, who will be attentive both for the sake of knowing what is the end of this city and for the sake ofethe very sweetness of peace, which is dear to all.
Chapter Twelve Whoever attends at all with me to the pattern of human affairs and our common nature recognizes that just as there is no B74
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man who does not wish joy, so there is no man who does not wish peace. For even they who choose war desire nothing but victory. Therefore, by waging war they desire to arrive at a glorious peace. For what else is victory but the conquest of the opponent? When this is accomplished, there will be peace. Therefore, with the desire for peace, wars are waged, even by those who desire to exercise their warlike prowess whether commanding or fighting.
It follows that peace is the desired end of war. For every man even in the act of waging war is seeking peace, but no man seeks war by making peace. For even those who wish that peace be broken do so not because they hate peace but because they wish it changed into a better peace. Therefore they do not desire that there shall be no peace but that peace shall be as they wish it. And in the case of sedition, when they have separated themselves from the community, they cannot fulfil their purpose unless they maintain some sort of peace with their fellow-conspirators. And so even robbers are careful to maintain peace with their comrades, so that they may more safely and more effectively attack the peace of other men. And if an individual happens to be of such powerful strength and so cautious, that he trusts no partner but makes his own plots, taking his booty after overpowering and killing those he can, yet he keeps up some shadow of peace with those whom he cannot kill and from whom he wishes to conceal his deeds. Moreover, in his own home he tries to be at peace with his wife and children and other members of the household, since he is certainly pleased when they are at his beck and call. For if they are not, he is angry, he rebukes and punishes, and if necessary he secures even by cruelty the peace of his home which he feels cannot exist unless all the members of the same domestic society are subject to one head, such as he himself is in his own home. And so if a city or nation offered to submit itself to him, on the same terms which he had imposed on his own household, he would no longer hide like a robber but lift his head in the daylight like a king, though the same covetousness and malice remained in him. And so all men desire to have peace with their associates whom they want to govern as they wish. For even those against whom they wage war they wish, if possible, to make their own and to impose on them when vanquished the laws of their own peace.
But let us suppose a man such as poetry and mythology depict, one so unsociable and savage as to be called a semi-man
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rather than a man. Although his kingdom was the solitude of a dismal cave, and he himself was so singularly bad that he was called Kakés (the Greek word for bad), though he had no wife with whom to converse fondly, no little children with whom to play, no sons to do his bidding, no friends with whom to enjoy the conversation, not even his father, Vulcan, than whom in one respect he was happier as not having begotten a monster like himself; although he gave to no one but took as he wished whatever he could, from whomsoever he could, whenever he could: yet in the very solitude of his cave, "the floor of which was always reeking with fresh carnage," as Vergil says, all he sought was peace unmolested by anyone, a peace untroubled by any man's violence or the fear of it. Finally, with his own body he desired to be at peace, and insofar as he had this peace, all was well with him. His limbs obeyed his commands, and to pacify his mortal nature which rebelled when in need and to allay the incitement of: hunger which threatened to evict the soul from the body, he made raids, slew and devoured; and yet, cruel and savage as ke was, he was providing for the peace of his life and safety. So if he had been willing to make with other men the same peace which he made with himself in his own cave, he would neither have been called bad nor a monster nor a semi-man. Or if the appearance of his body and his belching of murky flames frightened off human companions, perhaps he was being fierce not through desire to harm but through the need of remaining alive. But he may never have existed, or at least he was not the way he was described with poetic fancy: for if Kakos were not sufficiently blamed, Hercules would not be sufficiently praised. Therefore, that such a man, or rather semi-man, as I said, ever existed is not to be believed, along with other poetic fictions.
For even the most savage beasts, from whom he derived part of his savagery (for he was called half-savage), preserve their own species by a sort of peace, by begetting, bearing, suckling, and rearing their young, although very many are not gregarious but solitary; not like sheep, deer, doves, starlings, and bees, but like lions, wolves, foxes, eagles, and bats. For what tigress does not gently purr over her cubs, and, having subdued her ferocity, caress them. What kite, however solitary in circling over his prey, does not join a mate, build a nest, hatch eggs, rear the young, and
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preserve with the mother of his brood as peaceful a domestic society as possible? How much more is a man moved by the laws of nature, as-it were, to enter into society and to maintain peace, as far as he can, with all men, since even wicked men wage war to protect the peace of their own fellows, and would make all men their own, if they could, so that all men and things might serve but one head, and might, either through love or fear, surrender themselves to peace with him? For it is thus that pride perversely imitates God. For it despises equality with other men under Him and tries to impose a rule of its own upon its equals. It despises, that is, the just peace of God, and loves its own unjust peace. But it cannot help loving peace of some kind. For there is no vice so contrary to nature that it destroys the faintest traces of nature.
He then who prefers right to wrong and the orderly to the perverse sees that the peace of the unjust when compared with that of the just does not at all deserve the name of peace. Yet even the perverted must harmonize with and depend on some part of the whole order of things in which or out of which it is established; otherwise it would not exist at all. If a man were to hang with his head downward, this position of body and of limbs is certainly perverted, for that which nature requires to be above is below, and vice-versa; this perversity disturbs the peace of the body and is therefore painful; yet the soul is at peace with its body, and works for its safety, and hence the suffering. But if it is dismissed from the body by its pains, then, as long as the bodily limbs hold together, there is still a kind of peace among them, and hence the body remains suspended. And because the earthly body tends toward the earth and rests on the bond by which it is suspended, it tends toward its natural peace and by the demand of its weight, so to speak, it seeks a place of rest; and now, though without life and sensation, it does not depart from the peace natural to its rank whether possessing it or tending toward it. For if embalming preparations are applied to prevent the bodily frame from dissolving and disintegrating, a kind of peace still unites the various parts and keeps the whole body in a suitable place on earth, that is, in a place that is at peace with the body.
But if no embalming treatment is given and nature is left to take its course, it is disturbed by conflicting exhalations offensive to the senses (for that is what is smelled in cases of putrefaction)
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until the body unites with the elements of the world and little by little, particle by particle, it departs to enter into peace with them. Yet in this process the laws of the most high Creator and Ruler by whom the peace of the universe is administered are strictly observed, because although tiny animals breed in the carcass of a large animal, by the same law of the Creator all these little bodies serve the animals they belong to in peace. And although the flesh of dead animals is devoured by other animals, no matter where it is carried, nor what it mingles with, no matter what it is converted and changed into, it is still ruled by the same laws that are present everywhere for the preservation of every mortal species, acting as peacemakers by matching the parts that belong together.
Chapter Thirteen The peace of the body, therefore, is an orderly, proportioned arrangement of its parts; the peace of the irrational soul is the harmonious repose of the appetites, the peace of the rational soul is the ordered agreement of knowledge and action; the peace of body and soul is the ordered life and health of a living creature. Peace between mortal man and God is an ordered obedience in faith to eternal law; peace among men is an ordered concord; domestic peace is ordered concord among those ruling and those obeying. Civil peace is a similar concord among citizens. The peace of the Celestial City is a perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God and of one another in God. The peace of all things is the tranquillity of order. Order is the distribution of things equal and unequal, each to its own place.
And therefore the wretched—for, insofar as they are wretched, they certainly are not in peace—lack the tranquillity of order where there is no disturbance; yet, because they are deservedly and justly wretched, they are in their very wretchedness not unrelated to order. They are not indeed united with the blessed but it is by a law of order that they are separated from them. And though they are disquieted, their circumstances are not withstanding adjusted to thems and therefore they have some tranquillity of order and therefore some peace. But they are wretched because although not wholly miserable, they are not there where any degree of misery is impossible; but still more wretched are they if they are not at peace with that law by which the natural order is
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administered. But when they suffer, their peace is disturbed in the part that suffers; but in the part where there is no suffering and the bodily frame is not dissolved, there is peace. Just as there can be a certain life without pain, whereas there can be no pain without life, so also there may be peace without war, but no war without some kind of peace. This does not follow from the nature of war but because war implies the existence of some natural beings to wage it and these natural beings cannot exist without some kind of peace holding them together.
Therefore there is a nature in which evil does not or even cannot exist; but there cannot be a nature in which there is no good. Hence not even the nature of the devil himself is evil insofar as it is nature; but perversity makes it evil. Thus he did not abide in truth, yet did not escape the judgment of Truth (Jn 8:44); he did not remain in the tranquillity of order, yet did not flee from the power of the Orderer. The goodness of good, which is present in his nature, did not remove him from the justice of God by which in his punishment order was preserved. Nor does God thereby punish the good He has created but the evil that the devil committed. Nor does God remove all that He gave to his nature, but takes something and leaves something so that there should remain something to feel the pain of loss.
And this very pain testifies to the good that was taken and the good that was left. For if good were not left, he could not feel pain for the good lost. For he who sins is still worse if he rejoices in his loss of righteousness; but he who 1s in pain, although he may gain no good by it yet grieves for the loss of health. And since both righteousness and health are good, and the loss of any good is cause for grief rather than for joy (if, at least, there is no compensation, a spiritual righteousness may compensate for the loss of bodily health), certainly it is more appropriate for an unjust man to grieve in punishment than to rejoice in sin. So just as the rejoicing of a sinner because he has forsaken what is good testifies to a bad will, so his grief in punishment because of the good that he has lost testifies to a good nature. For whoever laments the peace lost by his nature is stimulated to do so by some vestiges of that peace whereby his nature is friendly to itself. Now it is right that in the final punishment the wicked and impious should weep in their torments for the loss of the good that was in their natures,
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perceiving that they were taken from them by a most just God whom they despised when He was the generous distributor of bounty.
God, therefore, the most wise Creator and the most just Orderer of all natures, who placed the human race upon the earth as its greatest adornment, has granted to men certain good things which befit this life; namely, temporal peace, insofar as it can be enjoyed in the short span of a mortal life in respect to health and safety and human fellowship, and everything needed to preserve or recover this peace (such as the objects accommodated to our outward senses: light, night, air to breathe and water to drink and whatever the body requires to feed and cover it, to heal and adorn it); and all under this most equitable condition, that every mortal making good use of these benefits to the peace of his mortal condition should receive greater and better things, that is, the peace of immortality, and glory and honor appropriate to it in our everlasting life passed in the enjoyment of God and of one another in God: Whereas he who uses the goods of this life perversely shall lose them and shall not receive those of everlasting life.
Chapter Fourteen
Therefore, all use of temporal things is related to the enjoyment of earthly peace in the earthly city; but in the Celestial City it is related to the enjoyment of everlasting peace. Hence if we were irrational animals, we should seek nothing beyond the ordered proportion of the parts of the body and the repose of the appetites; nothing, therefore, beyond the repose of the flesh and a good supply of pleasures, so that the peace of the body might advance the peace of the soul. For if bodily peace is lacking, the peace of the irrational soul is also impaired since it cannot achieve the gratification of its appetites. But the two together serve the mutual peace of soul and body, the peace of an ordered life and of health. For just as animals by shunning pain show that they love bodily peace, and by pursuing pleasure in order to placate the needs of their appetites show that they love peace of soul, so by shunning death they indicate sufficiently how greatly they love the peace that harmonizes soul and body.
But because man has a rational soul, he subordinates all he has in common with the beasts to the peace of the rational soul so that he may exercise his mind in contemplation and may act in accor-
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dance with it in order to enjoy that ordered agreement of knowledge and action which he called the peace of the rational soul. For this purpose he must desire to be neither molested by pain nor disturbed by desire nor dissolved by death in order that he might attain some useful knowledge and regulate his life and manners according to that knowledge. But lest by his very eagerness for knowledge he should incur some fatal infection of error, he needs divine teaching so that he may follow with assurance and divine help, so that he may follow it as a free man. And since, as long as he is in this mortal body, he is on pilgrimage away from God, he walks by faith, not by sight (2 Cor 5:6-7) and therefore he refers all peace, of body or of soul or of both, to that peace which exists between mortal man and the immortal God, that there may be in him an ordered obedience in faith to the eternal law.
Now since the Master God teaches two main precepts, love of God and love of one's neighbor, and since in them man finds three to love: God, himself, and his neighbor (Mt 22:37-39), and he who loves God loves himself, consequently he is concerned that his neighbor should love God, since he is commanded to love his neighbor as himself (such as his wife, his children, his household, and others 4s far as possible), and he would wish his neighbor to be equally concerned for him if by chance he is in need. Therefore he will be at peace as far as possible with all men in that human peace or ordered concord which has this order: first, harm no one; next, help everyone you can. Primarily, then, he has the care of his own household, inasmuch as the order of nature or of human society provides him with a closer and easier access to them for serving them. Wherefore, the Apostle says: ""Whoever does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his own household, he denies the faith and is worse than an infidel" (1 Im 5:8). So here there arises domestic peace, the ordered concord of those in the family who rule and those who obey.
For those who are concerned for others give commands, the husband to his wife, the parents to their children, the masters to their servants. But those who are objects of concern obey, as women obey their husbands; children, their parents; servants, their masters. But in the home of the just man who lives by faith and who is as yet a pilgrim in exile from the Celestial City, even those who give commands serve those whom they seem to command. For they command not through desire to dominate but
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through dutiful concern for others, not with pride in exercising authority but with mercy in providing for others.
Chapter Fifteen
This the natural order prescribes, and thus God created man. For, He says: "Let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds that fly in the heavens, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth" (Gn 1:26). For He did not wish a rational creature, made in His image, to have dominion except over irrational creatures; not man over man, but man over beasts. Whereupon the first just men were established as shepherds over cattle rather than as kings of men, so that God might teach what the relative position of creatures requires and what the guilt of sinners demands. For it is with justice, we believe, that the condition of slavery is the result of sin. So we do not read of a slave anywhere in the Scriptures until the just man Noah branded his son's sin with this word (Gn 9:25). So he merited this name by fault, not by nature. The origin of the Latin word for "slave" is believed to be derived from the fact that those who by the law of war might have been killed became, when preserved by their conquerors, slaves, so named from their preservation [servare]; but even this would not have happened except for the guilt of sin. For even when we wage a just war, the enemy must be sinning; and every victory, even when won by wicked men, humbles the conquered through a divine judgment, correcting or punishing their sins. Witness that man of God, Daniel, who in captivity confesses to God his own sins and those of his people, and in pious sorrow recognizes these sins as the cause of his captivity (Dn 9). Therefore, the prime cause of slavery is sin, so that man was subjected to man in a state of bondage; this was done only by a judgment of God in whom there is no unrighteousness and who knows how to distribute suitable punishments according to the merits of the sinners.
But as the heavenly Lord says: "Everyone who sins is the slave of his sin" (Jn 8:34), and so there are many wicked masters who have religious' men as their slaves and who are nevertheless not themselves free: "For by whom a man is conquered, to him is he also bound as a slave" (2 Pt 2:19). And surely it is a happier condition to be slave to a man than to a lust; for the cruelest dominion which devastates the hearts of mortals, to mention no
THE CITY OF GOD
other, is this very lust for dominion. Moreover, in a peaceful order in which some are subjected to others, the lowly position is as helpful to sérvants as the proud position is harmful to masters. But no nature, in which God first created man, is the slave either of another man or of sin. Yet penal slavery is also ordained by that law which commands us to preserve the natural order and forbids us to disturb it; for if nothing had been done contrary to that law, there would have been nothing requiring penal slavery. For this reason also the Apostle admonishes slaves to be subject to their masters and to serve them heartily and with good will, so that if they cannot be freed by their masters they may themselves make their very slavery in some sense free, by serving not in crafty fear but in faithful affection until all wickedness pass away and all human worship and power be eliminated and God be all in all (Eph 6:5; 1 Cor 15:24).
Chapter Sixteen Hence even if our righteous fathers had slaves, they so administered domestic peace as to distinguish the lot of children from the condition of slaves in respect to these temporal goods; but as to the worship of God in whom we should find our hope of everlasting goods, they considered with equal affection all the members of their households. Thus the natural order so prescribes that from it the name of pater familias arose and has been used so widely that even those who rule unjustly welcome being called by that name. But those who are true fathers of their households have regard for all in their households just as for their own children to see that they worship and gain God's favor, desiring and praying that they may reach the heavenly home where the duty of commanding men will be unnecessary because there will be no duty of providing for those who are already happy in that immortal state; but until they reach there, fathers have a greater responsibility in ruling than slaves have to tolerate their slavery.
But if anyone in the household by disobedience breaks the domestic peace, he is rebuked by a word or a blow or some kind of just and legitimate punishment as far as human fellowship allows, for the sake of the offender, so that he may be readjusted to the family peace from which he had broken away. For just as it is no kindness to help a man so that he loses a greater good, so it is not innocent conduct to spare a man so that he falls into a more
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serious sin. To be innocent we must not only not harm anyone, but must restrain him from sin or punish his sin so that either he who is punished may profit by his experience or others may be deterred by his example. Therefore, because a man's house should be the beginning or element of the city, and every beginning ministers to some end of its own kind and every part to the integrity of the whole of which it is a part, it clearly follows that domestic peace ministers to civic peace, that is, that the ordered concord concerning command and obedience among those who dwell together in a household ministers to the ordered concord concerning command and obedience among citizens. So we see that the father of a family should draw his precepts from the law of the city, and so rule his household that it shall be in harmony with civic peace.
Chapter Seventeen
But the families who do not live by faith pursue an earthly peace by means of the good things and conveniencés of this temporal life, while a household of those living by faith awaits the everlasting blessings promised for the future using like pilgrims anything earthly and temporal, not letting them entrap or distract from the path that leads to God, but using them to endure more easily and not to aggravate the burden of the corruptible body which weighs down the soul (Wis 9:15). Therefore, both kinds of human groups and of households use alike whatever is needed for this mortal life, but in using them each has its own quite different end in view. So also the earthly city which lives not by faith seeks an earthly peace and its aim at the concord of citizens concerning command and obedience is limited to a kind of agreement of human wills in respect to whatever is useful for this mortal life. But the Celestial City, or rather the part of it which goes its pilgrim way in this mortal life and lives by faith, must also use this peace until that mortal state for which such peace is necessary shall pass away. Therefore as long as it leads its life in captivity, as it were, being a stranger in the earthly city although it has already received the promise of redemption, and the gift of the Spirit as pledge of it, it does not hesitate to obey the laws of the earthly city whereby whatever ministers to the support of mortal life is so administered that since this mortal life is common to both, a
THE CITY OF GOD
harmony may be preserved between both cities concerning the things belonging to it.
Because the earthly city has had certain philosophers whose doctrine is condemned by the Divine Teaching and who being deceived either by their own conjectures or by demons supposed that there are many gods to be bribed to support human concerns, and that different provinces belong to different responsibilities of theirs, so that the body is the province of one, the soul of another; and in the body, one rules the head, another the neck, and so forth with each member; likewise in the soul, one presides over natural intelligence, another over education, another over anger, yet another over lust; and so the various affairs of life were assigned; one god cares for cattle, other gods respectively for grain, wine, oil, woods, money, navigation, wars and victories, marriage, birth, fertility, and so forth; but because the Celestial City knew only one God to be worshiped and believed with faithful piety that He is to be served with that service which in Greek is called /atria and should be rendered only to God, it happens that the Celestial City could not have common laws of religion with the earthly city, and on this pojnt must dissent and become a wearisome burden to those who thought differently, and must endure their anger and hatred and persecutions, except that the minds of their enemies have been alarmed by the multitude of the Christians and by the divine help accorded them.
While this Celestial City, then, pursues its path as a pilgrim on earth, it calls citizens from all peoples and collects an alien society of all languages, careless as to differences in manners, laws, institutions by which earthly peace is gained or maintained, abolishing or destroying none of it, nay, rather preserving and following them, for however diverse they may be among various nations, they aim at one and the same end, earthly peace, as long as that religion which teaches the obligation to worship one most high and true God is not impeded.
Therefore even the Celestial City in its pilgrimage makes use of the earthly peace and guards and seeks the convergence of human wills concerning what is useful for man's mortal nature as far as sound piety and religion allow, and makes the earthly peace minister to the heavenly peace, which is so truly peace that it must be considered and called the only peace, at least of a rational
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creature, since it is the best ordered and most harmonious fellowship in the enjoyment of God and one another in God. And when we reach that peace, this mortal life shall give way to one that is eternal; no animal body to weigh down the soul with its corruption, but a spiritual body lacking nothing and subdued in every part to the will. In its pilgrim state the Celestial City possesses this peace by faith; and by this faith it lives justly when it makes the attainment of that peace the aim of every good action in which it engages for the service of God and one's neighbor, since the life of a city is surely a social life.
Chapter Eighteen
As to the uncertainty about everything which Varro alleges to be the differentiating characteristic of the New Academy, the City of God utterly denounces such doubt as madness. About those things which its mind and reason apprehend, it has most certain knowledge, although this knowledge is limited because of the corruptible body that weighs down the spirit (sinée, as the Apostle says, "we know in part" [1 Cor 13:9]; yet it trusts the evidence of the senses which the mind uses through the agency of the body, since he is miserably deceived who thinks that they should never be trusted. It believes also in the Holy Scriptures, old and new, that we call Canonical, whence comes the very faith by which the just man lives (Hb 2:4); through this faith we walk without doubting as long as we are on pilgrimage exiled from the Lord (2 Cor 5:6). As long as this faith is sound and certain we may without just reproach doubt about those matters which neither sense nor reason has perceived and which have not been revealed to us by the Canonical Scriptures, and that we have not become aware of through witnesses whom it is absurd not to trust.
Chapter Nineteen
It is unimportant in the City of God whether whoever follows the faith leading to God does so in one dress or manner of life or another as long gs these are not against the divine precepts; hence, when philosophers themselves become Christians they are not forced to change their dress and manner of living, which do not hinder religion, but only their false doctrines. So the peculiarity of the Cynics which Varro emphasized is of no concern if nothing indecent or uncontrolled is done. Indeed, of those three
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kinds of life, the contemplative, the active, and the mixed, although anyone might lead his life in any one of them with faith preserved and attain everlasting rewards, yet there is value in what he possesses through his love of truth, and in what he expends by the claim of Christian love. No one ought to be so entirely contemplative as not to consider his neighbor's benefit, nor so active as to neglect the contemplation of God. Leisure should not mean delight in dull vacancy of mind but inquiry or discovery of truth so that each one makes progress without withholding from others what he has discovered.
And in action we should not covet the honors and power of this life, since everything under the sun is vanity (Eccl 1:23), but we should aim at using our position and influence if these have been honorably won for the benefit of those who are under us, which is according to God's law, as we have previously explained. For that reason the Apostle says: 'He that desires the episcopate desires a good work" (1 Tm 3:1). He wished to show what the word Episcopate means: a task, not an honor. For it is a Greek word derived from the fact that he who is set over others oversees or cares for them; for epi means "over" and skopein, "'to see," and therefore we may if we choose translate episkopein into Latin as "oversee." So that a bishop who loves to govern rather than to do good is no bishop. And so no one is prohibited from zeal in inquiring into truth because that pertains to a praiseworthy use of leisure; but it is inappropriate to covet high position without which a people cannot be ruled, although the position be held and administered appropriately. Therefore, love of truth seeks holy leisure; the necessity of charity undertakes righteous activity. If no burden is placed on us we are free to discern and contemplate truth; but if it is placed on us, we should accept it under the necessity of love. But neither is delight in truth to be wholly forsaken, lest when that sweetness is withdrawn, that burden might crush us.
Chapter Twenty
Since, therefore, the supreme good of the City of God is everlasting and perfect peace, not that through which mortals pass by being born and dying but that in which immortals abide, wherein no adversity at all is suffered, who would deny that this is the most blessed life, or that when compared with it the present
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life, however great may be the goods of soul and body and external good things with which it is filled, is judged most wretched? Yet whoever so lives this life for the sake of that other life which he most ardently loves and most confidently hopes for can even now without absurdity be called blessed, though not in reality so much as in hope. But the actual possession of the happiness of this life without the hope of what is beyond is a false happiness and great misery; for it does not use the true goods of the mind, since that is not true wisdom that does not prudently direct its judgments, courageous actions, self-control, and just dealings toward that end where God shall be all in all (1 Cor 15:28) in sure eternity and perfect peace.
Chapter Twenty-One
This, now, is the place where I should explain as briefly and clearly as possible what I promised in the second book of this work, that if we were to accept the definitions used by Scipio in Cicero's De Republica, there never was a Roman state. For he briefly defines a state as a commonwealth. If this definition is true, there never was a Roman state, for there never was a commonwealth, which he wished to be the definition of a state. For he defined a people as a numerous gathering united in fellowship by a common sense of right and common interests. What he means by a common sense of right he explains by arguing that a state cannot be administered without justice; therefore, where there is no true justice, there can be no right. For what is done rightly is surely done justly, whereas what is done unjustly cannot be done rightly. For the unjust human inventions are not to be called or considered as rights, since even their makers say that right is that which flows from the fountain of justice, and deny the definition commonly given by those who misunderstand the matter, that right is the interest of the strongest.
So when there is no true justice there can be no gathering of men united in fellowship by a common sense of right and, therefore, no people as defined by Scipio or Cicero; and if no people, then no commonwealth, but only some kind of mob unworthy to be called a people. Consequently, if a state is a commonwealth, and if that is not a people, that is, not united in fellowship by a common sense of right, and if there is no right where there is no
THE CITY OF GOD
justice, then it certainly follows that where there is no justice there is no state. Furthermore, justice is that virtue which distributes to everyone his due. What justice, then, is that which removes a man from the true God and subjects him to unclean demons? Is this to give everyone his due? Or is he who retains a piece of land from the purchaser and gives it to someone who has no right to it unjust, whereas he who takes himself from the Lord God who made him and serves wicked spirits is just?
Certainly this same book, De Republica, argues very sharply and vigorously against injustice and in favor of justice. And since when it was previously argued on behalf of injustice against justice, maintaining that a state cannot exist or be administered except through injustice, it was put forward as the most valid position that it is unjust for some men to serve other men as masters, and yet an imperial city including a mighty state cannot govern provinces without pursuing such injustice; the answer to this argument on the part of justice was that the rule over provincials is just, because servitude is useful to such men and is established for their welfare when rightly established, that is, when license to 'do wrong is withdrawn from wicked men, and that those subjected will be better off because, when not subjected, they were worse off.
To confirm this reasoning a remarkable example is given, as though from nature and expressed this way: 'Why, therefore, does God command man, the soul command the body, the reason command the passions and the other vicious parts of the soul?" This example teaches clearly enough that servitude is useful to some men and that service to God is useful to all.
For in serving God the soul rightly commands the body, and within that very soul the reason subject to God the Lord rightly commands the passions and other vices. Therefore, when a man does not serve God, how much justice can we suppose him to possess? For when a man does not serve God, in no way can his soul justly command his body or his human reason command his vices. And if there is no justice in such a man, without doubt there is no justice in a community of such men. Here, then, there is no common sense of right which transforms a multitude of men into a people, whose wealth has been said to be a commonwealth. For why need I speak of the utility whereby also a gathering of men,
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according to our definition, is called a people? Although, if you carefully note, there is no utility to those who live impiously as do all who do not serve God and serve demons—demons all the more impious in demanding that sacrifices be paid to them as to Gods —yet I think that all we have said concerning a common sense of right sufficiently demonstrates that in terms of this definition a people in whom there is no justice cannot be said to be a state. For if it is said that the Romans in their state served not unclean spirits but good and holy gods, must we repeat what we have already said enough times, nay, more than enough? For can he who has read the previous books of this work and has reached this point doubt that the Romans served evil and impure demons unless he is either exceedingly stupid or shamelessly contentious? But aside from the character of the gods to whom they offered sacrifices, it is written in the Law of the true God: "He who sacrifices to any God except to the Lord only shall be utterly destroyed" (Ex 22:20). He who prescribed such a threatening commandment did not will, therefore, that sacrifices be offered either to good gods or to evil ones.
Chapter Twenty-Two
But you may reply: "Who is this God, or how is He, and no other god besides, proven worthy to receive sacrifices from the Romans?" He who still asks who this God is must be very blind. He is the very God whose Prophets foretold those things which we behold. He is the very God from whom Abraham received the declaration: "In your seed all nations shall be blessed" (Gn 22:18). This was fulfilled in Christ, who arose from that seed according to the flesh, as even those acknowledge, whether they will or not, who have remained hostile to this name. He is the very God whose divine Spirit spoke through those men whose prophecies, cited in my previous books, are fulfilled through the Church which we see spread throughout the world. He is the very God whom Varro, most learned of Romans, thought to be Jupiter, not knowing what he saxd; this I considered worth mentioning merely because a man of such learning could not deny that this God existed nor consider him worthless. For he believed that he was identified with the one whom he considered the Supreme God. Finally he is the very God whom Porphyry, the most learned of philosophers, though the sharpest enemy of the Christians, con-
THE CITY OF GOD
fesses to be a mighty God, even through the oracles of those whom he considers to be gods.
Chapter Twenty-Three
For in the book entitled Philosophy of the Oracles, in which he collects and comments on the responses, supposedly divine, with regard to matters pertaining to philosophy, to quote his own words as translated from Greek into Latin: 'To one inquiring what god's favor he should seek in order to recall his wife from Christianity, Apollo answered in the following verses." Then the following words are given as those of Apollo: "You will probably find it easier to write in permanent characters on water, or lightly fly like a bird through the air than to recall to her senses an impious wife once she has polluted herself. Let her persist as she wishes in her empty delusions, singing false laments to her dead God who was condemned by right-minded judges and executed publicly by violent death." Then after these verses of Apollo (translated here into Latin prose), Porphyry says: '"'In these verses Apollo revealed the incurable corruption of the Christians, saying that the Jews recognized God rather than the Christians." See how he misrepresents Christ and prefers the Jews to the Christians in the recognition of God. For he so explained Apollo's verses as to say that Christ was put to death by right-minded judges, as if He had been deservedly punished by just judges. What the lying seer of Apollo said and Porphyry believed or that he put forward in the seer's words are their responsibility. We shall later look into Porphyry's consistency, that is, how consistent he makes his very oracles with one another.
Here, however, he says that the Jews, as the defenders of God, judged rightly when they decreed that Christ was to be tortured by the worst kind of death. He should have listened, then, to this God of the Jews to whom he bears this testimony when that God says: "He who sacrifices to any other Gods, save to the Lord alone, shall be utterly destroyed" (Ex 22:20). But let us come to clearer statements, and hear how great a God he thinks the God of the Jews is. For example, Apollo when asked which is the better, reason or law, "replied," he said, "in these verses." Then he adds these verses of Apollo from which I select the following as sufficient: "Truly in God," he says, "the Creator and the King prior to all things, before whom tremble heaven and earth and the sea and
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the hidden places beneath, and their deities themselves are afraid, for their law is the Father whom the holy Hebrews greatly honor." In this oracle of his own God Apollo, Porphyry has described the God of the Hebrews as being so great that the very deities tremble before Him. Since, therefore, that God said: "He who sacrifices to any gods will be utterly destroyed," I am surprised that Porphyry himself did not tremble and fear lest he be destroyed utterly for sacrificing to other gods.
This philosopher also says some good things about Christ, as if he had forgotten that abuse of which we have just spoken, or as if his gods only when asleep spoke wickedly of Christ and when awake recognized that He was good and gave Him deserved praise. For he says, as if about to announce something marvelous and incredible: '"'What we shall say will certainly seem surprising to some. For the gods have proclaimed that Christ is very pious and has become immortal, and they speak favorably of him; the Christians, however, are polluted, they say, and contaminated and caught up in error, and against them the gods utter many blasphemies." Then he adds examples, as he declares, of oracles of the gods blaspheming the Christians, continuing: "But to those who inquired whether Christ were God, Hecate answered: 'You know that the immortal soul goes abroad after it leaves the body; but when it is sundered from wisdom it wanders forever. This soul is that of a man preeminent in piety; because they are estranged from the truth, they worship it.' "" Then after the words of this socalled oracle he adds his own explanation: "Therefore, Hecate said that this was a most pious man, and that his soul, like that of other pious men, was invested, as it deserved, with immortality, and that the Christians in their ignorance worship it. And to those inquiring why he was then condemned, the goddess in an oracle answered: "The body, certainly, is always subject to crippling torments; but the souls of the pious have their abode in heaven. Now that soul gave to other souls the fatal gift of becoming involved in error; these were the souls to whom the fates had not granted that they should attain the gifts of the gods or gain knowledge of immortal Jupiter. Consequently, they were hated by the gods because, although by fate they did not know God, nor receive the gifts of the Gods, this man gave them the fatal gift of being involved in error. He himself, however, was pious, and like other pious people, entered into heaven. So you must not blas-
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pheme him but pity the folly of men: Through him there is a risk of an easy and headlong fall.' "
Who is so foolish as not to understand that these oracles either were fabricated by a shrewd man, one very hostile to Christians, or were responses of impure demons with similar intent? Since they praise Christ they hope to be believed as truthful when they blame the Christians and so, if possible, to block the way to everlasting salvation whereby the individual becomes a Christian. Of course they assume that it is not contrary to their wicked and multifarious astuteness if they are believed when praising Christ, provided that their repudiation of the Christians is also accepted. They hope that anyone convinced on both counts will be led to praise Christ provided he does not wish to be a Christian and so is not freed from the domination of those demons by the Christ whom he has praised. Besides, their praise of Christ is such that anyone believing in Him on their terms is not a true
Christian but a Photinian heretic who recognizes Christ only as man and not also as God and cannot, therefore, be saved by Him and cannot evade or undo the snares of those lying demons.
We, however, can approve neither Apollo's condemnation of Christ nor Hecate's praises. The one wants us to believe that Christ was unrighteous, since he says that He was put to death by right-minded judges; the other, that He was a very pious man, yet only a man. Yet both have the same intention, to prevent men from becoming Christians, because, if they are not Christians, they cannot be delivered from their power. Indeed, this philosopher, or rather those who believe such so-called oracles against the Christians, must first reconcile, if possible, Hecate and Apollo with reference to Christ Himself so that either both may condemn or both may praise Him. But even if they could do this, yet we should avoid such cheating demons whether they condemn or praise Christ. But when their god and goddess disagree about Christ, he condemning Him, she praising Him, certainly when they blaspheme the Christians, men do not believe them if they have right judgment.
When Porphyry or Hecate, praising Christ, asserts that He gave himself totally to the Christians to involve them in error, he exhibits, as he thinks, the causes of this very error. But before I quote from his words, I first ask whether it was willingly or unwillingly that Christ gave to Christians this fatal gift of involve-
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ment in error. If willingly, how could He be just? If unwillingly, how could He be blessed? But now let us hear the causes of this error. "There are," he says, "'in a certain place very small earthly spirits subject to the power of evil demons. The wise men of the Hebrews (among them was also this Jesus, as you have heard from the oracles of Apollo quoted above) turned religious men away from these very evil demons and lesser spirits and forbade them to venerate them; but they were to venerate the heavenly gods, above all, God the Father. "But this," he says, "the gods also teach and we have shown above how they admonish men to turn their minds to God and command them to worship Him everywhere. But unlearned and impious natures to which fate has not granted the gifts of the gods and a notion of immortal Jupiter, not listening to the gods and to inspired men, have rejected all the gods and instead of despising the prohibited demons have revered them. Although pretending to worship God, they do not those things through which alone God is adored. For God as the Father of all lacks nothing; but it fares well with us when we adore Him by means of justice, chastity, and other virtues and so make life itself a prayer to Him through the imitation and knowledge of him. For seeking to know purifies,' he says, "while imitation deifies by promoting affection for Him."
He has well proclaimed God the Father and has spoken well of the conduct by which He should be worshiped; of such precepts the prophetic books of the Hebrews are full, when they praise or blame the life of the saints. But in respect to Christians, he errs or slanders as greatly as the demons, whom he accepts as gods, desire; as if it were difficult for anyone to remember the base and shameful actions performed in the theaters and temples to please the gods, and to compare with these what is heard in our churches and what is offered to the true God, and thus conclude where character is edified and where it is ruined. Who but a diabolical spirit has told or suggested to him such a foolish and evident lie as that the Christians revered rather than despised the demons whose worship was forbidden by the Hebrews? But that God whom the wise men of the Hebrews worshiped prohibits sacrifices being offered even to the holy angels and heavenly powers, whom we venerate and love in this our mortal pilgrimage as our most blessed fellow citizens; speaking in thunderous tones He gave His Law to the Hebrew people, saying in very threaten-
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ing words: "He who sacrifices to any other gods shall be utterly destroyed" (Ex 22:20).
And lest it be thought that this command prohibits sacrifice only to those very evil demons and earthly spirits that Porphyry calls least or lesser (for even these are called gods in the holy Scriptures, not of the Hebrews, but of the Gentiles, as the seventy translators expressed it clearly in the Psalm, saying: 'For all the gods of the nations are demons" (Ps 96:5), but that sacrifices to some or all of the heavenly powers were permitted, He soon adds: 'Save to the Lord only" (Ex 22:20), that is, save to the Lord alone. If anyone supposes that the words Domini soli mean "to our Lord the Sun," to whom he thinks sacrifice should be offered, an examination of the Greek Scriptures will easily show that this is not the meaning.
Therefore, the God of the Hebrews, to whom this distinguished philosopher bears this singular testimony, gave to the Hebrew people the Law, written in the Hebrew language, not obscure and unknown but now published in all nations, in which it is written: "He who sacrifices to gods, save to the Lord only, shall be utterly destroyed." What need is there to continue the inquiry into His Law and Prophets concerning this? In fact, the need is not for inquiry, for the passages are neither few nor obscure, but rather for collecting and exposing in this argument of mine the obvious and many passages in which it appears clearer than daylight that the Supreme God chose to have sacrifice offered to no being whatever save to Himself only. Here is one brief utterance, a little one or rather a great one but spoken truly by that God whom the most learned of the Gentiles so excellently extol; let it be heard, feared, and lived up to, lest the disobedient experience utter destruction. "He who sacrifices to gods," He says, "save to the Lord only, shall be utterly destroyed," not because God has need of something but because it benefits us to belong to Him. To him the psalmist sings in the sacred Scriptures of the Hebrews: "I have said to the Lord: You are my God since you need not my goods" (Ps 16:2).
But we ourselves who are His City are his most splendid and best sacrifice, and this mystery we celebrate in our offerings, which are well known to the faithful, as we have discussed in the preceding books. For that the victims which the Jews offered as a shadow of what was to come should cease, and that the peoples
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from the rising of the sun to its setting should offer one sacrifice, as we see happening now, was declared by divine oracles through the Hebrew prophets; and of these oracles we have selected what seemed a sufficient number and scattered them throughout this work.
Therefore where there is not that justice whereby the One and Supreme God rules an obedient city according to His grace, so that it sacrifices to none save to Him only, so that in all men belonging to this city and obeying God the soul commands the body and the reason faithfully commands the vices in a system of law, so that as one just man lives by faith (Heb 2:4; Rom 1:17; Gal 3:11), which works by love (Gal 5:6), just so, a gathering or people of just men lives by faith which works by love, the love whereby a man loves God as He should be loved, and his neighbor as himself —where there is no such' justice, I say, certainly there is no gathering of men united in fellowship by a common sense of right and by a community of interest. And if this does not exist, there surely is not a people, if this definition of people is true. Therefore, neither is there a state because where there is no people there is no commonwealth.
Chapter Twenty-Four
But if a people be defined not in this but in some other way as in this way: "A people is a large gathering of rational beings united in fellowship by agreement about the objects of their love," then certainly to see the quality of each people, we must examine what it loves. Yet, whatever it loves, if it is a large gathering not of cattle but of rational beings, and is united in fellowship by common agreement about the objects of its love, then it is not absurd that it be called a people; and surely the better the objects of its united love, the better the people, and the worse the objects of its love, the worse the people. According to this definition of ours the Roman people is a people, and its wealth is without doubt a commonwealth. But what this people loved in its early and later periods, and by what moral decline it moved into bloody sedition and then into social and civil war corrupting and disrupting that concord which is, so to speak, the health of a people, history bears witness; and in the preceding books I have enlarged upon it. And yet I shall not for this reason say either that there is no people or that the people's wealth is not a commonwealth as long as there
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remains, however slight, a gathering of rational beings united in fellowship by a common agreement about the objects of its love. But what I have said about this people and this state let me be taken to say and to mean about the Athenians, or any other Greeks, or the Egyptians or that earlier Babylon, about the Assyrians and about every other nation great or small which had a public government. Generally speaking, a city of the ungodly, not ruled by God, since it is disobedient to the command of God that sacrifice be not offered save to Himself only, which could not give to the soul its proper rule over the body, nor to reason its just authority over the vices, lacks true justice.
Chapter Twenty-Five
For however laudable may seem to be the rule of the soul over the body and the reason over the vices, if the soul and the reason do not serve God as God has commanded that He should be served, then in no way do they rightly rule the body and vices. For what kind of mistress over the body and the vices can that mind be which is ignorant of the true God, and which instead of being subject to his authority is prostituted to the corrupting power of the most vicious demons? Hence the very virtues which it thinks it possesses, through which it rules the body and vices in order to obtain or keep what it desires, if it does not subordinate them to God, are themselves vices rather than virtues. For although some suppose that virtues are true and honorable when they are referred to themselves and not sought on account of something else, even then they are puffed up and proud and so must be judged as vices, not virtues. For just as it is not that which comes from the flesh but that which is above the flesh which makes the flesh live, so it is not that which comes from man but that which is above man that makes him live a blessed life; and this is true not only of man but of every heavenly domination and power.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Therefore, as the life of the flesh is the soul, so the blessed life of man is God, of whom the sacred Scriptures of the Hebrews declare: "Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord" (Ps 144:15). Wretched, therefore, is the people that is alienated from that God. Yet even this people has a peace of its own not to be rejected; but in the end it will not possess it because it does not make good use
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of it before the end. But it is to our interest that it enjoy this peace meanwhile in this life; for as long as the two cities are commingled, we also enjoy the peace of Babylon; and the people of God is by faith so freed from it as to live as a stranger in the midst of it. On this account the Apostle also admonished the Church to pray for its kings and other nobility, adding these words: "That we may live a quiet and tranquil life with all piety and love" (1 Im 2:2). And the Prophet Jeremiah, in predicting the captivity to befall the ancient people of God, and in commanding them by divine inspiration to go obediently to Babylon, serving God by their very patience, admonished them to pray for Babylon, saying: "Because in her peace is your peace" (Jer 29:7), that is, of course, the temporal peace of the present which is common to good and wicked alike.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
But the peace that is ours we already have with God by faith, and we shall forever have it with Him by sight. But peace in this life, whether common to all or our special possession, is such that it should be called a solace of our misery rather than an enjoyment of blessedness. Also, our very justice, although it is true in relation to the true final good to which it is subordinated, is nevertheless in this life only of such a kind as to consist rather in the remission of sins than in the perfecting of virtues. Witness the prayer of the entire City of God that is exiled on earth. Through all its members it cries out to God: "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" (Mt 6:12). Nor is this prayer efficacious for those whose faith is dead without works (Jas 2:17), but only for those whose faith brings forth works through love (Gal 5:6). For because the reason, though subjected to God, in this mortal condition and in the corruptible body, which weighs down the soul (Wis 9:15), does not perfectly rule the vices, such a prayer is necessary for just men. For although the reason exercises command over the vices, certainly this is not without struggle. And even if we fight the good fight and rule as master, after such foes have been defeated and subdued, still if: this realm of weakness something creeps in so that sin is found if not in some swift action, certainly in some momentary utterance or some fleeting thought. And therefore there is no complete peace as long as the vices are being ruled, because the battle against resisting vices is precarious while those
THE CITY OF GOD
conquered do not allow for a triumph of carefree ease but one held down under a command that is full of anxiety. Among all these temptations, therefore, of which it has been briefly asserted in the divine oracles: "Is man's life on earth anything but temptation?"
(Jb 7:1), who will assume that his life is such that he need not say to God: "Forgive us our debts," unless it be a proud man, not truly great, but puffed up and bloated, who is justly resisted by Him who gives grace abundantly to the humble? On this account it is written: "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (Jas 4:6; 1 Pt 5:5). And so in this life, accordingly, justice for the individual means that God rules and man obeys, the soul rules over the body and reason rules over the vices even when rebellious, whether by subduing or withstanding them, and that from God Himself we seek grace to do our duty and forgiveness for our sins, and that we offer our service of thanksgiving for the blessings received. But in that final peace to which this justice should be subordinated and for the sake of having it this justice should be maintained, since our nature will be healed of its sickness by immortality and incorruption and will have no vices and since nothing either in ourselves or in another will be at war with any one of us, the reason will not need to rule the vices, since they will no longer exist; but God will rule man, and soul the body, and in obeying we shall find a pleasure and ease as great as the felicity of our living and reigning. And there, for all and for everyone, this state will be everlasting, and its everlastingness will be certain; and therefore the peace of this blessedness or the blessedness of this peace will be the highest good.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
But, on the other hand, those who do not belong to that City of God will receive everlasting misery, which is called also the second death (Rv 2:11), because neither the soul that is alienated from God's life can be said to live there, nor the body which will be subjected to everlasting torments; and this second death will be all the harder to bear in that it cannot be ended in death. But since just as misery is the opposite of blessedness, and death of life, so war is the opposite of peace, the question is properly raised: What or what kind of war can be understood to take place in the final state of the wicked to correspond to the peace that is predicted and lauded in the final state of the righteous? But let the questioner
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attend to what is harmful or destructive in warfare, and he will see that it is nothing but the mutual opposition and conflict of things. Therefore, what war can he imagine more grievous and bitter than one in which the will is so opposed to passion and passion to will that their hostilities can be ended by the victory of neither, and in which the power of pain so struggles with the very nature of the body that neither yields to the other? For in this life, when such a conflict arises, either pain conquers, and death takes away feeling, or nature conquers, and health removes the pain. But in the life beyond, pain remains to torment and nature stays to feel it; neither ceases to be lest the punishment should also cease.
However, since these are the extremes of good and evil of which we should seek to gain the former and escape the latter, and since through judgment good men pass to the former, bad men to the latter, I will, so far as God may grant, discuss this judgment in the following book.
Augustine of Hippo
THE RULE OF ST. AUGUSTINE
a - =
Introductory Note. There has always been controversy about the authenticity of the Rule of St. Augustine. Widely held was the opinion, passed on by Erasmus and St. Robert Bellarmine, among others, that the only Rule written by Augustine was one for nuns to be found in Letter 211. In recent years, however, Luc Verheijen, O.S.A., a competent contemporary expert on the Rule of St. Augustine, has discovered the original text as a Rule for Men and has published a careful study of it in the manuscript tradition.
The text that I have translated for this volume is the basic Latin text authored by Augustine and present in Verheijen's critical edition of the Rule for Men.
Letter 211, which 1s an authentic letter, contains the Rule in the feminine version but one not made by Augustine.
Verheijen calls this Rule: "Regularis informatio." We do not know who made the adaptation for women, but the text is basically the same as that of the official, authentic "Rule for Men" called "Praeceptum" by Verheijen.
There is another Rule called "Regulation for a Monastery" (ordo monasterii) which Verhesjen ascribes to Alypius, who was Augustine's student, friend, and fellow bishop. This has two small additions by Augustine.
There is, however, only one basic text which was authored by Augustine and this is translated here.
The evangelical foundation of the Rule is found in the Acts of the Apostles 4:32, where we read that "the whole group of believers were united, heart and soul." And so Augustine tells his brethren: "The main purpose for your having come together is to live harmoniously in your house, intent upon God in oneness of mind and heart" (I. 1).
This oneness of mind and heart or interpersonal unity 1s to be attained through love, a mutual love that enables all to remain "intent upon God." Charity is the environment of
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monastic life, enabling all to remain under the yoke of the Lord and making the burden ever lighter. In a contemplative atmosphere the monks aim at union with Christ, who lived freely for others. Just as there is a natural union of minds and bodies, so is there a material aspect to the union of minds and hearts in the monastery: This is the holding in common of all material possessions to be distributed according to each one's needs.
Fidelity to regulations that often seem too minute 1s, however, an effort to purify the heart for the "seeing of God." And regulations concerning common life are directed ultimately toward that inner community of thoughts and affections by which God's love is expressed for each one. As God dwells in the temple of each one's heart, so He dwells within the community as in a temple, to witness to the oneness of Christ and His members. The aim of "living in freedom under grace" remains always the ideal toward which numerous specific rules are directed. Renewal of the religious life in each age requires a reexamination as to whether the inherited regulations are efficacious in achieving the aim of religious life.
To follow the Rule of St. Augustine 1s to make a spiritual ascent to that Beauty which is God, the Splendor of Truth.
Generosity is the response to this Beauty, which is reflected in a true community of one heart and one mind in the one
Christ after the model of the first Christians at Jerusalem. A fervent monastery is a microcosm of the City of God.
Augustine's Rule represents the first monastic legislation, and his first monastery at Thagaste was that of a lay monastery. Bishop Eusebius of Vercelli (371) had already established community life for the clergy. At Hippo Augustine first established a community of lay monks and as bishop he formed an episcopal community of priests who renounced personal wealth and marriage while living ascetically and contemplatively gnd working for the salvation of others in humility, charity, and peace.
Augustine's Rule influenced the writing of many other Rules; it was used in the Canon Movement of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and in the Mendicant Movement of the
THE RULE OF ST. AUGUSTINE
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This Rule guides the religious life of the Order of St. Augustine organized in its present form in 1256 by Pope Alexander IV, and originally known as the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine (O.E.S.A.), a title that prevailed until 1968. irst and foremost, my very dear Brothers, you are to love God, and then your neighbor, because these are the chief commandments given to us.*
Mutual Love: Expressed in the Community of Goods and in Humility
We urge you who form a religious community to put the following precepts into practice.
. Above all, live together in harmony (Ps 67:7), having one mind and one heart (Acts 4:32), intent on God, since that is why you have come together.
. Do not call anything your own but share all things. Food and clothes should be distributed to each one of you by your superior, not to all equally, but to each one according to his need, since all do not enjoy equal health. For this is what you read in the Acts of the Apostles: "All things owned were held in common, and to each one was given whatever he needed"' (Acts 4:32, 35).
. Those who had personal possessions in the world should freely consent when they enter religious life that these become the property of the community.
. Those, however, who had no personal possessions should not seek in religious life those things which they could not have before they entered. Yet they are to be given whatever is required for their infirmities even though their poverty before they entered religious life prevented their having even life's necessities. Nor should they consider themselves fortunate because they receive food and clothes which were beyond their means in their previous lives.
. Nor should those who formerly were poor now become proud
first sentence is not contained in the critical text established by L. Verheijen, O.S.A., but it is found in many versions.
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because they associate with those whom previously they dared not approach. Instead, let them raise up their hearts and avoid empty earthly vanities lest our communities be useful for the rich and not for the poor: if the rich learn humility there and the poor are puffed up with pride.
. But, on the other hand, those who were obviously important in the world should not look down upon their brethren who have entered the religious community from a condition of poverty. They should be prouder of their life together with their poor brothers than of the social status of their rich parents. The fact that they have contributed some of their resources to the community is no reason for them to have a high opinion of themselves. Nor should they take greater pride by sharing their riches with the community than by enjoying them in the world. For whereas all vices express themselves in evil acts, pride lurks also in our good works in order to destroy even them. And what good is it to dispense gifts to the poor and even become poor oneself if Biving up riches makes a person prouder than he was when he possessed a fortune?
. Live, then, all of you, "one in mind and one in heart" (Acts
4:32), and mutually honor God in one another because each of you has become His temple (2 Cor 6:16).
II. Community Prayer. ""Persevere in prayer" (Col 4:2) at the hours and times appointed.
. In the oratory no one should do anything out of keeping with the purpose of the place. So that if some perhaps have leisure and wish to pray outside the regular hours, they should not be distracted by those wanting to use the oratory for another purpose.
. When with Psalms and hymns you pray to God, ponder in your heart what your voice utters.
. When you sing keep to the text you have, and do not sing what is not intended to be sung.
Il. Community and Care of the Body. Subdue your body by fasting and by abstaining from food and drink insofar as health permits. Those unable to fast the whole
THE RULE OF ST. AUGUSTINE
day may take something to eat even apart from the main evening meal. They may do this, however, only around midday. But-the sick may take something to eat any time of day.
. When you come to the table, listen until you leave to the customary reading without disturbance or dispute. Not only are you to satisfy your physical hunger but also to hunger for the word of God (cf. Am 8:11).
. And if those entering the community who were accustomed to live comfortably have extra nourishment given to them, this should not irritate others or seem unjust to those whose former style of life made them physically stronger. They should not consider their weaker brothers more favored because they receive a more generous fare; they should rather be glad that they are able to bear what the former cannot yet endure.
. And if more food, clothing, and bedding are given to those entering the community who were accustomed to live comfortably than is provided for others who are stronger and more fortunate, the latter should be mindful of how much the rich now have to live without in comparison with their previous life,even though they cannot live as simply as those who are physically stronger.
. Nor should all the brethren desire what they see given to a few, for it is given not as a mark of honor but out of consideration for their weakness. Otherwise, there would be undesirable abuse in religious life where the rich become schooled in hardship and the poor become more luxurious. Obviously, the sick should receive special food; if not, their illness would only increase. Even if they entered from the poorest social conditions they should, when convalescing, receive that treatment most likely to renew their strength. Their illness entitles them to what the rich are entitled to because of their former style of life. But once they have made a complete recovery, they are to resume their previous mode of life when they were happier because their needs were fewer. The simpler a way of life the better is it suited to the servants of God. Once restored to health, they should not allow the desire for food, previously needed to support their weakness, now to enslave them. Those who can lead simple lives without any difficulty should consider themselves the most fortunate of people. For it is better to make do with too little than to have many things.
AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
IV. Community Responsibility in Good and Evil. There should be nothing that attracts attention in your attire.
Try to find favor by your manner of life, not by the clothes you wear.
. When you go out, go with someone else and stay together when you have reached your destination.
. In walking, standing, and in all your actions do nothing that might seem offensive, but do that which befits the holiness of your way of life.
. When you see a woman, do not fix your eyes on her. For although when you go out you are not forbidden to look at women, it is sinful to desire them or to want to be desired by them (cf. Mt 5:28). For it is not only by gestures of affection that desire between men and women is awakened but also by looks. And do not say that you have pure intentions if you keep looking at a woman, because the eye is the messenger of the heart. When impure intentions are allowed to appear not by words but just by exchanging glances and finding pleasure in each other's affection, even though not in each other's arms, we cannot speak any longer of true chastity which is precisely that of the heart.
. Let no one who fixes his eye upon a woman and delights in having her eye fixed on him suppose that he is not seen by others; he is certainly seen, and by those he does not realize are observing him. But although his act were hidden and unobserved, how can he hide anything from that Witness above us from whom nothing is hidden (Prv 24:12)? Or are we to think that He does not see because He sees with a patience as great as His Wisdom? Let the religious man therefore fear to displease God by pleasing a woman wickedly. Let him know that God looks upon all things and so be unwilling to look upon a woman lustfully. For in this respect and for this reason fear was recommended when it was written: "The covetous eye is an abomination to the Lord" (Prv 27:20).
. When therefore you are together in church or anywhere else where women are present, you are to consider yourselves responsible for one another's chastity. Then God who dwells in you (2 Cor 6:16) will protect you through your responsibility for one another.
THE RULE OF ST. AUGUSTINE
. And if you should notice this wantonness of the eye I have spoken of in a brother, admonish him immediately, so that what was begun will not progress but will be promptly corrected.
. But if after this warning you see him repeating this on another day, then whoever happens to see this should report him as he would report a wounded brother in need of healing. Yet, first of all, the fault should be pointed out to another, and perhaps to a third so that they may be convinced (Mt
18:15-—17). Thus he can be convicted on the testimony of two or three witnesses and punished with suitable severity. Do not consider yourself malicious for reporting this. For surely you are not innocent if by your silence you allow your brothers whom by reporting you could have healed to perish. For if your brother had a bodily wound which he wanted to hide because of the fear of surgery, would it not be cruel for you to remain silent, and merciful for you to reveal it? How much more then should you reveal this, lest he suffer a more deadly wound in the heart?
. But if he fails to heed the admonition, he should first be brought to the attention of the superior before his offense is made public to the others who will have to prove his guilt, if he denies the charge. Thus he may be reproved privately so that his fault may perhaps be kept from others. If, however, he denies the charge, then others should be summoned so that he may be accused in the presence of all, not only by one witness but by two or three (1 Tm 5:20), and thus stand convicted. If proven guilty, he must submit to the punishment imposed by his superior or by the higher authority under whose jurisdiction the matter falls. If he refuses to submit to the punishment and does not voluntarily depart, let him be expelled from your midst. For this is not done out of cruelty but out of mercy, lest he ruin many others by his evil influence.
. And let what I have said about the restraint of impure looks be diligently and faithfully observed in the discovery, prevention, manifestation, proving, and punishment of all other sins. This should be done out of charity for the neighbor but out of hatred for their sins. But if any of you has so seriously fallen as to have secretly accepted letters or any kinds of gifts from a woman, let him be
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pardoned and prayed for if he openly confesses his fault. But if he is detected and convicted, he must be more severely punished according to the decision of the superior or higher authority.
V. Service of One Another. Your clothes should be kept in one place and looked after by one or more brothers. They will see that they are well aired and kept free of moths. And just as your food is prepared in one kitchen, so your clothes are to come from one storeroom. If possible, have no concern as to what is given you to wear at the change of seasons. It does not matter whether you get back the same clothes you handed in or something worn by another, provided no one is denied what he needs (Acts 4:35). But if among you there arise disputes and murmuring because someone complains about receiving poorer clothing than he previously had and thinks it beneath his dignity not to be as well dressed as this one or that one of his brothers, by, this you prove how lacking you are in that holy and inner garment of the heart, you who quarrel over bodily garments. But if your weakness is tolerated so that you receive what you turned in, nevertheless whatever you place aside must be kept in one place under the common charge.
. This should be done so that no one may seek merely his own convenience but that all may work for the interest of the community with greater zeal and more readiness than if he were providing for his own individual interest. For it has been written of charity that it "is not self-seeking" (1 Cor 13:5), that is to say, it puts the interests of the community before its own interests, and not the other way around. The more you are concerned for the interests of the community rather than for your own interests, the more certain is your progress in the spiritual life. Thus through all the passing needs of men's lives something sublime and permanent will be revealed, namely, charitye(],Cors12:3,1;,13:13).
. Consequently, a teligious who receives clothes or other useful things from his parents or relatives may not keep these quietly for himself. He should give them to the superior so that, as the property of the community, they may be placed at the disposal of whoever needs them (Acts 4:32; 4:35).