13. "They" are the saints of the Old Testament of whose faith we are reminded in Heb 11.
Book IX 381 would also have been possible for human beings, after breeding children and justly carrying out their duties, to be transferred to better things by some kind of change other than death. This could either be that supreme change by which on getting back their bodies10 they will become like the angels in heaven (Mt 22:30); or else, ifthis may only be properly granted to all mankind together at the end of the world, it would be by some kind of lesser change, which for all that would still bring about a better condition than either this body has, or even the bodies of the two who were created at the beginning, the man' s from the mud of the earth, the woman's from the man's flesh.
1 1 . Elijah, you see, is not to be reckoned as already being like what the saints will be when, the work of the day being done, they will all equally receive the wage of a tenner, 1 1 nor on the other hand like people who have not yet departed this life, from which he did still depart, not by death but by special conveyance. 12 And so he already enjoys something better than he could have done in this life, although he does not yet enjoy what he is going to do at the end in consequence ofa life well lived here. For they were looking forward to better things for us, lest they should be perfected without us being perfected too.13
Or if you suppose that Elijah could not have earned such a blessing if he had married a wife and begotten children—he is believed not to have had one because scripture did not say he did, although for that matter it did not say anything about his being celibate either—what reply will you give about Enoch, who pleased God after having had children, and did not die, but was conveyed away?14 So then, if Adam and Eve had lived justly and had chastely begotten children, why could they not have made room for these to succeed them, not by dying but by being conveyed away?
10. 1n the case he has in mind they would not have lost their bodies, because they would not have died; but he is of course thinking of the resurrection of the dead, to which we now look forward, achieving the effect which would have been granted to them, without their having to die first.
1 1. See Mt 20: 1-16, the parable of the workers in the vineyard, in which all received a denarius; a penny in the old translations, because that is what a denarius became. But it was a coin which was worth ten even smaller coins, and much is often made by Augustine of its derivation from the number 1 0; so "tenner," even though colloquial, seems to be the best modern equivalent. 12. See2Kgs2:11. 13. "They" are the saints of the Old Testament of whose faith we are reminded in Heb 11. Augustine is here alluding, very freely from a slightly inaccurate memory, to verses 39 and 40 of that chapter. His final clause reads ne sine nobis perfecti perficerentur—"lest being perfected they should be perfected without us." 1 have presumed to emendperfecti to perfectis, to agree with nobis. Neither form is in the actual text of Hebrews. 14. See Gn 5:21-24.