arises, no doubt, from the ternary number, barrenness. But intercession was made for
Ccuap. IV.] ON THE TRINITY. 73
His servants that they should not fear those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.* Wherefore the apostle says, '* That I may fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh.''? And the resurrection of the body of the Lord is found to contain a type of the resurrection of our outward man, because He says to His discifor one and two and three make six. And this number is on that account called perfect, because it is completed in its own parts: for it has these three, sixth, third, and half; nor is there any other part found in it, which we can call an aliquot part. The sixth part of it, then, is one; the third part, two; the half, three. But one and two and three complete the same six. And Holy Scripture commends to us the perfection of this number, especially in this, that God finished His works in six days, and on the sixth day man was made in the image of God.? And the Son of God came and was made the Son of man, that He might re-create us after the image of God, in the sixth age of the human race. For that is now the present age, whether a thousand years apiece are assigned to each age, or whether we trace out memorable and remarkable epochs or turning-points of time in the divine Scriptures, so that the first age is to be found from Adam until Noah, and the second thence onwards to Abraham, and then next, after the division of Matthew the evangelist, from Abraham to David, from David to the carrying away to Babylon, and from thence to the travail of the Virgin," which three ages joined to those other two make five. Accordingples, '' Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have,'' And one of the disciples also, handling His scars, exclaimed, '' My Lord and my God! °'4 And whereas the entire integrity of that flesh was apparent, this was shown in that which
He had said when exhorting His disciples: ''There shall not a hair of your head perish."5 For how comes it that first is said, "' Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father;''® and how comes it that before He ascends to the Father, He actually is touched by the disciples; unless because in the former the mystery of the inner man was intimated, in the latter a type was given of the outer man? Or can any one possibly be so without understanding, and so turned away from the truth, as to dare to say that He was touched by men before He ascended, but by women when He had ascended? It was on account of this type, which went before in the Lord, of our future resurrection in the body, that the apostle says, '' Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ's.''? For it was the resurrection of the body to which this place refers, on account of which he also says, '* Who has changed our vile body, that it may be fashly, the nativity of the Lord began the sixth, which is now going onwards until the hidden end of time. We recognize also in this senary number a kind of figure of time, in that threefold mode of division, by which we compute one portion of time before the Law; a second, under the Law; a third, under grace. In which last time we have received the sacrament of renewal, that we may be renewed also in the end of time, in every part, by the resurrection of the flesh, and so may be made whole from our entire infirmity, not only of soul, but also of body. And thence that woman is understood to be a type of the church, who was made whole and upright by the Lord, after she had been bowed by infirmity through the binding of Satan, For those words of the Psalm lament such hidden enemies: '* They bowed down my soul.''* And this woman had her intirmity eighteen years, which is thrice six, And the months of eighteen years are found in number to be the cube of six, vzz. six times six times six. Nearly, too, in the same place in the Gospel is that fig tree, which was convicted also by the third year of its miserable barrenness. But intercession was made for it, that it might be let alone that year, that year, that if it bore fruit, well; if otherwise, it should be cut down." For both three years ioned like unto His glorious body.''® The one death therefore of our Saviour brought salvation to our double death, and His one resurrection wrought for us two resurrections; since His body in both cases, that is, both in
His death and in His resurrection, was ministered to us by a kind of healing suitableness, both as a mystery of the inner man, and as a type of the outer.
HAPS A, tH RATIO OF THESINGLE TO. THE DOUBLE COMES FROM THE PERFECTION OF THE SENARY NUMBER. THE PERFECTION OF THE SENARY NUMBER IS COMMENDED IN THE SCRIPTURES. THE YEAR ABOUNDS IN THE SENARY NUMBER,
7. Now this ratio of the single to the double arises, no doubt, from the ternary number, since one added to two makes three; but the whole which these make reaches to the senary,
2 Col. i. 24. 4 John xx. 28. 6 John. xx. 17. 8 Phil. ili, 21.
1 Matt. x. 28. 3 Luke xxiv. 39. 5 Luke xxi, 18. 4:3 Gor. xv. 23.
10 Matt. i. 17. 9 Gen. i. 27. 12 Luke xiii. 6-17. II Ps, lvis. 6,
THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN. [Book IV.
is found to have been brought in so many days to the birth, as the authority of the church maintains upon the tradition of the elders. For He is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also He suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which He was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which He was buried, wherein was never man laid,? neither before nor since. But He was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th. If, then you reckon from that day to this you find two hundred and seventy-six days which is fortysix times six. And inthis number of years the temple was built, because in that number of sixes the body of the Lord was perfected; which being destroyed by the suffering of death, He raised again on the third day. For '' He spake this of the temple of His body,' 3 asis declared by the most clear and solid testimony of the Gospel; where He said, '*For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." 4 belong to the same threefold division, and the months of three years make the square of six, which is six times six.
8, A single year also, if the whole twelve months are taken into account, which are made up of thirty days each (for the month that has been kept from of old is that which the revolution of the moon determines), abounds in the number six, For that which six is, in the first order of numbers, which consists of units up to ten, that sixty is in the second order, which consists of tens up to a hundred. Sixty days, then, are a sixth part of the year. Further, if that which stands as the sixth of the second order is multiplied by the sixth of the first order, then we make six times sixty, z.e. three hundred and sixty days, which are the whole twelve months. But since, as the revolution of the moon determines the month for men, so the year is marked by the revolution of the sun; and five days and a quarter of a day remain, that the sun may fulfill its course and end the year; for four quarters make one day, which must be intercalated in every fourth year, which they call bissextile, that the order of time may not be disturbed: if we consider, also, these five days and a quarter themselves, the number six prevails in them, First, because, as it is usual to compute the whole from a part, we must not call it five days, but rather six, taking the quarter days for one day. Next, because five days themselves are the sixth part of a month; while the quarter of a day contains six hours.
a —— =
—_ er
e eita
CHAP, 6.—THE THREE DAYS OF THE RESURREC-
TION, IN WHICH ALSO THE RATIO OF SINGLE TO DOUBLE IS APPARENT.
1o. Scripture again witnesses that the space of those three days themselves was not whole and entire, but the first day is counted as a whole from its last part, and the third day is itself also counted as a whole from its first part; but the intervening day, z.e. the second day, was absolutely a whole with its twenty-four hours, twelve of the day and twelve of the night. For He was crucified first by the voices of the Jews in the third hour, when it was the sixth day of the week. Then He hung on the cross itself at the sixth hour, and yielded up His spirit at the ninth hour. But He was buried, ''now when the even was come,'' as the words of the evangelist express it;® which means, at the end of the day. Wheresoever then you begin,— even if some other explanation can be given, so as not to contradict the Gospel of John,' but to understand that He was suspended on the cross at the third hour,—still you cannot make the first day an entire day. It will be reckoned then an entire day from its last part, as the third from its first part. For the night up to the dawn, when the resurrection of the Lord was made known, belongs to the third day; because God (who commanded
For the entire day, z.e. including its night, is twenty-four hours, of which the fourth part, which is a quarter of a day, is found to be six hours. So much in the course of the year does the sixth number prevail.
CHAP, 5.—-THE NUMBER SIX IS ALSO COMMEND-
ED IN THE BUILDING UP OF THE BODY OF CHRIST AND OF THE TEMPLE AT JERUSALEM.
g. And not without reason is the number six understood to be put for a year in the building up of the body of the Lord, as a figure of which He said that He would raise up in three days the temple destroyed by the Jews. For they said, *' Forty and six years was this temple in building."* And _ six times forty-six makes two hundred and seventy-six. And this number of days completes nine months and six days, which are reckoned, as it were, ten months for the travail of women; not because all come to the sixth day after the ninth month, but because the perfection itself of the body of the Lord
3 John ii. 19-21. c 7 John xix. 14. 6 Mark xv, 42-46.
2 John xix. 41, 42. 4 Matt. xii. 40. 5 Matt. xxvii. 23-50.
John ii. 20.
ON THE TRINITY. 75
Cuap. VIII. ] the light to shine out of darkness,* that through the grace of the New Testament and the partaking of the resurrection of Christ the words might be spoken to us '' For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord '' ") intimates to us in some way that the day takes its beginning from the night. For as the first days of all weré reckoned from light to night, on account of the future fall of man;3 so these on account of the restoration of man, are reckoned from darkness to light. From the hour, then, of His death to the dawn of the resurrection are forty hours, counting in also the ninth hour itself. And with this number agrees also His life upon earth of forty days after His resurrection. And this number is most frequently used in Scripture to express the mystery of perfection in the fourfold world. For the number ten has a certain perfection, and that multiplied by four makes forty. But from the evening of the burial to the dawn of the resurrection are thirty-six hours which is six squared. And this is referred to that ratio of the single to the double wherein there is the greatest consonance of co-adaptation. For twelve added to twenty-four suits the tatio of single added to double and makes thirty-six: namely a whole night with a whole _day and a whole night, and this not without
CHAP. cman | WHAT MANNER WE ARE GATHERED
FROM MANY INTO ONE THROUGH ONE MEDIA-
TOR,
11. This mystery, this sacrifice, this priest, this God, before He was sent and came, being made of a woman—of Him, all those things which appeared to our fathers in a sacred and mystical way by angelical miracles, or which were done by the fathers themselves, were similitudes; in order that every creature by its acts might speak in some way of that One who was to be, in whom there was to be salvation in the recovery of all from death. For because by the wickedness of ungodliness we had recoiled and fallen away in discord from the one true and supreme God, and had in many things become vain, being distracted through many things and cleaving fast to many things; it was needful by the decree and command of God in Hi mercy, that those same many things should join in proclaiming the One that should come, and that One should come so proclaimed by, these many things, and that these many) things should join in witnessing that this One) had come; and that so, freed from the bur4 den of these many things, we should come to that One, and dead as we were in our souls by many sins, and destined to die in the flesh on account of sin, that we should love that One who, without sin, died in the flesh for us; and by believing in Him now raised again, and by rising again with Him in the spirit through faith, that we should be justified by being made one in the one righteous One; and that we should not despair of our own resurrection in the flesh itself, when we consider that the one Head had gone before us the many members; in whom, being now cleansed through faith, and then renewed by sight, and through Him as mediator reconciled to God, we are to cleave to the One, | feast upon the One, to continue one. :
'the mystery which I have noticed above. For not unfitly do we liken the spirit to the day and the body tothe night. For the body of the Lord in His death and resurrection as a figure of our spirit and a type of our ody. In this way, then, also that ratio of the single to the double is apparent in the thirty-six hours, when twelve are added to twenty-four. As to the reasons, indeed, why these numbers are so put in the Holy Scriptures, other people may trace out other reasons, either such that those which I have given are to be preferred to them, or such as are equally probable with mine, or even more probable than they are; but there is no one surely so foolish or so absurd as to contend that they are so put in the Scriptures for no purpose at all, and that there are no mystical reasons why those numbers are there mentioned. But those reasons which I have here given, I have either gathered from the authority of the church, according to the tradition of our forefathers, or from the testi-
CHAP. 8.—IN WHAT MANNER CHRIST WILLS THAT ALL SHALL BE ONE IN HIMSELF.
12. So the Son of God Himself, the Word of God, Himself also the Mediator between God and men, the Son of man, ¢ equal to the Father through the unity of the Godhead, and partaker with us by the taking upon Him of humanity, interceding for us with the Father in that He was man, 5 yet not concealing that He was God, one with the Father, among other things speaks thus: '"* Neither mony of the divine Scriptures, or from the nature itself of numbers and of similitudes. No sober person will decide against reason, no Christian against the Scriptures, no peaceable person against the church, pray I for these alone,'' He says, '"' but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as
I 2 Cor. iv. 6. 2 Eph. v. 8. 3 Gens 1. 4,.5.
Ate Limeaiias. 5 Rom. viii. 34.