The Essential Augustine
position, continuing to increase according to the promises made and fulfilled.
It was as a powerful nation that it was led out of Egypt with terrible signs and wonders, and the wicked peoples being driven out before them, it was brought to the land of promise and established there and exalted to be a kingdom. Thereafter frequently offending the true God Who had bestowed upon them so many benefits, by sin which had become rife among them and by sacrilegious enterprises, they were scourged by various disasters and consoled by restored prosperity, and their history is brought down to the incarnation and manifestation of Christ. And all the promise of this nation, its prophecies, its priesthood, its sacrifices, its temple, all its sacraments announced that this Christ, the Word of God, the Son of God, God Himself, was to come in the flesh, was to die and to rise again and to ascend into heaven, that by the power of His name He would have the multitudes in every nation consecrate to Him, and that those who believed in Him would have in Him remission of their sins and eternal salvation.
' And Christ comes. All that the prophets had fore16. told is fulfilled in His birth, life, words, actions, sufferings, death, resurrection, and ascension. He sends the Holy Spirit and fills the faithful gathered together in one house [Acts 2:2] and waiting with prayers and ardent desire for this promised gift. Filled with the Holy Spirit, they immediately speak with the tongues of all nations, they boldly refute errors, they preach the truths of salvation, they exhort men to penance for their past sinful lives, they promise indulgence by the divine grace. Apt signs and miracles follow their preaching of piety and of the true religion. Cruel unbelief is stirred up against them; they suffer the trials foretold to them: they look in trust for the blessings promised them; they teach what was appointed them to teach. Few in number, they are scattered as seed throughout the world; they convert the peoples with marvelous ease; in the midst of enemies they grow in number; by persecution they increase in strength; faced with hardships and distress they spread their influence to the ends of the earth....
And throughout all this the unbelief of the heathen nations continues to rage against the Church of Christ, but she gains the victory by patient endurance and by the maintenance of unshaken faith in the face of the cruelty of His adversaries. The sacrifice of Him Who is revealed Truth, which long had PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 227 been veiled under mystic promises, having taken place, those sacrifices by which it was prefigured are finally abolished by the destruction of the temple itself. The Jewish nation, condemned for unbelief, is rooted out of its own land and dispersed through every region of the world that it might carry everywhere the Sacred Scriptures, and that the testimony of the prophecies by which Christ and the Church were foretold might be furnished by our adversaries, so that it could not be thought that these predictions had been forged by us to suit the time, in which prophecies too the unbelief of these very Jews is foretold. The temples, idols, and impious rites of the heathen are gradually and in succession overthrown, as had been foretold by the prophets. Heresies bud forth against the name of Christ though under the veil of His name, as had also been foretold, by which the doctrine of our holy religion is disturbed. All these things are now seen to be fulfilled in accordance with the predictions which we read; and these fulfillments are now so many and so great that they lead us to await with confidence fulfillment of the rest. What mind, then, thirsting for eternity, and troubled by the shortness of this present life, can resist the crowning light of this divine corroboration of our faith?
THE TWO CITIES IN HISTORY*
Now as Jersusalem signifies the city and fellowship 21.37. of the saints, so Babylon signifies the city and fellowship of the wicked, since it is said to be interpreted "confusion." We have already spoken a little before of these two cities running on indistinguishably from the beginning of the human race to the end of the world, through the changing ages and destined to be separated at the last judgment. So the captive city of Jerusalem, and the people led forth into Babylon, are bidden to go into bondage by the Lord, through Jeremias, a prophet of that time. And there arose kings of Babylon under whom they were in bondage, who, having been stirred by certain wonders occasioned by their presence, came to know and worship and ordered to be worshipped the one true God, the author of ali creation. Moreover, they were bidden both to pray for those by whom they were held captive, and in the peace of these to hope for peace, for the begetting of children and the building of houses
On Catechizing the Uninstructed, 21, 37; trans. ACW 2 (1946) 67-68. and the planting of gardens and vineyards. But deliverance from that captivity after seventy years was promised them.
Now, all this signified in a figure that the Church of Christ, in all His saints, who are citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, was to be in bondage under the kings of this world. For the teaching of the apostle also enjoins that every soul should be subject to higher powers [Rom. 13:1], and that to all men should be rendered all things: tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom; [Rom. 13:7] and so with other things which, saving the worship of our God, we render to the rulers of the human order, since the Lord Himself, that He might afford us an example of this sound teaching, did not disdain to pay poll tax on the humanity with which He was invested. Moreover, Christian servants and the good faithful are also bidden to serve their temporal masters with patience and fidelity, whom they are to judge if they find them doing wrong to the last; or with whom they are to reign as equals if they likewise turn to the true God. Still, all are directed to be subject to human and earthly powers, until, at the end of the foreordained time, which the seventy years signify, the Church is delivered from the confusion of this world, as was Jerusalem from the captivity of Babylon. And by occasion of this captivity even earthly kings, forsaking the idols for the sake of which they were wont to persecute the Christians, have come to know and worship the one true God and Christ the Lord, and it is on their behalf, even when they were persecuting the Church, that the Apostle Paul bids prayer be made. For these are his words: I desire therefore in the first place that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for kings, for all men, and for all that are in high station; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all piety and charity. [I Tim. 2:1-3] And so through these very kings peace was given to the Church, albeit temporal peace, temporal quietude for the spiritual building of houses and planting of gardens and vineyards,
WHAT IS TIME?*
So, at no time hadst Thou not made anything, for 17, Thou hadst made time itself. And no periods of time are coeternal with Thee, for Thou dost abide, but they, if they abided, would not be periods of time. ae Confessions, XI, 14.17-30.40; trans. FOC 5 (1953), 343-