view in which he is supported, against Cicero, by most modem etymologists. Religion is what binds
232 SAINT A UGUSTINE - SERMONS
So there's nothing praiseworthy about just keeping awake, because burglars too keep awake; but with the intention of taking advantage of sleeping husbands, and getting at their wives under the pimping cover of night.1 2 3 4 The practitioners of magic arts also keep awake; but with the intention of serving demons, and committing abominations with their help. It would take too long, and be quite unnecessary to run through all the reasons vicious people have for keeping awake. But let me also refer you to a number of perfectly innocent reasons for doing so; craftsmen keep awake, so do farmers, sailors, fishermen, travelers, merchants, managers of all sorts of businesses, judges, counselors, buyers and sellers of literary learning, persons in authority, persons under authority, people engaged in any kind of trade or industry in which human life can be spent; but all with the intention of ensuring that the earth is inhabited more conveniently and decently by inhabitants who are going to pass on with the speed of light.5
In any case, the end of all these wakeful watchers, if it is unlawful means being damned to eternal death, and if it is lawful means being consumed by temporal death. The end of the law, however, is Christ for the justice of every believer (Rom 19:4), and the end which we have in view as we keep vigil is the end of perfection, which emancipates us from the end either of damnation or of consumption. And so all those others who keep awake, whether wrongfully or innocently, have in view and seek an end that is going to come to an end; the end we have in view, however, has no end. In a word, they keep watch, though they will have no permanent residence in whatever it is they desire to get to; we, on the other hand, watch and pray lest we should enter into temptation;6 because that is the way for us to overcome the one who tries to waylay us on our journey; that is the way for us to lay hold of the savior with whom we will reside forever.
NOTES
1. My reaction to the style is to infer an early date, before Augustine became bishop, say about 395. In content it is one of his more profound Easter vigil sermons.
2. He is playing on the etymology of religio, derived as he thinks from religare, to bind up; a view in which he is supported, against Cicero, by most modem etymologists. Religion is what binds us to God.
3. In ejus compagine, literally, in his compact structure. He is carrying through the image and the doctrine of the Church as the body of Christ, and of us as his members, to its ultimate, heavenly conclusion, where, risen from the dead, we will be—somehow—absorbed into the risen body or person of Christ, without however losing our own identities.
4. Lenocinante node, a telling phrase. It is very odd that he should ascribe this aim to burglars Uitrones. I think he must have inadvertently left out a phrase or two, having perhaps first learned his sermon by heart—this would support my hunch of an early date. He must surely have originally intended to say that burglars keep awake with the intention of burgling, and adulterers—or perhaps pimps, lenones—' with the intention of seducing other men's wives. But, no doubt being himself rather sleepy, he jumped from the first 'Vith the intention of," eo fine ut, to the second. Or it could be that the eye of a copyist jumped from latrones; sed eo fine ut... to lenones; sed eo fine ut oee Sermon 223J, note 2, below.