The City of God

clife. Therefore, the torments were perhaps more useful, as they taught that the incorruptible good should be loved, than those goods which, without any useful fruit, tormented their masters by the love of them. But some who had nothing to betray were also tormented because they were believed to have something. And these perhaps wished to have, nor were they poor by a holy will; to whom it had to be shown that not faculties, but the greeds themselves were worthy of such tortures. If, however, they had no hidden gold or silver by the purpose of a better life, I do not know indeed whether it happened to any of such that they were tormented while believed to have it. Nevertheless, even if it did happen, surely he who confessed holy poverty among those torments was confessing Christ. Wherefore, even if he did not deserve to be believed by the enemies, the confessor of holy poverty could not be tormented without a heavenly reward.

On the end of temporal life, whether it be longer or shorter. Chap. XI

They say that prolonged famine also devastated many, even Christians. The good and faithful turned this too to their own uses by piously enduring it. For whom famine killed, it snatched away from the evils of this life as if by a bodily disease; but those whom it did not kill, it taught to live more sparingly, it taught to fast more productively. But many Christians were also killed, many were consumed by the foul variety of many deaths. If this is to be borne with difficulty, it is in any case common to all who have been born into this life. This I know, that no one has died who was not at some time going to die. But the end of life makes a long or short life the same. For one is not better, another worse, or one longer and another shorter, which no longer exists. But what does it matter by what kind of death this life is ended, when he to whom it is ended is not forced to die again? When, however, to every mortal under the daily chances of this life, innumerable deaths are in a way threatened, as long as it is uncertain which of them is to come: I ask whether it is better to suffer one by dying, or to fear all by living? Nor am I ignorant of how much more lazily one chooses to live long under the fear of so many deaths than by dying once to fear none thereafter. D But it is one thing what the sense of the flesh, infirmly fearful, flees, and another what the reason of the mind, diligently clarified, convinces. A death is not to be thought evil which a good life has preceded. For nothing makes a death evil except what follows death. Therefore, it is not much to be cared for by those who are necessarily going to die, what happens for them to die, but where they are forced to go by dying. When, therefore, Christians know that the death of the religious poor man was far better among the tongues of the licking dogs than that of the impious rich man in purple and fine linen, what did those horrendous kinds of death harm the dead who lived well?

On the burial of human bodies, which, even if it is denied to Christians, takes nothing away. Chap. XII

But in such a slaughter of corpses, they could not even be buried. Nor does pious faith fear this too much, holding the prediction that even beasts consuming them will not harm the bodies that are to rise again, of which not a hair of the head will perish. Truth would by no means say, "Fear not them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul," Matthew 10:28 if it would at all hinder the future life whatever the enemies wanted to do with the bodies of the slain. Unless perhaps someone is so absurd as to contend that they who kill the body ought not to be feared before death lest they kill the body, and ought to be feared after death lest they do not allow the killed body to be buried. It is false, therefore, what Christ says, "they who kill the body, and after have no more that they can do," if they have so many things they can do to the corpses. Far be it that what Truth said should be false. For it was said that they do something when they kill, because there is sensation in the body when killing; afterwards, however, they have nothing they can do, because there is no sensation in the killed body. Many bodies of Christians, therefore, the earth did not cover, but no one separated any of them from the heaven and the earth, which He who knows from where to resurrect what He created fills entirely with His presence. It is indeed said in the Psalm: "They have given the dead bodies of thy servants to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth. Their blood have they shed like water round about..." Psalm 79:2-3