The City of God

These two cities the City of God and the city of the world are indeed intertwined and mixed together in this age, until they are separated at the final judgment. Regarding their origin, their progress, and their appointed ends, I shall explain what I judge should be said, as much as I am helped by God, for the glory of the City of God, which will shine more clearly when compared to the contrary state of those who are alien to it.

Concerning the causes to be discussed in the following disputation. Chapter XXXVI

But there are still things to be said against those who attribute the disasters of the Roman Republic to our religion because they are forbidden to sacrifice to their gods. For those things must be commemorated which, and how great, were the evils that city endured, or the provinces belonging to its empire, before their sacrifices were prohibited. All of these they would undoubtedly attribute to us if our religion were already known to them, or if it were already forbidding them from their sacrilegious rites. Next, it must be demonstrated whose morals, and for what reason, the true God deigned to assist in the expansion of their empire, He in whose power all kingdoms exist; although those whom they consider to be gods did not help them at all, but rather harmed them by deceiving and misleading them. Finally, I will speak against those who, refuted and defeated by the most manifest evidence, attempt to assert that the gods should be worshipped not for the utility of the present life, but for the life that is to come after death. This question, unless I am mistaken, will be much more laborious and worthy of a subtle disputation, so that one may argue in it even against the philosophers: not just any philosophers, but those who are distinguished by the highest glory among them and who share many sentiments with us, both regarding the immortality of the soul, and that the true God created the world, and concerning His providence by which He rules everything He has created. But since they, too, must be refuted in those matters where they hold opinions contrary to ours, we must not fail in this duty, so that by refuting their impious contradictions, according to the strength which God will bestow, we may assert the City of God, true piety, and the worship of God, in which alone eternal blessedness is truly promised. Let this, therefore, be the scope of this volume, so that we may henceforth take up what has been arranged, starting from another beginning.

Concerning the manner to be applied to the necessity of the disputation. Chapter I

A decorative woodcut initial 'S' features two figures, likely representing a scholar and a divine, seated within a classical architectural frame.

If the weak sense of human custom did not dare to resist the manifest reason of truth, but instead submitted its infirmity to wholesome doctrine as if to medicine, until it was healed by divine aid through the entreaty of faithful piety, there would be no need for much speech to convince anyone of the error of vain opinion, for those who perceive things rightly explain their insights in sufficient words. But now, because that is a greater and more hideous disease of foolish minds, whereby they defend their irrational impulses even after reason has been fully rendered—as much as is owed by man to man—either through excessive blindness, by which even open truths are not perceived, or through most obstinate stubbornness, by which even things that are perceived are not borne, as if they were defending reason and truth itself; there arises a necessity to speak more copiously about things that are clear, as if we were presenting them not to those watching, but to those who are palpating and closing their eyes, so that they might be touched in some way. And yet, what will be the end of arguing and the mode of speaking, if we believe that we must always respond to those who respond? For those who either cannot understand what is said, or are so hardened by the adversity of their own minds that even if they do understand, they do not obey, they respond as it is written, and they speak iniquity and are tirelessly vain. If we wish to refute their contrary statements as often as they set themselves with stubborn faces not to care what they say, provided they contradict our arguments in any way possible, you see how infinite, burdensome, and fruitless this is. Wherefore...