City of God 15.2–15.9

Chapter 2. On the sons of the flesh and the sons of the promise.

A certain shadow of this city, indeed, and a prophetic image of it served on earth, to signify it rather than to make it present, at the time when it had to be shown; and it too was called the holy city, by virtue of the image that signified, not of the truth expressed as it will be. Of this serving image, and of the free city which it signifies, the apostle speaks thus to the Galatians: “Tell me,” he says, “you who want to be under the law, have you not heard the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. But the one by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, the one by the free woman through the promise. These things are an allegory. For these are the two covenants: one from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery, which is Hagar. For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written: ‘Rejoice, you barren one who do not bear; break forth and cry out, you who are not in labor; for many are the children of the desolate one, more than of her who has a husband.’ Now we, brothers, like Isaac, are children of the promise. But just as then the one born according to the flesh persecuted the one born according to the Spirit, so it is now also. But what does the Scripture say? ‘Cast out the slave woman and her son; for the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.’ So we, brothers, are not children of the slave woman but of the free woman, with the freedom with which Christ has set us free.” This way of understanding, coming down to us from apostolic authority, opens to us how we ought to receive the Scriptures of the two covenants, the Old and the New. For a certain part of the earthly city was made an image of the heavenly city, signifying not itself but the other, and therefore serving. For it was established not for its own sake but to signify another; and, being preceded by another signification, it was itself prefigured even as it prefigured. For Hagar, Sarah's slave woman, and her son were a kind of image of this image; and since the shadows were to pass away when the light came, the free woman Sarah, who signified the free city (which that shadow in its turn served to signify in another way), said: “Cast out the slave woman and her son; for the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac”, which the apostle renders “with the son of the free woman.” We find, then, two forms in the earthly city: one showing its own presence, the other serving by its presence to signify the heavenly city. Nature vitiated by sin gives birth to the citizens of the earthly city; but grace, freeing nature from sin, gives birth to the citizens of the heavenly city. Hence the former are called “vessels of wrath,” the latter “vessels of mercy.” This was signified also in the two sons of Abraham: Ishmael, the one by the slave woman called Hagar, was born according to the flesh; the other, Isaac, was born of the free woman Sarah according to the promise. Both were of Abraham's seed; but the one was begotten through the ordinary course, which shows nature, while the other was given by the promise, which signifies grace. In the one human practice is displayed; in the other a divine benefit is commended.

Chapter 3. On the barrenness of Sarah, which the grace of God made fruitful.

Sarah, indeed, was barren; and in despair of offspring, wanting at least to have through her slave woman what she saw she could not have through herself, she gave her to be made fruitful by the husband by whom she had wished to bear and could not. So she exacted even in this way what was due to her from her husband, using her right in another's womb. Ishmael, then, was born as human beings are born, by the union of both sexes, under the usual law of nature. That is why it is said, “according to the flesh”; not that such things are not benefits of God, or that God does not work them, whose craftsman Wisdom, as it is written, “reaches mightily from end to end and orders all things sweetly”; but where a gift of God was to be signified, which grace would bestow on human beings though it was not owed, a son had to be given in a way not owed to the course of nature. For nature by now denies children to such a union of man and woman as that of Abraham and Sarah could be at that age, with the woman's barrenness added besides: she could not bear even at the time when it was not her age that failed her fruitfulness but her fruitfulness that failed her age. That the fruit of offspring was not owed to a nature so affected signifies that the nature of the human race, vitiated by sin and therefore justly condemned, deserved nothing of true happiness in the future. Rightly, then, does Isaac, born through the promise, signify the children of grace, the citizens of the free city, the partners of eternal peace, where there is no love of one's own and, so to speak, private will, but an obedience of love perfectly at one, rejoicing in the common and unchanging good and making one heart out of many.

Chapter 4. On the strife and the peace of the earthly city.

The earthly city, moreover, which will not be everlasting (for once it has been condemned to the final punishment it will no longer be a city), has its good here, and rejoices in sharing it, with such joy as can be had from such things. And since this good is not of a kind that causes no distress to those who love it, this city is for the most part divided against itself by lawsuits, wars, and battles, and by seeking victories that are either deadly or at any rate short-lived. For whatever part of it rises up in war against another part seeks to be the conqueror of nations while it is itself the captive of vices. If, when it has conquered, it is lifted up more proudly, the victory is deadly as well; but if, considering its condition and the common chances, it is more troubled by the adversities that may befall than puffed up by the successes that have come, then this victory is merely short-lived. For it will not be able to rule for ever over those it has been able to subdue by conquering. It is not right, however, to say that the things this city desires are not goods, since the city itself, in its own human kind, is something better. For it desires a certain earthly peace for the sake of the lowest things, and it wishes to reach that peace by waging war; since if it conquers and there is no one left to resist, there will be peace, which the parties did not have while they were opposed to one another and contending in unhappy want over things they could not both possess. This is the peace that toilsome wars seek, this the peace that a victory reputed glorious obtains. And when those who fought in the juster cause conquer, who would doubt that the victory is to be welcomed and that a desirable peace has come? These are goods, and without doubt gifts of God. But if the better things that belong to the heavenly city, where victory will be secure in eternal and supreme peace, are neglected, and these goods are desired in such a way that they are believed to be the only goods, or are loved more than the things believed to be better, then misery must follow, and what misery was there already must increase.

Chapter 5. On the first founder of the earthly city, a fratricide, whose impiety the founder of the city of Rome matched by killing his brother.

The first founder of the earthly city, then, was a fratricide; for, overcome by envy, he killed his brother, a citizen of the eternal city on pilgrimage in this land. So it is no wonder that so long afterwards, in the founding of that city which was to be the head of this earthly city we are speaking of and to rule over so many nations, a kind of image of its own sort answered to this first example, to what the Greeks call the archetype. For there too, as one of their poets recorded the crime itself, “The first walls were wet with a brother's blood.” For so Rome was founded, when, as Roman history testifies, Remus was killed by his brother Romulus; except that these two were both citizens of the earthly city. Both sought glory from establishing the Roman state, but both could not have as much glory as one would have if he were alone. For he who wished to glory in ruling would certainly rule less if his power were diminished by a living partner. So, that one man might have the whole rule, the partner was removed; and by crime there grew into something worse what by innocence would have been smaller and better. But these brothers, Cain and Abel, did not both have a like desire for earthly things, nor did the one who killed the other envy him because his own rule would become narrower if both ruled (for Abel did not seek rule in the city his brother was founding). It was that devilish envy with which the evil envy the good for no other reason than that the one are good and the other evil. For the possession of goodness is in no way made smaller when a partner joins in it or continues in it; rather, goodness is a possession which the undivided love of partners possesses the more widely the more harmoniously they possess it. In short, whoever will not have this possession in common will not have it at all, and he will find it the larger the more he is able to love his partner in it. What arose between Remus and Romulus, then, shows how the earthly city is divided against itself; what arose between Cain and Abel showed the enmity between the two cities themselves, the city of God and the city of men. So the wicked fight among themselves, the wicked and the wicked; again, the wicked and the good fight each other; but the good and the good, if they are perfect, cannot fight each other. Those who are advancing but not yet perfect can, however, in such a way that each good man fights against another with that part of himself with which he also fights against himself; for even within a single man “the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.” So the spiritual desire of one can fight against the carnal desire of another, or the carnal desire of one against the spiritual desire of another, as the good and the wicked fight each other; or indeed the carnal desires of two good men, not yet perfect, can fight each other, as the wicked fight the wicked, until the health of those being healed is brought to final victory.

Chapter 6. On the weaknesses which even the citizens of the city of God suffer during the pilgrimage of this life as the penalty of sin, and from which they are healed by God's care.

This weakness, namely the disobedience we discussed in the fourteenth book, is the punishment of the first disobedience, and so it is not nature but a fault. That is why it is said to the good who are advancing and living by faith on this pilgrimage: “Bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfil the law of Christ”; and elsewhere: “Reprove the restless, comfort the faint-hearted, support the weak, be patient toward all. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil”; and in another place: “If a man is overtaken in any fault, you who are spiritual, instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness, looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted”; and elsewhere: “Do not let the sun go down on your anger”; and in the Gospel: “If your brother sins against you, reprove him between you and him alone.” Again, about sins by which many may be offended, the apostle says: “Rebuke those who sin before all, so that the rest may be afraid.” For this reason, too, much is commanded about forgiving one another, and with great care for keeping peace, without which no one will be able to see God. There is that terror, when the servant is ordered to pay back the ten thousand talents that had been remitted to him, because he did not remit to his fellow servant a debt of a hundred denarii; and having set out this parable, the Lord Jesus added: “So also your heavenly Father will do to you, if you do not forgive, each of you, his brother from your hearts.” In this way the citizens of the city of God are healed while they are on pilgrimage on this earth and sigh for the peace of the country above. But it is the Holy Spirit who works within, so that the medicine applied from without may have some effect. Otherwise, even if God himself, using a creature subject to him, were to speak to human senses in some human form, whether to the bodily senses or to those very like them which we have in sleep, and did not rule and move the mind by inward grace, all preaching of the truth would profit a man nothing. This God does, distinguishing the vessels of wrath from the vessels of mercy by a dispensation very hidden, which he knows, yet just. For by his help, in wonderful and hidden ways, when the sin that dwells in our members (which is rather now the penalty of sin) does not, as the apostle commands, reign in our mortal body so that we obey its desires, and we do not present our members to it as weapons of iniquity, it is turned toward the mind that, under God's rule, does not consent to it for evil; and the man will now have it more quietly under his rule, and afterwards, when health is made perfect and immortality received, he will reign without any sin in eternal peace.

Chapter 7. On the cause of Cain's crime and his obstinacy in it, since not even God's word called him back from the deed he had conceived.

But what did this very thing, which we have explained as best we could, profit Cain, when God had spoken to him in the way in which he used to speak with the first human beings through a subject creature, in a fitting form, as though he were their companion? Did he not carry out the crime he had conceived, the killing of his brother, even after the word of divine warning? For when God had distinguished between their sacrifices, looking upon the one, disregarding the other (and there is no doubt this could have been known by some visible sign bearing witness to it), and had done so because Cain's works were evil and his brother's good, Cain was greatly grieved and his face fell. For so it is written: “And the Lord said to Cain: Why have you become sad, and why has your face fallen? If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly, have you not sinned? Be still; for its turning is toward you, and you shall rule over it.” In this admonition or warning which God gave Cain, the words “If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly, have you not sinned?” have, because it is not clear why or from what they were said, produced many interpretations through their obscurity, as each interpreter of the divine Scriptures tries to explain them according to the rule of faith. A sacrifice is rightly offered when it is offered to the true God, to whom alone sacrifice must be made. But it is not rightly divided when there is no right distinction of places or times or of the things offered, or of the one who offers and the one to whom it is offered, or of those to whom what has been offered is distributed as food (so that we take “division” here to mean discernment): whether when it is offered where it should not be, or when what should be offered elsewhere is offered there; or when it is offered when it should not be, or when what should be offered at another time is offered then; or when what ought never and nowhere to have been offered at all is offered; or when a man keeps for himself choicer things of the same kind than those he offers to God; or when a profane person, or anyone for whom it is not lawful, shares in the thing offered. But in which of these Cain displeased God cannot easily be found. But since the apostle John, speaking of these brothers, says, “Not like Cain, who was of the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because his works were evil, but his brother's righteous”, we are given to understand that God did not look upon his gift because he divided wrongly in this very thing: giving God something of his own, but himself to himself. So do all who follow not God's will but their own, that is, who live not with an upright but with a perverse heart, and yet offer God a gift by which they think he is bought, so that he may help them not to heal their depraved desires but to satisfy them. And this is characteristic of the earthly city: to worship God or gods by whose help it may reign in victories and earthly peace, not out of love of serving others but out of lust for ruling them. For the good use the world in order to enjoy God; but the wicked, on the contrary, want to use God in order to enjoy the world; that is, those of them who still believe that he exists or cares for human affairs; for those who do not believe even this are much worse. So when Cain knew that God had looked upon his brother's sacrifice and not upon his own, he certainly ought to have been changed and imitated his good brother, not been puffed up and become his rival. But he was grieved and his face fell. This is the sin God especially rebukes: grief at another's goodness, and that a brother's. For in rebuking this he asked: “Why are you grieved, and why has your face fallen?” Because he envied his brother, God saw it and rebuked it. For to human beings, from whom another's heart is hidden, it might be doubtful and altogether uncertain whether that grief was sorrow for his own wickedness, by which he had learned he displeased God, or for his brother's goodness, which pleased God when he looked upon his sacrifice. But God, in giving the reason why he refused to accept his offering, so that Cain might rather be displeased with himself, with good reason, than with his brother, without reason, showed that while he was unrighteous in not dividing rightly, that is, in not living rightly, and unworthy to have his offering approved, he was still more unrighteous in hating his righteous brother without cause.

Yet he did not dismiss him without a holy, just, and good command: “Be still,” he said, “for its turning is toward you, and you shall rule over it.” Over his brother? Far from it. Over what, then, but sin? For he had said, “You have sinned,” and then he added: “Be still; for its turning is toward you, and you shall rule over it.” This can indeed be understood to mean that the turning of the sin ought to be toward the man himself, so that he knows he must attribute his sinning to no one but himself. For this is the healing medicine of repentance and a not unfitting petition for pardon: that where it says, “for its turning is toward you”, we understand not “will be” but “let it be”, as a command, that is, not a prediction. For each person will rule over sin if he does not set it over himself by defending it but subjects it to himself by repenting; otherwise he will serve it as his master if he takes up the defense of what has befallen him. But if sin is understood to be the carnal desire itself, of which the apostle says, “the flesh lusts against the spirit”, among whose fruits he also names envy, by which Cain was indeed goaded and inflamed to his brother's destruction, then “will be” is rightly understood: that is, “for its turning will be toward you, and you shall rule over it.” For when that carnal part itself is stirred, which the apostle calls sin when he says, “It is not I who do it, but sin that dwells in me” (the part of the soul which even the philosophers say is faulty, which ought not to drag the mind along but which the mind ought to command and restrain by reason from unlawful deeds), when, then, it is stirred to commit some wrong, if one is still and obeys the apostle who says, “Do not present your members to sin as weapons of iniquity”, it turns back to the mind, tamed and conquered, so that reason rules it as its subject. This is what God commanded this man, who was inflamed with the torches of envy against his brother and wished him removed whom he ought to have imitated. “Be still,” he says; keep your hands from crime; do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires, and do not present your members to sin as weapons of iniquity. “For its turning is toward you”, while it is not helped by being given rein but is bridled by being still; “and you shall rule over it”, so that, when it is not permitted to act outwardly, it may grow used, under the power of a ruling and well-disposed mind, not to be stirred even inwardly.

Something of the same kind was said in the same divine book about the woman too, when after the sin, God questioning and judging, they received their sentences of condemnation: the devil in the serpent, and she and her husband in their own persons. For when he had said to her, “I will greatly multiply your sorrows and your groaning, and in sorrows you shall bear children”, he then added: “And your turning shall be toward your husband, and he shall rule over you.” What was said to Cain about sin, or the faulty desire of the flesh, is said here about the sinful woman; and it is to be understood that the husband, in ruling his wife, ought to be like the mind ruling the flesh. That is why the apostle says: “He who loves his wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh.” For these are to be healed as our own, not condemned as foreign. But Cain received that command of God as a transgressor. For as the vice of envy grew strong, he lay in wait for his brother and killed him. Such was the founder of the earthly city. How he also signified the Jews, by whom Christ was killed, the shepherd of the sheep that are human beings, whom Abel, the shepherd of the sheep that are cattle, prefigured, I refrain from saying now, since it belongs to prophetic allegory; and I recall that I said something on this point against Faustus the Manichaean.

Chapter 8. What reason there was for Cain to found a city at the very beginning of the human race.

But now, it seems to me, the history must be defended, so that Scripture may not be thought incredible when it says that a city was built by one man at a time when there appear to have been no more than four men on earth, or rather three, after brother killed brother: namely the first man, the father of all, Cain himself, and his son Enoch, after whose name the city itself was called. But those who are troubled by this give too little thought to the fact that the writer of this sacred history did not need to name all the people who could have existed then, but only those whom the plan of the work he had undertaken required. For the purpose of that writer, through whom the Holy Spirit was acting, was to come through the successions of certain generations descended from one man to Abraham, and then from his seed to the people of God, in which, set apart from the other nations, all the things would be prefigured and foretold which were foreseen in the Spirit as coming concerning the city whose kingdom will be eternal, and concerning its king and founder, Christ; yet in such a way that the other society of human beings, which we call the earthly city, would not be passed over in silence, so far as was enough to mention it, so that the city of God might shine out the more clearly by comparison with its adversary.

When, then, divine Scripture, where it records the number of years those men lived, concludes by saying of the one it was speaking of, “And he begot sons and daughters, and all the days of this or that one which he lived were so many years, and he died”, ought we, simply because it does not name those sons and daughters, to fail to understand that over so many years, in which people then lived in the first age of this world, very many human beings could have been born, by whose communities even very many cities could have been founded? But it pertained to God, by whose inspiration these things were written, first to arrange and distinguish these two societies in their different generations, so that the generations of men, that is, of those living according to man, should be traced separately, and separately those of the sons of God, that is, of men living according to God, down to the flood, where the separation and the mingling of both societies is related: the separation, because the generations of both are recorded separately, of the one from Cain the fratricide, of the other from the one called Seth (for he too had been born of Adam in place of the one his brother killed); the mingling, because as the good declined into worse, all had become such that they were destroyed by the flood, except one righteous man named Noah, with his wife, his three sons, and as many daughters-in-law, eight people who deserved to escape by the ark from that destruction of all mortals.

As for what is written, “And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he was building a city in the name of his son Enoch”, it does not follow that this was the first son he begot. Nor should this be supposed from his being said to have known his wife, as though he had then first united with her in intercourse. For of Adam himself, the father of all, this is said not only when Cain, who seems to have been his firstborn, was conceived; later the same Scripture says: “Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore a son, and called his name Seth.” From this it is understood that this Scripture is accustomed to speak so, though not always when it is read that human conceptions took place, yet not only when the two sexes first unite. Nor is it a necessary argument for thinking Enoch his father's firstborn that the city was called by his name. For it is not unreasonable that for some reason the father, though he had others, loved him more than the rest. Judah was not the firstborn either, and yet Judea and the Jews are named from him. But even if this son was born first to the founder of that city, we need not think that his name was given to the city founded by his father at the time he was born; for a city, which is nothing but a multitude of people bound together by some bond of society, could not then have been established by one man. But when that man's family grew to such numbers that it had the size of a people, then it could certainly have happened that he both established a city and gave the name of his firstborn to the city he established. For the life of those men was so long that among those recorded there whose years are not passed over, the one who lived the shortest time before the flood reached seven hundred and fifty-three years. Many even passed nine hundred years, though no one reached a thousand. Who, then, would doubt that within the lifetime of one man the human race could have multiplied so much that there were enough people to establish not one but very many cities? This can very easily be inferred from the fact that from the one man Abraham, in not much more than four hundred years, so great a number of the Hebrew nation was produced that at the exodus of that people from Egypt there are said to have been six hundred thousand men of military age; not to mention the nation of the Idumaeans, which does not belong to the people of Israel, begotten by his brother Esau, Abraham's grandson, and other nations born from the seed of Abraham himself, though not through his wife Sarah.

Chapter 9. On the long life of human beings before the flood, and on the greater size of human bodies.

For this reason no sensible judge of things will doubt that Cain could have founded not merely some city but even a large one, when the life of mortals extended over so long a time; unless perhaps some unbeliever raises a question against us from the very number of years which our authorities record that men lived then, and denies that it is to be believed. For in the same way they do not believe that the size of bodies was then far greater than it is now. Hence even their most famous poet, Virgil, speaking of a huge stone, a boundary stone fixed in the fields, which a brave man of those times seized in battle, ran with, whirled, and hurled, says: “Scarcely could twice six chosen men lift it on their necks, such bodies of men as the earth now brings forth”, meaning that the earth used to bring forth larger bodies then. How much more, then, in the earlier times of the world, before that famous and far-reported flood! But as to the size of bodies, the unbelieving are generally convinced by tombs laid bare by age, or by the force of rivers and various accidents, in which bones of the dead of incredible size have appeared or from which they have fallen. I myself, and not alone but with several others, saw on the shore at Utica a human molar tooth so huge that, if it were cut up into pieces the size of our teeth, it seemed to us that it could have made a hundred. But I would believe that it belonged to some giant. For besides the fact that the bodies of all were then much larger than ours, the giants far surpassed the rest; just as in other times, and in our own, there have been, rarely indeed, but almost never lacking, bodies that far exceeded the measure of others. Pliny the Elder, a most learned man, testifies that the further the course of the age goes on, the smaller the bodies nature produces; and he records that Homer too often lamented this in his poetry, not mocking these things as poetic fictions but taking them as historical fact, as a writer on natural wonders. But, as I said, the bones that are found, since they last a long time, reveal even to much later ages the size of the bodies of the ancients. The number of each man's years in those times, however, cannot now be put to the test by any such evidence. Yet that is no reason to withdraw our faith from this sacred history; the more certainly we see its predictions fulfilled, the more shameless it would be for us not to believe its narratives. Yet the same Pliny says that there is still a nation where people live two hundred years. If, then, places unknown to us are believed to have today long spans of human life of which we have no experience, why should times not be believed to have had them? Or is it credible that what is not here exists somewhere, and incredible that what is not now existed at some time?