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About the destined end of the City of God, that is, about the eternal bliss of the saints: the faith in the resurrection of those is confirmed and it is explained what it will be like. Then, with a speech about how the saints will spend their lives in immortal and spiritual bodies, the essay ends. Chapter I. About the state of angels and people This last book, as we promised in the previous book, will contain a discussion about the eternal bliss of the city of God. This bliss is called eternal not because of the length of time that goes through a series of many centuries and, however, sooner or later must have an end, but in the sense as it is written in the Gospel: “And of His kingdom there will be no end” (Luke I, 33). On the other hand, this eternity (should be understood) does not mean that this city represents such a type of continuous existence that some come out of it, dying, and others appear to replace them, being born, just as in a tree, constantly covered with leaves, apparently the same productive force remains, until new leaves appear in place of withered and fallen leaves and retain a shady appearance; and so that all its citizens will be immortal, for there people will receive what the holy angels never lost. This is how Almighty God, the Creator of this city, will arrange it. This is His promise, and He cannot deceive; and for us to believe this promise, He has already fulfilled many things, both promised and not. He first created this world, filled with all visible and sensory beautiful objects, in which there is nothing better than spirits, whom He endowed with reason and the ability to contemplate Himself and united in one community, which we call the holy and mountainous city, in which He Himself served as the object that supported their existence and made them blessed, as if by their common life and nutrition. He gave this rational nature such free will that it could, if it wanted, depart from God, that is, from its bliss; for immediately after that misfortune was bound to come for her. Although He foresaw that some angels, out of pride, thinking in themselves to have a blessed life, would turn out to be apostates from such a great good, He did not deprive them of this ability, deciding that it is more powerful and good to extract good from evil than to prevent evil. Yes, and evil would not exist at all if the changeable, although good, nature, created by the Almighty and invariably good God, Who created everything good, had not created it for itself through sin. This sin itself serves as obvious proof that nature was created good. For if she were not great, although not equal to the Creator, then apostasy from God, this, so to speak, her Light, would not, of course, be evil for her. Just as blindness of the eye is a defect, and this defect indicates that the eye was created in order to see light, and therefore in its very defect the eye is for other organs an organ capable of (perceiving) light (it is for this reason that deprivation of light constitutes a defect for the eye); so nature, which enjoyed God, testifies that it was created best by its own corruption, when it is ill-fated precisely because it does not enjoy God, Who subjected the free fall of the angels to the most just punishment with eternal deprivation of bliss, and to the angels who persisted in the highest good, turned this very firmness as a reward, so that they were sure that this firmness of theirs would endure without end. He created man himself upright and with the same free will, as a being, although earthly, worthy of heaven, if he remains in unity with his Creator; if he retreats from Him, he will also suffer the misfortune characteristic of this kind of nature. Foreseeing that he would also depart from God, having transgressed the law of God, God did not deprive him, however, of the ability of free will, for he knew in advance that He would make good out of his evil, gathering with His grace from the mortal race, deservedly and justly condemned, a numerous people, to restore and replenish the fallen part of the angels, so that, thus, the beloved and the city on high would not be diminished among its citizens, and even be maybe he was also happy about their growth. Chapter II. About the eternal and immutable will of God For although the wicked do many things contrary to the will of God, God possesses such wisdom and power that everything that seems contrary to His will turns to consequences or goals that His foresight found good. Therefore, although we say that God changes His will, becoming, for example, angry towards those to whom he was (previously) meek, in essence it is we who change, not He, and in the states that we ourselves experience, we see Him as if changing; just as for sick eyes the sun changes and from gentle it becomes as if harsh, from pleasant it becomes painful, although in itself it remains the same as it was. And we call the will of God the will that God creates in the hearts of those who obey His commandments, about which the apostle says: “God works in you both to will and to do” (Phil. II, 13). Likewise, we call the righteousness of God not only that righteousness with which God himself is righteous, but also that which He creates in a justified person; in the same way, we call His law the law that exists specifically for people, but is given by God. For these were, of course, people to whom Jesus said: “It is written in your law” (John VIII, 17), since elsewhere we read: “The law of his God is in his heart” (Ps. XXXVI, 31). Likewise, we call God willing in accordance with His will, which He works in people; because He Himself does not desire, but He makes His relatives desire; just as we call Him one who knew Him because He allowed Himself to be known by those by whom He was not known. For the words of the apostle: “Now, having known God, or better, having received knowledge from God” (Gal. IV, 9) cannot be understood to mean that they, destined before the creation of the world (1 Pet. I, 20), were only now known by God; but it is said that He knew them now, in the sense that now He only allowed them to know Himself. I have already mentioned this way of using words in previous books. Thus, according to the will by which we call God desiring, He desires many things, but does not do them, because He makes others willing, for whom the future is unknown. Thus, His saints, by virtue of the holy will inspired by Him, desire much, but this does not happen, just as for some they send forth their pious and holy prayers, and, however, He does not fulfill what they pray for, although He Himself creates this will to pray in them by His Holy Spirit. Hence, when the saints, by the inspiration of God, desire and pray that everyone receives salvation, then, using the above method of expression, we can say: “God wants so, but does not do it,” calling in this case the one who desires the One who makes the desire in them. On the contrary, according to His will, which is eternal, like His foresight, He has already created everything that He wanted to create in heaven and on earth, not only the past and present, but even the future (Ps. 113:3). But before the time comes at which, according to His will, that which He foresaw and prepared ahead of time should take place, we say: “It will be when God wills.” If we do not know the time when it will happen, or even whether it will happen, then we say this: “It will happen if God wants,” we say not because God will then have a new will, which He did not have, but because then there will be something that has been prepared from eternity by His immutable will. Chapter III. About the promise of eternal bliss to the saints and about the endless torment of the wicked For this reason (I am omitting much more), as we see already fulfilled in Christ, what God promised Abraham, saying: “And in your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed” (Gen. XXII, 18); thus will be fulfilled what He promised to his seed, saying through the prophet: “Dead bodies will arise”; and again: “I am creating a new heaven and a new earth, and the former will no longer be remembered and will not come to the heart. And you will rejoice and rejoice forever in what I do: for behold, I make Jerusalem a joy and her people joy. And I will rejoice over Jerusalem and be glad over My people; and the voice of weeping and the voice of crying will no longer be heard in it” (Isa. XXVI, 19; Isa. LXV, 17–19). And also what He foretold through another prophet, saying to him: “At this time all of your people who are found written in the book will be saved. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awaken, some to eternal life, others to eternal reproach and shame” (Dan. XII, 1-2). And in another place through the same prophet: “The saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom, and will possess the kingdom forever and ever” (Dan. VII, 18). And a little lower (the prophet) says: “The kingdom (of the Most High) is an everlasting kingdom” (Dan. VII, 27). Equally, everything else related to this subject, both that I cited in the twentieth book (Dan. XXI et seq.), and not given, that is contained in the same books - all this will come true, just as what the unbelievers considered unrealizable came true. For both promised, the fulfillment of both was predicted by the same God, before Whom the pagan deities tremble, as even the most famous pagan philosopher Porfiry testifies to this. Chapter IV. Against the sages of this world, according to whom the earthly bodies of people cannot be transferred to the heavenly abodes But people, namely, people who are learned and wise against the power of such an authority, which has converted the entire human race to faith and hope on this subject, as was predicted so long ago, put forward with what seems to them witty arguments against the resurrection of bodies and say what Cicero gives in the third book of On the Republic. Having assured that Hercules and Romulus were human, although they were considered gods, Cicero says: “Their bodies were not taken to heaven, for it would be a violation of nature if what existed from the earth did not remain in the earth.” This is the main argument of the wise men, whose thoughts the Lord knows are vain (Ps. 93:11). And in fact, if we consisted of only one soul, were a spirit without any body and, living in heaven, did not know earthly animals, and yet we were told that the time would come when we would be united by some amazing bonds with animate earthly bodies, then, refusing to believe this, would we not have made a stronger argument if we said that it is contrary to nature for something incorporeal to be connected by bodily bonds? And yet, the earth is full of souls that animate earthly bodies and are miraculously united with them. Why, by the will of the same God who created such creatures, cannot an earthly body be elevated into a heavenly body, if the soul, which surpasses every heavenly body, could be united with an earthly body? Or could a small particle of the earth contain something better in comparison with the celestial body in order to be sentient and living, and the sky would refuse to accept it, already sentient and living, or would not be able to support the accepted one, although it feels and lives thanks to the mentioned principle, better in comparison with any celestial body? But now this does not happen, because the time has not yet come when it is determined by the will of the One who created things that we took a closer look at and therefore lost their value in a more amazing way than what they do not believe. After all, if the fact that incorporeal souls, surpassing the heavenly bodies, are united with earthly bodies does not surprise us as much as the fact that earthly bodies are raptured, it is true, into heavenly, but still bodily abodes; Isn’t it just because we are used to seeing the first, and we ourselves are like that, while we have not yet become the second, and have never seen it? To an unprejudiced eye, the union of the incorporeal with the corporeal, without a doubt, seems to be a more amazing divine act than the union of, although different, heavenly and earthly, bodies. Chapter V. About the resurrection of the flesh, which some do not believe, although the whole world believes in it The ascension of the earthly body of Christ into heaven once seemed incredible, but now the whole world believes this; Now both scientists and unscientists believe in the fact of the resurrection of the flesh and its ascension to the heavenly abodes, although there are very few scientists or unscientists left who are surprised at this. If this fact was believed as a probable fact, then let them see how stupid they are who do not believe in it; if they believe an incredible fact, then the most incredible thing is that they believe the incredible. So, the same God predicted two incredible (events), namely, the resurrection of our body for eternal life and the fact that the world would believe in such an incredible truth - he predicted that both of these events would come true (Matthew XXVI, 13), when neither of them had yet come true. We see one of these incredible (events) already fulfilled: the world believes what seemed incredible. Why not have hope in something else, i.e., that something else will be fulfilled, in which the world incredibly believed, just as what also seemed incredible has already been fulfilled, i.e. that the world believed in such an incredible truth; for both of these incredible events, one of which we already see and the other we believe, were predicted in the same books through which the world came to believe. And if you think about the very way in which the world came to believe, you will find it even more incredible. With the nets of faith, Christ sent very few fishermen into the sea of ​​this century, not enlightened in the liberal sciences, not having received any school education, not skilled in grammar, not armed with dialectics and not pompous in rhetoric, fishermen, and through them, from the entire human race, he caught such a great number of fish as unusual as they were rare, and even philosophers themselves. Let us add, if we please, or better because it must be desired, to the two above events this third. So, we already have three incredible (events), which, however, came true. It is incredible that Christ was resurrected in the flesh and ascended to heaven with it; it is incredible that the world believed such an incredible fact; It is incredible that humble people, the simplest in position, very few in number and ignorant, were able to convince the world and even the most learned people of such an incredible fact and with such success. The first of these three incredible (events) those with whom we are talking do not want to believe; they are forced to admit the second, and if they do not believe the third, they will not explain where the second came from. In fact, the resurrection of Christ and His ascension into heaven with the flesh in which He was resurrected is already the subject of preaching and faith in the whole world; if it is an incredible fact, where did the belief in it come from all over the globe? If numerous, noble, high-ranking and learned people said that they were eyewitnesses of this event and that they saw what they saw, they would try to make it public, then not only would it not be surprising that the world believed them, but it would be incomprehensible that not everyone still wants to believe them; if, as was in reality, the world believed the words and writings of very few, dark, ignorant and unlearned eyewitnesses, why do some still not believe the whole believing world? The world believed a small number of ignorant, low-born, ignorant people because in the person of such humble witnesses the deity itself spoke all the more amazingly about itself. For the eloquence of those who persuaded was the miracles they performed, and not the words they spoke. And those who themselves did not see that Christ was resurrected in the flesh and ascended into heaven with it, believed the eyewitnesses who preached the gospel about this, not only because they spoke, but also because they performed miracles. Thus, those very people who were known to speak one or at best two languages ​​were suddenly heard speaking the languages ​​of all nations (Acts II). The lame man from his mother's womb, in the name of Christ, according to their word, became healthy at the age of forty; scarves from their bodies helped the sick recover; onto the street along which they had to pass, many people possessed by various diseases were carried out in order, so that the shadow of those passing by would overshadow them, and (the sick) immediately received healing; and many other miracles were performed by them in the name of Christ, and even the dead were raised (Acts III; Acts IV). If we assume that all this was as we read about it, then we will add these incredible facts to the three above-mentioned incredible events; let us collect all these testimonies about many incredible facts, so that we will believe that one incredible thing that is said about the resurrection of the flesh and the ascension into heaven, and we will convert to faith those who have not yet become hardened in unbelief. If they do not believe that the apostles of Christ performed the above-mentioned miracles so that their preaching about the resurrection and ascension of Christ would be believed, then that one great miracle is enough for us that the whole world believed this fact without any miracles. Chapter VI. That Rome made its founder Romulus a god out of love for him; The Church loved Christ by believing in Him as God Let us remember here that Tullius is surprised at the belief in the deity of Romulus. I will quote his words as they are written by him: “In Romulus,” he says, “the most worthy of surprise is that others, who, as they say, became gods from people, lived in less enlightened centuries, when the mind was more inclined to fiction, for uneducated people easily surrendered to faith. Meanwhile, the age of Romulus was closer to us, to the present six hundred years *****************, when the sciences and arts had already become stronger and crude human life was cleared of all old errors.” “From here,” he continues a little lower, “one can understand that Homer lived many years before Romulus, so that with people already learned and in enlightened times, there was almost no room left for invention. Antiquity accepted fairy tales, sometimes very absurdly invented; this same enlightened age rejected them, ridiculing first of all what cannot be” 214. Tullius Cicero, one of the most learned people and the most eloquent of all, calls the belief in the deity of Romulus amazing because those times were already civilized, which did not accept fabulous lies. But who elevated Romulus to the ranks of the gods, if not Rome, even if small and just beginning? Subsequently, the descendants had to preserve what they received from their ancestors, so that with this, along with the mother's milk, the superstition absorbed by Rome grew and achieved such great power that from its top, as if from some elevated place, it flooded with this view those peoples over which it ruled; and although these latter did not believe in the deity of Romulus, they called him a god for fear of offending the city to which they were enslaved, calling it somewhat differently than what Rome called it; Rome itself believed this, if not under the influence of love for error, then under the influence of error from love. Meanwhile, although Christ is the founder of the heavenly and eternal city, this city does not believe in His deity because it was created by Him, but rather because it had to be created because it believed in Him as God. Rome paid divine honor to its founder in the church after it had been built and dedicated to him; He placed the heavenly Jerusalem of its Founder, God Christ, as the foundation of his faith, so that it could be created and dedicated to Him. He recognized Romulus as a god out of love for him, and this one loved Christ out of faith in Him as God. Thus, just as for Rome the antecedent principle was love, and regarding the one whom he loved, he willingly believed even a false good; so for the heavenly city the preceding principle was faith, so that with right faith it loved that which was not false, but true. For in addition to so many of the above-mentioned miracles that convince us of the deity of Christ, He was preceded by divine prophecies that deserve full faith, which we see not yet awaiting their fulfillment, as the fathers believed, but already fulfilled on Him. Meanwhile, regarding the fact that Romulus founded Rome and reigned in it, we hear and read as a fact that has already happened, but was not predicted before; and that he was accepted among the gods, then written sources report that they believe this, but do not certify that it happened. And no signs of extraordinary events confirm that this really happened to him. For in what way or to what extent can that circumstance which, apparently, is considered a great miracle, namely, a nursing wolf, serve as a proof of his deity? If we assume that this she-wolf was not a public woman, but a beast 215, then the brother of Romulus is not considered a god, although she was the nurse of both of them. On the other hand, who was forbidden to call Romulus, Hercules, or other similar people gods, and who preferred to die rather than not call them so? Or, on the contrary, would any people accept Romulus as one of their gods if fear of the Roman name did not force them to do so? Meanwhile, who can count how many people chose to suffer the cruelest death rather than renounce the God of Christ! Thus, some cities under the Roman yoke were prompted to consider Romulus as a god by fear of even slight irritation, which, as they believed, could be on the part of the Romans if they did not do so; on the contrary, fear, not of slight irritation, but of immeasurable torment and even death itself, which was most often threatened, could not turn away the many martyrs throughout the land from veneration and even confession of Christ as God. And yet the city of Christ, although it was still wandering on earth and had armies of many nations, did not enter into a struggle with its wicked persecutors for the sake of temporary salvation; on the contrary, it did not oppose them precisely in order to receive eternal salvation. Its citizens were subjected to chains, imprisonment, torture, torture, and death - and yet they multiplied. They had no reason to fight to save life, since they neglected life for the sake of the Savior. I know that in the third book of Cicero, if I’m not mistaken, “On the Republic,” there is a reasoning that the best city accepts war only either for the sake of fidelity in fulfilling obligations, or for the sake of salvation. And what he calls salvation, or what kind of salvation he wants to understand, is explained to him in another place: “But,” he says, “these punishments that even the stupidest people experience—deprivation of necessities, exile, imprisonment, blows with a whip—private people often avoid when death quickly occurs. For cities, death, which frees individuals from punishment, itself serves as punishment. The city must be designed to be eternal. So, the death of a republic is not natural, like the death of a person for whom death is not only necessary, but very often even desirable. If a city perishes, is destroyed and destroyed, this (comparing the small with the great) is in some way similar to as if this whole world perished.” That the world will not perish, Cicero says following the Platonists. So, it is clear that, in the opinion of Cicero, the war is undertaken by the city for the sake of that salvation, which consists in the fact that the city remains here, as he says, eternal, even if individual streets die and are born, just as the constant shade of the olive or laurel and other trees of the same kind is preserved, while individual leaves fall and (re)appear. Therefore, death, as he says, serves as a punishment not for individuals, but for the whole city, very often exempting individuals from punishment. Hence the question naturally arises whether the Saguntians acted correctly when they preferred the destruction of their city to the violation of the fidelity with which they were associated with the Roman Republic itself; Why do people, citizens of the earthly state, praise them? But I do not know how they could remain faithful to such a reasoning, which says that war should be undertaken only for the sake of loyalty or for the sake of salvation, but does not say which should be given preference, if both cannot be preserved at the same time. Indeed, if the Saguntians had preferred salvation, they would have had to break allegiance; if they remained faithful, they had to sacrifice salvation, as this happened. Meanwhile, the salvation of the city of God is such that it can be preserved, or, better said, acquired by faith and through faith; with the loss of faith, no one can achieve it. Considerations taken about this to a highly courageous and strong heart created so many and such martyrs as there were not and could not have been even one when Romulus was considered a god. Chapter VII. That faith in Christ was a matter of divine power and not of human conviction However, it is very strange to mention the false deity of Romulus when we are talking about Christ. Nevertheless, if Romulus lived almost six hundred years earlier than Cicero and his time, as they say, was a time so scientifically enlightened that it rejected everything that could not be, then six hundred years later, during the time of Cicero himself, and especially even later, under Augustus and Tiberius, i.e., in even more enlightened times, the human mind could all the more have considered it impossible and with ridicule to remove from the ear and heart the resurrection of the flesh of Christ and the ascension into heaven, if it had not the divinity of this truth or the truth of the deity itself and the miraculous signs testifying to it did not prove that it could be and was; so that, despite the intimidation and opposition of so many and great persecutions, which began in Christ and was to come in the new age for others, the resurrection and immortality of the flesh became the subject of firm faith and undaunted preaching and was sown throughout the whole earth in order to grow more fruitfully from the blood of the martyrs. For while the whole world believed this truth, pursuing it with fear, the predictions of the prophets that preceded it were read about it, miracles of courage accompanied it, and they were convinced of it as a new truth, contrary to habit, but not to reason. Chapter VIII. About miracles that were performed so that the world would believe in Christ, and do not cease to occur (now), when the world already believes Why, they say, do not happen at the present time the miracles that you preach have happened? I might say to this that before the world believed, miracles were necessary for it to believe. Anyone who is still looking for miracles in order to believe is himself a great miracle, not believing, when the whole world already believes. But they say this because they do not believe the miracles that happened then. Where is Christ, who ascended with the flesh into heaven, sung everywhere with such faith? Why, in times of enlightenment and ridicule of everything that cannot be, does the world, in an extremely miraculous way, believe the incredible beyond all miracles? Or will they say that it is probable, and therefore they believed him? Why, then, do they not believe themselves? So, we pose the following short dilemma: either the belief in an incredible event, which was not seen, was produced by other incredible phenomena that occurred and were visible; or else extreme unbelief was overcome by an event so probable that there was no need for any convincing miracles. At this point I must dwell in refutation of the most vain people. We cannot deny the facts of many miracles that confirmed that one great and saving miracle that Christ ascended into heaven with the flesh in which he was resurrected. All this, like the miracles that were performed, is described in the same most reliable books. These books became known in order to produce faith; They become even more famous thanks to the faith they created. They are read by peoples in order to arouse faith in themselves; but, on the other hand, they would not be read by the people if they were not believed. In the name of Christ or through His sacraments, or through the prayers and invocation of saints, His miracles are performed even today; but they do not receive such fame that they are spoken of with the same glory as those of them. The canon of sacred Scriptures, which was supposed to be completed, tells about those miracles everywhere and they are in the memory of all peoples; meanwhile, no matter where they take place, the whole city or whatever settled area barely knows about them. For the most part, very few people know about them here, while others do not know, especially if the city is large; and when they are told about them in another place, they do not have such authority that they would be believed without any difficulty or doubt, even if they were told by faithful Christians to the faithful. The miracle that happened in Mediolan during our stay there, when a blind man regained his sight, could become known to many because the large city of Mediolan, and the emperor was there at that time, and this fact happened in front of a huge number of people who flocked to the relics of the martyrs Protasius and Gervasius, which, (hitherto) hidden and completely unknown, were revealed in a dream to Bishop Ambrose; It was there that the blind man received his sight, being healed from long-standing blindness. But who, except for very few, in Carthage knows about the healing that took place on Innocent, the lawyer of the viceroyal prefecture, and they were among the others and we saw everything with our own eyes. As a most pious man with his entire household, he received me and my brother Alypius, who appeared from across the sea when we were not yet clergy, but were already serving God, and it was with him that we lived then. He was treated by doctors; they cut out his fistulas, which he had in great numbers and in the most confused form on the lower back part of his body, and the doctors (now) observed the results of their medical art. This operation cost him long and severe suffering. Meanwhile, one of the ulcers eluded the doctors and was so hidden that they could not reach it to open it with a knife. Finally, when all the ulcers that came out were healed, this one remained, regarding which the doctors’ efforts were in vain. Considering the slowness of the recovery suspicious and fearing that he would have to resort to surgery again, as his family doctor predicted, whom those doctors did not even allow during the operation to watch how they would perform it, and whom the patient himself drove out of the house in irritation and had difficulty accepting again, the patient stood up and said: “Are you going to cut me again? Will it happen to me as the one whose presence you yourself did not want said?” They began to make fun of the inexperienced doctor, and to calm the patient’s fear with kind words and promises. Quite a few more days passed, and there was no benefit from what was being done. The doctors, however, continued to insist on the promise that they would end the ulcer with medicine, without resorting to a knife. They also invited a doctor, already elderly and quite famous in the art of this kind, Ammonius (he was still alive), who, having examined the (sick) place, promised the same thing that, guided by caution and experience, they also promised. Encouraged by such authority, the patient began to laugh at his family doctor with playful gaiety, as if he had already recovered. What's next? So many days passed without any benefit that the tired and embarrassed doctors admitted that the patient would not recover without a new operation. The patient was frightened and turned pale from extreme fright, and when he came to his senses and was able to speak, he ordered the doctors to leave and not return; shedding tears and suppressed by the thought of the inevitability (of the operation), he only said that they should invite a certain Alexandrian, who was then considered a famous surgeon, to perform what, in irritation, he did not want to allow them. But when he came and, like an artist on the scars of wounds, appreciated the work of the doctors, then, like an honest man, he began to convince the patient that those doctors, who put in so much work that examining him causes him astonishment, took advantage of the result of their treatment, adding that the patient really cannot recover unless an operation is performed, but that it is not in his moral rules, because of the remaining trifle, to steal the reward for such work from people whose high-class work, art and diligence he was surprised noticed on the scars of the wounds. Thanks to this, the former doctors were again invited and it was decided that they, in the presence of the Alexandrian, would open with a knife the ulcer, which, by all accounts, was considered otherwise incurable. The operation was postponed until the next day. But when the doctors left, the owner’s extreme sadness aroused such grief in his house that we could barely restrain ourselves from sobbing, as at a funeral. The sick man was visited daily by holy men, the then bishop of Uzalen, Saturninus of blessed memory, and presbyter Gelos, as well as deacons of the Carthaginian church; Among the latter was the only survivor of them, already in the rank of bishop, our venerable Aurelius, with whom, remembering the wondrous deeds of God, we often talk about this circumstance and find that he firmly remembers what we are talking about. When, as usual, they visited the sick man in the evening, he, with tears of compassion, asked them to honor his funeral with their presence the next morning rather than grief. And indeed, under the influence of previous sufferings, he was attacked by such fear that many of the doctors were sure that he would die. They consoled him and convinced him to trust in God and courageously endure His will. Then we began to pray, and when, according to custom, we knelt down and sank to the ground, the sick man threw himself on the ground with such an appearance as if he had been defeated by some irresistibly captivating force, and began to pray; and who will convey in words how he began to pray, with what excitement and outburst of spirit, with what tears, with what cries and sobs that shook all his limbs and completely suppressed his spirit? Whether others were praying, or whether their attention was absorbed in this, I don’t know. I was completely unable to pray and only internally uttered the following few words: “Lord, what other prayers of your (slaves) do you heed if you do not heed these?” It seemed to me that nothing could be added to these words, except perhaps that he should die praying. We got up and, having accepted the blessing from the bishop, began to disperse, and the patient asked them to come the next morning, and they convinced him not to lose heart. And then the day came, which was so feared: the servants of God appeared, as they promised to appear; The doctors came, prepared everything that the moment required, and laid out the fatal instruments to the horror of everyone. And while those invested with the highest authority try to lift the patient’s fallen spirit with consolation, his limbs are put in order on the bed, the knots of the bandages are untied, the (sick) place is exposed, the doctor examines him and, with instruments in his hands, carefully looks for an ulcer to be operated on. He peers, then feels, then examines in every possible way and... finds a completely overgrown scar. The joy, praise and thanksgiving to the merciful and almighty God, which poured out from the lips of everyone along with happy tears, cannot be described; all this can be understood rather than expressed in words. In the same Carthage, the most pious woman of the noble family Innocentia had breast cancer, a disease, as doctors say, that cannot be cured by any medicine. Usually, they either cut off and separate from the body the member in which it originates, or, in order for a person to live a little longer, they consider it necessary to abandon all treatment, since thanks to this, according to Hippocrates, death occurs later. This is what an experienced and very friendly doctor told her, and she turned to God in prayer. Shortly before Easter, she received instructions in a dream that she should guard the women's department at the baptismal sanctuary and that the one who, after baptism, would come out to meet her before the others, would overshadow her (sick) place with the sign of Christ; she did so and was immediately healed. When the doctor later saw her, who told her not to resort to any treatment if she wanted to live a little longer, and found her quite healthy, while an earlier examination revealed the mentioned disease in her, he eagerly asked what she was using, wanting, as far as can be understood, to find out about the medicine that refuted the definition of Hippocrates. And when he heard how it was, he answered her with irony in a dismissive tone and with such a mien that she was afraid that he would utter some offensive word to Christ: “I thought you were going to tell me something great.” To this, immediately and with a shudder, she objected: “What great did Christ do by healing cancer, when He raised the four-day-old?” Having heard about this and being very annoyed that such a great miracle that happened in such a city and on such a noble person remains unknown, I considered it necessary to reprimand and even reprimand her for this. And when she answered me that she was not silent about this, I asked the women who happened to be with her at that time and were very close to her, whether they knew about this before? They answered that they absolutely did not know. “So,” I said, “you are not silent, which even they, who are connected with you by friendship, have not heard!” And since I learned from her about this in general terms, I asked her, in the presence of these women, to their great surprise and glorification of God, to tell in detail and in order how the matter happened. In the same city, a gouty doctor, intending to be baptized, on the eve of baptism, received in a dream from black curly boys, in whom he guessed demons, a prohibition to be baptized that year, but, not listening to them, although they sent the most terrible pain to his feet, which he had never experienced before, he came and, according to his vow, was baptized without delay, inflicting an even greater defeat on the demons with the bath of rebirth; in baptism he was freed not only from the illness that he experienced beyond his usual habit, but also from gout itself and, although he lived for a long time, he no longer suffered from his legs. Who knows about this? Only we and very few brothers who could have heard about this know. One Kuruban mimist, having been baptized, received healing not only from paralysis, but also from an ugly heaviness in the reproductive parts, and came out of the source of rebirth relieved from both diseases, as if he had no damage to his body. Who knows about this except Kuruba and those very few who might have heard about it somewhere? Having learned about this, we, by order of the holy Bishop Aurelius, asked (that man) to appear in Carthage; although we had heard about this before from people whose veracity they could not doubt. We have one person, the former tribune of the people Hesperia; he has a manor called Zubedi on Fussalen territory. Having learned that his house was there under the control of the harmful power of evil spirits, causing torment to animals and slaves, he asked (in my absence) our elders to have one of them come there, through whose prayers (the spirits) would be driven out. One (of the elders) appeared, offered the sacrifice of the body of Christ there, praying as much as he could for the mentioned obsession to disappear, and immediately, by the mercy of God, it disappeared. Meanwhile, from his friend he received holy land brought from Jerusalem, where on the third day the buried Christ was resurrected, and hung it in his bedroom so that he himself would not be subjected to any evil. But when his house was cleansed of the filth that he thought came from that land, out of reverence he did not want to keep it in his bedroom. It happened that my brother and I, the bishop of the Siniten church, Maximinus, were nearby; Hesperia asked us to come, and we arrived. And after he told us about all this, he asked that this earth be buried somewhere and that a place of prayer be built there where Christians could gather to glorify the works of God. We had nothing against this - that’s what was done. There was one young paralytic peasant there; Having heard about this, he asked his parents to immediately bring him to this sacred place. Brought there, he prayed and immediately walked back on his own feet. At a distance of less than thirty miles from Hippo there is a cottage called the Victorian. There is a church there in honor of the Mediolan martyrs Protasius and Gervasius. One young man was brought there who, in the middle of the day in the summer, while bathing a horse in the river, was attacked by a demon. And when he lay either dying, or very similar to the deceased, the lady of the dacha came here, according to custom, for evening prayers and hymns, with her maids and with some pious women; and they began to sing hymns. As if struck by this singing, (the demon) shook, with a terrible howl he grabbed the altar, not daring or not being able to move, as if he were tied or nailed to it, and with great crying, asking for mercy, he confessed where, when and how he attacked the young man. Finally, having announced that he would leave, he counted the members (of the young man), which he threatened to take away when leaving, and with these words he left the young man. But the latter’s eye, popping out onto his cheek, hung on a thin vein, as if on an internal root, and the entire middle of it, which had previously been black, turned white. Seeing this, those present (others also came running to the sick man’s cries, and everyone was immersed in prayer for him), although they were glad that (the young man) had regained consciousness, but, saddened about his eye, they said that they needed to find a doctor. Then his sister’s husband, who brought him here, said: “God, who expelled the demon through the prayers of the saints, is able to restore his sight.” After that, he put the dropped and hanging eye back into place as best he could and tied it with a towel; he believed that the eye should recover no earlier than after seven days. When he did this, he (seven days later) found (the young man) completely healthy. Others received healing here; it would take a long time to talk about them. I know that one Hippo maiden, having anointed herself with oil, which the presbyter, praying for her, dissolved with his tears, immediately recovered from demonic possession. I also know that the bishop once prayed for a young man whom he had not seen, and he was immediately freed from the demon. There was one old man, a Hippo named Florentius, a pious and poor man, who earned his living by being a tailor. He lost his clothes, and not having the means to buy them, he turned to the Twenty Martyrs, whose memory we highly honor, with a loud prayer for clothes. The naughty youths who were there by chance heard him and, when he went, they followed him, teasing him, as if he had asked the martyrs for fifty folls ****************** to buy a dress. Continuing his way in silence, he saw a large trembling fish jumping ashore, and with their assistance, he took it and sold it for thirty folls to the kitchen of one cook, a good Christian named Katoz, telling how it happened, and hoping with this money to buy wool so that his wife would sew him clothes. But, having cut the fish, the cook found a gold ring in its entrails and, moved by mercy and under the influence of religious fear, he immediately returned it to the old man, saying: “This is how the Twenty Martyrs dressed you!” When Bishop Preyekt transferred the relics of the most glorious martyr Stephen to the Tibilitan waters, a great crowd of people flocked to the church erected in his honor, crowding around. At this time, the blind woman asked to be taken to the bishop who was carrying (the remains), and he gave her the flowers that he was holding; she accepted them, applied them to her eyes, and immediately received her sight. To the amazement of those present, she walked ahead with delight, choosing the road and no longer needing a guide. Bishop Lucillus, with a large crowd of people accompanying him, carried the shrine of the mentioned martyr, which was placed in the Siniten Castle, located next to the Hippo Colony. From carrying this sacred burden, the fistula, which had been tormenting him for a long time and was awaiting the hand of a very friendly doctor who was going to cut it out, suddenly healed, since he later did not find it on his body. Eucharius, a presbyter from Spain living in Calama, suffered from an old stone disease and received healing from the cancer of the above-mentioned martyr, which Bishop Possidius brought him. The same Eucharius, having later fallen ill with another illness, lay as if dead, so that his fingers were already bandaged; Through the intercession of the mentioned martyr, when the tunic of the presbyter himself was brought from his shrine and placed on the lying body, he rose to his feet. There also lived a certain Martial, a noble man in his position, who had already reached an advanced age and had an aversion to the Christian religion. He had a Christian daughter and a son-in-law who was baptized that year. Although they asked the sick man with great tears to become a Christian, he resolutely refused and drove them away with extreme indignation. In a vision, the son-in-law received instructions to go to the shrine of St. Stephen and there, as far as possible, pray for the sick man, so that God would give him the good disposition not to deviate from his intention to believe in Christ. He did so with great weeping and in the most ardent and pious mood; then, when leaving, he took with him from the altar, to which he was approaching, several flowers and put them under the sick man’s head, because night had already come and he was sleeping. And so, even before dawn, the patient shouted to go to the bishop, who happened to be visiting me in Hippo. Having learned about his absence, the patient asked the elders to come. They appeared, he said that he believed, and to everyone’s surprise and everyone’s joy he was baptized. While he was alive, the words did not leave his lips: “Christ, accept my spirit in peace,” although he did not know that these were the last words of the most blessed Stephen, when the Jews stoned him (Acts VII, 58); These words were also his last words, since he died soon after. There, thanks to the same martyr, two gouty people were healed, one a local resident and the other a foreigner, but the local resident directly, and the foreigner learned from revelation what he should do when he fell ill: he did so and immediately the pain subsided. There is a manor named Avdur; there is a church there and in it is the shrine of the martyr Stephen. One little boy, when he was playing in a clearing, was crushed by a wheel that had gone astray and harnessed to a cart, and he immediately began to beat, giving up his breath. His mother grabbed him and applied him to the cancer, and he not only came to life, but also turned out to be safe and sound. In a neighboring estate called Kaspali-ansky, one pious woman fell ill and despaired of recovery; Her tunic was brought to the same shrine, but the sick woman died before the tunic was brought from there. Her parents covered her corpse with a tunic and she came to life and became healthy. In Hippo, someone named Basho, a Syrian, prayed before the shrine of the same martyr for his sick and in danger daughter and brought her clothes there with him; Meanwhile, slaves come running from the house with the news that (the sick woman) has died; but since he was praying, they were met by his friends, who ordered them not to tell him about it, so that he would not cry publicly. Returning to the house, where the sobs of his relatives could already be heard, he threw the clothes he had taken with him over his dead daughter, and she returned to life. In our country, the son of a certain tax collector Irenaeus died of illness. When his body lay lifeless and was preparing for burial with weeping and sobs, one of his friends suggested anointing the body with oil from the same martyr. They did this, and the deceased came to life. Again, our former tribune Elevzin laid his dead little son on the martyr’s shrine, which is located in his country house, and after a prayer, which he poured out with great tears, he took him down from the shrine, revived. What should I do? I’m embarrassed by the promise to finish this essay, so I can’t give here everything I know; Undoubtedly, the majority of our people, when they read this, will complain that I have passed over so much that they and I know about in silence. I ask them to excuse me in advance and think about what enormous work it would be worth to do something that necessity forces me not to do in this essay. In fact, if I, keeping silent about other things, wanted to describe only those miracles of healing that through this martyr, that is, the most venerable Stephen, were performed in Kalamskaya and in our colony, then it would be necessary to compile quite a lot of books; and not all such miracles can be collected, but only those about which notes have been written and intended for public reading. We decided to start compiling such records precisely because in our time there are signs of divine power similar to the ancient ones, and they should not remain unknown to many. It has not yet been two years since the mentioned cancer began to exist in Hippo, and although many miracles, as we know for certain, are not recorded, at the time I am writing about this, their number reaches seventy. In Kalama, where cancer itself appeared earlier, and records are published more often, their number is incomparably greater. We also know that through the same martyr many wonderful miracles were performed in the colony neighboring Utica, Uzala, where his shrine was erected by Bishop Euodius much earlier than ours. But there is no custom of keeping records there, or rather there was none; because now, perhaps, it’s already started. When we recently visited there, we advised the local bishop to write a note for public reading about how a very famous woman, Petronia, received a miraculous healing there from a severe and prolonged illness, in the cure of which doctors could not give her any help; and the bishop listened to us very willingly. In this entry he also outlined something that I cannot keep silent about, although I must hasten to what remains unfinished in this work. She said that some Jew advised her to put a ring on her hairline, which was girded under her clothes over her naked body, in which under the precious stone there would be a stone found in the kidneys of an ox. Girded with this belt, as if it were a medicine, she went to the church of the holy martyr. But having set out from Carthage, near which she stayed on her estate near the Bagrada River, she, rising to continue her journey, saw that ring in front of her feet, and in amazement began to feel the hair belt on which it was strung. Making sure that the belt was tightly knotted, she thought that the ring had burst and slipped off; but when the ring turned out to be completely intact, she took it as a guarantee of future health and threw the belt and the ring into the river. But this miracle is not believed by those who do not believe that the Lord Jesus was born, leaving his mother’s virginity intact, and that He appeared to the disciples through locked doors; let them at least be curious about it, and if it turns out to be true, let them believe the rest. The woman in question is a very famous person, noble by birth and marriage, and lives in Carthage; and such a vast city, and such a famous person will not hide this circumstance from those interested. The martyr himself, through whose prayers she received healing, of course, believed in the Son of the Ever-Virgin, believed that He appeared to the disciples through closed doors, and finally believed that He ascended to heaven with the flesh in which He was resurrected, for which, in fact, we are saying all this, and the mentioned miracles are performed by him precisely because for this faith he laid down his soul. Thus, by the power of the same God, who performed those miracles about which we read, miracles are performed at the present time through those pleasing to Him and as He pleases; but these miracles are not so well known and are not so remembered from frequent reading, so as not to fall out of memory, like grains of sand of the past. After all, even where they try to publish records of those receiving miraculous help, as is now the custom with us, only those who are present hear about it, and then only once; most of them are not present at all; so that those present themselves, a few days later, forget what they heard, and there is hardly anyone among them who would report what they heard to someone who was absent. One thing happened here, though not as big as the ones I mentioned above, but such a well-known and wonderful miracle that I think there is no Hippo man who did not see it or did not know it, or who could somehow forget about it. So, ten children (seven brothers and three sisters) from Caesarea Cappadocia, people not unknown among their fellow citizens, due to the curse of their mother, who remained a widow after the death of their father and was cruelly insulted by them, were immediately subjected to such punishment from above that they began to terribly shake with all their members. In this terrible form, unable to bear the gaze of their fellow citizens, they scattered throughout almost the entire Roman Empire, wherever everyone decided to go. Two of them, Paul and Palladia, already known in many places for their shameful misfortune, came to us. They arrived fifteen days before Easter and began to visit church every day, and in it the most venerable Stephen, praying that God would have mercy on them and make them as healthy as before. And here, wherever they went, the cities attracted attention everywhere. Some who saw them in other places and knew the reason for their shaking reported it to whomever they could. And then Easter came. On the morning of the Lord's Day, when a large crowd had already gathered (in church) and the young man (Paul) was holding on to the bars of the sacred place where the martyr's shrine is located, he suddenly prostrated himself on the ground and fell silent, as if sleeping, however, without experiencing shaking, as usually happened to him even in his sleep. When, in the astonishment of those present, some of whom were struck with fear and others with grief, some wanted to raise him to his feet, others forbade them to do so, saying that they should, perhaps, expect death. And so he rose to his feet and no longer shook, for he had received healing, and stood healthy, looking at those who surrounded him. Who could refrain from praising God at the same time? Enthusiastic and grateful cries filled the entire church. Then they run to my house, where I was sitting, ready to leave, burst in one after another, and each new arrival tells me as news what the other has already told me; and when I rejoiced and thanked God, he himself appears, along with many, bends down to my knees, rises and kisses me. Let's go to the people; the church was full and trembling with joyful cries heard here and there (because there were no silent ones): “Thanks be to God! God bless!" When silence was finally established, the celebratory readings of the divine Scriptures were read. And when the time came for the sermon, I said a few words according to the time and joyful mood. I wanted not so much to listen to me as to pay attention to a kind of eloquence of God expressed in this divine action. That man dined with us and told in detail the story of his, his mother’s and brothers’ disaster. The next day, after delivering a sermon, I promised to read a transcript of his story to the people. When I had fulfilled this on the third day of Easter, I ordered that while reading this entry, both of them, brother and sister, stood on the steps of the portico from the height of which I read. All the people of both sexes saw them: one standing calmly, and the other shaking with all its members. And those who had not seen their brother (before) judged by his sister how much divine mercy was shown on him. They saw why they needed to thank God for him and why they should pray for her. Meanwhile, when the record about them was read, I ordered them to leave the eyes of the people, and began to talk about this circumstance in some more detail; and so, during this conversation of mine, joyful cries were again heard from the martyr’s shrine. Those listening to me turned and moved there. It turned out that, having descended from the steps on which she was standing, (the sister) went to pray to the holy martyr. As soon as she touched the bars, she fell, as if falling into a dream, and stood up healthy. While we were asking what happened and why such a joyful cry was happening, she appeared in the basilica where we were and with her those who brought her healthy from the martyr’s shrine. Then such a cry of amazement arose in the assembly that it seemed that there would be no end to these exclamations combined with tears. She was taken to the place where she had stood a little earlier, subject to shaking. They began to rejoice that she had become the same as her brother, about whom they (previously) mourned because she remained unlike him; They saw that they had not yet offered prayers for her, but their good wishes for her that preceded the prayers were heard so quickly. They sent forth joyful praise to God without words, but so noisily that their ears could hardly bear it. What was in the hearts of these rejoicings other than faith in Christ, for which Stephen’s blood was shed? Chapter IX. That all the miracles performed by the martyrs in the name of Christ serve as evidence of the faith that the martyrs had in Christ What else do these miracles testify to if not the faith that preaches that Christ was resurrected in the flesh and ascended into heaven with the flesh? For the martyrs themselves were martyrs, that is, witnesses of this faith; testifying to it, they endured extreme hostility and cruelty towards themselves in the world, and defeated the world not by resistance, but by death. For this faith they laid down their lives; they can ask this from the Lord, in whose name they tasted death. For the sake of this faith, they first discovered extraordinary patience, so that such power would later manifest itself in these miracles. After all, if the eternal resurrection of the flesh has not yet taken place in the person of Christ or will not take place, as Christ predicted and was predicted by the prophets by whom Christ was foretold, then where does such power come from for the dead who were killed for the faith preaching the resurrection? Whether God himself performs these miracles directly in the supernatural manner in which the Eternal One produces temporal phenomena, or through His servants; and those miracles that he performs through ministers, whether he performs some through the spirit of martyrs, as people still consisting of a body, or all through angels, whom He commands invisibly, unchangeably and incorporeally; so that the miracles performed through the martyrs are performed only by their prayer and intercession, and not by their (direct) action; or some in this way, and others in another, in a completely incomprehensible way for mortals; in any case, these miracles serve as confirmation of the faith in which the eternal resurrection of the flesh is preached. Chapter X. How much more decent it is to honor the martyrs, who perform so many miracles, promoting the veneration of the true God, than the demons, who perform something similar in order to be considered gods themselves To this, perhaps, they will tell us that their gods also do something miraculous. The good thing is that they begin to compare their gods with our dead people. Will they not also say that they have gods from dead people, for example Hercules, Romulus and many others, who are considered accepted among the gods? But among us, martyrs are not gods, because both for ourselves and for the martyrs we know the same God. Nevertheless, however, with the miracles that are performed at the tombs of our martyrs, the miracles that they claim to be performed in the churches of their gods can in no way be compared; and if some of their miracles seem similar to ours, in any case their gods, like the magicians of Pharaoh Moses (Ex. VIII), were defeated by our martyrs. Their miracles were performed by demons out of the vanity of unclean pride, according to which they wanted to be their gods; and our miracles are performed by martyrs, or better yet, by God himself, through prayer or with the assistance of martyrs, so that we are strengthened in the belief that they are not our gods, but have the same God with us. Finally, they built churches to their gods, erected altars, established priests, and made sacrifices; We do not erect churches to our martyrs, as to gods, but we build tombstones as to dead people, whose souls live with God; and we erect altars there, on which we offer sacrifices not to the martyrs, but to the one God, theirs and ours. During this sacrifice, they are also remembered in their place and order, as the people of God who have overcome the world in the confession of God - they are remembered, but they are not called upon by the priest performing the sacrifice. The priest brings the sacrifice to God, and not to them, although he offers it at their tomb, because he is a priest of God, and not of them. This sacrifice is the body of Christ, which is not offered to them, because they themselves are this body. So, which miracle workers should you rather believe? Is it those who want to be considered gods among people, for whom they perform miracles, or those who do everything miraculous so that we believe in God, who is Christ? Is it those who wanted even their crimes to be considered sacred, or those who do not want their most praiseworthy qualities to be considered sacred, but that everything that truly deserves their praise would serve for the glory of Him in whom they boast? For their souls glory in the Lord (Isa. XXXIII, 3). Let us believe those who both speak the truth and do wonderful things. After all, they suffered because they spoke the truth, so that later they could do miraculous things. Their main truth was that Christ rose from the dead and was the first to show in His flesh the immortality of the resurrection, the onset of which He promised us either at the beginning of a new century or at the end of the present. Chapter XI. Against the Platonists, who, on the basis of the natural gravity of the elements, assert that an earthly body cannot be in heaven Against this great gift of God, the aforementioned thinkers, whose thoughts are known to the Lord as vain (Isa. XCIII, 11), borrow objections from the gravity of the elements. From their teacher Plato, they learned that the two greatest and extreme world bodies are connected and connected to each other by two intermediate elements, air and water. Based on this position, they say that since, counting from bottom to top, the first is the earth, the second above it is water, the third above water is air, the fourth above air is sky (fire), then an earthly body cannot be in heaven. Each of these elements retains its place, balanced by its own particles. This is the kind of argumentation that human blindness, overwhelmed by vanity, opposes to the omniscience of God! How, one might ask, do so many earthly bodies live in the air, although air is considered the third element above the earth? Is it possible that the One who gave the earthly bodies of birds the ability to fly in the air will not be able to give human bodies that have become immortal the ability by which they could live in the highest sky? Yes, and terrestrial animals that cannot fly, to which people belong, would have to live in the earth, just as fish, which are aquatic animals, live in water. Why does an earthly animal not even live in the second element, that is, in water, but in the third? Why, belonging to the earth, if it is forced to live in the second element located above the earth, it immediately suffocates, and in order to preserve life it must live in the third? But isn't this order of the elements confused? Or rather, does it exist in nature, but is missing from their argument? I will not repeat what I said in the thirteenth book of bodies like lead, which, however, receive such a form from the master that they can float on water; Meanwhile, if the human body receives a property thanks to which it will ascend to heaven and gain the opportunity to live in heaven, this is considered a contradiction to the plan of the omnipotent Artist. Already, even against what I said above, those who reason and interpret about the order of the elements, to which they refer, absolutely cannot find any objections. Indeed, in this account from bottom to top, in which the earth appears first, water - second, air - third, sky - fourth - the nature of the soul rises above everything. Aristotle calls it the fifth body 216, and Plato calls it incorporeal. 217 If she is the fifth body, then obviously higher than the rest; it is all the more superior to all others if it is incorporeal. What is she doing in her earthly body? How does the subtlest of all elements coexist in this mass? The lightest one is in this load? The fastest - in this inertia? Is it really impossible that, due to the merits of this so excellent nature, her body will ascend to heaven, and if at present the nature of earthly bodies pulls souls down, then someday souls will be able to delight earthly bodies upward? If we now pay attention to the miracles which, as performed by their gods, they contrast (with the miracles) of our martyrs, will it not turn out that even these miracles speak in our favor and decisively confirm us? Among the great miracles of their gods is, without a doubt, the great miracle mentioned by Varro, which consists in the fact that the Vestal Virgin, if she was threatened with an unjust accusation of fornication, filled a sieve with water from the Tiber and brought it to her judges so that not a single drop escaped. Who held the weight of the water in the sieve? Who, despite so many holes in the sieve, did not allow a single drop to fall out of it onto the ground? They will say some god or some demon. But if there is a God, is he really greater than the God who created this world? If a demon, is he really stronger than the angel who serves God who created the world? If a lesser god, or an angel, or a demon could balance the weight of the liquid element in such a way that, apparently, the very nature of water changed, then wouldn’t the omnipotent God, who created the elements themselves, be able to free the earthly body from gross heaviness, so that it, animated, could dwell in that very element in which the life-giving spirit wants? Further, if air is placed between fire above and water below, why do we often find it between water and water and between water and earth? Why does the air end up between clouds, which are thought to be saturated with water, and the seas? How, I ask, does it follow from the gravity and order of the elements that the most swift and stormy streams, before they begin to flow below the air on the ground, hang above the air in the clouds? Why, finally, does air appear to occupy the middle between the highest layers of the sky and the lower layers of the earth throughout the entire space of the universe, when its place is between the sky and the waters, just as the place of the waters is between it and the earth? In conclusion, if such is the order of the elements that, according to Plato, the two middle ones, air and water, are united by the two extreme ones, fire and earth; if fire is placed in the highest heaven, and earth occupies the lowest place, as the foundation of the world, and therefore earth cannot be in heaven, then why is fire on earth? Indeed, according to the meaning of this position, both elements, fire and earth, should each be in their own place, lower and higher, so that just as the lower, in their opinion, cannot be above, so the highest should not be below. If they believe that there is not or will not be a single particle of earth in heaven, then we should not see a single particle of fire on earth. Meanwhile, at the present time there is fire not only on the earth, but also underground, so that it is spewed out by the tops of the mountains; in addition, we see that it exists on earth in the use of people, and is born from the earth, because it is born from firewood and stones, which, undoubtedly, are earthly objects. But, they say, that fire is a calm, clean, harmless and eternal fire, and this one is restless, smoky, corruptible and destructive. However, it does not destroy either the mountains in which it constantly burns, or the abysses of the earth. But so be it, let our fire not be like that fire, but meet the conditions of earthly existence; why do they not want to admit our belief that the nature of earthly bodies, having once become incorruptible, will correspond to heaven, just as our corruptible fire now corresponds to the earth? So, the gravity and order of the elements does not give them any reason to claim that Almighty God did not create our bodies in such a way that they could dwell in heaven. Chapter XII. Against the tricks of the unbelievers, with which they ridicule Christians for believing in the resurrection of the flesh But they usually raise the most petty questions and with these questions they ridicule our belief in the resurrection of the flesh: for example, they ask, will premature babies be resurrected? And since the Lord said: “And a hair of your head will not perish” (Luke XXI, 18), then they ask whether everyone will have the same strength and strength or size will be different? If the bodies are the same, where will the premature babies get what they did not have here in their bodily composition, if they too are resurrected? Or, if premature babies are not resurrected, since they were not born, but thrown out, then, applying the same question to babies, they ask where their growth will come from, which, as we see, they do not have now, dying in infancy? We will not say that babies who are capable not only of birth, but also of rebirth, will not be resurrected. Then they ask, what form will the sameness of bodies have? If everyone there is as big and tall as the tallest people are now, then they ask not only about babies, but also about the majority: where will they get what they lack now, if everyone there gets what they had here? If, as the apostle says, we all reach “the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph. IV, 13); and in another place: “Whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. VIII, 29), then one must think that the appearance and growth of the body of Christ will be (the norm) for all human bodies that will enter His kingdom. In this case, they say, for many it will be necessary to reduce the size and height of the body; How will the words be fulfilled: “And a hair of your head will not perish” if so much of the very size of the body is lost? And regarding the hair itself, one can ask whether then everything that is now cut off when cutting will be returned to it? If it is returned, will not such disgrace cause disgust in everyone? The same obviously needs to be said about nails; and all that very much that is now cut off when caring for the body must be returned to them. Where, in this case, will there be beauty, which should, of course, be greater in the state of future immortality than there can be in the state of present corruption? And if it is not returned, it means it will be lost, how, they say, and a hair from your head will not disappear? Similar arguments are made regarding leanness and obesity. If everyone is then equal, then, of course, some will not be lean and others fat. This means that for some something will be added, and for others something will be subtracted. And from here we will all have to receive then what we did not have, but some will have to gain what they did not have, and others will have to lose what they had. They talk in every possible way about various kinds of damage and the destruction of dead bodies, about cases when some of the bodies turn into dust, and others evaporate into the air as gases; some bodies are devoured by beasts, others by fire; some people die in the water during a shipwreck or in some other way, so that rotting turns their bodies into moisture; all such bodies, they believe, cannot be united and restored to flesh. They go over what deformities and mutilations exist or are being born, and with disgust and mockery they also mention monstrous creations, and inquire in what form each ugliness will be resurrected? If we said that there would be nothing like that in the human body then, they would have a ready refutation to our answer by pointing to the ulcers with which, as we preach, the Lord Christ was resurrected. But of all these questions, the most difficult one is asked by them: into whose flesh will the meat on which a person eats, devouring the human body under the influence of hunger, return. After all, this meat turned into the flesh of someone who, thanks to such food, remained alive and with it made up for those losses (in the body), which were evidenced by his emaciation. So, will that body return to the person whose flesh it was before, or, on the contrary, will it remain in the one whose flesh it became later; This is the question they are trying to resolve, ridiculing our faith in the resurrection; moreover, either, like Plato, they promise the human soul alternately alternating states of true misfortune and false bliss, or, following Porphyry, they dwell on the idea that the human soul, after long wanderings through various bodies, will one day end its misfortunes forever; not, however, in such a way that he will have an immortal body, but in such a way that he will be freed from any body. Chapter XIII. Are premature babies not subject to resurrection if they are among the dead? With the help of God's mercy, which supports my efforts, I will answer those objections on their part that seem to me to be directly related to the subject of my speech. That premature babies will be resurrected, who, while still in the womb of their mother, were already dead, I do not dare to either affirm or deny this, although I see no reason why their resurrection would have passed, since they are among the dead. Indeed, one of two things: either not all the dead will be resurrected, and some human souls will remain in eternity without bodies, which they, although in the womb, still had; or, if all human souls receive their resurrected bodies, which they, wherever they were, had alive and left dead, I find no reason to say that any of the dead will not participate in the resurrection of the dead, even in the womb. But let everyone hold one or another of these opinions about bastards; in any case, what we will say next about already born babies should also be understood regarding premature babies, if they are resurrected. Chapter XIV. Will infants be resurrected in the same bodily form that they were expected to receive with the onset of age? What can we say about babies, except that they will not be resurrected in the small body in which they died, but by a wondrous and instantaneous act of God they will receive the body that they had to develop over time? For the saying of the Lord: “And a hair of your head shall not perish” says that what was will not be absent, without denying at the same time that what was not will also be present. The babies who died did not have the full size of their body, since every baby lacks precisely that measure of body height that it would not outgrow if it reached full age. This measure exists for everyone, with it everyone is conceived and born, but it exists ideally, and not materially, just as all members already exist hidden in a seed, although some, for example teeth, are missing even after birth. In this idea, embedded in the corporeal matter of everyone, in some way, as I would put it, there is conceived something that is not yet there or that is hidden, but which over time will be, or better said, will be revealed. And the baby in it is small or tall, according to how small or tall he will be. On this basis, we are not at all afraid of the loss of the body at the resurrection, because if then we are all equal, and even so that we all reach a gigantic size, then even the tallest people in earthly life will not have anything in their stature that would perish, contrary to the saying of Christ: “And a hair of your head will not perish”; for the Creator, who created everything out of nothing, can there be a lack of power to fill (from where - this wondrous Artist knows) what should be filled? Chapter XV. Will the bodies of the resurrected have the measure of the body of the Lord? But since Christ was resurrected with exactly the height with which he died, then it is indecent to say that His body, when the time of the general resurrection comes, will receive greater growth than what it had when He appeared to the disciples after the resurrection in the form in which they knew Him - it will receive more, so that, thus, He could be compared with the tallest people in stature. If we say that all higher bodies should be equal to the measure of the Lord’s body, in this case the bodies of very many people will suffer damage, although the Lord Himself promised that not even a hair of our head will perish. It remains to conclude that everyone will receive his own measure of growth, which he either had in his youth, even if he died an old man, or would have had if he had died earlier. And the words of the Apostle about the measure of the full stature of Christ (Eph. IV, 13) must be understood either in such a way that they were spoken for a completely different purpose, i.e. so that under the head of Christ in Christian nations, with the moral progress of all members, the measure of His age will be fulfilled; or, if they are said about the resurrection of bodies, so that the bodies of the dead will be resurrected at an age no earlier and no later than youth, and precisely at that age and strength to which, as is known, Christ lived on earth. After all, even the most learned people of this century believe that the age of adolescence is about thirty years; Having reached this time, a person tends to become more courageous, and then to old age. That is why the apostle does not say “to the measure of the body” or “to the measure of growth,” but “to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” Chapter XVI. What is meant by the conformation of the saints to the image of the Son of God? In the same way, the words: “Whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. VIII, 29) can be understood about the inner man. Therefore, in another place the apostle tells us: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. XII: 2). Thus, we become conformed to the Son of God when we are transformed, but we are not conformed to this age. These words can also be understood in such a way that just as the Son of God is conformed to us by mortality, so we must be conformed to Him by immortality, which, however, also relates to the resurrection of bodies. If in these words we are given an indication in what form our bodies will be resurrected, then this conformity, like the above-mentioned measure, should be understood not in the sense of size, but in the sense of the age of the body. So, everyone will be resurrected in the same stature as they were or had to be in youth; although in the future life, where there will be no slightest mental or even bodily weakness, it will not be of any importance whether the body will have a youthful or senile appearance. Therefore, if someone insists that everyone will be resurrected in the bodily form in which they died, one should not start long disputes with him over this subject. Chapter XVII. Will women’s bodies be resurrected and remain in their own field? Some, in view of the words that we will all reach “the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph. IV, 13) and that God “predestined (to be) conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. VIII, 29), believe that women will be resurrected not in the female, but in the male sex, since God created from the earth only one man, and from a man - a woman. But, in my opinion, those who have no doubt that both sexes will be resurrected have a more correct view of the matter. In fact, there will no longer be lust, which is the cause of shame. After all, even before the Fall, husband and wife were naked and not ashamed. Therefore, then human bodies will be cleansed only of shortcomings, but nature will remain. The female sex is not a defect, but a nature; and although nature will then be free from intercourse and birth, the female members will remain, serving not for the previous use, but for a new beauty, which would not arouse the lust of the one looking at it, since there would be no lust then, but the wisdom and mercy of God would be praised, both the non-existent who created and the non-existent who delivered from damage. And that at the beginning of the human race a wife was created from a bone taken from the ribs of a sleeping husband, this event was supposed to serve as a prophecy about Christ and the Church. For this dream of the husband (Gen. II, 21) meant the death of Christ, whose ribs, when He hung lifeless on the cross, were pierced by a spear and blood and water poured out of them (John XIX, 34); what we consider to be the sacraments by which the Church is built. Scripture uses precisely this expression; in it we read not “formed” or “created,” but “created” (Gen. II, 22); therefore, the apostle speaks of the creation of the body of Christ, which is the Church. Thus, a woman is the same creation of God as a man; that she came from her husband, this served as an indication of their unity, and that she came from her husband in this way, this, as said, depicted Christ and the Church. And He who established both of these sexes will restore them. Finally, Jesus Christ himself, when asked by the Sadducees who denied the resurrection which of the seven brothers would have the wife whom each of them had in order to restore, as the law prescribed, the seed of a dead brother, answered: “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God” (Matthew XXII, 29). And although He could have said: “The one about whom you are asking Me will herself be a man, and not a woman,” He did not say this, but this: “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but remain like the Angels of God in heaven” (Matthew XXII, 30). We will, of course, be equal to the angels in immortality and bliss, and not in the flesh and not in the resurrection, which the angels have no need for, because they could not die. Thus, the Lord denied marriages, not women, in the resurrection, and denied when such a question was raised that most likely would have been resolved by denying the female sex, if the Lord had known that it would not exist then; on the contrary, He affirmed that this sex would be, saying: “They neither marry (which refers to men), nor are they given in marriage" (which refers to women). So, then there will be those who usually get married here, and those who get married here, but they will not do it there. Chapter XVIII. About the perfect man, that is, Christ, and His body, that is, the Church, which is His fulfillment Therefore, since the apostle says that we will all come into a perfect man, it is necessary to consider these words of his in their entirety, in which they read like this: “He who descended, he is also the one who ascended above all the heavens, to fill all things. And He appointed some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be shepherds and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all come into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, into a perfect man, to the measure of the full stature of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by the cunning art of deception, but by true love we may return all things to Him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, which is composed and held together by every mutually fastening bond, through the action of each member to its own measure, receives increase for the building up of itself in love” (Eph. IV, 10-16). This is the perfect man, that is, the head, and this is the body, embracing all the members who will in due time enter into it! But while the Church is being built, new members are added to this body every day - to that body about which it is said: “You are the body of Christ, and individually members” (I Cor. XII, 27); and in another place: “For His body, which is the Church” (Col. I, 24); and again: “There is one bread, and we, who are many, are one body” (I Cor. X, 17). The creation of this body is also spoken of in the passage under consideration: “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of service, for the building up of the body of Christ,” and then what we are actually talking about is added: “Until we all come into the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, into a perfect man, to the measure of the full stature of Christ”; and how far in the body this measure should extend is indicated by the words: “So that we... through true love return everything to Him who is the head Christ, from whom the whole body is composed and copulated through all kinds of mutually fastening ties, with each member acting to its own measure.” Hence, the measure of both each individual part and the whole body, embracing all parts, is precisely the measure of completeness, about which it is said: “To the measure of the full age of Christ.” The apostle also mentions this fullness in another place, where he speaks of Christ: “And he appointed Him above all things, to be the head of the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that fills all in all” (Eph. 1:22–23). If the words of the apostle in question should be attributed to the form in which everyone will be resurrected, then what prevents us from understanding a woman by the husband mentioned by him, understanding a husband in the meaning of a person in general, just as in the words: “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord” (Ps. 112:1) of course, women who fear the Lord are also understood. Chapter XIX. The fact that bodily defects, which in real life contradict human beauty, will not exist in the resurrection, when, with the natural substance remaining, its quality and quantity will be combined into one beauty What to answer now about hair and nails? - if we admit that nothing will then be lost from our body, so that no ugliness will appear as a result of such loss, - at the same time it goes without saying that all the excesses that would be ugliness in the body will remain in the (total) mass of the body, and will not be returned to their (former) places where they would disfigure the shape of the members. If, for example, a vessel were made from clay, which, having been turned into the same clay, was again made anew, then there would be no need for that part of the clay that was (previously) in the handle or bottom to return precisely to the handle or to the bottom, as long as the whole was again converted into a whole, that is, as long as all the clay, without losing the slightest part, was turned into a whole vessel. Therefore, hair and nails, cut and cut off so many times, will not be returned to their places if there they serve to disgrace; however, they will not disappear from any of the resurrected ones, since, due to the changeability of matter, they will turn into the same flesh in order to take some place in the body without disturbing the harmony of its parts. However, the words of the Lord: “And a hair of your head will not perish” can be understood rather in such a way that they are spoken not about the length, but about the number of hairs; He also says in another place: “Even the hairs of your head are all numbered” (Luke XII: 7). I say this not because I think that something that belonged to it by nature will perish in any body; I only say that those ugliness with which the body was born (and it was born with them because, of course, so that they would serve as an indication of the state of our present mortality, as a state imposed as punishment), will return to the body, but in such a way that although the substance of the body will remain intact, there will be no ugliness. In fact, if a human artist can melt a statue, which for some reason he made ugly, and reproduce it in a beautiful form so that nothing is lost from its substance, but only its ugliness is eliminated, and if there was something bad in the previous figure of the statue or was not in harmony with the whole, he does not take it away and does not separate it from the mass that served him as material, but stirs it throughout the mass so that only to eliminate the defect of the statue, without diminishing its magnitude, then what should we think about the almighty Artist? Will He really not be able to eliminate all kinds of ugliness of human bodies, not only ordinary ones, but also rare and monstrous ones, which are characteristic of the present disastrous life, but will be an insult to the future bliss of the saints - to eliminate them so that, although they constitute natural, but still ugly products of bodily substance, by their elimination they do not cause this substance any damage? Hence, further, one should not fear for the lean and the fat, so that even there they would not be the same as, if only they could, they would not want to be here. Indeed, all beauty of the body consists in the proportionality of the parts, together with a certain grace of color. Where there is no such proportionality in parts, our eye is offended by something either because it is crooked, or because it is small, or because it is too large. Therefore, there will be nothing ugly arising from the disproportion of parts, where something is crooked will be corrected, what is less than it should be will be replenished (from where, the Creator knows), and what is more than is necessary will be eliminated, without violating the integrity of matter. And how much grace there will be in color where “the righteous will shine like the sun” (Matt. XIII, 43)! One must think that the luminosity of the body of Christ, when He was resurrected, was rather hidden from the eyes of the disciples than absent. Their weak human gaze would not have endured it, since they had to see Christ so that He could be recognized by them. The circumstances are also explained that He showed them traces of His wounds for their touch and even took food and drink; not because he needed both, but because, according to His power, he could do this too. The case when we do not see something, although it is there, is present, just as the mentioned luminosity of the body of Christ, although it, as noted above, was not visible to the apostles, who, however, saw everything else, is called in Greek ἀορασία - a word which our translators, not being able to translate it into Latin, translated in the book of Genesis as “blindness.” The Sodomites were amazed by it when they were looking for the doors of a righteous man and could not find them (Gen. XIX, 11). If this were the kind of blindness in which one cannot see anything, then the Sodomites would not ask about the doors to which they approached, but would look for guides who would lead them there. I don’t know how, but we are filled with such love for the blessed martyrs that in the future kingdom we would like to see on their bodies the traces of those wounds that they accepted for the name of Christ - and perhaps we will. These wounds will not be ugliness, but dignity, - a certain beauty, although shining in the body, but the beauty is not of the body, but of virtue. Nevertheless, however, if the martyrs were deprived of any members here, they will not be left without these members in the resurrection of the dead, to whom it is said: “And a hair of your head shall not perish.” But if in the new age it is deemed necessary that the traces of their glorious wounds should be visible on the immortal flesh, then where the members were, as said, taken away or cut off, traces of the wounds will appear and appear on those same parts again returned, but not lost. So, although all the defects that were in the body will then no longer exist, the mentioned traces of virtues should not be considered such defects. Chapter XX. That in the resurrection of the dead the nature of bodies scattered in one way or another must be restored to their integrity On the other hand, let us be far from thinking that in order to resurrect bodies and return them to life, the omnipotence of the Creator cannot collect everything that was devoured by beasts or fire, or turned into dust and ashes, or dissolved into moisture, or evaporated into the air. Let us not think that some depths or hidden places of nature hid something that disappeared from our senses to such an extent that it would remain either unknown to knowledge, or come out from under the power of the Creator of all. Cicero, this great writer of theirs, wanting to define God, says: “He is a certain free and independent mind, alien to any mortal admixture, omniscient and omnimoving, and himself gifted with eternal motion” 218. The same (judgment) is found in the doctrines of great philosophers. So, to use their own language, how can something hide from the “all-knowing” or disappear without a trace from the “all-moving”? This already resolves the question that seems more difficult, namely: if the flesh of a deceased person becomes the flesh of another person, then which of them will it belong to in the resurrection? After all, if a person, exhausted and overcome by hunger, began to feed on the corpses of people - and such evil, as ancient history testifies and as the unfortunate experience of modern times says, sometimes occurred - then who will argue that all this food is thrown out through the lower passage and none of it turns into the flesh of that person, when his very emaciation, which was and has passed, sufficiently shows that this nutrition compensated for the loss in his body? But the remarks I made above should serve to resolve this difficulty. For whatever hunger depletes the body of, all of it evaporates, of course, into the air; That’s why we said that Almighty God can bring back what has gone. Therefore, that flesh will be returned to the same person whose human flesh it originally constituted. It must be taken away from that other, for it is, as it were, borrowed by him as someone else’s capital, and must be returned to the one from whom it is borrowed. In turn, that person who was exhausted by hunger will have his own flesh returned to Him who is able to collect what has evaporated into the air. Even if it perished in every possible way, and not a single particle of it was preserved in any secret places of nature, the Almighty will restore it from wherever He pleases. But in view of the saying of the Truth itself: “And a hair of your head shall not perish,” it would be absurd to think that while a hair from a person’s head cannot perish, so many human bodies, exhausted and eaten from hunger, can perish... Having examined and discussed, as far as necessary, all these objections, let us combine everything that has been said in the following general terms. In the eternal resurrection of the flesh, the growth of our bodies will have the measure that belonged to it according to the norm of youth put into each body, not yet reached or already achieved, with the preservation of the corresponding beauty in the sizes of all members. If something has been taken away from the body, as excessive lengthening in some of its constituent parts, then in order to preserve beauty, this taken away will then be placed throughout the body, so that it itself will not be lost, and the proportionality of the parts of the body will be preserved; there is nothing incredible that as a result of this the height of the body itself may even increase, when, in order to preserve beauty, that which in any part of the body turned out to be superfluous and indecent is distributed throughout all the members. If they insist that everyone will be resurrected with the same bodily height with which they died, one should not argue against such an opinion too hotly, one must only think that there will be nothing ugly, nothing weak, nothing inert, nothing corruptible, in a word, nothing indecent will be in that kingdom in which the sons of the resurrection and promise will be equal to the angels of God, not in body, of course, but in blessedness. Chapter XXI. About the new state of the spiritual body into which the flesh of the saints will change Accordingly, everything that does not perish from living bodies, or, after death, from corpses, will be restored and, together with the remains preserved in the coffins, will rise again, changing from the old state of the spiritual body into the new state of the spiritual body and endowed with incorruptibility and immortality. wind or water, will be deprived of any opportunity to be anywhere, then even in this case it will not hide from the omnipotence of the Creator; on the contrary, not a single hair on its head will perish in it. Then the flesh subordinate to the spirit will become spiritual, but still flesh, and not spirit, just as the spirit, subordinate to the flesh, will itself be carnal, but still spirit, and not flesh. An example of this is the distorted state of our punishment. We were carnal not according to the flesh, but precisely according to the Spirit, to whom the apostle says: “I could not speak to you, brethren, as to spiritual people, but as to carnal people” (I Cor. III, 1) And if in this life a person is called spiritual, then in body he is still carnal and sees the law in his members, opposing the law of his mind (Rom. VII, 23); but he will be spiritual also in body when his flesh is resurrected, to be what it is written about: “The natural body is sown, the spiritual body is raised” (I Cor. XV, 44). But what and how great the glory of the spiritual body will be, I fear that everything that is said about it would not be a daring floridity, because we do not yet see it in experience. However, since we should not remain silent about the joy of our hope for the sake of praise to God, and the words: “Lord! “I have loved the abode of Your house” (Ps. XXV, 8) are spoken from the inner depths of holy fiery love, then from the gifts of God, which in this calamitous life are poured out on the good and the evil, we, with the help of God, will draw, as far as we can, a conclusion about what that glory will be, about which, without experiencing it, we, of course, cannot speak in a worthy manner. I no longer mention the time when God created man upright, I do not touch upon the blissful life of two spouses in paradise, since this life was so short that even their children did not see it; but who can list the signs of God’s goodness towards the human race in this life, which we know, in which we are still in, the trials of which, even all of it as a continuous trial, no matter how successful we are, we do not cease to endure while we are in it. Chapter XXII. About the misfortunes and misfortunes that the human race has become guilty of for its ancestral disobedience and from which no one is freed except by the goodness of Christ In fact, if we consider everything from the very beginning, then our present life, filled with so many evils that it can hardly be called life at all, shows that the entire mortal race has been condemned. For what else does this terrible depth of ignorance mean, from which springs all kinds of error, plunging all the sons of Adam into some dark womb, so that man cannot free himself from it without labor, sorrow and fear? What does this love itself mean for so many vain and harmful objects, and hence - burning worries, worries, sorrows, fears, insane joys, discord, disputes, wars, treachery, irritability, hostility, deceit, flattery, deception, theft, predation, treachery, pride, ambition, hatred, murder, cruelty, bestiality, debauchery, luxury, insolence, shamelessness, impudence, fornication, adultery, incest and so many unnatural acts and abominations of both sexes, which it is shameful to even talk about, sacrilege, heresy, blasphemy, perjury, oppression of the innocent, slander, fraud and treason, perjury, injustice, violence, robbery and all other similar vices now it doesn’t come to my mind, although it doesn’t leave my real life? True, all this is the work of vicious people; however, they all come from that root of error and perverted love with which every descendant of Adam is born. Who, in fact, does not know with what ignorance of the truth, which is already revealed in children, with what reserve of vain desires, which begins to be revealed already in a child, a person appears in this life, so that if he were left to live as he would like, and to do everything that he would like, then he would either spend his whole life, or most of it, in crimes and atrocities that I remembered and which I could not remember. But since God’s providence does not completely abandon the condemned and God does not withhold His mercies in anger (Ps. 76:10), then in the very feelings of the human race, against the darkness with which we are born, prohibition and teaching resist (evil) inclinations, themselves, however, filled with labors and sorrows. For what do these various intimidations mean, which are resorted to to curb the vanity of children? What are these teachers, these teachers, these whips, belts, vines, this discipline, with which, according to the Holy Scriptures, it is necessary to crush the ribs of a beloved son so that he does not grow up rebellious? Having become hardened, he can barely be curbed, and perhaps he cannot be curbed at all (Sir. XXX, 12). What is achieved by these punishments if not the eradication of ignorance and the curbing of evil desires, with which vices we are born into this world? What does it mean that we remember with difficulty, but forget without difficulty, that we acquire knowledge with difficulty, but remain ignorant without difficulty, that we are active with difficulty, and lazy without difficulty? Isn’t it clear from here to what, as if by its own weight, vicious nature is inclined and what help it needs in order to free itself from this? Idleness, inactivity, laziness, negligence are precisely such vices, thanks to which we run away from work; because work itself, even useful work, is a punishment. But besides children's punishments, without which it is impossible to learn what the elders want - and they hardly want anything useful - who can retell in words or imagine in thought how many and what kind of punishments weigh on the human race, which relate not only to the anger and lewdness of wicked people, but to the state common to all? How many fears and how many troubles there are from expensive losses and sorrows over them, from losses and penalties, from deceptions and falsehoods of people, from false suspicions, from all kinds of violent atrocities and crimes of others, because they are often the cause of robbery, and imprisonment, and shackles, and prisons, and exile, and crucifixions, and the taking of members, and the deprivation of organs, and bodily violence to satisfy the vile lust of the rapist and many other terrible (atrocities)? How many troubles and dangers come from countless accidents that threaten the body from the outside: from heat, cold, storms, rain, floods, lightning, thunder, hail, thunderstorms, earthquakes, destruction, from irritation, fearfulness or even anger of pack animals, from so many poisons hiding in trees, waters, winds, animals, from severe or even fatal bites of wild animals, from rabies caused by a mad dog, so that this affectionate and friendly animal sometimes threatens more than lions and dragons, and makes the person whom it accidentally infects so terrible that parents, wife and children fear it more than any beast? What troubles do those who sail on ships and those who travel on land suffer? Who walks anywhere without being exposed to unexpected accidents? Another, returning from the forum completely healthy, falls, breaks his leg and dies from this wound. Who is apparently safer than the one sitting? And, however, Eli fell from his chair and died (1 Kings IV, 18). How many and what kind of misfortunes for the fruits of the field do farmers, and indeed all people in general, fear from the sky, from the earth or from dangerous animals? Usually they are calm about the harvests already collected and harvested. But we know of a case when suddenly rushing water, forcing people to scatter, threw out and carried away a wonderful harvest of bread from the granaries. Who considers himself secure from a thousand different attacks of demons by his innocence? So that no one relies on this, demons even baptized infants, of course, no one is more innocent than whom, sometimes torment them in such a way that, by God’s permission, the deplorable misery of the present life and the desired bliss of the future are especially shown to them. Our body itself is susceptible to so many diseases that doctors’ books do not cover them all. In many or almost all of them, both the benefits themselves and the medications serve as instruments of torture, so that people get rid of this consequence of punishments with the help of punishments. Did the unbearable (internal) heat drive thirsty people to the point that they drank human urine, even their own urine? Didn’t famine lead to the point that people couldn’t resist eating human meat—meat not of people found dead, but of those killed specifically for this purpose, and not even strangers? Even mothers, with the incredible cruelty produced by severe hunger, ate their own children. Finally, who can express in words how often sleep itself, which has received the name in the proper sense of peace, is disturbed by dreams, and how often it disturbs the poor soul and feelings with great horrors, although produced by ghostly objects, but imagined and, so to speak, shown to them in such a way that we are not able to distinguish them from reality? What kind of lies of visions even those who are awake in some illnesses are tormented by and much more miserably in case of poisoning, although, however, sometimes even healthy people are deceived by evil demons with such visions that even if they cannot lure them to their side this way, then, in any case, they defile their feelings with the desire to fulfill this illusoryness From this, so to speak, hell of a real miserable life, only the grace of Christ the Savior, our God and Lord, liberates. For this is the meaning of the very name Jesus, which is translated Savior - Savior, mainly so that after this life we ​​are not accepted by an even more disastrous and eternal, not life, but death. For, although in this life there are great reliefs and healings through sacred objects and holy people, such mercies are not always communicated in this way to those who ask, so that people do not strive for religion for the sake of this, but for the sake of another life, where there will be no more evils; and if grace helps the best people in misfortunes and in real life, then with the sole purpose that they endure them the more courageously, the stronger their faith. In this regard, say the scientists of this century, philosophy is also useful, which, as Tullius notes, the gods communicated to some few people in its true form. To people, he says, either the gods have not given a greater gift, or none could have been given; from this it is clear that those themselves against whom we are speaking, be that as it may, are forced to recognize the fact of possessing philosophy, not just any philosophy, but true philosophy, as a matter of divine grace. If, further, against the misfortunes of this life, the only help from above has been given to a few in the person of true philosophy, then from here it is sufficiently clear that the human race is condemned to a state of disastrous punishment. And since, as they admit, there is no greater gift in comparison with this, one must think that this gift was given not by any other god, but by Him whom they, who honor many gods, call the greatest. Chapter XXIII. The fact that in addition to the above-mentioned evils, equally common to both evil and good, actually relates to the feat of righteous people But besides the evils of this life, common to the good and the evil, the righteous here also have some of their own exploits, which they perform, fighting vices and being exposed to the trials and dangers of this war. Indeed, at times stronger, at times weaker, but the flesh does not cease to fight against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, so that we do not do what we want (Gal. V, 17.), fulfilling every evil lust, but, as far as possible for us with help from above, subjugate it to ourselves, not sympathizing with it and constantly watching, so that we are not deceived by an opinion similar to the truth, not deceived by cunning speech, not overwhelmed by darkness some misconception; so that we do not mistake anything good for bad or bad for good; so that fear does not deviate us from what needs to be done, and lust does not direct us to what does not need to be done; lest the sun go down on our wrath (Eph. IV, 26); so that enmity does not direct us to avenge evil for evil and does not devour us with selfish or immoderate sadness; so that an ungrateful mind does not instill in us coldness towards experienced benefits, and a clear conscience is not darkened by slanderous rumors; so that we are not misled by our own unfounded suspicion regarding others and not crushed by someone else's false suspicion regarding ourselves; lest sin should reign in our mortal body, and our members should not be given over to sin as instruments of unrighteousness (Rom. V, 12–13); so that our eye does not follow lust and the desire for revenge does not overcome us; so that neither sight nor thought is directed to what gives bad pleasure; so that we do not incline our ears to unkind or obscene words; so that they do not do what they should not do, although they would like to; so that in this struggle, filled with labor and danger, we do not hope to achieve victory on our own and attribute the acquired victory not to ourselves, but to the grace of Him about whom the apostle says: “Thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (I Cor. XV, 57). And in another place he says: “We overcome all these things through the power of Him who loved us” (Rom. VIII, 37). However, no matter how hard we fight against vices in this struggle, even if we triumph over vices, we must know that while we are in this body, we should not be left with a feeling, under the influence of which we must say to God: “Forgive us our debts” (Matthew VI, 12). But in that kingdom in which we will forever be with immortal bodies, we will no longer have any struggle and no debts; Yes, they would not exist if our nature remained as right as it was created. Therefore, this struggle itself, from which we hope to be freed by the victory that awaits us, belongs to the evils of real life, which is under condemnation, as the fact of the existence of so many evils in it convinces us. Chapter XXIV. About the blessings with which the Creator has filled the present life, guilty of condemnation Let us now pay attention to what and how many benefits the goodness of God, who provides for every creature, has filled even this disastrous state of the human race, in which the truth of the punishing God is praised. Firstly, the blessing pronounced even before sin: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen. I, 28), God did not want to take back even after the Fall, leaving the power of fertility granted to him in the condemned race; This amazing power of the seed invested in human bodies, even more amazing than the power by which the seed itself is formed, could not even be pulled out by sin, as a result of which the necessity of death befell us; on the contrary, next to and together with this, so to speak, river, with this stream of the human race, there goes both: the evil that comes from the progenitor, and the good that is communicated by the Creator. In the original evil there are two (particular evils): sin and punishment; The original good has its two (private goods): reproduction and education. But, as far as this was in our intentions, about evil, one of the particular types of which, sin, arose from our insolence; and the other, punishment, from the judgment of God, I have already said enough. Now I intend to talk about those benefits that God has communicated and still communicates to the most vicious and condemned nature. For even while condemning, He did not deprive her of everything that he had given her - otherwise she would not have existed at all; on the other hand, he did not leave her outside His power, although as punishment he subjected her to the devil, since he did not free the devil himself from His power; It is His business, the Almighty’s, that nature and the devil exist, just as everything that exists owes its existence to Him. So, of those two benefits that, as we said, from the goodness of God, as if from some source, pour out onto nature damaged by sin and condemned to punishment, the multiplication comes from the blessing spoken among the first works of world creation, from which God rested on the seventh day. Education has its cause in the action that God has been doing hitherto (John V, 17). For if God were to withdraw the hand of His omnipotent power from creatures, they could not expand and continue their existence in the succession intended for them; they would not even have survived for some time in the state in which they were created. Thus, God created man in such a way that he gave him a certain fruitful power, as a result of which some people produce others, giving them the very possibility of this productivity, but only a possibility, and not a necessity; those whom He wanted to deprive of it remain infertile, although, however, He did not take away from the human race the blessing of childbearing once given to the first spouses. Therefore, although reproduction has not been taken away by sin, it is now not the same as it would have been if no one had sinned. Hence, man, crowned in the beginning with honor, after the fall became like cattle (Ps. 48:13) and gives birth in the same way; although, however, a certain spark of reason, so to speak, with which he was created in the image of God, had not completely extinguished in him. But if education were not combined with reproduction, then education alone (without education) would not be found in unique forms and species. After all, if people did not have intercourse, then God could fill the earth with people without it; just as He created the first man without the intercourse of man and woman, so He could (produce) everyone; people who copulate cannot be born without the will of the Creator. Thus, just as the Apostle speaks of that spiritual institution, thanks to which a person is formed for piety and righteousness, says: “He who plants and he who waters is nothing, but God who makes all things grow” (I Cor. III, 7), so in the present case one can say exactly: “The Father who copulates and inseminates is nothing, but God who forms all things; and the mother who bears what is conceived and nourishes what is born means nothing, but God who increases everything.” It is precisely by the action that he has been doing that he creates in such a way that seeds develop and from hidden and invisible shells of a kind are revealed into visible forms of beauty. By combining and composing in an incomprehensible way the incorporeal and corporeal, that is, the dominant and subordinate, natures, He makes them animate. This action of His is so great and amazing that in the observer of this action not only in man, a rational being and superior to all earthly animals, but also in the smallest insect, it evokes amazement and praise to the Creator. So He gave the human soul intelligence; in the soul of a child, reason and understanding are, so to speak, in a dormant state, as if they were not there, and they must be awakened and revealed with the onset of age, so that the child becomes capable of knowledge and learning and ready to perceive truth and love for good; Thanks to this ability, a person acquires knowledge and is a being endowed with powers with which he wisely, persistently and correctly fights against errors and all innate vices and defeats them with nothing other than the desire for the highest and unchangeable good. And if a person does not even do this, then who can properly express in words or understand how wonderful in itself this ability for such benefits, endowed from above into rational nature, and what an amazing work of the Almighty it is? For besides the arts of living morally and achieving immeasurable bliss, which are called virtues and are communicated to the sons of promise and reign solely by the grace of God in Christ, has not the human mind invented and studied so many such arts, partly necessary, and partly related to pleasures, that this superior power of mind and reason, even in this kind of superfluous, even dangerous and disastrous knowledge, which it craves, shows what Does man have a great good in his nature, thanks to which he was able to either invent these arts, or learn them, or teach them to others? Who is able to retell to what amazing and amazing production of clothes and buildings human ingenuity has reached, what successes it has achieved in agriculture and navigation; what she invented and produced in the manufacture of vessels, in the variety of statues and paintings; what she tried to do in theaters that was surprising for the audience and incredible for the listeners; what and how much did she come up with for catching, killing and taming irrational animals? entertainment of the spirit, how many musical instruments and methods of singing she invented to delight the ear, what knowledge she achieved of distances and numbers and with what skill she determined the movement and order of the heavenly bodies, what knowledge she achieved of world objects; who can retell all this, especially if we did not want to limit ourselves to general words, but wanted to go into detail? Who, finally, will be able to determine how much wit has been used by philosophers and heretics to defend even lies and errors? For in the present case we are talking about the nature of the human mind, with which real mortal life is adorned, and not about faith and the path of truth, by which immortal life is acquired. Since the Creator of this nature is the true and highest God, because He rules all created things and has the highest power and the highest justice, this nature would never have fallen into these misfortunes and would not have been subjected to eternal misfortunes (except only those who will be freed from them), if there had not previously been the great sin of the first man, from whom all other sins originated. Even in our body itself, although in terms of mortality it is common to us with wild animals and, moreover, much weaker (the bodies) of many of them, what kindness and providence of the Creator is revealed! Are not the sense organs and other members disposed upon it, and are not its appearance, form, and stature so proportioned as to indicate that it was created for the service of the rational soul? Man is not created like the creatures lacking a rational soul, which we see bending towards the earth; the figure of his body directed towards the sky reminds him to philosophize about heavenly things. Further, the mobility that is imparted to the tongue and hands, convenient and adapted for writing and speaking and for performing very many arts and activities, does not it clearly show what kind of soul such a body is given to serve? But even if we do not take practical needs into account, the proportionality of all parts of the body is so great and these parts correspond to each other in such excellent proportion that you do not know whether during the creation of the body there was more of an idea of ​​utility than an idea of ​​beauty. At least, we do not see anything in the body created for the sake of benefit, which at the same time would not have beauty. This would be even clearer for us if we knew the exact dimensions in which everything is connected and connected to each other; but human research, with diligent study, can only be done in the outer parts, and what is hidden and inaccessible to our eyes, such as the plexus of veins, nerves and viscera, as well as the secrets of the main vital parts, cannot be researched. Although the cruel inquisitiveness of doctors, called anatomists, opens the corpses of the dead; although with the hands of one who dissects and examines the dead, everything most hidden in human bodies is rather inhumanly brought to light in order to know what, how and where to treat; nevertheless, those exact dimensions that I am talking about, which give both to each organ and to the whole body from the outside and inside that combination, which in Greek is called ἁρμονία, not only no one is able to discover, but no one takes upon himself the courage to investigate. If they could become known, then in the inner parts themselves, which do not contain any beauty, such grace of the idea would be revealed that the mind would prefer it to any visible form that gives pleasure only to the eye. But something in the body is also located in such a way that it has only beauty, and not benefit; for example, a man’s chest has nipples, and his face has a beard; that a beard serves not as protection, but as an adornment for a man, this is proven by the clean faces of women, who, as the weakest, would, of course, most likely need (such) protection. So, if there is not a single member (at least from among the visible ones, about which no one argues) that would be adapted for some function so that (at the same time) it is not beautiful; but there are some members that have only beauty, but no benefit, then from here, I think, it is easy to understand that when the body was created, its dignity was placed above practical needs. For the practical need will pass, and the time will come when we will mutually enjoy beauty alone, apart from all lust; which should especially be attributed to the praise of the Creator, to whom the psalm says: “You are wonderfully great. You are clothed with glory and majesty” (Ps. 103:1). And what words can be used to define the beauty and usefulness of other creatures, which divine generosity allowed man to admire and use, although doomed and condemned to labor and misfortune? - beauty, which consists in the varied and varied beauty of the sky, earth and sea, in such abundance and in such amazing luxury of light, in the sun, moon and stars, in the shade of forests, in the colors and fragrance of flowers, in the multitude of chirping motley-feathered birds, in the variety of so many and such animals, of which the most surprising are those that have less volume (for we are more surprised by the work of ants and bees than by the enormous the body of whales), in the quantitative form of the sea, when it, like clothing, is clothed in various colors and is sometimes green, and, moreover, with various shades, sometimes purple, sometimes azure. How pleasant it is to look at it even when it is agitated, and this pleasantness becomes even greater because it caresses the observer (with the hope) that it will not throw out or break the sailor! How much food against hunger and what variety of tastes against disgust are poured out in the riches of nature, in addition to all the art and labor of cooks, how many benefits are contained in many objects for the protection and restoration of health! How blessed is the alternating continuity of day and night! How pleasant is the quality of the air! How much material for building clothing is in plant stems and in animals? Who can remember everything? Already, what I have combined into one mass, as it were, if I wanted to take it apart and examine it in parts, how long would it take me to dwell on each particular, which contains very much? And all this serves as a joy for the unfortunate and condemned, and not as a reward for the blessed. What rewards will there be if there are so many such consolations? What will God give to those whom he predestined to life, if he showered such gifts on those who were predestined to death? With what blessings will He fill in the future life those for whom in the present, by His will, the only begotten Son endured so many and such misfortunes? Hence, speaking about those predestined for the future kingdom, the apostle says: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also freely give us all things with Him?” (Rom. VIII, 32). When this promise is fulfilled, what will we do then? What will we be like? What benefits will we receive in that kingdom, since in the death of Christ we have already received such a pledge for us? What will the spirit of a person be like when it no longer has any vice to which it would submit or to which it would yield, or even against which it would fight with honor, but will be filled with virtue full of peace? What and how clear and true, alien to any error and not requiring labor, knowledge of all things will be where we will drink from the wisdom of God from its very source with the highest bliss and without any difficulty? What will a body be like that, completely subordinated to the spirit and abundantly revived by it, will not need any nutrition? For it will not be an animal, but a spiritual body, although it has a carnal substance, but alien to any carnal damage. Chapter XXV. About the stubbornness of some who deny the resurrection of the flesh, which, according to prophecies, the whole world believes However, famous philosophers do not disagree with us about the benefits of the spirit, which he will enjoy in a state of complete bliss; they argue about the resurrection of the flesh and, as far as they can, deny this truth. But numerous believers left the few deniers, learned and unlearned, the wise of this world and the ignorant, and with a believing heart turned to Christ, Who by His resurrection proved what seemed absurd to them. The world has already believed the truth predicted by God, who also predicted that the world would believe this truth. It was not the sorcery of Peter 219 that forced Him to predict this truth, along with praise to those who believe in it, so much time in advance. For He is the God before Whom (as I have already spoken about this several times and do not hesitate to remind), according to the confession of Porphyry, who wants to prove this with the oracles of his gods, the deities themselves tremble, and Whom he extols so much that he calls either God the Father or God the King. May it not be that we understand what He predicted the way those who do not believe, following the world, want to understand what He predicted the world would believe. But why not understand this rather as He predicted the world should believe, and not as the idle talk of very few who do not want to believe after the world what He predicted the world should believe? After all, if this, as they say, must be believed differently so as not to inflict offense on God, for Whom they are such zealous witnesses, by calling what is written about it nonsense; then don’t they inflict a greater offense on Him by saying that it should be understood differently, and not as the world believed, whose faith He Himself praised. Did you promise and fulfill it yourself? It’s one of two things: either He is not able for the flesh to resurrect and live forever; or one should not believe that He will do this because (the resurrection of the flesh) is evil and is not worthy of Him. But we have said enough about His omnipotence, by which so many incredible things were created. If they want to know what the Almighty cannot do, then this is this: I will say that He cannot deceive. Let us believe that He can, without believing that He cannot. So, for the reason that He cannot deceive, they must believe that He will fulfill what He promised to fulfill, and, moreover, believe as the world believes, the faith of which He Himself predicted, Himself praised, He Himself promised and Himself brought to fulfillment. And how do they prove that (the resurrection of the flesh) is evil? There will be no damage, which is bodily evil. We have already discussed the order of the elements; enough has been said about other human conjectures; what ease of movement there will be in an incorruptible body, I believe, we have sufficiently shown in the thirteenth book from the present state of a completely healthy body, which, of course, cannot be compared with the future immortal state. Let those who either have not read them read the previous books of this essay or want to recall what they have read in their memory. Chapter XXVI. How is Porphyry’s position that blessed souls will be freed from every body refuted by the opinion of Plato, according to whom the highest God promised the gods that their bodies would never leave them? But according to Porfiry, for the soul to be blessed, it must be freed from any body. Thus, it is completely useless for the body to be, as we said, incorruptible, if the soul is blessed only by being freed from all body. But in the mentioned book I said as much about this as was necessary; Let us cite only one circumstance in the present case. Namely, the teacher of all of them, Plato, would have to make an amendment in his books and say that their gods, imprisoned, according to him, in heavenly bodies in order to be blessed, will be released from their bodies, that is, they will die; however (he says that) God, by whom these gods were created, promised them, so that they could enjoy a serene state, immortality, that is, eternal residence in the same bodies - he promised not because their nature is immortal, but because his decision is stronger than nature. In this case, Plato refutes them also from their statement that the resurrection of the flesh should not be believed because it is impossible. For in the indicated place this philosopher very clearly expresses the idea that God, having promised immortality to the gods He created, thereby showed that, although He did not create them immortal, which is impossible, He will nevertheless make them immortal. This very passage from Plato reads as follows: “Although you, as having received a beginning, cannot be immortal and indestructible, yet you will in no way be destroyed and no fates will destroy you through death and will not be stronger than My decision, which constitutes a stronger bond for your eternal existence than the bonds with which you were united at birth” 220. If those who hear these words are not only not deaf, but also not stupid, they will, of course, have no doubt that the created gods are promised, according to Plato, by the God who created them, what is impossible for them. Indeed, the One who says: “Although you, as having received a beginning, cannot be immortal and indestructible, you will not be destroyed in any way and no destinies will destroy you through death and will not be stronger than My decision,” what else is saying than this: “This is impossible, however, with My assistance, you will be like that.” Consequently, He is able to resurrect the flesh incorruptible, immortal and spiritual, Who, according to Plato, promised to do what is impossible. Why do they still declare impossible what God promised, what, according to God’s promise, the world believed, to which it was even promised that it would believe? After all, we say that this was created by God, who, according to Plato, creates the impossible. Thus, for souls to be blessed, they must not be freed from every body, but receive an incorruptible body. And in what body, which has become incorruptible, is it more fitting for them to enjoy joy, if not in the one in which they groaned when it was corruptible? They will not have that fierce desire that, echoing Plato, Virgil puts into them, saying: And again they begin to desire to return to their bodies 221. I say, they will not have such a desire to return to bodies, because they will have the bodies into which they would like to return with them and will have them in such a way that they will be with them forever and will never, even for the shortest time, be separated from them due to death. Chapter XXVII. About the contradiction in the opinions of Plato and Porphyry, with a mutual concession in which neither one nor the other would deviate from the truth Plato and Porfiry each expressed one such thought, which, if communicated together, they would, perhaps, become Christians. Plato said that souls cannot exist in eternity without bodies; therefore, according to him, even the souls of the sages will return to their bodies after a more or less long time. Porfiry, on the contrary, says that the purest soul, having returned to the Father, will never return to the real disasters of the world. Hence, if Plato had inspired Porfiry with what he correctly imagined, i.e., that the souls of even the righteous and wise men would return to human bodies, and Porfiry, for his part, had conveyed to Plato his correct idea that holy souls would never return to the misfortunes of the corruptible body, and, moreover, in such a way that each of them expressed not just one of these thoughts, but both together and each individually - one and the other, then from them views, in my opinion, it would turn out that souls would return to bodies and receive bodies in which they would live blissfully and immortally. For, according to Plato, even holy souls will enter human bodies, but according to Porphyry, holy souls will never return to the misfortunes of the present world. Just say Porfiry together with Plato that souls will return to bodies, and Plato and Porfiry that souls will not return to misfortunes, they will agree that souls will return to bodies in which they will no longer endure any misfortunes. So, these bodies will not be any other, but precisely those that God promises, who has the power to make souls eternally blessed with their flesh. It seems to me that both of them could easily make such a concession to us; Once they recognized that the souls of the saints would return to immortal bodies, it was then possible to allow the souls to return to those very bodies in which they suffered the disasters of the present age, in which they honored God with reverence and faith in order to get rid of these disasters. Chapter XXVIII. What could Plato, Labeo or Varro tell each other about true belief in the resurrection if their opinions were combined into one judgment? Some of our people, who revere Plato for his most beautiful way of exposition and for some of the correct judgments he expressed, say that he had some opinions similar to ours about the resurrection of the dead. Tullius, indeed, touches on this subject in his books “On the Republic,” wanting, as he himself claims, in this case to joke rather than to say what actually happened. It makes a person come to life and tell something that coincides with Plato’s reasoning. Labeo even says that two people died on the same day and met at a certain crossroads, that they were then ordered to return to their bodies and agreed to live with each other as friends, and that in such relations they remained until they died. But these authors tell us about such a resurrection of the body as happened to those who, as we know, were resurrected and returned to their former life, but did not return in such a way that they were not subject to death later. Marcus Varro tells something much more amazing in his books about the origin of the Roman people; I consider it necessary to quote his words. “Some,” he says, “genetliaki 222 wrote that people have a rebirth, which the Greeks call παλινγενεσία; this rebirth itself, they write, takes place over the course of four hundred and forty years, so that the same body and the same soul that were once united in man are reunited again.” Varro, or some, I don’t know, geneticians (he does not give the names of those whose opinions he gives) tell us something that, although false (for once the souls returned to the bodies they wore, they will never leave them), nevertheless eliminates and destroys many arguments in favor of that impossibility about which our opponents prattle. In fact, they think or thought that it is impossible for the bodies of people, having turned into air, into dust, into ashes, into moisture, into the bodies of animals or even people who devoured them, to return again to what they were. Therefore, Plato and Porphyry, or better those who consider themselves their followers and are still alive, if they agree with us that the souls of saints will return to bodies, as Plato said, but will not return to misfortune, as Porphyry taught, so that from their opinions follows as a consequence the thought that the Christian faith preaches, namely, that souls will return to such bodies in which they could live forever blissfully without any misfortune - let them Varro will also take the fact that souls will return to the very bodies in which they were before, and the whole question of the eternal resurrection of the flesh will be resolved for them. Chapter XXIX. About the property of that knowledge with which the saints in the next century will see God Let us now consider how much the Lord will honor us with His help, what the saints will do in their immortal and spiritual bodies, since their flesh will live not in a carnal, but in a spiritual way. But, to tell the truth, I don’t know what this activity will be like, or better yet, peace and leisure. I have never seen this with my bodily senses. And if I say that I saw with my mind, that is, with my understanding, then how much or what does our understanding mean in the face of such superiority? There reigns, as the apostle says, “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Philip. IV, 7). Whose mind? Of course, ours, or, perhaps, the angel’s, but not God’s. So, if the saints live in the world of God, then, of course, in one that surpasses all understanding. And in fact, it undoubtedly surpasses our mind; and if it also surpasses the mind of angels, for whoever says “every mind” obviously does not exclude angels, then we must think that the words of the apostle were spoken because neither we nor the angels are able to know the world of God as God knows it. So (this world) surpasses every mind, except, without a doubt, the mind of God. But since we, who participate in this world in our own way, will receive a higher peace within ourselves, among ourselves and with God, to the extent that the highest is characteristic of us; then the holy angels thus know this world by their very nature, but people in their present state know it much less, no matter how large their minds may differ. For we must bear in mind the greatness of him who said: “We know in part and we prophesy in part; when what is perfect comes, then what is in part will cease” (I Cor. XIII, 9-10); and again: “Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face” (I Cor. XIII, 12). This is how the holy angels see, who are also called our angels, because, having been delivered from the power of darkness and having moved into the kingdom of Christ with the guarantee of the Spirit, we begin to belong to those angels with whom we will have a common holy and sweetest city of God, about which I have already written so many books. Being God's, the angels are also ours, just as Christ, being God's, is at the same time ours. They are God's because they did not abandon God, they are ours because they began to have us as their fellow citizens. The Lord Jesus said, “Do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that their angels in heaven see the face of My Father in heaven” (Matthew XVIII: 10). From here, as they see, so we will see, but we do not see that way yet. That is why the apostle says: “Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.” So, the reward for faith will be the vision about which the Apostle John speaks: “When it is revealed, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is” (1 John III, 2). And by the face of God we must understand the revelation of God, and not any member similar to the one we have in our body and call it a face. Therefore, when they ask me what the saints will be doing in this spiritual body, I will say not what I see, but what I believe, in accordance with the words of the psalm: “I believed, and therefore I spoke” (Ps. 116:1). Namely, I will say that the saints will see God in their very body; But will they see God through the body, just as through the body we now see the sun, moon, stars, sea and earth with everything in them? This is a question that is not easy to answer. In fact, it would be wild to say that the saints will then have such bodies that they will not be able, even if they wanted to, to close and open their eyes. It would be even more wild to say that anyone there who closes his eyes will no longer see God. After all, if the prophet Elisha, being absent in body, saw how his servant Gehazi received gifts from Naaman the Syrian, whom the said prophet had healed of leprosy, which, in the opinion of the profane servant, should have remained a secret, since his master was not there (2 Kings. V, 8–27), then won’t the saints in that spiritual body see everything, not only with their eyes closed, but even without their body? Then that perfect thing will come about which the apostle speaks: “We know in part and we prophesy in part; when the perfect comes, then what is in part will cease.” Then, wanting to explain with some similarity how this can be, he says how different the present life is from the future life, and the life of not just any people, but even those gifted with special holiness: “When I was a baby, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; and when he became a husband, he left behind his children. Now we see as if through a dark glass, fortune-telling, but then face to face; Now I know in part, but then I will know, even as I am known” (I Cor. XIII, 11-12). So, if already in this life, where even the prophecy of amazing people is as comparable to that life as a baby is to a husband, Elisha, however, saw his servant receiving gifts when he himself was not there; then when the soul will not be burdened by the corruptible body, and the incorruptible body will in no way hinder it, will the saints need to see with bodily eyes, which the absent Elisha did not need in order to see his servant? For in the translation of the Seventy the words of the prophet to Gehazi were: “Did not my heart go with you when that man turned to meet you from his chariot?” (2 Kings V, 26). And Presbyter Jerome translated it from the Hebrew as follows: “Wasn’t my heart present when the man came out of the chariot to meet you?” The Prophet said that he saw with his heart the help that was miraculous, of course, and help, no doubt, from above. But how much more fully will everyone possess this gift when God is all and in all (I Cor. XV, 28)! However, the bodily eyes will have their purpose, will remain in their places, and the spirit will use them through the spiritual body. After all, that prophet, although he did not need them to see what was absent, also used them to see what was present; however, he could see this too with his eyes closed in spirit, just as he saw what was absent without being there in person. So, let us not say that the saints in that life will not, if they close their eyes, see God, whom they will constantly see in spirit. But here’s another question: will they see Him with their bodily eyes when they are open? If in a spiritual body even spiritual eyes are capable of seeing as much as they are capable of seeing as we have them now, then, without a doubt, it will be impossible to see God with them. It is clear that they will have a completely different ability, as soon as through them that infinite nature will be contemplated, which is not limited by space, but is found everywhere and everything. After all, if we say that God is in heaven and on earth (for He Himself speaks through the prophet that He fills heaven and earth (Jer. XXII. 24)), then we will not say on this basis that He is in heaven in one part, and on earth in another, but that He is all in heaven and all on earth, not alternately, but simultaneously here and here; which is impossible for bodily nature. So, the power of those eyes will be superior not in the sense that their vision will become sharper, as they say the vision of some snakes and eagles is (for even with such visual acuity these animals cannot see anything except bodies), but in the fact that they will also see the incorporeal. Perhaps this great power of vision was given for a time, even in a real mortal body, to the eyes of the holy man Job, when he said: “I have heard about You by the hearing of the ear; now my eyes see You; therefore I renounce and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5–6). Although, however, nothing prevents the eyes from being understood here as the eyes of the heart, about which eyes the apostle says: “And he enlightened the eyes of your heart” (Eph. I, 18). And that it is with these eyes that we will be able to see God when we see Him, not a single Christian doubts this, accepting with faith what the Teacher says: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew V, 8). But we have a question about whether it will be possible to see God with bodily eyes. True (in the Gospel) it is written: “And all flesh will see the salvation of God” (Luke III, 6); but this saying can be understood without any difficulty as if it were said: “And every man shall see the Christ of God,” Who was visible in the body and will be visible in the body when He judges the living and the dead. And that Christ is the salvation of God, many places of Scripture testify to this, but with particular clarity the words of the venerable elder Simeon, who, taking the baby Christ in his arms, said: “Now you are letting your servant go, O Master, according to your word, in peace; for my eyes have seen Your salvation” (Luke II, 29–30). And in the saying of the above-mentioned Job: “In my flesh I will see God” (Job. XIX, 26; according to the Vulgate) - as these words are conveyed by the lists translated from the Hebrew - although, of course, a prophecy is expressed about the resurrection of the flesh, it is not said: “(I will see God) through my flesh.” If it were said in this way, then one could understand Christ God, whom we will see in the flesh through the flesh; In its present form, this saying can be understood in such a sense as if instead of the words: “In my flesh I will see God,” it was said: “I will be in the flesh when I see God.” And the saying of the Apostle: “Face to face” (I Cor. XIII, 12) does not force us to believe that God, whom we will endlessly see in spirit, we will see with a bodily face on which the bodily eyes are located. After all, if this meant the outer face of a person, the same apostle would not have said: “But we all, with open face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord” (II Cor. III, 18). We understand no differently what is sung in the psalm: “Those who turned their gaze to Him were enlightened, and their faces were not ashamed” (Ps. XXXIII, 6). We now approach God by faith, which, as we know, is a matter of the heart, not the body. But since we do not know how (to Him) the spiritual body will approach (and we are talking about this unknown subject), then in the present case, when we do not have guidance and support in any authority of the Holy Scriptures, which cannot be understood differently, of necessity we are given what is said in the book of Wisdom, namely: that the thoughts of mortals are fearful and their imaginations are erroneous (Wisdom IX, 14). Of course, if the reasoning of philosophers, by which they come to the idea that we see mental objects with the mental eye, and sensory, i.e., bodily, with the bodily senses, so that our mind cannot contemplate either mental objects through the body, or bodily ones - without the body - if this reasoning were undoubtedly correct, then it would be undoubtedly true that God cannot be seen with the eyes of even the spiritual body, but this reasoning is also refuted by sound meaning, and prophetic authority. In fact, who has deviated so much from the truth as to dare to say that God does not know the body? Does He really have a body through the eyes of which He could know this? On the other hand, what was said above about the prophet Elisha does not sufficiently show that bodily objects can be seen by the spirit, and not only by the body? After all, when that servant accepted the gifts, without a doubt, it was a physical action, which the prophet saw, however, in spirit; Why shouldn’t the ability of the spiritual body be the same, so that the spirit can also be seen through the body? And God is Spirit. Then, each of us knows his own life, which he now lives in the body and with which he makes his real earthly members vigorous and alive, through his inner feeling, and not through his bodily eyes; on the contrary, he sees the life of others, although invisible, through the body. For how else would we distinguish living bodies from non-living ones if we did not see at the same time both the body and life itself, which we cannot see except through the body? Without a body, we do not see life with bodily eyes. Therefore, it is possible and completely acceptable that we will then see the world bodies of the new heaven and the new earth in such a way that through these bodies, which we ourselves will wear and meet everywhere we direct our gaze, we will see with complete clarity God, present everywhere and governing everything, even bodily, and not in the same way as now we see the invisible of God through viewing created things (Rom. 1:20), as if through a glass darkly, fortune-telling and partly (I Cor. XIII, 12); Moreover, the faith we believe is of greater importance to us than the very appearance of bodily objects that we see through our bodily eyes. But just like people who are now alive and revealing their lives through vital movements, at the first glance we do not consider them alive by faith, but see them as such, although we cannot see their life in itself, which, without any doubt, we see in them with the help of bodies; In the same way, through bodies, we will see the incorporeal God who rules everything everywhere we turn the spiritual gaze of our bodies. Thus, if we see God with bodily eyes in such a way that they, in a state of such superiority, will have something similar to the mind, with which the incorporeal nature could be visible (which, however, is difficult and even impossible to prove by any examples and testimonies of the Divine Scriptures), or (which is easier to understand) God will be known and contemplated by us in such a way that each of us will see Him in spirit and in each of us, one in the other, and in ourselves, and in the new heaven and the new earth, and in everything that creation will then be, in every body to which the sophisticated eyes of the spiritual body will be directed. Then even our thoughts will be mutually open from one to another. For then it will be fulfilled that the apostle immediately after the words: “Do not judge before the time” adds: “Until the Lord comes, who will illuminate the hidden things in darkness and reveal the intentions of the heart, and then everyone will have praise from God” (I Cor. IV, 5). Chapter XXX. About the eternal bliss of the City of God and the eternal Sabbath And what will be that bliss when there is no longer any evil, no good is hidden, and the occupation will consist of praising God, Who will be all in all! For I don’t know what others can do where there is endless leisure, where there is no labor caused by any need. In addition, the holy song in which I read or hear convinces me of this: “Blessed are those who dwell in Your house; they will continually praise You” (Ps. 83:5). In this praise to God all the members and entrails of the incorruptible body will prosper, which now, as we see, are occupied with various necessary functions; because then this necessity itself will not exist, but complete, undisturbed and serene bliss will come. In fact, then all those parts of bodily harmony located inside and outside the entire composition of the body, which I have already spoken about and which are currently hidden, will no longer be hidden, and together with other great and amazing objects that we see there, they will inflame our rational mind to praise such an Artist, filling it with a sense of reasonable beauty. What movements of those bodies there will be, I do not undertake to determine, and I cannot imagine it. However, both the movement and the calm state, as well as the face itself, whatever they may be then, will be appropriate for the place where there will be nothing that would be indecent. Without a doubt, the body will always be where the spirit wants, but the spirit will not want anything that could be indecent for both the spirit and the body. There will be true glory, where everyone will be praised, not by mistake or by the ingratiation of the praiser. There will be true honor, which will neither be denied to anyone worthy, nor granted to anyone unworthy; no unworthy will be admitted to it, since no one except the worthy will be allowed to be there. There will be true peace where no one will suffer any trouble, either from himself or from others. The reward of virtue will be the One who bestowed virtue and promised Himself to it, better and higher than Whom nothing can be. For what He said through the prophet: “I will be your God, and you will be My people” (Lev. XXVI, 12), what else does it mean if not the following: I will be the One from whence will flow everything that people will honestly desire: life, and health, and food, and wealth, and glory, and honor, and peace, and all good in general? The words of the apostle have the same true meaning: “God will be all in all” (I Cor. XV, 28). He will be the goal of our desires. Whom we will contemplate endlessly, love without disgust and praise without fatigue. This duty, this disposition of the heart and this occupation will, of course, be common to everyone, just as eternal life itself will be common. However, who can imagine in thought, much less express in words, what degrees of honor and glory will be in accordance with well-deserved rewards? What is certain is that they will be there. But that blessed city will see such great good in itself that the lower one will not envy the higher one as much as other angels do not now envy the archangels; each then will not want to be what he did not receive, although he will be united with the one who received the closest bonds of consent, just as in the body the eye does not want to be a finger, although both are contained in one inseparable composition of the body. Thus, one will have less of a gift than another, but will have it without wanting more. They will then also have free will because sins will no longer be able to give pleasure. And this freedom will be greater, because it will be purified from the pleasure of sinning for the sake of the immutable pleasure of not sinning. The first free will given to man when he was created right was that he could not sin, but he could also sin; This same future freedom will be more powerful than that, because it will already be in a state of impossibility of sinning. And she will be like this by the gift of God, and not by the possibility contained in her very nature. For it is one thing to be God, and quite another to be a partaker of God. God cannot sin by nature; he who participates in God receives the impossibility of sinning from God. There had to be degrees in this divine gift, so that at first a free will was given in which a person could not sin, and in the future one in which he could no longer sin; the former was related to the state of the reward, and the latter was related to the state of receiving the reward. But since our nature sinned, because it could have sinned, then, being cleansed through abundant grace, it is brought into a state of freedom in which it could not sin. Just as the first immortality that Adam lost as a result of sin was that (man) could not die, and the future will be that we will then no longer be able to die; in the same way, the first freedom consisted in the fact that we could not sin, and the future will consist in the fact that we will then be placed in a state of the impossibility of sinning. For the will to piety and truth will not be lost, just as the will to bliss is not lost now. True, because of sin we have not retained either piety or bliss, but having lost bliss, we have not lost the very will to bliss. At least in God himself, although He cannot sin, is free will to be denied for this reason? So, in that city, everyone will have the same free will inherent in everyone, purified from all evil and filled with all good, endlessly enjoying the joys of eternal joys, having forgotten about their guilt and their punishments, but not having forgotten about their liberation so much as not to be grateful to their Liberator. Thus, in relation to theoretical knowledge, there will also be a recollection of past evils; in relation to sensations there will be complete oblivion of them. After all, even the most experienced doctor, as far as science tells him, knows almost all the diseases of the body, but how they are felt by the body, does not know very many that he has not experienced himself. Hence, how the knowledge of evils is of two kinds: one, by which evil is known theoretically, and the other, which is obtained through the transference of evil through experience (otherwise, of course, we know vices from the instructions of wisdom, and otherwise - from the most vicious life of a stupid person); Likewise, oblivion of evils is of two kinds. Otherwise, an educated and learned person forgets about them, and otherwise, a person who has endured and experienced them himself; the former when he does not pay attention to experience, and the latter when he frees himself from (the) misfortunes. In accordance with this last type of oblivion, the saints will not remember their past evils, because they will be so free from them that all their misfortunes will be completely erased from their feelings. However, the power of knowledge, which will be great in them, will remind them not only of their own past misfortune of the condemned, but also of the eternal misfortune of the condemned. Otherwise, that is, if they do not know that they were ill-fated, how will they sing, as the psalm says, “the mercy of the Lord forever” (Ps. 88:2)? There will be absolutely nothing more comforting for that city than this song in praise of the grace of Christ, by whose blood we have been delivered. Then the words “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 45:11) will be fulfilled. This will be a truly great Sabbath, which has no evening, which is praised by the Lord at the first works of the world, where we read, “And He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, for on it He rested from all His works, which God created and created” (Gen. II, 2-3). Even we ourselves will be the seventh day, when we are filled and renewed with His blessing and sanctification. There, stopping, we will see that He is God, what we ourselves wanted to be when we fell away from Him, hearing the words of the deceiver: “You will be like gods” (Gen. III, 5), and separated from the true God, according to whose creative will we were to be gods not through abandonment of God, but through communion. For what have we done without Him, if we did not faint in His wrath (Ps. 89:9)? Having been freed from this wrath and having achieved perfection by the grace that overcomes wrath, we will be free forever, seeing that He is God, with whom we too will be full, when He “will be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). After all, our very good deeds are imputed to us for receiving this Sabbath in the case when we look at them as His deeds, and not as ours. If we attribute them to ourselves, then they will be servile deeds, for it is said about the Sabbath: “On it you shall not do any servile work” (Deut. V, 14). Therefore, the prophet Ezekiel says: “I also gave them My Sabbaths, so that they might be a sign between Me and them, so that they would know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them” (Ezek. XX, 12). We will fully know this when we are completely free and fully see that He is God. The very number of centuries, as if days, if we count them according to those periods of time, indications of which we find in Scripture, will turn out to be sabbatical, because this number is seven; Thus, the first century, like the first day, extends from Adam to the flood, the second - from the flood to Abraham; They are equal, however, not in length of time, but in the number of generations, since both have ten. Then, from Abraham to the coming of Christ, according to the calculation of the Evangelist Matthew, three centuries follow, of which each contains fourteen generations, namely; from Abraham to David, from David to the migration to Babylon and from the migration to Babylon to the birth of Christ. All, therefore, five. Now comes the sixth, which should not be measured by any number of generations in view of what is said: “It is not your business to know the times or seasons that the Father has appointed in His authority” (Acts I, 7). After this age, God will, as it were, rest on the seventh day, having arranged so that this seventh day itself will rest in him, which we ourselves will be. It would now take a long time to discuss each of these centuries in detail. At least this seventh century will be our Sabbath, the end of which will not be in the evening, but the Lord's, as if the eternal eighth day, which Christ sanctified with His resurrection, thus prefiguring the eternal rest not only of the spirit, but also of the body. Then we will be free and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what we will be forever! For what other goal is ours than to achieve the kingdom that has no end? We consider the duty of this great work to be fulfilled with the help of God. For whom it is small or for whom it is too great, let them excuse me, and for whom it is sufficient, let them not send thanks to God, but together with me. Amen. 1. Blessed Augustine. Creations. – Volume 3–4. – St. Petersburg: Aletheya, 1998. Preparation of the text for printing by S. I. Eremeev (digitized from the publication: Mn.: Harvest, M.: AST, 2000). 2. Works of Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. – Second edition. – Parts 3–6. – Kyiv, 1905–1910. // Reprint from the publishing house of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Valaam Monastery, 1994. 3. Latin text Cicero here does not mean his own time, but the time of Scipio the Younger and Laelius, whom he describes as reasoners in the cited work. About the Republic, book. 2. Ch. 21. See above, book. 18, ch. XXI See Aristot. de Coelo, lib. IV, cap. 6. See above, book. 10, ch. 16. See above, book. 18, ch. LII. See above, book. 13, ch. XVI. Genetliaci - predictors of the fate of a newborn by the stars You might be interested in: