* * * * *

ST. AUGUSTINE

THE CITY OF GOD

A French critic has said of Augustine’s “City of God” that it is the earliest serious attempt to write a philosophy of history, and another has spoken of it as the encyclopaedia of the fifth century.  These two remarks together characterise the work excellently.  It is a huge treatise in twenty-two books, begun in the year 413, and finished in 426, and was given to the public in sections as these were completed.  Augustine (see lives and letters) himself explains the origin of the work.  The fall of Rome by Alaric’s invasion in 410 had been ascribed to the desertion of the old gods of Rome and to the wide extension of Christianity, or the City of God, throughout the empire.  It was to refute this calumny that the learned African bishop elaborated his great defense of Christ’s kingdom, the “Catholic Church, which should include all nations and speak in all tongues.”  In Books 1-5 St. Augustine shows that the catastrophe of Rome was not due to the neglect of the old mythological superstitions; and in Books 6-10 that the heathen cult was helpless for the life after death.  Books 11-14 deal with the origin of the two cities, namely, of God and the World; Books 15-18 with their respective histories, and Books 19-22 with their respective ultimate destinies.

I.—­THE ORIGIN OF THE TWO CITIES

I write, dear Marcellinus, of that most glorious City of God, both in her present pilgrimage and life by faith, and in that fixed and everlasting seat which she awaits in patience.  I write to defend her against those who place their gods above her Founder—­a great and arduous work, but God is my aid.  I well know what power a writer needs who would show the proud how great is the virtue of humility.  For the law of our King and Founder is this:  “God is against the proud but gives grace to the humble”; but the swollen and insolent soul loves herein to usurp the divine Majesty, and itself “to spare the subject and subdue the proud.”  Wherefore I may not pass over in silence that earthly city also, enslaved by its lust of empire.

For it is from this City of the World that those enemies have arisen, against whom we have to defend the City of God; Romans, spared by the barbarians on Christ’s account, are haters of the name of Christ.  The shrines of the martyrs and the basilicas of the apostles received, in the devastation of the city, not their own people only, but every fugitive; and the fury and greed of the invaders were quenched at these holy thresholds.  Yet with thankless arrogance and impious frenzy these men, who took refuge under that Name in order that they might enjoy the light of fugitive years, perversely oppose it now, that they may languish in sempiternal gloom.