God, not only promise eternal life to the purest virtues, but even alleviate the temporal misfortunes which as men we are born to endure." The first five books, Augustine himself explains, "were written against those who thought that the gods were to be worshipped for the sake of the good things of this life; the next five against those who held that the worship of the gods should be maintained for the sake of a life to come after death." The remaining twelve books were intended to meet the criticism, that the argument had been destructive, not constructive; Augustine set himself in them to describe the origin, the development, and the appointed ends, of the two "cities" or "societies of men" opposed to each other-the one based on love of self issuing in contempt of God, the other on love of God issuing in contempt of self" (xiv. 28). He afterwards. explains that the earthly "city" is not purely and merely evil: it can secure some kinds of good, "sine dubio Dei dona," but they are not the highest; it began with unbrotherly self-assertion, consummated in fratricide; its spirit had found complete expression in that Roman republic which had been ruined by its own corruptions before Christ came to make all things new.

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There had been preparations for the idea of a

City of God. The Empire had welded the nations into a comprehensive secular unity; the great Stoics had had visions of a universal human brotherhood. The Catholic Church had now been for many eventful years "in evidence;" it had presented to men's view not a mere idea of sanctified human order, but a "visible polity, an institution, with a definite organisation, with a constitution and a code of laws," and ranks of "officers" and conditions of citizenship.1 And so, in the words of Dean Merivale, "The hour had come, and the man was not wanting. . . . The manifestation of the City of God by Augustine, the explanation of God's divine appointments from the creation to the redemption of man, was a full and final appeal to the conscience of the inquiring heathens, the stricken and despairing votaries of the discredited city of the Romans." The visible kingdom of Christ was to lead to, and to be absorbed into, the Holy Jerusalem of the Apocalypse; and Augustine, when, within four years of his own departure, he wrote the concluding or twenty-second book, burst forth into a rapture of expectation which might seem to anticipate the medieval hymn familiar to us as beginning, "O what the joy and the glory

2

1 See Cunningham on "S. Austin," p. 116.
2 Conversion of the Roman Empire, p. 146.

must be!" He looks forward to a "felicity which will be certain, calm, everlasting, where no evil will exist, where no good will be out of view, and we shall be occupied in the praise of God, who will be all things in all !... Where the spirit wills, there the body will be: nor will the spirit will anything which can be unbecoming to spirit or body. There will be true glory, where no one will be praised by mistake or by flattery; true honour, which will not be denied to any one worthy, nor bestowed on any one unworthy. . . true peace, where no one will suffer any adversity, either from himself or from any one else. The reward of virtue will be He Himself who has given virtue, and promised to it Himself, than whom there can be nothing greater or better.1 What else is that which He spake by the prophet, 'I will be their God,'... that is, I will be that whence they may be satisfied, I will be all things that men can honourably desire, life, health, food, abundance, glory, honour, peace, all good things? For this is the true sense of the words, 'that God may be all things in all.' He Himself will be the end of our desires, who will be seen without end, loved without satiety, praised

1 In De Trin. viii. 4 and De Civ. Dei, xi. 28 he speaks of God as the Good, essentially All-good. So far is he from regarding God as mere irresistible "Omnipotence."

without weariness.

In that city there will be

a free will in all its inmates,-one in all, and inseparable in each,-a will freed from all evil and filled with all good, enjoying unfailingly the delight of joys eternal, forgetful of faults, forgetful of punishments, but yet not so forgetful of its deliverances as not to be thankful to its Deliverer!"

The "strain that could rise to this " "soulenthralling" loftiness dies down, at the close, in tones of tender simplicity: "I think that by the Lord's help I have fulfilled my obligation in regard to this lengthy work. Let those who think I have said too little, or too much, excuse me; let those who are satisfied give thanks, not to me, but with me, as congratulating me, to my God. Amen."

APPENDIX XIV.

THAT the "Quicunque Vult," commonly called the Athanasian Creed, is more Augustinian than Athanasian, and reproduces what Augustine frequently asserted when writing on the Trinity or the Incarnation, is well known; but a few illustrations may be in place.

Take the treatise De Trinitate: "The Father is God, and the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet we do not call that supreme Trinity itself three Gods, but one God." After similar language, in

...

which the terms used are "great" and "good," we read, "Accordingly the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, the Holy Spirit Almighty; yet they are not three Almighties, but one Almighty” (v. 9.)

"The Father only is Father, and not Father of two Sons, but of an only Son. Nor are there three Sons, since the Father is not Son, nor is the Holy Spirit; nor three Holy Spirits, because the Holy Spirit, properly so called, . . . is neither Father nor vii. 7. Cp. c. Sermon. Arian. c. 15.

Son :

"So entire is the equality in this Trinity, that not only is the Father not greater than the Son as touching His Godhead, but neither are the Father and the Son together something greater than the Holy Spirit :" viii. proem. So in iv. 29 the Holy Spirit is said to proceed both "a Patre" and "a Filio," the same preposition being used in the Quicunque. The formula, "Not three Gods, nor three Almighties, but one God Almighty," recurs in De Civ. Dei, xi. 24.

"There are

So c. Sermonem Arianorum, c. 15, three, and each one of them is God, yet they are not three Gods, etc."

Again, c. Maximinum Arian. Ep. ii. c. 22: The Catholic faith, which neither confounds nor separates the Trinity, which neither denies the three Persons nor believes the substances to be diverse." Ib. c.