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How great shall be that felicity, which shall be tainted with no
evil, which shall lack no good, and which shall afford leisure for the
praises of God, who shall be all in all! For I know not what other
employment there can be where no lassitude shall slacken activity, nor
any want stimulate to labor.
I am admonished also by the sacred song, in which I read or hear the
words, "Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house, O Lord; they
will be still praising Thee." All the members and organs of the
incorruptible body, which now we see to be suited to various necessary
uses, shall contribute to the praises of God; for in that life
necessity shall have no place, but full, certain, secure,
everlasting felicity. For all those parts of the bodily harmony,
which are distributed through the whole body, within and without, and
of which I have just been saying that they at present elude our
observation, shall then be discerned; and, along with the other great
and marvellous discoveries which shall then kindle rational minds in
praise of the great Artificer, there shall be the enjoyment of a
beauty which appeals to, the reason. What power of movement such
bodies shall possess, I have not the audacity rashly to define, as I
have not the ability to conceive. Nevertheless I will say that in any
case, both in motion and at rest, they shall be, as in their
appearance, seemly; for into that state nothing which is unseemly
shall be admitted. One thing is certain, the body shall forthwith be
wherever the spirit wills, and the spirit shall will nothing which is
unbecoming either to the spirit or to the body. True honor shall be
there, for it shall be denied to none who is worthy, nor yielded to i
any unworthy; neither shall any unworthy person so much as sue for it,
for none but the worthy shall be there. True peace shall be there,
where no one shall suffer opposition either from himself or any other.
God Himself, who is the Author of virtue, shall there be its
reward; for, as there is nothing greater or better, He has promised
Himself. What else was meant by His word through the prophet, "I
will be your God, and ye shall be my people," than, I shall be
their satisfaction, I shall be all that men honorably desire, life,
and health, and nourishment, and plenty, and glory, and honor, and
peace, and all good things? This, too, is the right interpretation
of the saying of the apostle, "That God may be all in all." He
shall be the end of our desires who shall be seen without end, loved
without cloy, praised without weariness. This outgoing of affection,
this employment, shall certainly be, like eternal life itself, common
to all.
But who can conceive, not to say describe, what degrees of honor and
glory shall be awarded to the various degrees of merit? Yet it cannot
be doubted that there shall be degrees. And in that blessed city there
shall be this great blessing, that no inferior shall envy any
superior, as now the archangels are not envied by the angels, because
no one will wish to be what he has not received, though bound in
strictest concord with him who has received; as in the body the finger
does not seek to be the eye, though both members are harmoniously
included in the complete structure of the body. And thus, along with
his gift, greater or less, each shall receive this further gift of
contentment to desire no more than he has.
Neither are we to suppose that because sin shall have no power to
delight them, free will must be withdrawn. It will, on the
contrary, be all the more truly free, because set free from delight in
sinning to take unfailing delight in not sinning. For the first
freedom of will which man received when he was created upright consisted
in an ability not to sin, but also in an ability to sin; whereas this
last freedom of will shall be superior, inasmuch. as it shall not be
able to sin. This, indeed, shall not be a natural ability, but the
gift of God. For it is one thing to be God, another thing to be a
partaker of God. God by nature cannot sin, but the partaker of God
receives this inability from God. And in this divine gift there was
to be observed this gradation, that man should first receive a free
will by which he was able not to sin, and at last a free will by which
he was not able to sin, the former being adapted to the acquiring of
merit, the latter to the enjoying of the reward. But the nature thus
constituted, having sinned when it had the ability to do so, it is by
a more abundant grace that it is delivered so as to reach that freedom
in which it cannot sin. For as the first immortality which Adam lost
by sinning consisted in his being able not to die, while the last shall
consist in his not being able to die; so the first free will consisted
in his being able not to sin, the last in his not being able to sin.
And thus piety and justice shall be as indefeasible as happiness. For
certainly by sinning we lost both piety and happiness; but when we lost
happiness, we did not lose the love of it. Are we to say that God
Himself is not free because He cannot sin? In that city, then,
there shall be free will, one in all the citizens, and indivisible in
each, delivered from all ill, filled with all good, enjoying
indefeasibly the delights of eternal joys, oblivious of sins,
oblivious of sufferings, and yet not so oblivious of its deliverance as
to be ungrateful to its Deliverer.
The soul, then, shall have an intellectual remembrance of its past
ills; but, so far as regards sensible experience, they shall be quite
forgotten. For a skillful physician knows, indeed, professionally
almost all diseases; but experimentally he is ignorant of a great
number which he himself has never suffered from. As, therefore,
there are two ways of knowing evil things, one by mental insight, the
other by sensible experience, for it is one thing to understand all
vices by the wisdom of a cultivated mind, another to understand them by
the foolishness of an abandoned life, so also there are two ways of
forgetting evils. For a well-instructed and learned man forgets them
one way, and he who has experimentally suffered from them forgets them
another, the former by neglecting what he has learned, the latter by
escaping what he has suffered. And in this latter way the saints shall
forget their past ills, for they shall have so thoroughly escaped them
all, that they shall be quite blotted out of their experience. But
their intellectual knowledge, which shall be great, shall keep them
acquainted not only with their own past woes, but with the eternal
sufferings of the lost. For if they were not to know that they had
been miserable, how could they, as the Psalmist says, for ever sing
the mercies of God? Certainly that city shall have no greater joy
than the celebration of the grace of Christ, who redeemed us by His
blood. There shall be accomplished the words of the psalm, "Be
still, and know that I am God." There shall be the great Sabbath
which has no evening, which God celebrated among His first works, as
it is written, "And God rested on the seventh day from all His
works which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and
sanctified it; because that in it He had rested from all His work
which God began to make." For we shall ourselves be the seventh
day, when we shall be filled and replenished with God's blessing and
sanctification. There shall we be still, and know that He is God;
that He is that which we ourselves aspired to be when we fell away from
Him, and listened to the voice of the seducer, "Ye shall be as
gods," and so abandoned God, who would have made us as gods, not by
deserting Him, but by participating in Him. For without Him what
have we accomplished, save to perish in His anger? But when we are
restored by Him, and perfected with greater grace, we shall have
eternal leisure to see that He is God, for we shall be full of Him
when He shall be all in all. For even our good works, when they are
understood to be rather His than ours, are imputed to us that we may
enjoy this Sabbath rest. For if we attribute them to ourselves, they
shall be servile; for it is said of the Sabbath, "Ye shall do no
servile work in it." Wherefore also it is said by Ezekiel the
prophet, "And I gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign between me and
them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctify them."
This knowledge shall be perfected when we shall be perfectly at rest,
and shall perfectly know that He is God.
This Sabbath shall appear still more clearly if we count the ages as
days, in accordance with the periods of time defined in Scripture,
for that period will be found to be the seventh. The first age, as
the first day, extends from Adam to the deluge; the second from the
deluge to Abraham, equalling the first, not in length of time, but
in the number of generations, there being ten in each. From Abraham
to the advent of Christ there are, as the evangelist Matthew
calculates, three periods, in each of which are fourteen generations,
one period from Abraham to David, a second from David to the
captivity, a third from the captivity to the birth of Christ in the
flesh. There are thus five ages in all. The sixth is now passing,
and cannot be measured by any number of generations, as it has been
said, "It is not for you to know the times, which the Father hath
put in His own power." After this period God shall rest as on the
seventh day, when He shall give us (who shall be the seventh day)
rest in Himself. But there is not now space to treat of these ages;
suffice it to say that the seventh shall be our Sabbath, which shall
be brought to a close, not by an evening, but by the Lord's day, as
an eighth and eternal day, consecrated by the resurrection of Christ,
and prefiguring the eternal repose not only of the spirit, but also of
the body. There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and
praise. This is what shall be in the end without end. For what other
end do we propose to ourselves than to attain to the kingdom of which
there is no end?
I think I have now, by God's help, discharged my obligation in
writing this large work. Let those who think I have said too little,
or those who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those
who think I have said just enough join me in giving thanks to God.
Amen.
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