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Of the bliss of Paradise, of Paradise itself, and of the life of
our first parents there, and of their sin and punishment, many have
thought much, spoken much, written much. We ourselves, too, have
spoken of these things in the foregoing books, and have written either
what we read in the Holy Scriptures, or what we could reasonably
deduce from them. And were we to enter into a more detailed
investigation of these matters, an endless number of endless questions
would arise, which would involve us in a larger work than the present
occasion admits. We cannot be expected to find room for replying to
every question that may be started by unoccupied and captious men, who
are ever more ready to ask questions than capable of understanding the
answer. Yet I trust we have already done justice to these great and
difficult questions regarding the beginning of the world, or of the
soul, or of the human race itself. This race we have distributed into
two parts, the one consisting of those who live according to man, the
other of those who live according to God. And these we also
mystically call the two cities, or the two communities of men, of
which the one is predestined to reign eternally with God, and the
other to suffer eternal punishment with the devil. This, however, is
their end, and of it we are to speak afterwards. At present, as we
have said enough about their origin, whether among the angels, whose
numbers we know not, or in the two first human beings, it seems
suitable to attempt an account of their career, from the time when our
two first parents began to propagate the race until all human generation
shall cease. For this whole time or world-age, in which the dying
give place and those who are born succeed, is the career of these two
cities concerning which we treat.
Of these two first parents of the human race, then, Cain was the
first-born, and he belonged to the city of men; after him was born
Abel, who belonged to the city of God. For as in the individual the
truth of the apostle's statement is discerned, "that is not first
which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that
which is spiritual," whence it comes to pass that each man, being
derived from a condemned stock, is first of all born of Adam evil and
carnal, and becomes good and spiritual only afterwards, when he is
grafted into Christ by regeneration: so was it in the human race as a
whole. When these two cities began to run their course by a series of
deaths and births, the citizen of this world was the first-born, and
after him the stranger in this world, the citizen of the city of God,
predestinated by grace, elected by grace, by grace a stranger below,
and by grace a citizen above. By grace, for so far as regards himself
he is sprung from the same mass, all of which is condemned in its
origin: but God, like a potter (for this comparison is introduced by
the apostle judiciously, and not without thought), of the same lump
made one vessel to honor, another to dishonor. But first the vessel
to dishonor was made, and after it another to honor. For in each
individual, as I have already said, there is first of all that which
is reprobate, that from which we must begin, but in which we need not
necessarily remain; afterwards is that which is well-approved, to
which we may by advancing attain, and in which, when we have reached
it we may abide. Not, indeed, that every wicked man shall be good,
but that no one will be good who was not first of all wicked but the
sooner any one becomes a good man, the more speedily does he receive
this title, and abolish the old name in the new. Accordingly, it is
recorded of Cain that he built a city, but Abel, being a sojourner,
built none. For the city of the saints is above, although here below
it begets citizens, in whom it sojourns till the time of its reign
arrives, when it shall gather together all in the day of the
resurrection; and then shall the promised kingdom be given to them, in
which they shall reign with their Prince, the King of the ages, time
without end.
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