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But the families which do not live by faith seek their peace in the
earthly advantages of this life; while the families which live by faith
look for those eternal blessings which are promised, and use as
pilgrims such advantages of time and of earth as do not fascinate and
divert them from God, but rather aid them to endure with greater
ease, and to keep down the number of those burdens of the corruptible
body which weigh upon the soul. Thus the things necessary for this
mortal life are used by both kinds of men and families alike, but each
has its own peculiar and widely different aim in using them. The
earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeks an earthly peace,
and the end it proposes, in the well-ordered concord of civic
obedience and rule, is the combination of men's wills to attain the
things which are helpful to this life. The heavenly city, or rather
the part of it which sojourns on earth and lives by faith, makes use of
this peace only because it must, until this mortal condition which
necessitates it shall pass away. Consequently, so long as it lives
like a captive and a stranger in the earthly city, though it has
already received the promise of redemption, and the gift of the Spirit
as the earnest of it, it makes no scruple to obey the laws of the
earthly city, whereby the things necessary for the maintenance of this
mortal life are administered; and thus, as this life is common to both
cities, so there is a harmony between them in regard to what belongs to
it. But, as the earthly city has had some philosophers whose doctrine
is condemned by the divine teaching, and who, being deceived either by
their own conjectures or by demons, supposed that many gods must be
invited to take an interest in human affairs, and assigned to each a
separate function and a separate department, to one the body, to
another the soul; and in the body itself, to one the head, to another
the neck, and each of the other members to one of the gods; and in
like manner, in the soul, to one god the natural capacity was
assigned, to another education, to another anger, to another lust;
and so the various affairs of life were assigned, cattle to one, corn
to another, wine to another, oil to another, the woods to another,
money to another, navigation to another, wars and victories to
another, marriages to another, births and fecundity to another, and
other things to other gods: and as the celestial city, on the other
hand, knew that one God only was to be worshipped, and that to Him
alone was due that service which the Greeks call latreia, and which
can be given only to a god, it has come to pass that the two cities
could not have common laws of religion, and that the heavenly city has
been compelled in this matter to dissent, and to become obnoxious to
those who think differently, and to stand the brunt of their anger and
hatred and persecutions, except in so far as the minds of their enemies
have been alarmed by the multitude of the Christians and quelled by the
manifest protection of God accorded to them. This heavenly city,
then, while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens out of all nations,
and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all languages, not
scrupling about diversities in the manners, laws, and institutions
whereby earthly peace is secured and maintained, but recognizing that,
however various these are, they all tend to one and the same end of
earthly peace. It therefore is so far from rescinding and abolishing
these diversities, that it even preserves and adopts them, so long
only as no hindrance to the worship of the one supreme and true God is
thus introduced. Even the heavenly city, therefore, while in its
state of pilgrimage, avails itself of the peace of earth, and, so far
as it can without injuring faith and godliness, desires and maintains a
common agreement among men regarding the acquisition of the necessaries
of life, and makes this earthly peace bear upon the peace of heaven;
for this alone can be truly called and esteemed the peace of the
reasonable creatures, consisting as it does in the perfectly ordered
and harmonious enjoyment of God and of one another in God. When we
shall have reached that peace, this mortal life shall give place to one
that is eternal, and our body shall be no more this animal body which
by its corruption weighs down the soul, but a spiritual body feeling no
want, and in all its members subjected to the will. In its pilgrim
state the heavenly city possesses this peace by faith; and by this
faith it lives righteously when it refers to the attainment of that
peace every good action towards God and man; for the life of the city
is a social life.
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