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As we promised in the immediately preceeding book, this, the last of
the whole work, shall contain a discussion of the eternal blessedness
of the city of God. This blessedness is named eternal, not because
it shall endure for many ages, though at last it shall come to an end,
but because, according to the words of the gospel, "of His kingdom
there shall be no end." Neither shall it enjoy the mere appearance of
perpetuity which is maintained by the rise of fresh generations to
occupy the place of those that have died out, as in an evergreen the
same freshness seems to continue permanently, and the same appearance
of dense foliage is preserved by the growth of fresh leaves in the room
of those that have withered and fallen; but in that city all the
citizens shall be immortal, men now for the first time enjoying what
the holy angels have never lost. And this shall be accomplished by
God, the most almighty Founder of the city. For He has promised
it, and cannot lie, and has already performed many of His promises,
and has done many unpromised kindnesses to those whom He now asks to
believe that He will do this also.
For it is He who in the beginning created the world full of all
visible and intelligible beings, among which He created nothing better
than those spirits whom He endowed with intelligence, and made capable
of contemplating and enjoying Him, and united in our society, which
we call the holy and heavenly city, and in which the material of their
sustenance and blessedness is God Himself, as it were their common
food and nourishment. It is He who gave to this intellectual nature
free-will of such a kind, that if he wished to forsake God, i.e.,
his blessedness, misery should forthwith result. It is He who, when
He foreknew that certain angels would in their pride desire to suffice
for their own blessedness, and would forsake their great good, did not
deprive them of this power, deeming it to be more befitting His power
and goodness to bring good out of evil than to prevent the evil from
coming into existence. And indeed evil had never been, had not the
mutable nature, mutable, though good, and created by the most high
God and immutable Good, who created all things good, brought evil
upon itself by sin. And this its sin is itself proof that its nature
was originally good. For had it not been very good, though not equal
to its Creator, the desertion of God as its light could not have been
an evil to it. For as blindness is a vice of the eye, and this very
fact indicates that the eye was created to see the light, and as,
consequently, vice itself proves that the eye is more excellent than
the other members, because it is capable of light (for on no other
supposition would it be a vice of the eye to want light), so the
nature which once enjoyed God teaches, even by its very vice, that it
was created the best of all, since it is now miserable because it does
not enjoy God. It is he who with very just punishment doomed the
angels who voluntarily fell to everlasting misery, and rewarded those
who continued in their attachment to the supreme good with the assurance
of endless stability as the meed of their fidelity. It is He who made
also man himself upright, with the same freedom of will, an earthly
animal, indeed, but fit for heaven if he remained faithful to his
Creator, but destined to the misery appropriate to such a nature if he
forsook Him. It is He who when He foreknew that man would in his
turn sin by abandoning God and breaking His law, did not deprive him
of the power of free-will, because He at the same time foresaw what
good He Himself would bring out of the evil, and how from this mortal
race, deservedly and justly condemned, He would by His grace
collect, as now He does, a people so numerous, that He thus fills
up and repairs the blank made by the fallen angels, and that thus that
beloved and heavenly city is not defrauded of the full number of its
citizens, but perhaps may even rejoice in a still more overflowing
population.
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