|
Intending to speak, in dependence on God's grace, of the day of
His final judgment, and to affirm it against the ungodly and
incredulous, we must first of all lay, as it were, in the foundation
of the edifice the divine declarations. Those persons who do not
believe such declarations do their best to oppose to them false and
illusive sophisms of their own, either contending that what is adduced
from Scripture has another meaning, or altogether denying that it is
an utterance of God's. For I suppose no man who understands what is
written, and believes it to be communicated by the supreme and true
God through holy men, refuses to yield and consent to these
declarations, whether he orally confesses his consent, or is from some
evil influence ashamed or afraid to do so; or even, with an
opinionativeness closely resembling madness, makes strenuous efforts to
defend what he knows and believes to be false against what he knows and
believes to be true.
That, therefore, which the whole Church of the true God holds and
professes as its creed, that Christ shall come from heaven to judge
quick and dead, this we call the last day, or last time, of the
divine judgment. For we do not know how many days this judgment may
occupy; but no one who reads the Scriptures, however negligently,
need be told that in them "day" is customarily used for "time."
And when we speak of the day of God's judgment, we add the word last
or final for this reason, because even now God judges, and has judged
from the beginning of human history, banishing from paradise, and
excluding from the tree of life, those first men who perpetrated so
great a sin. Yea, He was certainly exercising judgment also when He
did not spare the angels who sinned, whose prince, overcome by envy,
seduced men after being himself seduced. Neither is it without God's
profound and just judgment that the life of demons and men, the one in
the air, the other on earth, is filled with misery, calamities, and
mistakes. And even though no one had sinned, it could only have been
by the good and right judgment of God that the whole rational creation
could have been maintained in eternal blessedness by a persevering
adherence to its Lord. He judges, too, not only in the mass,
condemning the race of devils and the race of men to be miserable on
account of the original sin of these races, but He also judges the
voluntary and personal acts of individuals. For even the devils pray
that they may not be tormented, which proves that without injustice
they might either be spared or tormented according to their deserts.
And men are punished by God for their sins often visibly, always
secretly, either in this life or after death, although no man acts
rightly save by the assistance of divine aid; and no man or devil acts
unrighteously save by the permission of the divine and most just
judgment. For, as the apostle says, "There is no unrighteousness
with God;" and as he elsewhere says, "His judgments are
inscrutable, and His ways past finding out" In this book, then, I
shall speak, as God permits, not of those first judgments, nor of
these intervening judgments of God, but of the last judgment, when
Christ is to come from heaven to judge the quick and the dead. For
that day is properly called the day of judgment, because in it there
shall be no room left for the ignorant questioning why this wicked
person is happy and that righteous man unhappy. In that day true and
full happiness shall be the lot of none but the good, while deserved
and supreme misery shall be the portion of the wicked, and of them
only.
|
|