Christianity has ruined the fairest civilisation which the world has yet seen: Christianity has broken up our empire of twelve hundred years.

And indeed the prospect of temporal things at that moment was wretched: Gaul and Spain were laid waste, Italy was open to the inroads of the Goths, and its capital sacked. The world seemed on the point of being delivered up to desolation and anarchy. Then it was that St. Augustine answered the denunciations of enemies and the anxious questionings of friends. Out of the very capture of the world's capital, and the impending fall of civilisation, the design arose in his mind to trace the origin, progress, and allotted course of the City of God. As all human powers, the armies of Rome, her arts of peace, her majestic municipal system, her matchless code of laws, and that crown of subject nations secure under her long-continued sway, which flourished like a rich garland round the Mediterranean, seemed dissolving visibly before him, his eyes fixed themselves more and more intently upon another vision, transitory indeed in one sense in that it was passing in time, but springing from the counsel of God ordained before time, and flowing on till the full tide of its waves is gathered into eternity.* Starting from the basis of God, almighty in power, the supremely good Creator of all natures, who assists

*Drawn from the following passages, De Civ. Dei, xiv. 26, xv. 21, 17, xiv. 28, tom. iv. 1544 B; De Civ. Dei, xix. 17, 26.

Р

and rewards upright wills, who withdraws Himself from evil wills, and condemns them, but who is the orderer of both, he traces two commonwealths which emerge into mortality from the common door of Adam, and thence proceed and diverge to their own distinct and proper ends. Already the two races part asunder in the very children of the first parent; Cain stands at the head of one; and Seth at the head of the other. And their different tempers are apparent from the first. Cain begot Enoch, in whose name he built a city; a city of the earth, that is, not sojourning in this world, but resting in its temporal peace and prosperity, having here the end which it seeks. But the house of the men who live by faith looks for the promises which are future, but eternal; and uses temporal things as a pilgrim not to be taken captive by them, and turned aside from God to whom it tends, but in order to bear more easily the burden of the body weighing down the soul. And so the use of things necessary to this mortal life is common to both houses and races of men, while each has its own end in using them, and that end exceedingly diverse. Thus, even the earthly commonwealth, which does not live by faith, seeks earthly peace; and draws its citizens into agreement of command on the one side, and of obedience on the other, in order to produce a certain harmony of human wills, in the things which concern mortal life. While the heavenly commonwealth, or rather that

part of it which sojourns in this mortal state, and lives by faith, must likewise use that same earthly peace, until the mortal state requiring such a peace pass away. And therefore it is that while in the bosom of this earthly commonwealth it leads what is like a captive life of pilgrimage, having already received the promise of redemption, and the spiritual gift which is its pledge, it hesitates not to obey the laws of the earthly commonwealth, which administer what is necessary for sustaining mortal life, in order that, as this mortal state is common to both alike, in things which belong to this there may be concord between the two commonwealths. In fine, the city of the devil consists in the things of this world, where it is not a pilgrim, but a settled dweller, resting in temporal peace and happiness, and having here its chosen end. It has a self-love which reaches right up to the contempt of God; it boasts in itself; it seeks glory from men; it is swayed by the lust of empire; it loves its own virtue in its own great men; and its wise men, living according to the principles of human nature, pursue the goods either of the body, or of the mind, or of both; it does not rejoice save over some temporal prosperity; it does not sorrow but for some temporal adversity. And the City of God lives in the hope of God, always enduring the earth, and hoping for heaven; it knows no evil, save offending God, and not reaching His promises; nor good, save meriting God, and obtaining them;

it makes use of Babylon's peace, referring it to the peace of heaven, its proper good being the eternal and perfect peace, that is, the most well-ordered and harmonious society of those who enjoy God, and each other in God: its king is truth; its law is charity; its manner of being is eternity.* It has a love of God which it pushes even to the contempt of self; it glories in its Lord; in it by mutual charity are servants to each other, rulers who do good to their subjects, and subjects who obey their rulers. It cries, "I will love Thee, O Lord my virtue;" in it there is no wisdom of men save piety, waiting for this reward in the society of saints, angels as well as men, that God be all in all.

It was thus St. Augustine consoled his friends and expressed his own unshaken belief as he stood between imperial Rome collapsing, and the northern flood bursting in upon her. This is the first Philosophy of History; and after fourteen centuries it remains the best, if not the only one. The whole mind of the Middle Ages for a thousand years after St. Augustine's departure lived upon This book was the delight of Alfred, the manual of Charlemagne and St. Louis, and of every Christian ruler and philosopher until men ceased to read history with the eyes of faith. To use his own image, it was like a magnificent piece of music sounding in their ears through the palace of time,

it.

"Cujus rex veritas, cujus lex caritas, cujus modus æternitas." Ep. cxxxviii. 17.

and filling it with immortal harmonies. No writer seems to me to have grasped with so much force the idea that there is no moral evil save in the abuse of free will, nor to derive so continually the consequence how largely it enters into the design of God, not only to reward the good will, but to punish the evil will. And in this consists the completeness of his view, and its agreement with the course of events, where others fall short and are disproved by it.

But St. Augustine has himself supplied us with the key to his own life and writings, and as it gives touchingly and eloquently the cause of the whole change in individual man which I am here illustrating, I will quote the passage. It occurs in the last treatise which he wrote while yet a neophyte and a layman. He lived forty years after this to become the great voice of the Church, but no where has he set forth more lucidly the truth on which the Church lives.

"In all manners does God heal the mind according to the opportunity of times which are ordered by His marvellous wisdom; but most of all was His beneficence to the human race shown when the very Wisdom of God, the only Son consubstantial and coeternal with the Father, deigned to assume whole man, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. For so He proved to the carnal, and to those who could not gaze upon the truth with the mind's eye, and to those who were