THE POLITICAL ASPECTS OF
S. AUGUSTINE S < CITY OF GOD
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
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CALCUTTA AND MADRAS
THE POLITICAL ASPECTS
OF S. AUGUSTINE S
CITY OF GOD
BY
JOHN NEVILLE FIGGIS, Lirr.D.
LATE OF THE COMMUNITY OF THE RESURRECTION
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IQ2I
PREFACE
THE delivery of these lectures was one of the last
pieces of work that Neville Figgis was allowed to carry
through. He prepared them for the press, leaving them
in the form of lectures and preserving here and there
the impress which the anxiety of war-crisis made upon
them. In that form, therefore, they are published now.
In place of the final revision which his failing health
prevented him from making, another hand has tried
unskilfully to supply what he would have done with
skill, in order to carry out his wishes and make his last
complete piece of work accessible to a wider public than
those who heard the lectures delivered.
MIRFIELD, A II Saints Day, 1920.
CONTENTS
I. GENERAL SCOPE OF THE DE CIVITATE DEI
THE PHILOSO
THE STATE .
II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY ... 32
5I
IV. THE CHURCH ..... 68
V. THE DE CIVITATE DEI IN THE MIDDLE AGES . 81
VI. THE DE CIVITATE DEI IN LATER DAYS . . 101
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... ng
APPENDIX ...... I2C ,
NOTES ........ . 125
Errata
Page 77, line 12, for Geirke read Gierke
89, ,, 2 from foot, for Canorum read Canonum
THE POLITICAL ASPECTS
OF S. AUGUSTINE S
4 CITY OF GOD
i
GENERAL SCOPE OF THE DE CIVITATE DEI
As Man amongst creatures and the Church amongst
men and the Fathers in the Church, and S. Augustine
amongst the Fathers, so amongst the many pretious volumes
and in the rich storehouse of his workes, his bookes of the
City of God have a speciall preheminence/
So W. Crashawe began the dedication which he prefixed
in 1620 to the second edition of J. Healey s translation
of the text and of the Commentary thereon of J. L. Vives.
Vives had dedicated his Commentary to Henry VIII,
dating from Louvain on July 7, 1522.
This passage of Crashawe we might parallel from
writers of almost every age ; and from some of widely
different outlook. Bishop Otto of Freising, the uncle
and historian of Frederic Barbarossa, sings in unison
with Niceron, the collector of literary anecdotes in the
seventeenth century.
The greatness of the De Civitate Dei is not in dispute.
No student of the fifth century can afford to overlook
it. No one can understand the Middle Ages without
taking it into account. What is true of historians is
true no less of ecclesiastical politicians and reformers
2 THE CITY OF GOD
even down to a leader in the modern socialist movement
like Sommerlad. 1 In his earlier days Count Hertling
has written on the book, and he alluded to its principles
in a recent speech. The book has been more widely
read than any other of S. Augustine except the Con
fessions/ It has had commentators from Coquaeus
down to Scholz. For these reasons it might seem hardly
a fitting topic for Pringle-Stewart lectures. One
historian said to me on hearing of the Course : Is
there anything new to say about that ? Yet another
said, that the more he tried to comprehend the mind
of the Middle Ages, the more was he convinced that
it was necessary to understand S. Augustine.
That understanding is not easy. There are those
who are for treating S. Augustine as the typical example
of the medieval temperament with its heights and depths,
its glories and splendours of imagination, its dialectical
ingenuity and its irrational superstitions. Others see
in S. Augustine essentially a man of the antique world.
They do not deny to him real influence upon later times.
Who can ? But they are inclined to minimise this ;
at least in matters of social and political importance.
The former is the view of Dorner, still more of Feuerlein. 2
It became a commonplace with scholars like Gierke and
Ritschl, and in a less degree with Harnack. It is presented
in an extreme form in a book, once well known, that
came from America, the late Dr. A. V. G. Allen s Con
tinuity of Christian Thought/ Hermann Reuter in
his Augustinische Studien began a reaction. That
book is of incalculable value for those who wish to com
prehend S. Augustine. This reaction reached its limit
in a book published during the war, by Troeltsch, Die
christliche An tike und die Mittelalter/ Signs of this
view are to be found in Dr. Carlyle s valuable work
on Political Theory in the West although it is more
through what he does not say than what he does, that
we gather the views of the writer. Professor Dunning
GENERAL SCOPE OF DE CIVITATE DEI 3
in his History of Political Thought is even more
significant in his omissions.
Political thought and S. Augustine s influence there
on are to be the topic of these lectures. That involves
the whole subject of Church and State. So we are
carried some way into theology. The De Civitate Dei
is not a treatise on politics. It is a livre de circonstance
concerned with apologetic. Most of S. Augustine s
doctrine alike in theology and philosophy is embedded
in it. We may regard it as an expansion of the Con
fessions. The relation of true philosophy to scepticism,
the idea of creation, the problem of time, the contribu
tion of Platonism, more especially Neo-Platonism, the
meaning of miracle and nature, the Incarnation as
expressing the humility of God, the whole scheme of
redemption, salvation by grace, long divagations into
comparative mythology, all these might be made the
subject of lectures on the De Civitate Dei, and that with
out leaving the terrain occupied by the author. Another
lecturer better equipped might give not six but twelve
lectures concerning the philosophic and theological
problems suggested by the De Civitate Dei, and not even
mention those points which I hope to discuss. If that
had been what was expected, you would not have done
me the high honour of choosing me to lecture on this
work. To begin with, a great Augustinian scholar,
Canon T. A. Lacey, in the first course of Pringle-Stewart
lectures discussed some of the more important of these
matters, although without special reference to this book.
You would not wish them discussed again by one
who has neither Mr. Lacey s intimate knowledge of
S. Augustine nor his alertness of critical judgment. So
I shall limit myself to the political aspects of the book.
The points which it offers to the student of political
thought are not few, nor are they unimportant. The
book has been treated as a philosophy of history finer
than that of Hegel ; and again as the herald of all that
4 THE CITY OF GOD
is significant in the Scienza Nuova of Vico. Can such
views be sustained ? Or is it the case that S. Augustine
had no notion of a philosophy of history, that his views
are self-contradictory, and that only a few passages
throw more than a faint light on it. That question
will form the topic of the second lecture. Did S.
Augustine teach that the State is the organisation of
sin, or did he believe in its God-given character, and
desire its development ? Did he teach the political
supremacy of the hierarchy, and, by implication, that
of the Pope and the Inquisition ? Or was it of the
Church as the Communio sanctorum that he was think
ing ? Does his doctrine of individual election reduce
to ruins all ecclesiastical theory ? These topics will
occupy the third and fourth lectures. What was
S. Augustine s influence on mediaeval life ? Was there
something almost like a reception of Augustinianism,
followed by a repudiation at the Renaissance ? Or
was it that only slightly he affected political ideals in
the Middle Ages ? Some see the whole controversy be
tween Popes and Emperors implicit in the De Civitate
Dei/ Others would trace it to causes quite different.
What real change came about at the Reformation ?
Did S. Augustine s social doctrine (apart from the
theology of grace) lose all influence ? Or did men retain
unimpaired the idea of the civitas Dei, as it had been
developed ? These questions will occupy the last two
lectures.
To-day let me try to determine certain preliminary
points. Let us get clear what is the nature and aim
of the book. Much needs to be said which will seem
trite to students. I would crave your pardon. These
matters are needful for evidence of what will later be
said. Besides, it is a less error to take too little for
granted than too much.
Like nearly all of S. Augustine s writings, the De
GENERAL SCOPE OF DE CIVITATE DEI 5
Civitate Dei is controversial. It is a pamphlet of large
scale. Like S. Paul and unlike S. Thomas, Augustine
wrote only under the pressure of immediate necessity.
All his writings have an apologetic character. Most
of them are coloured by his intensely rich personality.
Trained in rhetoric, Augustine is never abstract or
impersonal. Sometimes we regret this and the longueurs
to which his skill in dialectic leads him. Theories abound
in S. Augustine s works, but the last thing he is is
a theorist, pure and simple. Augustine became a
theologian, as he had become a philosopher, driven by
practical needs. Adversaries might even argue that
all his emphasis on the external, on the given quality
of grace, was due to his own experiences just as Luther
universalised his own inner life into the doctrine of
justification by faith. We must see the place which
these controversies, implied in the De Civitate/ occupied
in S. Augustine s life. After his conversion, he spent
the first years in assailing the doctrines of which he
had been an adherent. We have the books Contra
Academicos/ the Soliloquy and other writings against
the Manichaeans. In these he is concerned with problems
mainly speculative, the nature and origin of evil, the
nature of belief, the possibility of certitude, the sig
nificance of error, which at least is evidence of the
personality of the man in error, and so forth.
To these controversies succeeded his great conflict
with the Donatists. When he was converted, Augustine
did not become a merely intellectual adherent of Chris
tianity. He became a member of a visible, active and
world-wide Church ; and that in a day of storms. When
Augustine came home to Africa, after his mother s
death, he found the Church rent by schism, with the
Catholics appearing as the weaker party, and the Donatists
claiming almost a national position. Augustine was
forced into the position of a champion of the Catholic
Church. Consequently, more in regard to schism than
6 THE CITY OF GOD
to heresy, he developed the idea of the unity and uni
versality of the Church. He thus marked a difference
between himself and Greek theologians like Origen.
Then came the sack of Rome by Alaric. Only in
our own time can the shock of that world-catastrophe
be paralleled in its effect on the imagination and thoughts
of men. The eternity of Rome had been a presupposition
of the common consciousness. But now the world
seemed in ruins i.e. the world of imagination and
mental comfort. Augustine saw that the taking of
Rome had no great military significance/ In one
sermon he bids his hearers be calm and recollect that
Rome really means Romans and that the Roman
name was not extinguished. The calamity gave its
last chance to dying paganism. Rome had been a
stronghold of the ancient worship, and was still largely
pagan in feeling. Obvious then was its line of counter
attack. This horror would not have been, had we
stood by the ancient ways. The mad policy of the
Emperors in prohibiting sacrifices to the gods has
produced its inevitable nemesis. The sack of Rome
is the judgment of Jove/
This was the position in which Augustine was placed,
one somewhat resembling that of a modern Christian
faced with the charge that Christianity is bankrupt
because it did not prevent the war. To meet the charge
Augustine wrote the De Civitate Dei/ He did not write
it all at once. In the Retractations he admits that
he was interrupted by the Pelagian controversy. That
too leaves its traces upon this encyclopedia of his mind.
Much of the book is but an expansion of Augustine s
doctrine of grace applied on the scale of world history.
That is another reason why the book is so hard. Augus
tine had a discursive mind, and his training in rhetoric
increased this tendency. He had no great powers of
construction. The architectonics even of the Con
fessions leave much to be desired a fact which is less
GENERAL SCOPE OF DE CIVITATE DEI 7
patent than it should be to many because they do not
read the latter books. In his controversial writings he
does not know when to stop ; nor does he trouble much
about relevance. We can never understand S. Augus
tine if we think of him as a system-maker. Systems
may have come out of him, but before all else he is a
personality. He is the meeting-place of two worlds.
All that the training of that day in the West could give
he knew little or no Greek he had. His mind was a
mould into which the culture of the world was poured.
This he had either to assimilate to Christianity, or to
eliminate from himself. Sometimes he is inclined to
do the latter. Hence his inconsistencies ; and in
consequence many different people could justify them
selves out of his writings. Augustine is not, as some
think, a pure ascetic without interest in human life,
careless of the goods of learning but sometimes he
seems to be that. He is a rich, hot-blooded, highly com
plex and introspective personality, passionately Christian,
but exquisitely and delicately human, sensitive and
courageous, looking with reverence on Rome, possessed,
with Virgil and Cicero, of a Roman love of authority
and law, and an African touch of earth, yet ever withal
having the nostalgia of the infinite. Within Augustine
there struggle two personalities, a mystic, who could
forgo all forms, not only of outward but of inward
mechanism, and fly straight the alone to the Alone
with a champion of ecclesiastical order, resolute to
secure the rights of the Church, and a statesman looking
before and after.
One constant temptation besets the historian of
thought in every sphere. He is apt to suppose that
his subjects are more consistent than they are ; to make
logical wholes of scattered and often contradictory
hints ; and sometimes even to rule out, as unauthentic,
writings which have no other evidence against them
than that of being hard to reconcile with others of the
8 THE CITY OF GOD
same author. In no case could this be a worse error
than in that of S. Augustine ; in no part of S. Augustine
could it be worse than in the De Civitate Dei. One
student has said : It is not a book, it is journalism ;
whenever S. Augustine had nothing else to do he sat
down and wrote a bit of it. That may be fancy. But
it is a fanciful way of conveying a truth. Let us then take
the work right through, and give an account of it, not
troubling about its logical consistency or the relevance
of parts to the main idea.
In the Retractations Augustine gave his own analy
sis of it, though a very brief one. The first five books
are a reply to those who say that the pagan gods are
to be worshipped for the sake of earthly security and
peace. The next five are a reply to the contention of
the philosophic apologists that the worship of old Roman
gods leads to the real good, eternal life. The pagans
having been routed, Augustine turned to construction.
This is divided into three parts. In Books XI-XIV we
have the origin of the two cities, the Civitas Dei and the
Civitas tenena ; in the next four he traces their course
in time, and in the last four their consummation in
eternity.
Let us go through the work in further detail. In
Book I, Augustine states that his object in writing is
to rebut the charge that Christianity has ruined Rome.
He shows that temporal felicity had not been the un
varying condition for the city of Rome. Besides, the
same gods had failed to protect Troy, or else -5neas
would never have reached Italy. Even at the time of
writing, Christianity, he claims, is having its effect, in
getting better treatment for the vanquished. Pagans
the very men who attack the Church go running to
the churches to take sanctuary. There they are safe.
Augustine does not claim that a complete acceptance
of Christianity would guarantee the life of a nation
GENERAL SCOPE OF DE CIVITATE DEI 9
The laments over a toppling order, he will not meet by
saying that a Christian commonwealth now or at any
future date will be stable. What marks this book is
the final repudiation of the old views, as much Jewish
as pagan, that temporal felicity follows the service of
the true God alike for the individual and the nation.
The wicked, either man or nation, may flourish like
a green bay tree, says S. Augustine, and often will.
That will not advantage the wicked in the end, which
is outside this life. But it will teach the good man
humility and a due dependence on the eternal values.
The world may be saved. But it will be saved on
other-worldly lines. Hermann Reuter is right in saying
that the whole world turns on the contrast between
worldly and other-worldly motives. 3
Augustine replies to the charge against the Christians
by a doctrine concerning the nature of religion which
makes the topic of temporal felicity irrelevant. This
method was a revolution. Like most of S. Augustine s
thought and some of Christian teaching it was neither
entirely novel nor exclusively Christian. It rests on
the philosophic conception of God as the summum
bonum. IWhat is the chief end of man ? To glorify
God and taenjpy Him for ever/ This may be a summary
of the Christian ideal, but it includes within it the Neo-
Platonist also and many others. Augustine was aware
of this, and in the second part he will meet and refute
the argument that eternal goods are to be won by the
worship of the pagan- deities. Meanwhile he is occupied
with those who complain of the evil wrought by Chris
tianity. Against them he points out the luxury and
corruption of Rome, all the ills predicted by Scipio if
Carthage should be destroyed and Jeshurun wax fat
with that lust of sovereignty which among all other
sins of the world was most appropriate unto the Romans.
He depicts the tragedies produced by the lust of power
and describes the hideous sexualities current in the
io THE CITY OF GOD
theatre and in certain worships not yet discarded,
despite all the Gothic peril. He concludes by sketching
his plan to point out (i) the evils that befel Rome in
early days ; (2) the uselessness, so proved, of the old gods
even for temporal ends ; (3) their even greater useless-
ness for eternal bliss.
The second book is mainly concerned with the pro
found moral gulf between paganism and Christianity.
Therein Augustine makes lavish use of the De Repub-
lica of Cicero. He describes in detail the decay of
Roman manners during the last days of the Republic,
glancing at the moral and political passions which preceded
and provoked the Imperial regime. This book is designed
to establish the now familiar thesis of the moral and
political corruption produced by paganism, and concludes
with an exhortation to the Romans to renounce it.
Book III describes the miseries that ushered in and
accompanied the triumphs of Rome. With these are
contrasted the golden times of peace under King Numa
and the wickedness of the attack on Alba Longa. Em
phasis is thus laid on the miseries inherent in the pagan
state as an expression of pagan ethics and religion.
In Book IV Augustine lays down that justice is to
be set before power, and that alike by nations and indi
viduals. We come to the maxim on which so much
more must be said : Remota justitia, quid regna nisi
magna latrocinia. The Roman Empire he seems on the
whole to have viewed as a just reward earned partly as
the due of Roman virtue and partly in compensation
for unjust attacks ; but he is not always consistent.
He speaks of the lust of power of Ninus and the Assyrian
Empire. Here we come in Chapters 3 and 15 to strongly
anti-imperialist passages. Thence Augustine proceeds
(C. u) to consider the more refined forms of paganism
those which take the individual deities as names for the
attributes of the one supreme God who was often inter
preted pantheistically. He decides that Jove was at
GENERAL SCOPE OF DE CIVITATE DEI n
least no final organiser of victory for his children, and
in that noteworthy passage (IV, 15) he argues in favour
of a society of small States, little in quantity and peace
ful in neighbourly agreement/ as against the aggre
gations of empire. Once more he makes easy game of
the puerilities of polytheism, and denounces its obscene
festivals. Thence he passes to the more serious doctrine
of Varro, for whom Augustine entertained the greatest
respect. Acute and learned, with a prodigious memory,
Varro is Augustine s main authority for mythology
just as later on Vico, who knew Varro mainly through
the De Civitate Dei/ is driven at every turn to appeal
to him. Varro was a Theist or Pantheist of a kind, and
like Augustine worshipped a Providence, the bestower
of kingdoms, who grants his boons to bad no less than
good, like a parent giving toys. The book concludes
with the assertion that God is the giver of all kingdoms
and the determiner of their end, and with illustrations
drawn from the Jewish State.
Book V enters into the problem of freedom and neces
sity. Despite his strong predestinarian doctrine Augus-.
tine was no believer in a blind fate any more than was
Calvin. Empire, he holds, has been given to the Romans
as the reward of certain terrestrial virtues. Great
qualities of courage and self-sacrifice belong or did belong
to Roman patriots. No pagan could be more eloquent
than he is on their grandeur. He will even set them
as an example for the citizens of the heavenly city.
The argonauts of the ideal are bidden to emulate the
zeal and sacrifice which Romans had shown for a cause
so far inferior. The well-known passage from the sixth
.ZEneid, excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, is used to
illustrate Roman imperialism (V, 12). Augustine argues
that ambition may be a vice, but that it acts in restraint
of worse vices, cowardice and indolence. Even here
the Christian martyr is superior. He despised earthly
honours and endured worse torments. The Romans
12 THE CITY OF GOD
had not the true end of doing God s will. Hence they
could have no eternal hope. Their relative goodness
would have gone unrewarded, and God s justice there
fore would for ever be assailable, had not an earthly
sovereignty been their meed. That species of power is
other in kind than the eternal joy of the children of God.
Yet once more must Augustine assert that it is the
true God who gave Rome her Empire and who presides
over the origin and issue of all wars. There he antici
pates the argument of Dante. Rhadagaisus, the Gothic
king, whom they all know, forms a shining example of
this divine supervision in his sudden and incalculable
downfall.
Following this passage is the famous Fiirsten-spiegel,
the picture of a godly prince (V, 24). Somewhat to our
surprise, Augustine chooses as an instance Constantine
the Great. Maybe he knew less ill of him than we do.
At least this choice shows how entirely Roman was
Augustine. Theodosius the Great is then made the topic
of a panegyric, for he grudged not to assist the labouring
Church by all the wholesome laws which he promulgated
against heretics.
Augustine s first part concludes with Book V. He
is now to be occupied in showing that paganism is wrong
even as a method of approach to the True God.
Vulgar paganism is now demolished. We pass in
Book VI to the philosophic creeds. An interesting
appreciation of Varro precedes an account of his book
on Human and Divine Antiquities which indeed we
know largely through the use Augustine makes of it.
Varro divides religion into three stages, somewhat after
the manner of Comte, There is (a) the mythical, followed
by (b) the natural and (c) the civic. He prefers the
second. Augustine tries to show the connexion between
the two, and denies that paganism can be detached from
its darker side. It is vain to worship pagan deities in
GENERAL SCOPE OF DE CIVITATE DEI 13
the hope of eternal bliss. Book VII carries the matter
a little further, and argues -the inconsistency of Varro.
Book VIII treats of the Platonic doctrine of God. This
in the main Augustine accepts ; but he treats as futile
the attempt to accommodate it with the worship of the
pagan pantheon. Apuleius, the African representative
of paganism, is discussed. We have vigorous words
in abuse of magic. The heathen practice of apotheosis
is contrasted with the honours given to the Christian
martyr. This, he says, is high reverence, but in no
sense do we treat the martyrs as gods. Book IX is
concerned with a further condemnation of the doctrine
of mediating spirits and demons. Thence Augustine
passes to the doctrine of the One Mediator, and argues
the possibility of the Incarnation. The Book shows*
that the debate between the Christian apologist and
his assailants is at bottom a conflict between two
forms of mediation.
Book X contains a further analysis of Plotinus,
whose doctrine Augustine parallels with the Logos
doctrine of S. John i. He contrasts the one sacrifice,
once offered, with the offerings to idols ; and the
Christian with the pagan miracles. In Chapter 25
he argues that all good men in every age are saved, but
saved through faith in Christ, e.g. the saints of the Old
Testament. Then we have more argument for the
Incarnation. Augustine sees the fundamental difficulty
in Incarnation, a self-limitation of God which is all
but intolerable. It is this doctrine of the humility of
God at which imagination boggles. These proud fellows
scorn to have God for their Master, because the Word
became Flesh and dwelt among us/
The last words of Book X sum up the first part
of the whole :
In these ten books I have spoken by the good assist
ance of God sufficient in sound judgments (though some
14 THE CITY OF GOD
expected more) against the impious contradictors that prefer
their gods before the founder of the holy city, whereof we
are to dispute. The first five of the ten opposed them that
adored their gods for temporal respects ; the five later
against those that adored them for the life to come. It
remains now, according as we promised in the first book,
to proceed in our discourse of the two cities that are con
fused together in this world, and distinct in the other ; of
whose original, progress, and consummation I now enter to
dispute, evermore invoking the assistance of the Almighty/
Now at last in Book XI we get to the two cities.
Augustine begins by proving that the universe and time
began together. The City of God begins with the creation
of light, i.e. with the angels ; and the other with the
sin of Satan. The doctrine of the Trinity is expounded,
and Augustine emphasises his view that evil is a defect
of will, not of nature, once more attacking the Manichsean
dualism. Let there be light signifies the creation
of the angelic hierarchy.
Book XII once more discusses the relations of the
good and evil angels. Augustine meets and denies
the doctrine of the longevity of the world, of the Anti
podes, of an eternal recurrence. He goes on to the
creation of man. Book XIII describes the fall, and
its consequence in death. He combats the view that
death was inevitable, not penal. In Book XIV we
proceed to the ordinary doctrine of the irruption of
grace. After dilating on the evils of sin, he describes
the two cities more at large in Chapter 28.
Two loves therefore have given original to these two
cities self-love in contempt of God unto the earthly ; love
of God in contempt of one s self to the heavenly. The first
seeks the glory of men and the latter desires God only as
the testimony of conscience, the greatest glory. That glories
in itself, and this in God. That exalts itself in self-glory ;
this says to God, " My glory, the lifter of my head." That
boasts of the ambitious conquerors, led by the lust of
GENERAL SCOPE OF DE CIVITATE DEI 15
sovereignty : in this everyone serves the other in charity,
both the rulers in counselling and the subjects in obeying.
That loves worldly virtue in the potentates ; this says unto
God, " I will love thee, O Lord, my strength." And the
wise men of that follow either the good things of the body
or mind or both, living according to the flesh, and such as
might know God honoured him not as God, nor were thankful,
but all were vain in their own imaginations, and their foolish
heart was darkened ; for professing themselves to be wise
that is, extolling themselves proudly in their own wisdom
they became fools, changing the glory of the incorruptible
God to the likeness of the image of a corruptible man and
of birds and fourfooted beasts and serpents : for they were
the people s guides or followers into all those idolatries, and
served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed
for ever. But in this other the heavenly city, there is no
wisdom of man, but only the piety that serves the true
God, and expects a reward in the society of the holy angels
and men, that God may be all in all.
Book XV begins with the contrary course of the two
cities in history. Cain built the first city ; not Abel,
who was always a pilgrim.
It is recorded of Cain that he built the city, but Abel
was a pilgrim and built none. For the city of the saints
is above, though it have citizens here upon earth, wherein
it lives as a pilgrim until the time of the kingdom come,
and then it gathers all the citizens together in the resurrec
tion of the body and gives them a kingdom to reign in with
their king for ever and ever.
Chapter 4 describes the earthly city. Peace is the
aim of its life. This it can win only by war. Cain s
effort is compared with the building of Rome by Romulus,
who also slew his brother. Once more he compares
them in regard to Seth and Enos.
In XV, 21 he sums it up :
Thus the two cities are described to be seated, the one
in worldly possession, the other in heavenly hopes, both
16 THE CITY OF GOD
coming out at the common gate of mortality, which was
opened in Adam ; out of whose condemned race, as out of a
putrefied lump, God elected some vessels of mercy and
some of wrath ; giving due pains unto the one, and undue
grace unto the other, that the citizens of God upon earth
may take this lesson from the vessels of wrath, never to
rely on their own election, but hope to call upon the name
of the Lord : because the natural will which God made
(but yet here the Unchangeable made it not changeless) may
both decline from Him that is good and from all good to
do evil, and that by freedom of will : and from evil also to
do good, but that not without God s assistance.
Book XVI goes on with the history. Augustine
condemns in parentheses the idea of inhabitants at
the Antipodes. The supreme type of the earthly city
is the Tower of Babel. The course continues until the
second period, that of Abraham, and the third, that
of the Mosaic Law. From now onwards the city of
God becomes represented for practical purposes by the
Hebrew nation. Therefore it takes on some of the
qualities of an earthly State. This gives occasion to
S. Augustine to argue that all the promises of permanence
in the Old Testament could not refer to the Jewish State
but must have their fulfilment in that city eternal in
the heavens. This is true in especial of all the promises
to David (XVII, 16). He is led to argue that peace is
no enduring condition on earth, but belongs of right
only to the life beyond.
In Book XVIII we get to the course of the civitas
terrena, i.e. the whole topic of Vico. That is represented
in the Assyrian monarchy ; but certain criticisms of
Grecian myths and Egypt occur. We may cite here
the vivid words of Vives on the following chapters :
In this eighteenth book we were to pass many dark
ways and oftentimes to feel for our passage, daring not fix
one foot until we first groped where to place it, as one must
do in dark and dangerous places., Here we cannot tarry all
GENERAL SCOPE OF <DE CIVITATE DEI 17
day at Rome, but must abroad into the world s farthest
corner, into lineages long since lost, and countries worn
quite out of memory ; pedigrees long ago laid in the depth
of oblivion must we fetch out into the light like Cerberus,
and spread them openly. We must into Assyria, that old
monarchy scarcely once named by the Greeks ; and Sycionia,
which the very princes thereof sought to suppress from
memory themselves, debarring their very fathers from having
their names set on their tombs, as Pausanias relateth ; and
thence to Argos, which being held the most antique state
of Greece is all enfolded in fables ; then Athens, whose
nimble wits aiming all at their country s honour, have left
truth sick at the heart, they have so cloyed it with eloquence
and wrapped it up in cloudes. Nor is Augustine content
with this, but here and there casteth in hard walnuts and
almonds for us to crack, which puts us to shrewd trouble
ere we can get out the kernel of truth, their shells are so
thick. And then cometh the Latin gests, all hacked in
pieces by the discord of authors. And thence to the
Romans ; nor are the Greek wise men omitted. It is
fruitless to complain lest some should think I do it cause
less. And here and there the Hebrew, runneth like veins
in the body, to show the full course of the Two Cities, the
Heavenly and the Earthly. If any one travelling through
those countries and learning his way of the cunningest
should for all that miss his way sometimes, is not he pardon
able ? If any pass through, will anyone think him less
diligent in his travel ? None, I think. What then if chance
or ignorance lead me astray out of the sight of divers mean
villages that I should have gone by, my way lying through
deserts and untracked woods and seldom, or never, finding
any to ask the right way of. Am I not to be borne with ?
I hope yes. Varro s Antiquities are all lost ; and the life of
Rome. None but Eusebius helped me in Assyria, but that
Diodorus Siculus and some others set me in once or twice.
I had a book by me called Berosus by the booksellers, and
somewhat I had of Joannes Annius, goodly matters truly, able
to fright away the reader at first sight. But I let them lie still ;
I love not to suck the dregs or fetch fables out of frivolous
pamphlets, the very rackets wherewith Greece bandieth
ignorant heads about. Had this work been a child of
Berosus I had used it willingly ; but it looketh like a bastard
18 THE CITY OF GOD
of a Greek sire. ... If any man like such stuff, much good
may it do him. I will be none of his rival. . . . Concern
ing Athens, Rome, Argos, Latium, and the other fabulous
subjects, the reader hath heard whatsoever my diversity of
reading affordeth, and much from the most curious students
therein that I could be acquainted withall. He that liketh
not this thing, may find another, by and by, that will please
his palate better, unless he be so proudly testy that he
would have these my pains for the public good, of power to
satisfy him only. The rest, the Commentaries themselves
will tell you/ (On De Civitate, XVIII, i.)
Prophecy comes in and the conflicts of philosophers.
The rise and early progress of Christianity are now
described. The Civitas Dei is beginning to be identified
with the Church ; but Augustine emphasises the un
certainty of its true membership owing to the scarcity
of the elect. The book thus concludes the history on
earth :
Now it is time to set an end to this book, wherein, as
far as need was, we have run along with the courses of the
two cities in their confused progress, the one of which, the
Babylon of the earth, has made her false gods of mortal
men, serving them and sacrificing to them as she thought
good ; but the other, the heavenly Jerusalem, she has stuck
to the only and true God, and is his true and pure sacrifice
herself. But both of these do feel one touch of good and evil
fortune, but not with one faith, nor one hope, nor one law :
and at length at the last judgment they shall be severed for
ever, and either shall receive the endless reward of their
works. Of these two ends we are now to discourse.
Book XIX proceeds to the discussion with which
we began, the thought of the summum bonum. Augustine
says that this can be found only in the world beyond.
After admitting that society is integral to human life,
he points to some of its inevitable miseries on earth
war, insecurity and becomes eloquent on the value of
peace.
GENERAL SCOPE OF DE CIVITATE DEI 19
(C. n.) We may therefore say that peace is our final
good, as we said of life eternal. Because the Psalm says
unto that city, whereof we write this laborious work : " Praise
the Lord, O Jerusalem, praise thy Lord, O Sion ; for He hath
made fast the bars of thy gates and blessed thy children
within thee ; He giveth peace in thy borders/ When the
bars of the gates are fast, as none can come in, so none can
go out. And therefore this peace which we call final is the
borders and bounds of this city ; for the mystical name here
of, Jerusalem, signifies a vision of peace. But because the
name of peace is ordinary in this world where eternity is
not resident, therefore we choose rather to call the bound,
wherein the chief good of this city lies, " life eternal." . .
The good of peace is generally the greatest wish of the
world, and the most welcome when it comes. Whereof I
think one may take leave of our reader, to have a word or
two more, both because of the city s end, whereof we now
speak, and of the sweetness of peace, which all men do
love/
(C. 12.) Who will not confess this with me, who marks
man s affairs and the general form of nature ? For joy
and peace are desired alike of all men. The warrior would
but conquer ; war s aim is nothing but glorious peace.
What is victory but a suppression of resistants ; which
being done, peace follows ? So that peace is war s purpose,
the scope of all military discipline and the limit at which
all just contentions level. All men seek peace by war, but
none seek war by peace. For they that perturb the peace
they live in, do it not for hate of it, but to show their power
in alteration of it. They would not disannul it, but they
would have it as they like ; and though they break into
seditions from the rest, yet must they hold a peaceful force
with their fellows that are engaged with them, or else they
shall never effect what they intend. Even the thieves
themselves, that molest all the world besides them, are at
peace amongst themselves. . . .
What tiger is there that does not purr over her young
ones and fawn upon them in her tenderness ? What kite
is there, though he fly solitarily about for his prey, but will
seek his female, build his nest, sit his eggs, feed his young,
and assist his mate in her motherly duty, all that in him
lies ? Far stronger are the bands that bind man unto *
20 THE CITY OF GOD
society, and peace with all that are peaceable ; the worst
men of all do fight for their fellows quietness and would
(if it lay in their power) reduce all into a distinct form of
state drawn by themselves, whereof they would be the
heads, which could never be, but by a coherence either
through fear or love. For herein is perverse pride an
imitator of the goodness of God having equality of others
with itself under Him, and laying a yoke of obedience upon
its fellows, under itself instead of Him ; thus hates it the
just peace of God, and builds an unjust one for itself. Yet
can it not but love peace, for no vice however unnatural
can pull nature up by the roots. . . .
(C. 13.) The body s peace therefore is an orderly dis
posal of the parts thereof ; the unreasonable soul s, a good
temperature of the appetites thereof ; the reasonable soul s,
a true harmony between the knowledge and the performance.
That of body and soul alike, a temperate and undiseased
habit of nature in the whole creature. The peace of mortal
man with immortal God is an orderly obedience unto his
eternal law, performed in faith. Peace of man and man is
a mutual concord ; peace of a family, an orderly rule and
subjection amongst the parts thereof ; peace of a city, an
orderly command and obedience amongst the citizens ;
peace of God s City, a most orderly coherence in God and
fruition of God ; peace of all things is a well disposed order. . . .
(C. 14.) All temporal things are referred unto the
benefit of the peace which is resident in the terrestrial city,
by the members thereof ; and unto the use of the eternal
peace by the citizens of the heavenly society. . . .
Now God, our good Master, teaching us in the two
great commandments the love of Him, and the love of our
neighbour, to love three things, God, our neighbours and
ourselves, and seeing he that loves God offends not in loving
himself it follows that he ought to counsel his neighbours
to love God and to provide for him in the love of God, sur e
he is commanded to love him as his own self. So must he
do for his wife, children, family and all men besides, and
wish likewise that his neighbour would do as much for him,
in his need ; thus shall he be settled in peace and orderly
concord with all the world. The order whereof is, first, to
do no man hurt, and, secondly, to help all that he can. So
that his own have the first place in his care and those his
GENERAL SCOPE OF <DE CIVITATE DEI 21
place and order in human society affords him more con-
veniency to benefit. Whereupon S. Paul says : " He that
provideth not for his own and, namely, for them that be
of his household, denieth the faith and is worse than an
infidel." For this is the foundation of domestic peace,
which is an orderly rule and subjection in the parts of the
family, wherein the provisors are the commanders, as the
husband over his wife, parents over their children, and
masters over their servants ; and they that are provided for
obey, as the wives do their husbands, children their parents,
and servants their masters. But in the family of the faith
ful man, the heavenly pilgrim, there the commanders are
indeed the servants of those they seem to command ; ruling
not in ambition, but being bound by careful duty ; not in
proud sovereignty but in nourishing pity/
(C. 15.) Thus has nature s order prevailed and man
by God was thus created/ But sin ruled all. Sin is
the mother of servitude and the first cause of man s
subjection to man/ Dominion in the strict sense existed
only between man and dumb animals. Yet for all that
obedience is our duty ; and the family is ever a part
of the city.
In Chapter 17 we find the two ends described ; one
is earthly peace alone, the other has its other-worldly
reference. Yet this heavenly city has members in all
earthly cities, gives them true peace and the heavenly
hope. Augustine goes on discussing (Chapter 21) Cicero s
definition of a republic in which justice is an integral
element. On that hypothesis Rome never was a common
wealth, since justice cannot be where the true God is
not worshipped. But in Chapter 24 he gives another
definition under which any stable state can be grouped.
No true virtue exists apart from God, yet earthly peace
is needed and must be used by the citizens of the heavenly
state.
Book XX is concerned with the Last Judgment. In
Chapter 6 Augustine argues that the first resurrection
has already taken place in the conversion of sinners to
22 THE CITY OF GOD
Christ. The millennial kingdom is not, as the Chiliasts
say, a future reign of Christ in the world, but is the
present kingdom of the Church. This is the binding of
the devil. It began with the spread of the Church out
side of Judaism. The thrones and they that sat upon
them are the rulers of the Churches. The souls that
reign with Christ a thousand years are the martyrs.
The beast is the society of wicked man, opposed to the
company of God s servants and fighting against His holy
city. This society consists not only of open enemies
but also of tares among the wheat. More apologetic
discussion concludes the book.
Book XXI is concerned with the pains of the lost.
We have an interesting passage on the miseries of
life.
The last Book XXII gives an account of the felicity
of the saved and the eternal bliss of the kingdom of God.
Here apologetic follows concerning the Incarnation and
the miraculous, in order to refute contemporary errors.
After a description of the ills of life comes an eloquent
passage on the goods of human life. Those passages
form an interesting contrast :
(C. 22.) Concerning man s first origin our present life
(if such a miserable estate can be called a life) does suffi
ciently prove that all his children were condemned in him.
What else does that horrid gulf of ignorance confirm, whence
all error has birth, and wherein all the sons of Adam are so
deeply drenched, that none can be freed without toil, fear
and sorrow ? What else does our love of vanities affirm,
whence there arises such a tempest of cares, sorrows, repin-
ings, fears, mad exultations, discords, altercations, wars,
treasons, furies, hates, deceits, flatteries, thefts, rapines,
perjuries, pride, ambition, envy, murder, parricide, cruelty,
villainy, luxury, impudence, unchastity, fornications, adul
teries, incests, several sorts of sins against nature (filthy
even to be named), sacrilege, . . . false witnesses, false
judgments, violence, robberies, and suchlike, out of my
remembrance to reckon, but not excluded from the life of
GENERAL SCOPE OF DE CIVITATE DEI 23
man ? All these evils are belonging to man and arise out
of the root of that error and perverse affection which every
son of Adam brings into the world with him.
Augustine points out that the discipline of children
has no other meaning. What is the end of all these
but to abolish ignorance and to bridle corruption both
which we come wrapped into the world withal/ He
goes on :
To omit the pains that enforce children to learn the
(scarcely useful) books that please their parents, how huge
a band of pains attend the firmer state of man and be not
peculiarly inflicted on the wicked, but generally impendent
over us all, through our common estate in misery ! Who
can recount them, who can conceive them ? What fears,
what calamities does the loss of children, of goods or of
credit, the false dealing of others, false suspicion, open
violence and all other mischiefs inflicted by others, heap
upon the heart of man ? Being generally accompanied with
poverty, imprisonment, bands, punishments, tortures, loss of
limbs or senses, prostitution to beastly lust, and other such
horrid events ? So are we afflicted on the other side with
chances ab externo, with cold, heat, storms, showers, deluges,
lightnings, thunder, earthquakes, falls of houses, fury of
beasts, poisons of airs, waters, plants and beasts of a thou
sand sorts, stinging of serpents, biting of mad dogs, a strange
accident wherein a beast most sociable and familiar with
man shall sometimes become more to be feared than a lion
or a dragon, infecting him whom he bites with such a furious
madness, that he is to be feared by his family worse than
any wild beast. What misery do navigators now and then
endure ? Or travellers by land ? What man can walk
anywhere free from sudden accidents ? One coming home
from the court (being sound enough on his feet) fell down,
broke his leg and died of it ; who would have thought this
that had seen him sitting in the court ? Eli, the priest,
fell from his chair where he sat, and broke his neck. What
fears are husbandmen, yea all men, subject unto, that the
fruits should be hurt by the heavens or earth or caterpillars
or locusts or such pernicious things ! Yet when they have
24 THE CITY OF GOD
gathered them and laid them up they are secured. Not
withstanding I have known granaries full of corn borne
quite away with an inundation.
And so forth.
Augustine s tone may seem gloomy. But it must be
borne in mind that the times were not bright. The
reason of this book was the breaking up of the long
centuries of Roman prosperity. As it neared its end,
the storm burst even in Africa. Augustine s life was
passed in a series of changes like those which divide the
jubilees of Queen Victoria from the silver wedding of
her grandson. It may indeed be argued that the habitual
assumptions of Western civilisation both in Europe and
America have been too optimistic ; that they assume
peace and progress as natural and inevitable, and that
the advance of physical science led to an altogether too
favourable view of the reduction of pain in human life
in a state of things rarely realised in history. It may
be thought that the temper of Augustine, of the Middle
Ages, and of the present, is more truly universal than
that of the protected Roman Empire, of China, or of the
Victorians. Anyhow we can parallel S. Augustine
from writers in many ages, not only the Book of Job,
but Richard Baxter, the author of a book curiously
suggestive of the De Civitate Dei The Saints
Everlasting Rest. In that incomparable style of the
seventeenth century he declares :
(VII,. 12.) Oh, the hourly dangers that we poor sinners here
below walk in ! Every sense is a snare, every member a snare,
every creature a snare, every mercy a snare, and every duty
a snare to us. We can scarce open our eyes but we are in
danger ; if we behold those above us, we are in danger of
envy ; if those below us, we are in danger of contempt ; if
we see sumptuous buildings, pleasant habitations, honour
and riches, we are in danger to be drawn away with covetous
desires ; if the rags and beggary of others, we are in danger
GENERAL SCOPE OF <DE CIVITATE DEI 25
of self-applauding thoughts and unmercifulness. If we see
beauty, it is a bait to lust ; if deformity, to loathing and
disdain.
(VII, 15.) The Church on earth is a mere hospital ;
which way ever we go we hear complaining ; and into what
corner soever we cast our eyes we behold objects of pity and
grief ; some groaning under a dark understanding, some
under a senseless heart, some languishing under unfruitful
weakness, and some bleeding for miscarriages and wilful-
ness, and some in such a lethargy that they are past com
plaining ; some crying out of their pining poverty ; some
groaning under pains and infirmities ; and some bewailing a
whole catalogue of calamities, especially in days of common
sufferings when nothing appears to our sight but ruin ;
families ruined ; congregations ruined ; sumptuous structures
ruined ; cities ruined ; country ruined ; court ruined ; king
dom ruined ; who weeps not, when all these bleed ?
(VII, 16.) Oh, the dying life that we now live ; as full
of suffering as of days and hours ! We are the carcasses
that all calamities prey upon ; as various as they are, each
one will have a snatch at us, and be sure to devour a morsel
of our comfort. ... As all our senses are the inlets of sin,
so they are become the inlets of our sorrow. Grief creeps
in at our eyes, at our ears, and almost everywhere ; it seizes
upon our heads, our hearts, our flesh, our spirits, and what
part doth escape it ? Fears do devour us and darken our
delights, as the frosts do nip the tender buds : cares do
consume us and feed upon our spirits, as the scorching sun
doth wither the delicate flowers. Or, if any saint or stoic
have fortified his inwards against these, yet is he naked still
without ; and if he be wiser than to create his own sorrows,
yet shall he be sure to feel his share, he shall produce them
as the meritorious, if not as the efficient, cause. What
tender pieces are these dusty bodies ! What brittle glasses
do we bear about us ; and how many thousand dangers are
they hurried through ; and how hardly cured, if once cracked !
Oh, the multitudes of slender veins, of tender membranes,
nerves, fibres, muscles, arteries, and all subject to obstruc
tions, exesions, tensions, contractions, resolutions, every one
a fit subject for pain, and fit to communicate that pain to
the whole ; what noble part is there that suffereth its pain
or ruin alone ?
26 THE CITY OF GOD
But Augustine does not stop at this. The Puritan
ideal with its extreme of otherworldliness could see little
good in the natural and relative. Not so Augustine.
In Chapter 24 he almost outdoes his previously cited
passage in his anxiety to show the reality of earthly
goods goods distinct from the life of grace.
Besides the disciplines of good behaviour and the ways
to eternal happiness (which are called virtues), and besides
the grace of God which is in Jesus Christ, imparted only to
the sons of the promise, man s invention has brought forth
so many and such rare sciences and arts (partly necessary
and partly voluntary), that the excellency of his capacity
makes the rare goodness of his creation apparent, even then
when he goes about things that are either superfluous or
pernicious, and shows from what an excellent gift he has
those his inventions and practices. What variety has man
found out in buildings, attires, husbandry, navigations,
sculpture, and imagery ! What perfection has he shown in
the shows of theatres, in taming, killing and catching wild
beasts ! What millions of inventions has he against others
and for himself in poisons, arms, engines, stratagems and
suchlike ! What thousands of medicines for the health, of
meats for the throat, of means and figures to persuade, of
eloquent phrases to delight, of verses for pleasure, of musical
inventions and instruments ! How excellent inventions are
geography, arithmetic, astrology and the rest ! How large
is the capacity of man, if we should stand upon particulars !
Lastly, how cunningly and with what exquisite wit have the
philosophers and the heretics defended their very errors,
it is strange to imagine. For here we speak of the nature of
man s soul in general, as man is mortal, without any refer
ence to the way of truth whereby he comes to the life
eternal.
After dilating on the marvels of the human body, he
goes on to natural beauty.
And then for the beauty and use of other creatures,
which God has set before the eyes of man (though as yet
miserable and amongst miseries), what man is liable to
GENERAL SCOPE OF <DE CIVITATE DEI 27
recount them ? The universal gracefulness of the heavens,
the earth and the sea, the brightness of the light in the
sun, moon and stars, the shades of the woods, the colours
and smells of flowers, the numbers of birds and their varied
hues and songs, the many forms of beasts and fishes whereof
the least are the rarest (for the fabric of the bee or the ant
is more to be wondered at than the whales), and the strange
alterations in the colour of the sea (as being in several gar
ments), now one green, then another, now blue, then purple ?
How pleasing a sight sometimes it is to see it rough, and
how more pleasing when it is calm ! And O what a hand
is that, that gives so many meats to assuage hunger ! So
many tastes to those meats (without help of cook), and so
many medicinal powers to those tastes ! How delightful is
the interchange of day and night ! the temperateness of air
and the works of nature in the barks of trees and skins of
beasts ! Oh, who can draw the particulars ? How tedious
should I be in every peculiar of these few that I have here
as it were heaped together, if I should stay upon them one
by one ! Yet are all these but solaces of men s miseries, no
way pertinent to his glories.
What then are they that his bliss shall give him, if
that his misery has such blessings as these ? What will
God give them whom He has predestinated unto life, having
given such great things even to them whom He has pre
destinated unto death ? What will He give them in His
kingdom, for whom He sent His only Son to suffer all injuries
even unto death upon earth ? Whereupon S. Paul says
unto them : " He who spared not His own Son, but gave
Him for us all unto death, how shall He not with Him give
us all things also ? " When this promise is fulfilled, O
what shall we be then ? How glorious shall the soul of
man be without all stain and sin, that can either subdue or
oppose it, or against which it need to contend : perfect in
all virtue and enthroned in all perfection of peace !
How great, how delightful, how true shall our know
ledge of all things be there, without all error, without all
labour, where we shall drink at the spring-head of God s
sapience, without all difficulty and in all felicity ! How
perfect shall our bodies be, being wholly subject unto their
spirits, and thereby sufficiently quickened and nourished
without any other sustenance, for they shall now be no more
28 THE CITY OF GOD
natural, but spiritual ; they shall have the substance of
flesh quite exempt from all fleshly corruption.
In Chapter 25 he points out that as touching the
good things of the mind which the blessed shall enjoy
after this life, the philosophers and we are both of one
mind. Our difference is concerning the resurrection/
which he proceeds to argue. Of Porphyry, who has on
the whole his deepest reverence, of Plato and Varro,
Augustine speaks here, as always, in terms of honour,
almost love. In the last chapter he enlarges on the
visio pads and the eternal felicity of the city of God.
It is interesting as well as eloquent, for it brings out
the human and non-abstract quality of Augustine s
theology :
(C- 35-) How great shall that felicity be, where there
shall be no evil thing, where no good thing shall lie hidden ;
there we shall have leisure to utter forth the praises of God,
which shall be all things in all ! For what other thing is
done, where we shall not rest with any slothfulness, nor
labour for any want, I know not. . . . What the motions
of those bodies shall be there I dare not rashly define,
when I am not able to dive into the depth of that mystery.
Nevertheless both the motion and the state, as the form of
them, shall be comely and decent, whatsoever it shall be,
where there shall be nothing which shall not be comely.
Truly, where the spirit will, there forthwith shall the body
be ; neither will the spirit will anything, which may not
beseem the body nor the spirit. There shall be true glory,
where no man shall be praised for error or flattery. . . .
There is true peace, where no man suffers anything which
may molest him, either from himself or from any other.
He himself shall be the reward of virtue, which has given
virtue, and has promised Himself unto him, than whom
nothing can be better and greater. For what other thing
is that which He has said by the Prophet : " I will be their
God and they shall be My people " : but I will be whereby
they shall be satisfied. I will be whatsoever is lawfully
desired of men, life, health, food, abundance, glory, honour,
GENERAL SCOPE OF DE CIVITATE DEI 29
peace and all good things ? For so also is that rightly
understood which the Apostle says : " That God may be
all in all." He shall be the end of our desires, who shall be
seen without end, who shall be loved without any satiety
and praised without any tediousness. . . . There we shall
rest and see, we shall see and love, we shall love, and we
shall praise. Behold what shall be in the end without end ?
For what other thing is our end but to come to that kingdom
of which there is no end ?
I think I have discharged the debt of this great work
by the help of God. Let them which think I have done
too little and them which think I have done too much, grant
me a favourable pardon. But let them not think I have
performed enough, accepting it with a kind congratulation ;
give no thanks unto me but " unto the Lord with me."
Amen.
This brief outline makes this much clear. The
De Civitate Dei is apologetic and theological. It is
not a treatise on polity, whether ecclesiastical or civil.
All S. Augustine s philosophical reading has left traces
and every kind of dialectic is displayed. As apologetic
it is more effective against paganism than against the
Platonists. Too much is assumed in regard to Jewish
and Christian history. The book might reassure those
within the Church whose faith was shaken. It would
hardly arrest those without. It has the interest and
also the coruscating irrelevance that comes from a
great variety of topics. The thread is there, but some
times it is hard to disentangle. Compare this book
with such a work of apology as that of Origen against
Celsus. We note how much larger the Church looms
in the view of S. Augustine. It is no set of propositions
which he is defending in a dialectic debate with other
philosophers ; although he can do this and does it in
detail. But it is a social life which he sets up against
another form of social life. The treatment is less
individualist than that of Origen though the latter
had to follow the course taken by Celsus. First we may
30 THE CITY OF GOD
observe that what impressed Augustine was the witness
of the vastness of the Church and its triumph. As he
says in a sermon :
What do we see which they saw not ? The Church
throughout all nations. What do we not see which they
saw ? Christ present in the flesh. As they saw Him and
believed concerning the Body, so do we see the Body ; let
us believe concerning the Head. Let what we have respec
tively seen help us. The sight of Christ helped them to
believe the future Church ; the sight of the Church helps
us to believe that Christ has risen. Their faith was made
complete, and ours is made complete also. Their faith was
made complete by the sight of the Head, ours is made com
plete from the sight of the Body. (Sermon Ixvi. (cxi.) 6.)
Probably those are right who say that in this respect
also if in nothing else Augustine is epoch-making,
that all his apologetic rests on the idea of Church. This
characteristic would be developed in the Donatist con
troversy. It must be admitted, however, that such a
view of him is not universally held, and some would put
the distinctive basis of S. Augustine in the idea not of
the Church, but of grace. 4
Secondly we note the aggressive tone of the book.
Despite his references to Plato and his real debt to
Plotinus and Porphyry, Augustine is far more in
transigent than Clement of Alexandria, who would treat
Christianity as but the coping-stone of Greek thought.
It is not as a superior gnosis, but it is as a scheme of
Redemption, that Augustine commends Christianity,
and values it for himself. The cause of this lies partly
in that doctrine of original sin which was so strongly
held by Augustine, and even was in some degree being
developed while this book was in process. It is the
point of the whole book.
Another note is the stress laid on the ethical differ
ence between Christianity and its competitors though
that is not a novel feature. Augustine knows that it
GENERAL SCOPE OF DE CIVITATE DEI 31
is not speculative truth but conduct that shows the
greatest difference. Also he is aware that he is dealing
with a dying interest. Paganism was uttering its death-
cry (for the time). Clear is his note of triumph in the
conquering and universal power of the Church.
History including miracle plays a great part. The
destruction of Jerusalem following the rejection of Jesus
by the Jews is an emphatic evidence of the Gospel.
The argument from miracles he states as many would
state it now. A miracle is not contrary to nature but
to what we know of nature. The argument depends
on our conception of God. Augustine had no notion
of the distinction between the natural i.e. the physical
and the supernatural. Nature means the whole world
of God s order all that happens. The problem is
whether God s Will be paramount. All this has been
treated by Mr. Lacey in his earliest Pringle-Stewart
Lectures, Nature, Miracle and Sin.
Above all we must bear in mind that the whole
course of created existence is seen by S. Augustine as
a conflict between two societies. However little some
may make use of the figure of Civitas Dei, they have
no right to deny its implications as against a doctrine
purely individualist. Sin in Adam has become the
property of the race, it is needful to show redemption
in the order of historical development. The apologetic
rests on a philosophy of history.
Finally it is of and in the antique world that Augustine
wrote. The notion of him as medieval in temperament
may have some evidence, yet it must be understood
with care. The atmosphere of the book is of the old
world. It is before Gelasius with his doctrine of the two
powers, before Justinian. Only a little over a century
had passed since Diocletian s effort at exterminating
the Church. Less than that divided S. Augustine from
the reaction under Julian.
II
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
HAD S. Augustine a philosophy of history ? If so,
what is it, and what is its value ? These are the
questions to which I seek the answer to-day. Here is
a paragraph pertinent enough from Archdeacon Cun
ningham s Hulsean Lectures on S. Austin and his
Place in the History of Christian Thought* (p. 114).
He sets before us a philosophy of history the con
tinuous evolution of the Divine Purpose in human society :
he contrasts the earthly polities which change and pass
with the eternal City of God which is being manifested in
the world : he shows how these two are intermingled, inter
acting now, but how different they are in their real nature :
one is of the earth, centred only in earthly things, while
the other, because it has its chief regard fixed on that which
is Eternal, gives us the best rule for the things of time. The
earthly city, which aimed only at earthly prosperity, failed
to attain even that, while the Heavenly City, aiming at an
Eternal Reality, supplies the best conditions for earthly
good as well. It is in the hope of the final triumph of the
City of God that the course of the world becomes intelligible,
for then we may see that the rise and fall of earthly empires,
the glories of ancient civilisation, the sufferings of men in
their ruin, have not been unmeaning or in vain ; for they
have served to prepare for the coming of the kingdom of
God.
Thus it is that for S. Austin, faith in the Holy Catholic
Church serves to render history intelligible. This faith was
the key of knowledge, for it gave the first philosophy of
history worthy the name. . . .
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 33
If we examine it more carefully even now we shall
be amply rewarded. We may find new reasons to admire
S. Austin the discrimination he occasionally displays in
the use of evidence, the marvellous power of combining
many isolated facts into a connected system, even though
here and there he puts forward opinions which are hard
to reconcile with his general position. But we may find
greater merits than these : we may turn from the grandest
modern account of the evolution of human progress turn
from Hegel himself to St. Austin and feel that the his
torical system of the ancient father is more perfect and
complete ; inasmuch as he had a clearer conception of the
beginning, and a more definite perception of the final end
towards which the whole Creation moves/
Stronger praise can be found. An Italian scholar,
Professor Billed, wrote a book on Vico and S. Augustine.
The object was to show that Augustine was the true
originator in the field of the philosophy of history, that
Vico but followed in his steps, although by some he is
regarded as a pioneer. Dr. Reinkens in his inaugural
address as Rector of the University of Breslau develops
the theme of S. Augustine s philosophy of history in
reference to modern life. He seeks to show that his
system is an account of the progress of the world to a
rational freedom. This is one side. 1
Some modern interpreters of S. Augustine set little
store by his philosophy of history. H. Schmidt declares
that he reduces history to a nullity. Others speak as
though the few remarks he made on the topic are not
worth considering. 2 They point out how meagre is
his picture of the course of the terrene state, how he
overlooks almost all history, except Assyria and Rome
just glancing at Greece and Egypt. True, Augustine
mentions the common interpretation of the four
monarchies in Daniel, implying that the Church is the
fifth. Still there is no consistent effort to take the
student through the revolutions of human affairs, and
to justify the ways of God to man in the rise and fall
34 THE CITY OF GOD
of kingdoms such, for instance, as we see in Bossuet s
Discours sur 1 histoire universelle. To that we may
retort that this discourse was implicit in the De Civitate
Dei/
What is certain is that S. Augustine was a man
historically minded. He set out (he was compelled
by the purpose of his apologetic) to be a spectator of
all time and all created being. No one who takes the
Incarnation seriously can avoid some kind of philosophy
of history. That event if a fact testifies at once to
the importance of human life on earth, and shows its
centre. Doubts of Christianity at this moment are
largely due to the difficulty felt by many in making the
events in Palestine the pivot of human history. The
religion of the Incarnation cannot be mere theology
a system of notions developed from certain metaphysical
propositions nor can it be mere ethics, a code of laws
on a theistic basis. It has to do with a life on earth,
in which Christians hold that in the fulness of time
i.e. at the due moment in history the eternal reality
at the heart of things became self-revealed and self-
limited in a living earthly person. The issue of this was
the fulfilment of the Jewish theocracy in the Christian
Church. Augustine moreover approached Christianity
emphatically by way of the Church. No one who did
that could ignore the problems which it involved. Take
a definite historical fact as your centre, take an actual
visible society as the special sphere of God s operation,
a society which has a past and must have a future on
earth ; and then you are compelled to some philosophy
of history. You cannot, like a sheer Platonist and
Augustine shows leanings that way treat as of no
account the whole development in time and space, as
though this world were the dreams of the Absolute
in a fit of absence of mind ; and then it is the object of
the enlightened by some mystical process to get away
from those dreams into the reality of day, where there
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 35
is no change, no growth and no personality. That was
the ideal of many. Augustine at one time had it. At
times, even as a Christian, he uses expressions which
show how greatly Plato and Plotinus contributed to
his mental composition. On the whole, his belief in
the Church and his sense of immediate reality were too
great. A man who does not give way to the temptation
of a doctrinaire s system pure and simple, but has so
much regard to the actual as S. Augustine, is bound to
rest unsatisfied without some philosophy giving history
a meaning. Nowadays many seem to think it will be
all the same if we leave out the facts, content to breathe
the atmosphere created by a former belief in them, and
hold that the Christian has to do solely with certain
principles.
If the facts of Christ s life on earth be treated as
of little account, Christian faith will become either a
set of dogmatic propositions, metaphysically grounded,
coupled with a not too well-grounded ethical code,
inelastic and impracticable, or else a name for certain
states of sentimental brooding or elation. Against this
danger Augustine fought, as we do now. His sense
of Christianity being embedded in fact governs his
apologetic, and that despite his love of dialectic, and
his acquaintance with current philosophy.
The Dean of Wells in his Commentary on the
Epistle to the Ephesians has shown how S. Paul saw
in the Incarnation a philosophy of history. So did
S. Athanasius.
S. Augustine does but draw this out. By the fifth
century the Church had become a great human institu
tion. It was not the preacher of an Interims Ethik, but
an important part of the world historical process. That
was true, whatever you thought about the Church.
It was but natural that a mind like S. Augustine s,
sensitive to every prevailing current, should try to
look at all history as a great drama, of which the supreme
36 THE CITY OF GOD
crises are in Eden and Calvary. This much, however,
we must concede at the outside to the minimisers.
Augustine did not set out to compose a philosophy of
history. His purpose was not to comprehend history,
but to defend the Catholic Church. Even Hegel was
moved by something more than a disinterested concern
for the student who is trying to gather up the threads
of fact. He wanted to show how his own philosophy
of the Absolute could be brought into line with the
development of mankind. History proved to Hegel
an illustration of the doctrines of the Logic. Inciden
tally he wanted to justify the Prussian State, in which,
as we know, with his lack of humour, he contrived to
discern the self-presentation of the Absolute Idea.
However it may be with Hegel, the philosophy of
history arose directly out of the method of Augustine s
apologetic. It is not individualist. Augustine does
not proceed on the method, too often deemed adequate,
of taking separate points and arguing from them, in
order to affect individual conversions. That is not
his object. His purpose is this to justify the Christians
God against the attacks made upon Him, to remove
from the Church the charge of having brought about
the ruin of civilisation. Over against the shattered
world-order, great in its ruin, he sets another order
even greater. He shows that the security and justice
and freedom, which pious Romans believed to be
guaranteed by the Roman Empire, were not guaranteed,
that they never could be guaranteed on earth, that they
are a treasure not of the body but of the soul. Not
dear city of Cecrops, but dear city of God/ the cry of
the great Stoic Emperor, has the gist of the whole.
The Stoic lived in independence of temporal vicissitude,
without help from beyond. The Christian belongs
to the city which hath foundations whose builder and
maker is God. I m but a stranger here Heaven is
my home/ Over against Rome, the eternal city,
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 37
Augustine puts Jerusalem the Golden. This he does
not do in abstracto. He takes the two ideas incarnate
in two societies. One modern commentator, Scholz,
well describes the book as Faith and Unbelief, as
shown in world-history. Even if this be not a philosophy
of history, strictly so called, it is at least a justification
of the Church, historically conceived. This is evident
in the opening paragraph. ( De Civitate/ I. i.)
That most glorious society and celestial city of God s
faithful, which is partly seated in the course of these declin
ing times, wherein " he that liveth by faith " is a pilgrim
amongst the wicked ; and partly in that solid estate of
eternity, which as yet the other part doth patiently expect,
until " righteousness be turned to judgment " ; being then
by the proper excellence to obtain the last victory, and
be crowned in perfection of peace, have I undertaken to
defend in this work : which I intend unto you (my dearest
Marcellinus) as being your due by my promise, and exhibit
it against all those that prefer their false gods before this
city s founder. The work is great and difficult, but God the
Master of all difficulties is our helper. For I know well
what strong arguments are required to make the proud
know the virtue of humility, by which (not being enhanced
by human glory, but endowed with divine grace) it sur
mounts all earthly loftiness, which totters through the one
transitory instability. For the King, the builder of this
city, whereof we are now to discourse, hath opened his
mind to his people in the Divine Law thus : " God resisteth
the proud, and giveth grace to the humble." Now this
which is indeed only God s, the swelling pride of an ambitious
mind affecteth also, and loves to hear this as parcel of his
praise.
" Par cere subjectis, et debellare s^tperbos."
" To spare the lowly, and strike down the proud."
Wherefore touching the temporal city (which longing after
domination, though it hold all the other nations under it,
yet in itself is overruled by the one lust after sovereignty)
we may not omit to speak whatsoever the quality of our
proposed subject shall require or permit.
38 THE CITY OF GOD
These two cities and societies are vague enough, and
ill-defined in thought and imagination. Still, however
much or little Augustine meant by contemplating all
created history as the conflict of two opposed societies,
he meant more than some writers such as Reuter and
Troeltsch would seem to admit. Clearly, this scheme
affords a framework under which the whole of history
can be subsumed. You may say that the plan is imper
fectly executed. Many people have thought that even
of Hegel s explicit Philosophy of History/ It did not
require the late war to make it seem an odd performance
to try and classify all history as a progress towards
freedom, and to find that freedom for ever embodied
in the Prussian Absolutism.
Faults of construction we may admit. The picture
of the two cities was vague. At times Augustine forgets
all about it. It seems strange that after stating his
object he should go off into an elaborate attack on the
morals of popular idolatry. Yet when we think it out,
we can see some relevance to the main theme. Augustine
would, I suppose, have agreed that these earlier books
demonstrate the inadequacy of the Civitas terrena as an
ideal. Still it is well to be warned. The reader must
put up with a great deal of irrelevance and with the
amplification of all sorts of things which have no obvious
bearing on the main point. The passage from Vives
cited in the last lecture illustrates this (p. 16).
Two presuppositions of any philosophy of history
are in the mind of S. Augustine throughout, (i) The
unity of the human race, involving, as its corollary,
the doctrine of (2) the essential sociability of man. The
Civitas Dei, he says, can mean nothing less than the
social life of the children of God. That one principle
alone, according to Scholz, is a contribution of high
value to world-history. 3 Even better than Aristotle
did S. Augustine understand that true history begins
only with a form of society. Also he emphasises the
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 39
unity of the human race which is derived by its descent
from Adam. This idea lies behind his doctrine of
original sin.
The strong sense of providential government of the
world which Augustine shares with Vico may be thought
to be also essential to the philosophy of history. This
view, however, may be doubted. 4 One who was an
atheist or a pure agnostic, e.g. Comte, might still have
a philosophy of history, provided that he held the two
maxims stated above, without any reference to God.
Augustine s conception, which was avowedly derived
from the Republic of Plato, that you can best judge
of a nation by the analogy of an individual, helped
him in some ways. In others it was a drawback. Alike
in Plato and S. Augustine such a view may lead to a
conception of morals which permits the extremities of
persecution. All evil clericalism goes back to Plato.
The De Civitate Dei then is sketchy and incomplete.
If we are to justify it as a philosophy of history, in spite
of this, we must go further. Augustine s philosophy of
history is a philosophy of the time-process as a whole.
That is why he is able as Scholz (p. 138) complains
to treat world-history as an episode. History accord
ing to S. Augustine is not merely terrestrial. It is the
whole course of social happenings in time, in relation
to a timeless Deity. No one could be more profoundly
imbued than was S. Augustine with the doctrine of the
timeless reality of God. On that ground he felt the
more need of relating this to the world of successive
events. Hence his book involves a philosophy of creation
and a theodicy, no less than an account of the education
of the human race/ It is history as a whole, history
from the creation of light until the Last Judgment,
that is the justification of God. Only on that
tremendous canvas can he paint a picture that shall
outmatch the gloomy Velasquez-like portrait of the
world as set up for men s imagination by the sack of
40 THE CITY OF GOD
Rome. On this view much that seems at first sight
irrelevant falls into place. Augustine begins, he must
begin, with the Creation. The universe was not created
in Time. Time and the world are coeval. They are
the chosen achievement of God the divine symphony
which not even sin can rob of its beauty.
God Himself is the best poet
And the real is His song.
Augustine s strong aesthetic tendency, his worship
of beauty, comes out in the doctrine that history is in
truth a heavenly song that, in some way or other,
the evil in it is overruled by the beauty of the whole
just as discords are resolved by a skilful composer
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony
might be prized, Augustine says in his interesting letter
to Marcellinus ( Epist., 138) :
God is the unchangeable Governor as He is the un
changeable Creator of mutable things, ordering all events
in His providence until the beauty of the completed course
of time, the component parts of which are the dispensations
adapted to each successive age, shall be finished, like the
grand melody of some ineffably rare master of song.
He lifts creation, before the beginning of earth ; the
first important event, the true beginning of the two
societies, is the sin of Satan. The pride of Lucifer
typifies all evil doing ; it began among the angels that
dichotomy into the two societies which is to last for
ever, and as its counterpart set moving the course of
redemption.
Augustine seems to have held the view that men
are created to fill the gaps in the celestial choir caused
by the exclusion of the fallen angels ; that the elect
are to fill up that number and no more. The devil s
first sin was an act of freedom of will like that of Adam.
God did not cause it, for evil is negative. It cannot
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 41
be created. It is the choice of the lower, instead of
fidelity to the essential nature of a spiritual being. The
nature of all things, even of the devil, is good. It is
the will, not the nature, that goes wrong.
We need not follow S. Augustine into the account
of the Fall. It is familiar enough. Once more must
be emphasised the immense import, in regard to the
philosophy of history, of S. Augustine s strong doctrine
of original sin. He can compare the whole course of
human history to a single individual, and can parallel
their several stages. It is true that the comparison
is vague ; he gives different classifications in different
places. In the De Catechizandis Rudibus there
are six. Freedom for the race, which was all enclosed
in the loins of Adam, was lost in the strict sense by the
Fall. Men still have a choice, but only between different
kinds of sinful acts. Some are worse than others and
will meet with worse torments. Manifold is the hierarchy
of hell. With the Fall begins the human part of the
Civitas terrena. Yet the coming redemption always
holds some. The two societies not only now, but in
all ages, have been intermingled. The heavenly city
goes back through Shem to Seth ; the earthly to Cain.
The Hebrew development is treated as the main embodi
ment of the Civitas Dei. The Civitas terrena develops
through Assyria and Rome, though I am not sure that
Augustine ever absolutely identifies even the old Roman
Empire with the Civitas terrena.
The Civitas Dei began long ago ; but in its ful
ness it came with the spread of the Gospel. There
will be a mystical thousand years of the reign of Christ.
This is to be followed by the bitterest of all persecu
tions ; and the devil will once again be loosed. After
this the establishment of the final goal of the two cities
is easy. The goal of the Civitas Dei is the pax czterna,
and the visio del.
Dr. Reinkens argued that the end which the citizens
42 THE CITY OF GOD
of the heavenly city will reach is true freedom. Hence
he can parallel S. Augustine with Hegel, making them
both teach that the history of the world is the record
of the progress towards rational freedom. I cannot
but think that Reinkens is here misled by the wish to
make out a historical parallel. It is peace, not freedom,
that is the goal. Augustine doubtless thought that
freedom (non posse peccare) would only be reached
hereafter and would be reached then. But that is not
to the purpose. The sack of Rome had been the greatest
dramatic violation of the Pax Romana. The sense of
security had suffered a shock only to be likened to that
which we feel now. As compensation for this lost earthly
peace Augustine gives a new security the peace that
passes understanding. He does not promise a new
earthly security under the aegis of the Church. On the
contrary he agrees that neither religion nor piety can
guarantee earthly security, although both are in the
hands of God, who gives power, sometimes to the bad
in order to teach humility to the good, and sometimes
by way of reward to those relatively virtuous. The
only genuine security must be that which is beyond
the changes and chances of this mortal life. That is
the saints everlasting rest to be won in the heavenly
Jerusalem, the happy home, when the triumph is eternal
and warfare is accomplished. Save in figure it does
not attach to that partial representative of the Civitas
Dei which we see here and now in the Church Militant.
That is no more free from perilous conjuncture than
is the secular state.
Clearly the conception of redemption through the
sacrifice of the Cross, made effective by a visible and
sacramental Church, set over against the worldly society,
affords some kind of philosophy of history. It runs
as a thread through the whole complicated pattern of
created being. This it could hardly do if religion were
purely individual. The paramount significance of the
I
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 43
Church, viewed as the depository and dispenser of grace,
is of the essence of this historical philosophy. True,
it may be argued, and has been argued, that the pre-
destinarianism of S. Augustine makes the other way,
and reduces all to individualism. Augustine is not
always consistent. The two conceptions of the sacra
mental visible Church and the communio sanctorum
cross one another in a way that is often perplexing.
But this difficulty is not decisive. No one is secure
of salvation by baptism or even by communion. But
they are conditions sine qua non. Witness Augustine s
views on the condition of unbaptised infants. One of
his grounds of controversy with Julius of Eclanum was,
that the latter was willing to except infants unbaptised
from the full penalty to assign them to a sort of lower
court.
The sketch of world-history is the weakest thing in
the book. All, however, goes to emphasise his main
thesis. History is a unity. No one before or since
taught more plainly the solidarity of man. That
renegade Englishman, Houston Stewart Chamberlain,
in a book once overpraised even in England, condemned
all notions of humanity. He said that there was no
human race, only races and preached a new Teutonic
Christianity. Now we see this in its first flush of hot-
gospelling. The Foundations of the Nineteenth Cen
tury gives a reinterpretation in the interests of Deutsch-
land iiber A lies. All is based on a doctrine of the fun
damental inequality of races. It is the direct contrary
of the doctrine of the De Civitate Dei and Augustine s
frequent assertions that proximus homini est omnis
homo.
This unity of history is so set forth as to be a theodicy.
Augustine thought that the doctrine of original sin,
with its accompaniment of arbitrary election, could be
reconciled with Divine Justice. All men are ipso jure
damned. The few who are saved may rejoice. Those
44 THE CITY OF GOD
who suffer the last penalty have nothing of which to
complain. They go where they naturally belong. Those
who escape have no merit, not even a turning of the will,
for that is the work of irresistible grace. Certainly this
justification may not seem to us satisfactory. Later
theories, especially that of Molina, went far away from
this. But the point here is that Augustine gave a view
of the whole and claimed to justify the ways of God to
men.
Also, history is seen as the education of mankind.
Augustine was the product of the university and an
academic teacher. Strongly imbued as he was with
his own sense of experience, he was hardly likely to
undervalue the progressive education of mankind in the
arts. So distinctly sociable a being could not really
despise the social arts. Like all men he was tempted
at times to think his own course worthless for what it
left out. But that thought is hardly permanent. In the
background of his consciousness he was always aware
of the possession of culture. Still with his conversion
to Christianity and even the earlier conversion to
Platonism, the other-worldly doctrine creeps in. All
the goods of human life have only a relative value.
No earthly good has excellence save, and in so far, as
it leads us on. The topic of world-flight is strong in
S. Augustine in all his later writings. It is plausible to
argue that of this book it is the main theme.
Can that be ? Whether he liked it or not and I
rather think he did Augustine must have known
himself to be one of the best educated men of the day.
Like a modern Etonian condemning the public schools,
yet all the while conscious that they have made him a
little different from those who were not there this
attitude, whether social or scientific or religious, has
always in it an element of pose. The pessimistic view
of all worldly activities is clear enough in the De
Civitate Dei/ But it is counteracted by that other
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 45
conception under which he views history as a work of
art ; in that sublime sense of human power and the
beauty of things which was cited in the last lecture.
Nobody who felt that, could treat the sights and sounds
of earth, the outward beauty of things or even the course
and revolutions of family and national life, as a thing
of no account. A famous story of S. Bernard relates
how he passed by the lake of Geneva and was unaware.
S. Augustine has pictured for ever the scene at Ostia,
in which took place the conversation with his mother,
to which all the ten books of the Confessions are the
prologue.
Scholz argues that Augustine s theory of predes
tination takes all meaning out of history ; since every
thing is preknown, how can there be any real develop
ment ? Augustine is aware of this difficulty and tries
to meet it. [It is, by the way, a difficulty not confined
to this doctrine, but to any view which gives history as a
whole a meaning. If the world moves to a predetermined
end, the real end is in the beginning and it is only an un
winding of a clock.] In the argument against Fatalism
Augustine tries to meet this. He denies that the Divine
fore-knowledge does away with freedom. Here he was
right. Whether the same can be said of the effects of his
doctrine of irresistible grace is another matter. It must be
conceded that, to S. Augustine, history is the sphere of the
revelation under transitory and earthly symbols of the
Eternal and Changeless Being. All changes, individual
and social, are guided to their appointed end by a
Providence, which though infinitely patient is also infi
nitely powerful. That does not eviscerate history of
meaning. Any teleological view of human life is open
to the same objection. Augustine s view of the way in
which grace changes the human will may or may not
be tenable, but it is not determinist. Besides, not only
does Augustine make God free. Calvin did that. He
makes man free by nature. He never taught that the
46 THE CITY OF GOD
first sin of Adam was predetermined, or that of Satan.
Luther and Calvin did. Moral evil came into the world
by the wrong use of a will free from the outset. That
is the thesis which he is ever laying down against the
Manichsean doctrine. After the one evil act the will
is dominated by concupiscence, and that in every member
of the race. All that it does has the nature of sin. But
even then its acts are not necessitated ; a man can choose
between ambition and self-indulgence, between the
pride of heroism and the meanness of cowardice. Even
the doctrine of irresistible grace is not mere fatalism.
It does not make world-history the blind working out
of a formula like the obedience of a curve to its
equation. His emphasis on miracles, and the positive
arguments which he gives for them, form an evidence
of this. God s world will move to its end. That is
certain. Yet it moves through the reality of concrete
and actual persons and societies set in a world of time
and space. History is a real, not a phenomenal thing.
It is a drama, not a cinema show. He can appeal to
history elsewhere (Epist. cxxxvii. Ad Volusianum ) as
serving in its order as an argument for the truth of the
Gospel.
What man might not be moved to faith in the doctrine
of Christ by such a remarkable chain of events from the
beginning and by the manner in which the epochs of the
world are linked together, so that our faith in regard to
present things is assisted by what happened in the past,
and the record of earlier and ancient things is attested by
later and more recent events.
If we look before and after on this doctrine, we find
certain other points to note. The doctrine of the two
cities is not original. Indeed the Apocalypse of S. John
might well have suggested it. It is almost certain that
Augustine took it from Tyconius, the Donatist whom
he respected so greatly. In the edition of the Rules of
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 47
Tyconius by Professor Burkitt we can read all about
the two societies, the one of God and the other of the
devil. 5
To Tyconius also is due the interpretation of the
millennial kingdom, as exhibited by the Church. Nor
does Augustine state his doctrine for the first time in
the De Civitate Dei/ We find it fairly well developed
in the earlier treatise, De Catechizandis Rudibus, and
the division of human life into six ages. The main
outline is all there. It was reserved for this work to
treat it with a vast sweep of imaginative vision, so as to
embrace all created existence and to found thereon an
enduring apologetic.
Later on Otto of Freising attempted to write a history
of the world on the framework laid down by S. Augustine,
concluding in precisely the same way with the Last
Things. More famous is the work of Bossuet. His
Discours sur 1 histoire universelle is what it professes
to be, an attempt to see history in the light of the Incar
nation. He takes it down to Charlemagne and had
intended to take it further. The book is not an adapta
tion of S. Augustine s work. It is primarily historical,
just as the former is primarily apologetic. It is far more
detailed and better constructed. But like that of S.
Augustine, Bossuet s aim was partly practical, and he
boasted of a conversation with du Gouet which enabled
him to put the argument from the destruction of Jeru
salem in a convincing way. Bossuet treats more
satisfactorily the course both of profane and sacred
history, ending with the establishment of the definitely
Catholic Empire in the West. This book, one of its
author s greatest, owes much to S. Augustine. M.
Hardy wrote a volume, showing how close was this
dependence. That is in some degree true of all Bossuet s
work. Even Jansenism was hardly more deeply soaked
in S. Augustine than was Bossuet, who rarely preaches a
sermon without an allusion to him.
48 THE CITY OF GOD
Vice s Nuova Scienzia proves a problem. What
was the influence of the De Civitate Dei in this
one of the most original and epoch-making books of
modern times ? Dr. Billeri in Giovanni-Battista Vico
e S. Agostino claims the mastery and originality all
for S. Augustine, and boldly transfers to him any honour
given to Vico. This treatment is extravagant. The
purpose of the two writers is different. Augustine,
it cannot be too often repeated, is an apologist. Vico
is above all an enquirer. He wants to get a generalised
scheme of historical development, and to destroy what
may be called the academic superstition. His attitude
towards the earlier ages of classical history is curiously
like that of Nietzsche. Above all he is anxious to
rescue Homer from the imputation of being a teacher
of philosophy and morals in the later sense, and to
disabuse the reader of the notion that the virtues
honoured in the heroic age were those of a settled and
peaceful age, with the golden rule, at least in words, for
its motto. He is anxious to show that the original
development of men started from pure anarchism,
with the patriarch ruling his family, as in the case of
Polyphemus, through a ruthless aristocracy to a popular
government and thence to monarchy (as, e.g. Rome),
owing to the dissensions and unwillingness of men to
work together and submit to law.
With a strong belief in original sin, he claims that
God as the author of nature makes men s vices, lust,
cruelty and ambition work together for good, so as to
establish a stable and law-abiding society. This is a
universal law all over the world. Feudalism in some
form or other is the beginning of government, and
monarchy comes at the close. Thus Vico is certainly
at variance with writers like Filmer who treat monarchy
as original, no less than he is with believers in demo
cracy. It is a scheme entirely different from S. Augustine s
so different that at first sight one is disinclined to see
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 49
any parallel. But we notice (a) his strong belief in the
providential ordering of human affairs, (b) his making
original sin the beginning of all profane history, (c) his
reiterated assertion of the natural sociability of man as
the eternal law of his being, (d) his repeated references
to the De Civitate Dei and his use of it, further, for his
even more repeated use of Varro (whose work we have
not in the original). We may compare Vice s belief in
Providence with S. Augustine s famous passage on the
distribution of kingdoms. Only Vico goes more deeply,
for he has the modern scientific spirit and its love of
comparative method.
Augustine is mainly concerned with the Church,
Vico with the world. It is hard to say how far Vico
was prompted by S. Augustine or whether he intended
consciously to counter his book. Probably the truer
view is that S. Augustine appealed to him by the sweep
of his thought and by his vision of world-history ; but
that, so far as the main idea is concerned, Augustine
ranked mainly as one writer among the many whom he
cited. 6
What Professor Flint says in his history of the
Philosophy of History is worth citing :
It must have strongly confirmed Vico in some of his
most fundamental convictions in the belief of Providence
in history, of order and law in human affairs, of particular
passions and interests being rendered by supreme reason
subservient to general ends, of the analogy of the growth of
the individual to that of the race, of the futility of Epicurean
chance and the Stoic fate, as principles of historical explana
tion. But his theory of history is by no means a simple
continuation of that of Augustine ; on the contrary, the
differences between them are as profound as their resem
blances. Vico does not, like Augustine, look upon history
in relation to predestination, the fall, redemption, and the
end of the world, but as a manifestation of human nature
and of fixed laws. He conceives of Providence very
distinctly from St. Augustine.
5 o THE CITY OF GOD
Both the De Civitate Dei and the Scienzia Nuova
are great books ; both suffer from a good deal of bad
arrangement. Both are things to be felt rather than
learned. In different ways both have had enormous
influence on thought. But one is not the child of the
other. They are complementary, not contrary.
Ill
THE STATE
IN trying to comprehend S. Augustine s thought about
the State, we must avoid one error, that of translating
Civitas by State. 1 His thought, as I said, is eminently
social. He thinks of good and bad as gathered into
two societies. Only at the last judgment will the
Civitas terrena be dissolved into its constituent atoms.
But civitas is not for Augustine a term convertible
with respublica ; and the Civitas Dei is to be found long
before a visible Church existed, even before the call of
Abraham. He speaks of the good and the evil as
mystically two cities, stressing the word mystical.
More than once he explains civitas as equivalent to
society. The primary distinction is always between two
societies, the body of the reprobate and the communio
sanctorum ; not between Church and State. With his
strong doctrine of election, it is natural that he should
follow Tyconius in his views of the bipartite nature
of the body of God, i.e. the elect and the merely
nominal members. On earth these two bodies are inter
mingled, and always will be. Only partially and for
certain purposes is the Civitas terrena represented by any
earthly polity. The Church represents the Civitas Dei
rather by symbol than by identification. This error
is often made. Some phrases seem to point that way.
But first of all the distinction is to be drawn as I have
stated. Error has arisen by identifying sans phrase the
Civitas terrena with the State as such; and by taking
52 THE CITY OF GOD
every predicate applied to the Civitas Dei as obviously
intended for the Church Militant. It would be less
inaccurate to represent it, in the familiar phrase, as the
conflict between the Church and the World. Yet even
this would not be right. The real division is one
which will be made manifest at the Last Judgment, and
not until then. All earthly distinctions are but the
symbols, never adequate, of the final grouping into sheep
and goats. Members of either body are found, and
always will be found, in the terrene representative of
the other. It is the superiority of other-worldly
interests to those of this world which is the gist of
all.
Hermann Reuter 2 goes on to remark that, even if we
were using political terms to translate civitas, we ought
to use the word city rather than state/ That is
true. Hardly is it of capital importance, since the
antique conception of a commonwealth was derived
from the city-state. I doubt if we gain much by saying
that Cain was the founder of a city, not the State. What
we have to try and grasp is what Augustine thought
about the State ; not what he thought about some
States. Does he condemn the Respublica ?
In his deduction of the two cities Augustine uses
strong words on the effects of the lust of dominion. To
Augustine it was, as to Nietzsche, the will to power
that is founded upon the direct opposite of neighbourly
and Christian motives. Only he draws an opposite
inference. The original relations of man to man are
not without organisation. The family is primitive and
divine, and an association of families is natural. The
first kings were shepherds. Dominion, i.e. absolute
despotic dominion in the sense of the Roman Law, the
power of the pater-familias, of a master over slaves
that, as applied to man instead of animals, is due to sin.
Those people who quarrel with this have no right to say
that slavery is wrong now. Slavery owed its beginning
THE STATE 53
to sin. None the less is it God s judgment as a punish
ment and must be borne.
In the earlier chapters of the Fourth Book Augustine
decides on the whole against large Empires, though in
one place he seems to admit that Rome acquired hers
justly, on the ground of the iniquity of her enemies.
But he takes the case of the first invader of the ancient
hereditary monarchies, Ninus, as the classical instance
of the foundation of an Empire obtained by force and
fraud ; and he decides that it is no better than a grande
latrocinium. ( De Civitate/ IV. 6.)
To war against one s neighbours and to proceed to the
hurt of such as hurts not you, for greedy desire of rule and
sovereignty, what is this but flat thievery, in a greater
excess and quantity than ordinary ?
A page or two before he relates a story of Alexander the
Great and the pirate, which is of a similar tenor.
Augustine s attitude in regard to slavery, and to
private property in the sense of absolute dominion, is
nothing new, although the lesson has not yet been learnt
by the world. May it not be said that one of the things
that men have been slowly learning is that rights of
property are not absolute, and that they must give
way to the public welfare? This sense of property, as
of absolute dominion* has dominated modern Europe
through the Roman Civil Law. Yet the other sense
lies behind the Civil Law. It is the presupposition
of Jurists like Ulpian and the Stoics. Their teaching
pointed ultimately to the end of chattel slavery. It
may point in the same direction in regard to extreme
rights of private ownership. The moment you say
that ownership is the creation of the law, you imply
the power of revising it. 1 The idea that something else,
common ownership, is natural, and that legal division
is conventional, runs throughout history. Augustine
argues that the source of right must either be divine
54 THE CITY OF GOD
constitution or human. Since we hold our property by
the law of the State, we must hold to the State s laws.
He does not wish to upset them. This, he says, in reply
to the Donatists, in a letter to Vincentius ( Epist.,
xciii. 12) :
J* Since every earthly possession can be rightly retained
only on the ground either of Divine Right, according to
which all things belong to the righteous, or of human right,
which is in the jurisdiction of the Kings of the Earth, you
are mistaken in calling those things yours which you do
not possess as righteous persons, and which you have for
feited by the laws of earthly sovereigns.
According to Sommerlad, 3 Augustine set out to develop
a theory of Church and State ; but what as a fact he
did was to lay down an industrial and economic pro
gramme for the Middle Ages. I cannot think either
of these statements to be well-grounded. The last
thing that he set out to do was to give a theory of the
relations of the Church and State. Most of the more
important errors in the interpretation of the De Civitate
have their origin in this notion. With regard to the
second point, in the De Opere Monachorum he argues
strongly for the need of manual labour in bodies of
religious. 4 He will not have it that study and reciting
the Divine Office are enough. That dictum may have
helped to determine the character of Western monas-
ticism. It may have inspired the Benedictine ideal.
In so far, it helped to create an important element in
mediaeval civilisation. But it is surely a wild imagina
tion to suggest that Augustine anywhere laid down a
programme on socialistic lines for the Middle Ages ;
that that programme was for some centuries adopted,
and was discarded at the Renaissance with the rise of
modern capitalism. 5
On the first point, Augustine said a great deal which
has a bearing on Church and State as polities, and on
THE STATE 55
their relations. Most of what he said could be used
irTmore ways than one. In this and the following
lecture I shall try to disentangle what he meant himself,
and then in the last two to see what later times have
made of the Civitas Dei.
Once more let us recall the general aim of the book
an apology for the Church. That purpose does not
cease with Book X. We can see this by the analysis of
the last twelve books, how right down to the end he
lays preponderant stress on the evidence for the faith
in history and miracle.
Further, the Church which Augustine was defending
was now in enjoyment not merely of peace, but of im
perial patronage. The peace of the Church was a century
old when he began the book. The era of Julian was
over. The Council of Constantinople had achieved the
victory of Catholicism in the Empire. Theodosius
had stamped Christianity upon the legal system. Doubt
less the penetration was not so deep as it became later
in the work of Justinian. Still it was the one officially
supported religion. Such was not the time for an
intransigent history of the rights of the Church, or for
a nullification of the State. The occasion itself of the
book shows this. Augustine had to argue that the
legal prohibition of sacrifice was not a calamity. Was
it likely that at such a moment he would assert that the
State was a thing in essence evil ? Yet that he is accused
of doing. Ritschl, who followed Dorner, asserts that
Augustine regarded civil government as such as being
the organisation of sin. 6 Eicken, a very recent writer,
says that with the peace of the Church, the Church
showed itself more hostile to the State than in the days of
persecution. 7 The Council of Nicea with its golden throne
for the Emperor (as yet unbaptised) is an odd phenomenon ,
if that be so. But since this doctrine is set out in all
earnestness by some of the most learned and acute minds,
it must be rigidly examined before we are to reject it.
i
56 THE CITY OF GOD
Can we then interpret the De Civitate Dei as
teaching that civil society is wrong in itself ? Doubt
less it teaches, as any Christian book would teach, that
all earthly activities have their value only in the service
of God. Human life, including the State, has no value
save as a preparation. The heavenly home is the
goal. Few thoughtful Platonists would say less. If
Augustine means no more than that earthly activities
have a purely relative and provisional value, as compared
with the enduring realities of the immortal life, we ought
to beware of attributing to him any violently anti-
political doctrine. The problem is no easy one. Augus
tine is too great to be always consistent. Still let us
bear in mind this. Not only here but in his other works
Augustine repeatedly quotes with approval the Apostolic
injunctions about submission to the powers that be.
He declares the Government of Nero to be God s ordi
nance, and goes out of his way to say so. He is emphatic
on the duty of rendering to Caesar what belongs to
him. He is always full of the glory of Rome, and is
imbued with the value of social union and family life.
Beyond all this he is opposed to the Donatists.
Reuter is right when he says that we cannot arrive
at Augustine s political views they never amount to a
theory from reading or studying the De Civitate Dei
by itself. 8 We must study the treatises written against
the Donatists ; also his letters and sermons and some
of the minor works. Now it was the Donatists, not the
Catholics, who adhered to the old Christian attitude of
the days of persecution that typified by the Apocalypse,
in which is pictured a death struggle between the Im
perial power and the Christian Church. 9 Yet in the
Apocalypse we note that it is the Emperor as an object
of worship that is condemned never the idea of State
authority. Much of S. Augustine s energies were occu
pied in combating trfe Donatists. Rather reluctantly
he came to the conclusion that it was right to employ
\
Iten
THE STATE 57
against them the forces of the civil government. He
had thought differently in the days of his controversy
with the Manichaeans. Now that this policy won success,
he gave rather reluctantly his adhesion to the views of his
episcopal colleagues. Was it likely that, writing just
after this, Augustine should turn round and condemn the
State and all its works ? It was the Donatists who claimed
entire freedom from civil obligations. They were,
in modern phrase, absolutists/ To them the State is
an institution so profane as to be practically diabolical.
That was the cry which Augustine had to rrfeeF. We
can see how he met it in his reply to Petilian (II. 92).
Petilian asks, What have you to do with kings who
have never shown anything but envy to Christianity ?
Augustine replies at length. The most important passage
is in c. 210. In this he says that kings must serve God
as kings : for no man as a private individual could
command that idols should be taken from the earth.
But that when we take into consideration the social
condition of the human race, we find that kings, in the
very fact that they are kings, have a service which they
can render to our Lord in a manner which is impossible
for any who have not the power of kings. This is
assuredly to admit the sacred office of a king as represen
tative of the State.
There is another letter (Ad Marcellinum, 138, c. 15),
one written to meet the charge of the pagans that Chris
tianity was a civic peril, which affords even stronger
evidence. After denying that Christianity condemns
wars of every kind, he goes on :
Let those who say that the doctrine of Christ is incom
patible with the State s well-being, give us an army com
posed of soldiers such as the doctrine of Christ requires
them to be ; let them give us such subjects, such husbands
and wives, such parents and children, such masters and
servants, such kings, such judges in fine, even such tax
payers and tax-gatherers as the Christian religion has
5 8 THE CITY OF GOD
taught that men should be, and then let them dare to say /
that it is adverse to the State s well-being ; yet rather let j
them no longer hesitate to confess that this doctrine, if it
were obeyed, would be the salvation of every commonwealth.
He points out that some form of State is needful to
the worst tyrant and that the State is a natural and
therefore a Divine necessity.
Still, there is evidence which tells the other way. First
of all there is the main gist of the book this is to depress
the Civitas tenena. Of that there is no doubt ; and if the
Civitas terrena is to be identified with the civil State, as
such, cadit quaestio. But the Civitas terrena is above all
the society of the reprobate, a union largely unconscious
and no less invisible than the invisible body of the elect.
Only in so far as this society is represented by the State
does it come in for condemnation. What is condemned
is the World in Creighton s definition of it : human
society organising itself apart from God/
Then there is to be taken into account the remarkable
passage, or couple of passages, in which Augustine con
demns Imperialism (III. 10 and IV. 3, 15). At the most,
however, this view only condemns great Empires. It
does not depreciate, it rather exalts, the Commonwealth.
Augustine sees how greatly the lust of power goes to the
making of most great Empires. Rome he thinks had
justice on its side. He dislikes the tyranny of strong
nations over weak. He hazards the conjecture that the
world would be most happily governed if it consisted,
not of a few great aggregations secured by wars of
conquest, with their accompaniments of despotism and
tyrannic rule, but of a society of small States living together
in amity, not transgressing each other s limits, unbroken
by jealousies. In other words, he favoured a League
of Nations a condition, as he put it, in which there
should be as many States in the world as there are families
in a city. Still it is an organised State that he wants.
There must be a union of families to create the city,
THE STATE 59
and a union of associated governments, only no imperial
power. Here is doctrine, not only social, but eminently
political.
In another passage he contemplates a condition in
which compulsion will not be needed. There will be
no more necessity for it than in a well-governed family.
It is always on the analogy of the family that he thinks.
But this is not to do away with law and government.
Against the view that law is the expression of force,
and no more, he sets out his doctrine that law has its
true origin in consent.
On this point Vives makes a comment which is
worth quoting (X. 4) :
Oh, what a few laws might serve man s life, how
small a thing might serve to rule not a true Christian, but
a true man. Indeed he is no true man that knoweth not
and worshippeth not Christ. What serveth all these Digests,
Codes, Glosses, Counsels and Cautels ? In how few words
doth our great Master show every man his due course.
Love then Him which is above as well as thou canst, and
that which is next thee like thyself, which doing thou keepest
all the lawes and hast them perfect, which others attain
with such toil, and scarcely keep with so many invitations
and terrors. Thou shalt then be greater than Plato or
Pythagoras with all their travels and numbers, than Aristotle
with all his quirks and syllogisms.
We may compare also a later passage of Vives on
XIV. 28 : "
With how excellent a breviate hath he drawn the great
discourses of a good commonweal, namely that the rulers
thereof do not compel or command, but, standing aloft like
sentinels, only give warnings and counsels ; thence were
Rome s old magistrates called consuls, and that the subjects
do not refuse or resist, but obey with alacrity.
Most, however, turns on another argument
Augustine s discussion of Cicero s definition of a State,
60 THE CITY OF GOD
given in the De Republica. Cicero there makes
Scipio define a republic as res populi. Populus, how
ever, must be explained. The words must be cited :
Populum autem non omnem coetum multitudinis sed
coetum juris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatum
esse determinat (II. 21). In discussing this he fixes on
the word juris , and so makes justice to be of the essence
of a State. This leads on to the famous tag remota
justitia quid regna nisi magna latrocinia. But Augustine
does not allow himself to be balked by this. He argues
that there is some kind of commonwealth even in a
robber band. 10 They are bound by the social contract
among themselves. There must be rules for the division
of the spoil. In other words, there must be within them
a relative and internal justice, even though in regard
to the world at large they are outlaws. In other words,
any association, if permanent, must have within it the
nature of a State or part of it. He points out that Rome
according to the description of Sallust had ceased to
be a republic owing to the growth of corruption in morals.
This would be true of many other States. (This argu
ment is somewhat akin to the notion of Locke, that a
State ceases ipso facto, if the principles of the original
contracts are violated.)
Then later on (II. 21) he goes on to argue that if
justice in the absolute sense be a sine qua non of a true
commonwealth, then neither Rome nor any other pagan
State was one. For you cannot have justice where
the true God is not worshipped, and the only true
commonwealth would be that wherein Christ is King. 11
In XIX. 20 and 21 he says much the same. If this were
all, it might be held to be decisive, i.e. to prove that
Augustine condemns the State, though he does not
really make the Church a State even here. Even
here I do not see that there would be anything more
than religious toleration required for the condition to
be fulfilled, i.e. the position would be that of the Roman
THE STATE 61
Empire after the peace of the Church in the time of
Cohstantine. Perhaps, however, Augustine s doctrine
assimilating the State to an individual might be held
by implication to preclude toleration.
Augustine does not stop here, although some of his
interpreters, alike critics and disciples, have done so.
He sees that either you must give the name State to
Rome in all its changes, to the Greek republics and to
the world-monarchies, or else you must find some other
term that will enable you to classify them. Something
must be wrong with Cicero s definition (or else with the
Augustinian notion of justice) unless it can be applied
to such societies as these. So he proceeds to give a
definition of his own from which the word justice is
excluded. 12
Populus est coetus multitudinis rationalis, rerum
quae diligit concordi communione sociatus.
This, he says, will include Rome, Babylon, or any
other settled State. The really governing word here
is concordi. It is some kind of consent and harmony
that is necessary. 13 In an earlier passage he had adum
brated this, and said that this definition, as he would
show, was probabilior. Augustine is like any modern
who might argue, that the State, in the nature of things,
is democratic, because democracy involves the recognition
of human personality. That is a fact, which no legal
system can make not to be a fact, merely by the process
of denying it. You may lay down, for instance, that
a slave is not a person, but a chattel, a thing. That
does not make him one. He is a person. Your legal
system is false to fact if it denies that. But the modern,
who said that, would be unwise if he were to deny the
name of State to governments which so acted. He could
say if he liked that they were no true States. He could
not say that they were not States.
The moment you come to consider such a term as
State/ you are tempted to put into its definition a
62 THE CITY OF GOD
description of its ideal form, so that a State comes to
mean the perfect State. Thereupon, anything, that
falls short of that, is outside the definition. According
to Locke s definition, I believe that the English State
must have disappeared with almost every parliament
since 1832, because laws were passed interfering with
the individualist basis. According to an opposite
definition of sovereignty, that of Austin, it is at least
plausible to say that there is no such thing, and never
has been, as a true law in the United States of America.*
Augustine s use of Cicero s definition, and his enlarge
ment of the notion of justice so as to include true religion,
must be treated in the same way.
That love to one s neighbour and to oneself (Augustine
is no pure altruist), grounded on a love of God, are the
greatest bonds of union among men must be the view
of any Christian. So it is arguable that the Golden
Rule is the foundation of political righteousness, and
that the Golden Rule cannot be maintained apart from
belief in God.
Meanwhile the world is very evil. So long as the
heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone
we must have a number of communities that fall short
of this ideal. They cannot be wholly without justice,
or there would be no society at all, as Augustine most
pertinently said even in regard to the robber bands.
The good at which such societies aim earthly peace
and security is a real good and no sham. 14 It is not
to be despised or disturbed, but is to be used by the
Civitas Dei. So far is it from being true to say that
Augustine destroys civil authority, that it would be
fairer to say that he is like Luther. For Luther said,
on the one hand, that civil government is due to the
* I do not say more than plausible, because the body which has
power to change the constitution would be the Austinian sovereign.
But there are two ways in the U.S.A. of altering the constitution.
Which makes the sovereign ?
THE STATE 63
Fall, but (that being granted) it is a divine ordinance ;
and on the other, that earthly peace and security are
of such high value that no amount of civil tyranny
can justify insurrection. I doubt whether S. Augustine
could have agreed with Origen that associations of
men against unjust laws are to be approved, just as
we all approve associations of men to execute a tyrant
who sets himself against the liberties of a State/ He
must have agreed with the first proposition in so far as
it refers to Christians in a pagan State. 15 But I question
if he could have supported the second. So far indeed
is Augustine from saying that injustice destroys the
being of a commonwealth, that he uses the admitted
injustice and corruption of Rome in the later days
of the Republic as a reductio ad absurdum of Scipio s
definition.
Observe, once more, that Augustine declared that
his definition of a State was more probable than that
of Scipio. His sense of reality led him to prefer a
definition which would include all existing and historical
communities, and hamper him as little as possible by
an abstract ideal.
What is morally right for a nation to do is one thing.
It is another thing to say, that if it fails to do it, then it
ceases to be a nation. You can be human without being
humane. The whole discussion is akin to that way of
speaking which judges humanity, not by what it is, but
by what it should be, in the developed notion of humanitas.
It is not wise to say, even of our worst enemies, that
they are not human only that they act in a way that
is a disgrace to the human race. The worst of men is
a man for a that/
Augustine s second definition goes back beyond Plato.
It is paralleled by our modern distinction between law
and (moral) right. What is not just is not law, said
Algernon Sidney. This saying goes back through
Bellarmine to S. Thomas, and through S. Thomas to
64 THE CITY OF GOD
S. Augustine and further to Ulpian and the Stoics
with the definition jus est ars aequi et boni. We do not
now talk like Algernon Sidney. We prefer to say that
laws may often be unjust, but that they are still laws.
We have been led to develop another plan, which is
true to the facts of organised government, and there
fore distinguishes law sharply from moral right. All
,of us are familiar with the notion that law is a universal
command of the governing element in a community,
although it may be oppressive, immoral and irreligious.
Augustine did not go so far as this, but he realised the
distinction which exists between a State permeated
by justice, and a despotism or democracy which is still
a State, though far removed from justice. He saw that
State, reduced to its lowest terms, might be a people
whose manners are none and their customs beastly
associated for bad ends, yet still a State, because keeping
internal peace. Our distinction between legal and
moral right can be derived out of this definition which
allows to the community the full rights of a common
wealth, irrespective of its moral character.
On what grounds the importance of this passage is
denied I fail to understand. It was well enough for
mediaeval writers to take the other side only and argue
from it. Professedly they were trying to conduct the
State as a society of baptised persons. It is less compre
hensible how writers in our modern world should try
to tie S. Augustine down by his own severe interpretation
of Scipio s definition, an interpretation which he develops
only in order to pass to a different definition. So far
is S. Augustine from giving a clericalist definition of the
State, that he definitely discards it, and shows us that
he does so with intention, and gives his grounds. It
is contrary to the facts of life. 16
Observe that we are discussing, not what S. Augustine
ought to have meant, on a view of a certain section of
his words, nor what those living in a different age might
THE STATE 65
get out of his language, nor even what historically was
the outcome of it, but simply what was the picture of
the State that Augustine had in his own mind. The
question is not what he has come to mean for others,
but what he did mean himself.
We must do what we have to do in regard to any
thinker, viz. get behind his words and stated theories,
and see what were the half-conscious presuppositions
of his thought. Did Augustine represent to himself
that civil society is a bad thing ? Is it not truer to say
that he regarded it as natural although often perverted
by evil wills ? He is always arguing that every nature,
even that of the devil, is good as nature, but that the
will to use it aright has been changed by experience.
The two societies, the terrene and the divine, are made
by the two loves, the love of God and the love of self
apart from God. With all actual States, the latter
had much to do. Romulus, like Cain, killed his brother.
Historically, wrongdoing has much to say in politics.
Does anyone reading the newspapers deny this ? In
practice a State may have often been ruled by the law
of the beasts described by Machiavelli but only
partly is this so, or else the idea of justice could never
have arisen. Nowhere, however, does he assert that
human society is a bad thing. One of his most eloquent
passages describes its value. Things being what they
are, wars even may be just. Augustine is no pacifist.
Wars are the result of the will to power, and are evil.
Yet in the actual world they may be the less of two
evils. Our Lord condemns not the act of defence but
the animus of revenge. The earlier wars of Rome were
acts of defence as against criminal attacks. Her Empire
was a reward of relative virtue. All governments are
the will of God. Christianity, he claims, will mitigate
even war. He looks to the development of moral limita
tion on war, under definitely Christian ideals. He
quotes Cicero, and dilates (in the Confessions/ iii. 8)
66 THE CITY OF GOD
upon the generate pactum humanae societatis obedire
regibus, and is frequent in his references to the duty
of obedience to civil governors as laid down by S. Paul
and S. Peter. Nor does he interpret this in the
hierarchical sense a thing which was frequently done
in the Middle Ages.
How then is he to be treated as hostile to the State ?
Felix Dahn wrote that the doctrine of S. Augustine was
logically false, morally diseased, politically corrupt and
incompatible with duties to the State. 17 Yet Augustine
in his tractate De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, I. xxx.,
has a fine passage on the effects of the love of God and
our neighbour in teaching every kind of civic duty :
Tu pueriliter pueros, fortiter juvenes, quiete senes,
prout cuj usque non corporis tantum, sed et animi aetas
est, exerces ac doces. . . .
Tu cives civibus, gentes gentibus, et prorsus homines
primorum parentum recordatione, non societate tantum, sed
quadam etiam fraternitate conjungis. Doces reges pros-
picere populis, mones populos se subdere regibus.
He did not, as I said earlier, set out to produce a
theory of the State. There is no discussion about the
merits of the various forms of government, though there
is the classical passage known as the Mirror of Princes
describing the attributes of a good king. The one
purely political passage is that which I discussed earlier
in the argument for a family of small States, living in
amity, with its corollary the condemnation of imperialism.
His strongest word is that passage (II. 21) in which
he says, that, in the strictest view of justice, you could
have only one real kingdom, that in which Christ is
King. That, however, is little more than the sentiment
of almost any Christian ; that the best commonwealth
would be composed of the people who accepted the
best principles. It can hardly be said even to involve
a hierarchical control. At any rate he says it, not in
THE STATE 67
order to deny the rights of a commonwealth to other
bodies but to assert the need of a different classification.
Still this passage would undoubtedly stimulate (as it
did) the hierarchical interpretation of his doctrine. But
it really illustrates the thesis of Mausbach and Seidel, 18
that Augustine did not deny the goods of human life,
but sought to raise them to a higher power. That may
be taken as one side. That there is another, the purely
other-worldly, which treats as null all earthly activities
including the State, is not to be denied on any fair
reading. 19 The world-renouncing and the world-
accepting temper both meet in S. Augustine, as they
do in the Christian Church and its most eminent repre
sentatives, S. Paul, S. Anselm, S. Francis de Sales,
Fenelon, Newman. It must be this latter element
which gives Reuter the ground to state that for Augustine
the only true State is a monastic community, and that
all the rest are condemned ; though I do not know what
real evidence there is of this statement. The former
is that which can justify Mausbach 20 in saying that
nothing that we call kultur is recognised by S.
Augustine. All this, however, can only be fully dis
cussed if we consider the place in his system of the
Christian Church. That must be taken next time.
IV
THE CHURCH
WHAT then is S. Augustine s view of the place of the
Church in relation to civil society ? This is part of
the topic of the last lecture. Only to-day we look at
the matter from a different angle. Here too, a caveat
must be entered. We must beware of treating anything
said of the Civitas Dei as though it could be applied to
the existing ecclesiastical system. Much of it can. Yet
the Civitas Dei in its strict sense is not the Visible Church.
It is the communio sanctorum, the body of the elect,
many of whom are to be found in pre-Christian times or
in heathen peoples while from this body many among
the baptised will be excluded. 1 This communio sanctorum
is the true recipient of the promises to David and of
the gifts of eternal peace and beatitude, those promises
which Augustine sets forth with moving eloquence in
Book XX. The Visible Militant Church is never more
than a part of either nor does it ever attain. Its peace
and beatitude are in hope. It is always in via. It is but the
symbolic and inadequate representative of the Civitas
Dei, but it uses the peace provided by the earthly State. 2
Still we must beware of laying too much stress on
this. Reuter overstrains it. Augustine, it appears to
be proved, is the first of the fathers to declare that the
Church is the Kingdom of God on earth. The most
important of the passages is that in XX. 9. There Augus
tine is arguing for the identification of the Church with
the millennial kingdom (as against the Chiliasts) and for
THE CHURCH 69
the rulers of the Church sitting on thrones. He says
explicitly :
Ergo ecclesia et nunc est regnum Christi regnumque
caelorum. 3
Other passages also state this identification of the
Church with the Civitas Dei. Reuter will have it that
all these are to be understood of the Church only as
communio sanctorum* Therefore we must rule out
every inference that might be drawn from the application
of the idea of the Kingdom to the actual Church Militant.
This interpretation cannot be proved. There is little
doubt, from the context, that Augustine was thinking,
as Scholz and Seidel say, of the Church as a visible,
comprehensible body, hierarchically organised.
Dr. Cunningham s Hulsean Lectures afford us an
instance of the opposite view (p. 116).
For S. Austin the Kingdom of God was not a mere
hope, but a present reality ; not a mere name for a divine
idea, but an institution, duly organised among men, sub
sisting from one generation to another ; closely inter-connected
with earthly rule, with definite guidance to give, and a
definite part to take, in all the affairs of actual life. To
him the Kingdom of God was an actual Polity, just as the
Roman Empire was a Polity too ; it was " visible " in just the
same way in the earthly State, for it was a real institution
with a definite organisation, with a recognised constitution,
with a code of laws and means of enforcing them, with
property for its uses and officers to direct it.
Here then are the two opposing views. I take another
point. Both Reuter and Troeltsch argue that while
Augustine accepted the authority of the Church and had
no wish to change it they were the presuppositions of
his life as a Christian yet he meant little by them :
that his emphasis upon predestination makes against
any high view of ecclesiastical order. Repeatedly in
70 THE CITY OF GOD
his writings, e.g. in the De Catechizandis Rudibus/
Augustine lays stress on the fact that the elect will include
men of all nations and every age. At the beginning of
the De Civitate he declares that the Civitas Dei began
with the beginning of the world. Reuter (who is a
Protestant) goes so far as to say, that of all early
Catholic writers hardly any is so little hierarchically
minded as Augustine. It is true that Augustine takes
little interest in hierarchical topics. Never, so far as I
know, does he develop the theory of the episcopate in
the way in which S. Cyprian did. When he thinks of
the Church, it is of the whole body of the faithful. It is
the bigness of it that appeals to him, and to which he
appeals. Whatever his views in favour of small States,
in regard to the Church he is imperialist enough ; he is
opposed to all particularism. It is to this sense of uni
versality, rather than to that of the episcopate, that he
appeals. Still, it is of the Church as an organised body,
hierarchically governed, that he thinks in his controversy
with the Donatists. His strong views of the predes
tination of individuals no more upset his scheme of a
visible Church than did those of Calvin. Calvin threw
over the ancient system, and rejected both the Papacy
and the Episcopacy ; but no less strongly than S. Augus
tine did he hold to a doctrine of a Visible Church and
its authority. So did the Jansenists. It seems little
short of ridiculous to deny that the notion of the Church
loomed large to Augustine s imagination, much larger
than it did to that of Origen and the earlier apologists ;
or that, along with the doctrine of original sin, it was
the pivot of his system. 5 It had been to the Catholic
Church that he had been converted after trying many
experiments.
Rightly has it been pointed out by Schmidt 6 and
Weinand 7 that it was the Donatist schism that aroused
the Church as a society to full self-consciousness. All
the earlier heresies concerned high doctrine. Certain
THE CHURCH 71
statements about our Lord or the Trinity were, or were
alleged to be, false. In opposition to them, the Church
is primarily a teacher. But the Donatists were not
heretics in the ordinary sense. Or rather their heresy
was on the topic of the Church. Augustine was faced
with (a) a doctrine of the sacraments which reduced
religion to personal influence and is, in our modern
phrase, radically Protestant ; and (b) with the claim
of the Donatist schism to be the true Church of Africa.
Against these claims he was forced to develop the idea
of the Church as being something more than a company
of believers, as the sphere of God s work, the Civitas Dei ;
and of the sacraments as God s work done by human
agents, the character of whom no more affected their
validity than does that of an officer in the army the
validity of his orders. Further, the Church as a uni
versal world-wide polity is opposed to all particularist,
nationalist tendencies. In the early years of the fifth
century it looked as though Donatism was to be the
national religion of Africa. This contest was a conflict
between Catholicity in its very idea, and conceptions
which were its antithesis.
These ideas of S. Augustine need not have been new.
It is not their novelty which makes the difference, but
the emphasis with which they are stressed. Further,
the term Civitas Dei is itself significant. This is not
new. It can be seen in the New Testament, in Hebrews,
and the Apocalypse. The vogue given to these words
now caused more and more assimilation of the Church
to a State. All the qualifications were left out of account.
This process led to a political habit of treating the Church.
By the mere use of the terms civitas and regnum in a
work of such momentous influence, Augustine prepared
the way for the later development of the doctrine that the
Church is a societas perfecta, and must have the powers
necessary to any self-sufficing community. The con
ception of the Church as a social entity wielding
72 THE CITY OF GOD
governing powers owes much to S. Augustine. He did
much to strengthen the Church as an imperial force.
If we take two nineteenth-century writers, one in
the East and one in the West, who thought much about
the Church, Khomiakoff and Newman, what a wide
gulf there is between them ! Newman s sermons, in
the volume of the famous fifteen on the Church as an
imperial power, show how far the West has gone in this
political way of thinking about the Church. Augustine
may be said to have been one of the great forces which
began this development. Meanwhile the East remained
as it had been, preserving the view that the laity form a
real part of the organisation.
Ritschl thought that Augustine s emphasis on the
Church was the necessary corollary of the doctrine of
original sin the setting up of the society of grace. I
cannot see this. Grace might be conceived as acting
merely on the individual ; and all importance be denied
to the Church. Some even have based such a doctrine
on S. Augustine.
But he did think that the Church, the Visible Church,
recruited by baptism, nourished by sacraments, governed
by bishops, was the one true family of God ; and that
Christianity meant belonging to that family. The
actual expression extra ecclesiam nulla salus is not his.
But the principle he definitely states. When you add
to this the view that the Church was the regnum Dei,
and that the millennial kingdom of Christ was exercised
by the rulers of the Church, you can see how much
was latent in S. Augustine of the political aspect of
Christianity.
More momentous is Augustine s treatment of the
Church as the apocalyptic kingdom. This doctrine he
develops against the Chiliasts, scouting their notion of
an earthly physical reign of our Lord visible on earth.
The opposing party was important at that time, and
some alternative interpretation of the biblical passages
THE CHURCH 73
was needed. Augustine seems to have taken the doctrine
from Tyconius. This Tyconius was a Donatist with
whom Augustine stood on friendly terms. Moreover,
he had quarrelled with those of the more extreme
tendencies. Augustine indeed wonders why he did not
become a Catholic. In the Rules of Tyconius we have
found (as I said earlier) Augustine s doctrine of the two
Cities, and the conception of the bipartite character
of the City of God, i.e. consisting of the elect and the
foredoomed. Above all, Augustine s interpretation of
the Apocalypse is found to be derived from Tyconius,
who wrote a treatise on the Apocalypse, which now
has been lost, but has been partly restored by
conjecture.
The point of this exposition is that the millennial
kingdom is already in existence. It is a reign, therefore,
that does not involve the physical presence of Christ.
In other words, the Second Coming is the Church. The
First Resurrection has already taken place in the con
version of sinners and in their baptism. It is a spiritual
act, not a physical resurrection. In his interpretation
of Scripture Augustine oscillates between extreme literal
ism and a remarkable freedom. The martyrs are those
who reign with Christ. The thrones belong to the rulers
of the Church. This kingdom has been in existence
ever since Christianity spread beyond Judaea. It has
nothing to do with the peace of the Church and the
cessation of persecution, still less with the legal estab
lishment of Christianity. Neither persecution nor any
other earthly act affects this.
The ground for rejecting Chiliasm is that it postulates
an absence of earthly trials in this life a thing which
Augustine declares to be no less impossible for saints
than anyone else : and for that reason the promises that
there shall be no more sorrow nor crying can apply only to
the Church Triumphant. Now this argument cuts two
ways. If the Church be the Kingdom of God, it may,
74 THE CITY OF GOD
it is held, justify claims to paramount supremacy, and
lead to a great Church- State. A more natural inter
pretation points the other way. If Christ has been
reigning on earth, through the Church, ever since the
days of Antioch, then he was reigning all through the
period of persecution. Therefore for the Church to
exercise any political supremacy, or even secure any
recognition of its existence, are shown to be things
indifferent. The royalty of the Church, the peculiar
people, the holy nation, the royal priesthood/ the power
on earth of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, is of
the same nature as that of which Christ spoke when
He answered Pilate s satirical question Art thou a
King then ? with My Kingdom is not of this world.
The Kingdom of God cometh not by observation, and
its authority is in the souls of men, not in any outward
political structure. It was regal in her days of security,
regal when she was a distinct society in the second century,
regal when she was assailed by the whole might of Rome
under Diocletian, regal when having conquered by
stooping she enjoyed a guaranteed security, regal when
under Julian that security was threatened once more,
or when under Arians, like Constantius or Valens, it
was undermined from within, regal no more and no less
than it had been previously now that after the laws of
Gratian and Theodosius she had become not merely
tolerated but established, not merely established but
the exclusive official religion of the Empire.
The Church is a kingdom not of this world. Augustine
goes out of his way to say that kings and princes cannot
make the City of God, which comes by the calling of souls.
Once more it must be said that Augustine was not think
ing how to build Jerusalem in Afric s bright and sunny
land, but how to wean men from crying " peace,
peace " when there was no peace/ from seeking in any
earthly refuge that abiding home which remaineth for
the people of God. Richard Baxter s great book, The
THE CHURCH 75
Saints* Everlasting Rest/ reflects the aim and many of
the ideas of S. Augustine or the famous pcem of Bernard
of Murles, from which is taken the hymn Jerusalem the
Golden. This non-political interpretation of the sym
bolic kingdom is seen to be that which is in accordance
with the mind of S. Augustine, if we take the book as a
whole. It is what he meant to mean ; whether it is
always what his words did mean, is another question.
But evidence that tells on the other side is not to
be neglected. First, it is obviously possible to put a
clericalist interpretation upon the passages about justice.
Next, it must be remembered that he speaks of the good
that has been done to the Church by Christian kings.
In reply to Petilian he says that he does not give
unreserved trust to the State, but makes use of it. He
admits the change which had come over the Empire
since Constantine. He says that, since ruling is the
metier of princes, they, if they come over to the Church,
must forward her interests by laws in her favour. In
other places he speaks of the duty of the civil governor
to do what the Church requires in her interests. Now
one commentator thinks that all this amounts to not
much less than the comparison of Church and State
to sun and moon, which was first found, I think, in
Hildebrand, 8 and became so dear to the Middle Ages.
But I confess that I can see nothing here that in any
sense ap preaches to the doctrine of the two swords, or
even to the famous argument of Gelasius.
The Church was not yet in a condition even of parity
with the civil power. Augustine does not think of the
civil and ecclesiastical authorities as two co-ordinate
powers occupied in governing. Even in dream he had
not the great vision of mediaeval imagination, the one
commonwealth of Catholic Christians, with its twin
heads of Pope and Emperor ; though he does say that
there is one respublica of all Christians. It is doubtful
whether he hoped to convert the heathen by force,
76 THE CITY OF GOD
though he asks the Donatists whether they did not
agree with him in approving the imperial laws against
heathen sacrifice. Augustine appeals to the unity of
the Church, the Civitas Dei alike in morals and thought,
and sets this against the intellectual and moral anarchy
of the terrene State ; yet he is not at that moment
thinking of an imperial Christ-state, but pointing to
actual phenomena as a modern Roman Catholic in
England or the United States might do. Yet it is not
doubtful that it was possible in later times, and indeed
natural, to press all this into the service of the hierarch
ical organisation of the world.
Most of Augustine s writing is not in the tone of a
ruling Church, but rather of a body officially predominant,
though everywhere attacked. His attitude to Count
Boniface is not like that of the mediaeval popes.
It is the other world with which he is concerned.
He might have called his book The Gospel of the
Resurrection/ The De Civitate Dei is chargeable
with whatever plaints can be made against a tendency
to other-world lines. The strongest passage on this
point is not to be found there, but in the De Bono
Conjugali/ Answering the objection that if his views
were correct, and if enough people became converted
to the celibate life, the world could not go on being
peopled, for no children would be born, he replies :
That would be a blessing. It would mean that the
number of the elect would be filled up, and the kingdom
of God accomplished in the language of our Burial
Service. This presumably alludes to the theory that
the world need only go on until the number of elect
required to fill up the vacancies caused by the falling
of the angels had been made up. That was the object
of the creation to fill up the gaps in heaven. The rest
do not matter. God would not keep the factory of
the world running for the sake of the waste-products.
You may fairly urge against S. Augustine the kind of
THE CHURCH 77
reproaches that figure in the Pagan s Lament in
Swinburne s poem :
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean, and the world has
grown grey with Thy breath ;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the kisses
of death.
But it is a different charge to make him * the only
begetter of the Bull, Unam sanctam.
That is not to deny that there are weighty considera
tions in favour of such a view. Were there not, we could
never have such strong words as those of Kattenbusch,
who speaks of him as the Father of the Papacy. Geirke
holds that the logical development of the Augustinian
doctrine involves the complete subjection of the State
to the Church. 9 Similar are the views of Dorner,
Schmidt, Eicken and many more. 10 Their views are
stronger evidence of what Augustine meant, than is the
constant use that was made of him by mediaeval thinkers.
The mediaeval habit of taking tags as text-proofs, apart
from the general purpose of the writer, discounts their
value as evidence. Besides this there was an immediate
polemical interest at stake.
For this purpose we must go further. The De
Civitate Dei needs for its interpretation the writings
against the Donatists. In that conflict Augustine was led
to accept the assistance of the civil power. So far as
I can make out, he was never very happy about this
proceeding, and felt that it needed apology. Partly,
this feeling was due to the fact that his action indicated
a definite change of mind. In early days, and in regard
to the controversy with the Manichaeans, Augustine had
forgone all such things, and argued in favour of free
dom of opinion. This was a change, and one which he
had to explain. So far as the Donatists were concerned,
he had an easy task. From them indeed any objection
to the employment of force was little short of an imper-
7 8 THE CITY OF GOD
tinence. They had themselves appealed to the civil
power. Only when the appeal was rejected had they
turned round and cried hands off to the State. Besides
the violence of the Circumcellions, if not precisely
authorised, was largely used by them. Much of what
was done on the side of the Church was only an attempt,
often ineffectual, to secure that the peace should be
kept. This attempt had been largely frustrated through
the intimacy between Optatus and the Count Gildo.
Augustine did not confine his defence to these limits.
He produced a definite argument in favour of force in
religious matters. Most of it he bases on the verse
Compel them to come in/ He does not want opinion
forced. He thinks that penalty is useful, because it
makes a man reflect, and often give up his view as
erroneous. It is, in fact, educational, and, in his view,
precisely similar to the use of the rod. It is persecution
for the soul s good. Augustine s conception of the office
of the State is largely that of an educator.
Out of this acceptance of persecution it is easy to
develop a theory of civil domination. The State is to
use force. That is its duty. It is to extend the province
of the Kingdom of God on earth. Remember, it is
not, as it was later on, conceived as being the secular
arm of the Church. If the civil Governor is to persecute
heresy, who is to advise him ? He cannot do so on his
own motion. Obviously, the Church, organised through
its governors, will advise him. The moment you accept
persecution as a policy, you tend to a religious tyranny.
The State may still be conceived as having self-identity
of its own as it was in the Presbyterian doctrine of the
two kingdoms. But if it be bound to take orders from
the Church in regard to religious matters, it will not be
long before there will be a claim to direct the State in
regard to any policy that may have a religious, or a
moral, or an ecclesiastical bearing. How much will
be left out ?
THE CHURCH 79
**,
Add to this the inferences that may be drawn from
justice (as Augustine defines it) as being needful to a
perfect commonwealth. If the only true commonwealth
be that in which Christ is King, and if that is to mean
that the worship of God in Christ is not merely to be
allowed, but to be enjoined by law, then you must have
a theocratic State. It depends merely on what form
of organisation the Church has, as to who shall have the
last word. In a democratic system you might have the
whole body of the faithful. In a hierarchical Church
you might have either a General Assembly as in Scot
land, or a General Council of bishops or the Pope. As
we saw last time, that notion of justice is not at all
S. Augustine s own doctrine of the State. But it was
sufficiently near it for men to take it apart from the rest ;
and, together with other indications, to make it serve
the ends of the clericalism of the later Middle Ages.
Even more is this true with regard to the conception
of the Church as the apocalyptic kingdom. If the
Church be, here and now, in enjoyment of its millennial
glory, then the largest terms of supremacy that can be
brought out of the Apocalypse may be interpreted
literally. Its earthly head will be King of Kings and
Lord of Lords.
All these elements together (a) the doctrine of a
religion using the force of a compelle intrare, which must
give to the Church some claim to dictate what shall be
persecuted as heresy ; (b) the doctrine of justice as
necessary to a State, together with S. Augustine s
glosses, leading to a control of all law for spiritual ends ;
(c) the doctrine of the Church as a polity, as the millen
nial Kingdom of Christ, implying a reigning authority
will tend to develop a state of mind which will picture
the Civitas Dei as a christianised Church-State, from which
unbelievers are excluded, and which would claim, directly
or indirectly, the supreme power in that State for the
leaders of the hierarchy. If we add to this the effects of
8o THE CITY OF GOD
the Church s long continuance in a concentration upon
earthly activities, the development of vast adminis
trative machinery, the fact that she became to the
conquering barbarians the symbol and the source of all
culture, we are well on our way to such a conception
of church-power as was represented by Innocent III.
THE DE CIVITATE DEI IN THE MIDDLE AGES
So far we have been trying to find out what S. Augustine
meant to himself. In these two closing lectures I want
to consider what later ages have made of him. This
is not easy. Students, and students alone, have sufficient
data for a judgment concerning the practical influence
of a book. Yet that often makes them bad judges.
Living among books they are apt to over-estimate their
significance. They may attribute to a book results
which are due to many other causes. If we mean by
the influence of the De Civitate Dei that it caused
people to think or to do things which, except for it
they would not have thought or done, the problem of
estimating that influence is hard to solve. As a rule
no single cause is adequate, but many causes combine
to produce a practical result of any historical importance.
Commonly a book, however influential, is never more
than a secondary cause. Rousseau did not produce
the French Revolution, however highly you rate his
influence. That was the consequence of forces that
had been active for a long time. Rousseau may have
lit the match set fire to the powder magazine. He
did not make the powder.
So with the De Civitate Dei. Vast is its influence ;
still we must beware of the negative proposition, that if
it had not been written, the course of mediaeval history
would have been materially different. It might have
been. But it would be hard to prove this.
82 THE CITY OF GOD
There is another way in which the problem is diffi
cult a way in which the problem about the influence
of Voltaire or Rousseau is not difficult. Literally
immeasurable has been the influence of S. Augustine
in moulding the mind of Western Europe. So deeply
has it entered into our life, that it is not possible to
say where his influence begins and where it ends. For
the medieval world he summed up so much of their
heritage from the ancient world he was so large a
conduit-pipe that it is hard to say where the stream
did not penetrate. His characteristic theological doctrine
is so universal and of such immense import in the West,
that it is easy to over-estimate it in comparison with
others.
The problem of Augustine s political or semi-political
influence is a little easier. It is more sharply defined.
Yet even here it is hard to disentangle the threads : or
to be sure that what we see at work is the mind of
S. Augustine, and not other causes. Add to this the
additional difficulty which is created by the mediaeval
habit of citing names and stock quotations merely to
fortify itself, perhaps too with little acquaintance with
a writer s mind.
Perhaps it is safer to say that we are examining the
prevalence of certain ideals, of which S. Augustine was,
or was believed to be, the exponent ; and that therefore
presumably had to do with their prevalence. Even
Troeltsch, who is all for treating S. Augustine as above
everything an ancient, admits his importance for the
future as being the founder of the first great Kultur-
Ethik of Christendom. To-day I shall try and estimate
his influence in the Middle Ages, and in the last lecture
I shall deal with later times. All that can be attempted
is to take certain characteristic illustrations from the
earlier, the middle and the later period.
Einhard was the biographer and son-in-law of Charle
magne. I see no objection to calling him that we need
<DE CIVITATE DEI IN MIDDLE AGES 83
not be haunted by Freeman s ghost. In his personal
description he tells us that Charlemagne was fond of
reading, and more especially was devoted to the books
of S. Augustine s De Civitate Dei. We cannot treat
this statement as being without significance. Doubtless
Charles felt that the portrait of a Christian prince drawn
in the Fifth Book and known as The Mirror of Princes/
was the portrait of the kind of prince he would like to
be ( De Civitate/ V. 24) :
1 The State and Truth of a Christian Emperor s Felicity.
For we Christians do not say that Christian Emperors are
happy because they have a long reign, or die leaving their
sons in quiet possession of their empires, or have been ever
victorious, or powerful against all their opposers. These are
but gifts and solaces of this laborious, joyless life ; idolaters
and such as belong not to God (as these Emperors do) may
enjoy them ; because God in His mercy will not have these
that know Him to believe that such things are the best
goods He gives. But happy they are (say we) if they reign
justly, free from being puffed up with the glossing exalta-
"lionS-rbf their attendance or the cringes of their subjects; if
they know themselves to be but men, and remember that ;
if they make their power their trumpeter, to divulge the
true adoration of God s majesty; if they love, fear and
honour Him ; if they long most for that empire where they
need not fear to have partners ; if they be slack to avenge,
quick to forgive ; if they use correction for the public good,
and not for private hate ; if their pardons promise not
liberty of offending, but indeed only hope of reformation ;
if they counterpoise their enforced acts of severity with the
like weight of bounty and clemency ; if their lusts be the
lesser, because they have the larger licence ; if they desire
to rule their own effects, rather than others estates ; and
if they do all things, not for glory, but for charity, and
with all, and before all, give God the due sacrifice of prayer
for their imperfections ; such Christian emperors we call
happy, here in hope, and hereafter when the time we look
for comes, indeed.
We may go further. Charles would not think of
84 THE CITY OF GOD
himself as head of a Civitas terrena. He need not. He
aimed at a realm in which Christ was King, in which the
true God was worshipped, and none other ; a common
wealth inspired by justice in the strict sense, including
all the theological implications of S. Augustine. That
is to say, the realm of imperial Charlemagne was a
Christian Empire, the City of God on earth. Certainly
Charles did not draw from this any doctrine of the
political power of the Pope rather he deduced the
rights of imperial oversight. We may be sure that he
would not classify his realm under the second definition
of the commonwealth, from which justice and religion
are excluded. How could he ? He had baptised the
Saxons at the point of the sword, and had summoned
the Council of Frankfort. Proud as he may have been
at being the successor of Augustus, he would regard
himself yet more proudly as the successor of Constantine
and Theodosius. Now Augustine (however you interpret
him) never identified the Civitas Dei with any earthly
State. But he had prepared the way for other people
to do this.
The Holy Roman Empire, as it developed, declared
by its first title its claim to be the Civitas Dei on earth
i.e. a true Catholic Commonwealth with two swords
in all governing departments, the secular and the spiritual.
Augustine could say Omnium Christianomm una res-
publica est (XXV. i).
Charlemagne, and still more the great Otto, would
feel that they were undertaking to realise that maxim
in actual life. That is the meaning of the imperial
claim to be Lord of the World/ Lord Bryce declares
that it is hardly too much to say that the Holy Roman
Empire was built upon the foundation of the " De Civitate
Dei. This statement goes too far, if by it we under
stand anything that S. Augustine intended. Further,
it underrates the other-worldly character of S. Augustine s
DE CIVITATE DEI IN MIDDLE AGES 85
own conception of the Civitas Dei. But it is no whit
short of the truth, if we adopt that interpretation of
the De Civitate Dei, and of the chapters upon justice
as essential to a true republic, which I discussed in
Lecture III. Remember too, that this the notion of
the great State of the Middle Ages as the Civitas
Dei has nothing to do with the question whether
Augustine taught a doctrine of hierarchical domination
or no. It is equally compatible with Caesar o-papism.
The conception of the Holy Roman Empire as of the
one Commonwealth of God could claim to realise the
Augustinian ideal merely by its doctrine of the ecclesi
astical position of the Emperor, who is a sacred person,
Canon of S. Peter s, advocate and protector of the Church.
What is capital for our purpose is the point which Lord
Bryce emphasises, the religious character of the Holy
Roman Empire. It is not the religious character of
one section (the Church so-called) set over against the
other. It is the whole people, as it is the whole of life,
which is gathered into one great unity. To quote in
substance from one authority, Engelbert of Admont, 1
who will come again into question later on :
" There is one and one only Commonwealth of the
whole Christian people. Therefore there must necessarily
be one and one only king and prince of that Commonwealth,
ordained and constituted for the expansion and defence of
that Faith and people." On which grounds Augustine con
cludes that outside the Church there never was nor ever
could be a true Empire, although there have been Emperors,
qualitercunque et secundum quid, non simpliciter, who were
outside the Catholic Faith and Church.
The grandiose conception of organised human life,
which was expressed in the Holy Roman Empire, was
the origin of the attempts of theorists to secure a
harmony. The Church and the State might serve as
names for the two great departments, ecclesiastical
86 THE CITY OF GOD
and civil. In that way the word Church came to acquire
one of its meanings one which has never quite gone
from it as the equivalent of the clergy. But it is the
Christian world as a whole, the whole body of Christian
people throughout the world/ that is the entire Church,
and makes up the entire Commonwealth. So much so,
that towards the close of the Middle Ages one great
and revolutionary scholastic, William of Ockham, could
go further even than S. Augustine s phrase about all
Christians making one commonwealth, and boldly declare
that all men are one society. Omnes homines sunt
unum corpus et unum collegium. As one writer put
it, the regnum, the sacerdotium, the studium the State,
the Church, the University were the rulers of the
Commonwealth. This point is one which it is important
to make clear before we proceed to the various con
troversies between the two sets of officers, civil and
spiritual. Whether you take the Imperialist or the
Papalist view, as to which of these is to have the last
word, whether you are Erastian or clericalist, you are
equally within the limits and the circle of ideas of the
De Civitate Dei, as it was interpreted to mean a great
Church-State. Modern Erastianism is a bastard growth.
It has nothing to do with the pure milk of the word
dispersed by Thomas Liiber, who said that he was con
sidering only a State in which one religion and one only
was tolerated, and that the true one. But I must not
linger over this. In earlier papers on Erastus on the
Respublica Christiana I have tried to work it out
in detail. 2
Let us pass to some later illustrations. The con
cordant government of the world by Pope and Emperor
was an ideal. In practice there was a struggle for
preponderance. The Papacy had sunk to its lowest
in the tenth century. From that degradation the
Saxon Emperors rescued it. The friendship between
Otto the Third and Pope Sylvester II (Gerbert) did for
<DE CIVITATE DEI IN MIDDLE AGES 87
a moment realise the ideal. They write ecstatically
to one another : Nostrum, nostrum est imperium
Romanum. Once more the Papacy drooped. The
Franconian kings began to lift it from the dust. After
the Synod of Sutri in 1046 and the deposition of Pope
Gregory VI at the bidding of Henry III, the Cluniac
revival spread through Western Europe, and its greatest
representative assumed the tiara as Gregory VII. The
conflict that had long been preparing now broke forth.
After a brief space of amity with the weak and vicious
Henry IV, Gregory launched the excommunication,
and the long war began. Nowadays we are bidden
not to call it the Investiture Controversy, though that
is no bad name for the first phase, which ended with the
Concordat of Worms in 1122. Here more than any
where can we trace the influence of S. Augustine. Dr.
Mirbt has examined all the literature. 3 In an interesting
tractate he has shown how on every kind of topic
S. Augustine s authority was invoked. In the Libelli
de Lite/ which make up three volumes of the Monu
ment a Germaniae Historica/ we have an ample pamphlet
literature. Augustine is used as an authority by both sides.
It should be said that it is doubtful how far many
of the disputants had read the De Civitate Dei. Mirbt
has made it clear that in this as in other matters they
used collections of passages. One such collection is
known. Probably there were others. 4
The use of Augustine by both sides is evidence to
justify what I said earlier, that the question of the
influence of the ideal of the De Civitate Dei is irrelevant
to the topic of its clericalist or regalist interpretation.
Obviously Augustine can be made use of by clericalists.
But when we remember that the Empire is regarded
as the Commonwealth of which Christ is King, and that
it is by no means certain whether Augustine could set
Pope above King in any political sense, we need not be
surprised that some of Hildebrand s adversaries made
88 THE CITY OF GOD
as much play with Augustine s name as did his supporters.
One treatise among many, the De Unitate Ecclesiae/ 5
written after the death of Gregory VII, we may take
as an illustration. It is strongly imperialist. A passion
ate appeal for unity alike in Church and Empire, it is
an argument in favour of the anti-pope. With arguments
drawn from the maxim remota justitia quid regna nisi
magna latrocinia, the Hildebrandine party is condemned
for the deposition of Henry IV. (The writer appears
to separate ecclesia from regnum. That may be because
he takes ecclesia in the narrow sense as equivalent to
the clergy.) Many and long are the citations from the
De Civitate Dei. The writer quotes the Mirror of
Princes at length, and shows that he has no doubt
about the relevancy of the book to the controversy.
In Hildebrand himself we find but little use of
S. Augustine. One of his earlier letters shows that he
was imbued with a conception of the relations of Pope
and Emperor, which could preserve the unity of the
ancient ideal. The most famous letter of all points
the other way. Hildebrand revives what had fallen
into disuse the non-Christian way of treating the
secular State. The famous letter 6 (it is really a tract)
to Hermann of Metz is akin to Augustine s account of
the lust of power, as being one of the chief contributary
causes to the growth of the terrene state. Hackneyed
as is the quotation, it is needful here :
Who/ he asks, is ignorant that kings and princes had
their origin in those who, ignorant of God and covering them
selves with pride, violence and perfidy, in fact nearly every
crime, under the inspiration of the devil, the prince of this
world, claimed to rule over their peers, i.e. men, in blind lust
and intolerable arrogance.
It is hard to suppose that Gregory was ignorant of
the De Civitate Dei/ though the only passage from
Augustine s writings which he quotes in this letter
is from the De Doctrina Christiana/
<DE CIVITATE DEI IN MIDDLE AGES 89
Another passage is even more noteworthy :
It would really be more fitting to speak of good Chris
tians as Kings, than to call bad princes so. The former in
seeking the glory of God rule themselves. The latter seeking
their own lusts are enemies to themselves and tyrants to
others. The former are the body of that true King, Christ ;
the latter are the body of their father the devil.
This suggests Tyconius.
Hildebrand, thinking of rulers in an ascending feudal
hierarchy, could not make any special exception for
royalty, and was justified by the facts of the eleventh
century. Much that he said was due to his thinking
of phenomena which were* before his eyes. Yet in these
two passages there is a very distinctive mark, as of the
two cities. Also it is one of the rare mediaeval passages
which speak of civil government as equivalent to nothing
better than the civitas terrena ; though even here it is
not civil government itself, but the actual personal
wickedness of kings and princes that is condemned.
Moreover, even the letter which was called out by the
stress of the collision with Henry IV did not represent
Gregory s whole mind. In an earlier letter he had
spoken in the usual way of two coordinate and fraternal
powers. In his letters to William I and other kings
he seemed ready enough to adopt a high view of secular
authority, provided that it is always duly subordinate
to the spiritual. 7
On the whole the controversial literature of the day
witnesses to the enormous dependence on S. Augustine ;
and this dependence is greater in some of the other
writers than it is in Hildebrand himself.
Let us pass from this to a different atmosphere, less
clouded with controversy. The Concordia Discordantium
Canorum or Decretum of Gratian (1139), although
it is printed foremost in the Corpus Juris Canonici/
9 o THE CITY OF GOD
is not an authoritative work. Unlike the Decretale
of Gregory IX a century later, or the Sext of Boni
face VIII, it is not definitely promulgated law though
it must be remembered that even these decretals are,
in the Bulls which promulgated them, merely addressed
to the University of Bologna, and not promulgated
to the judges in the Courts Christian. Gratian s work
is like the Institutes of Coke immense in influence
but not official. It gives no legal authority to any text
in it. Yet its importance is little less than if it were
official. Anyhow it is evidence of the way in which
the legal mind of that day looked at these matters.
In this book we are in a different atmosphere. If
you take the conflict between Popes and Emperors
as a whole, what establishes itself is the influence of
S. Augustine upon both sides, owing to the universal
belief in the Empire as a Christian commonwealth, the
embodiment of true justice, i.e. to the general repudia
tion of the second or minimising definition (Augustine s
own) of a respublica. The mediaeval Church was a
State is a common saying. Yet more true is it to say
that the mediaeval State was a Church at least in ideal ;
for the ideal was the Holy Empire with its twin heads,
the smaller semi-national states being altogether on a
lower level, like duchies.
The Decretum of Gratian is concerned not so
much with the ideal of a Catholic Commonwealth, as
with the supremacy of the ecclesiastical element over
the civil. Gratian s work is more than what it seems
a compilation, more even than a law book. It is designed
to make law by declaring it ; it is a politico-ecclesiastical
pamphlet, and mirrors the life and thought of the day.
Its fundamental thesis, the subordination of civil to
ecclesiastical authority, is stated at the outset. In
Distinction X Gratian lays down in his own words that
the constitutions of princes do not prevail over ecclesi
astical constitutions ; that the tribunals of kings are
DE CIVITATE DEI IN MIDDLE AGES 91
subject to the sacerdotal power. This statement might
conceivably be explained to refer only to matters of
spiritual import, and in emergency could be so explained.
But Gratian meant more than that. His object was to
make a law book for the Church that should be parallel
with the Corpus Juris Civilis/ His work was executed
at Bologna, the home of the great Romanist revival : it
emanated from the chair which Professor Galante
holds to-day. If the Pope were truly sovereign, the
halting references to spiritual authority in the civil
law even those conditioned by the maxim that the
Emperor was the source of all law might have some
thing set over against them. Justinian might begin
his code with the title De Summa Trinitate et Fide
Catholica. That would have been enough, and more
than enough, to satisfy S. Augustine. But Justinian
himself had asserted an imperial supremacy in theological
controversies which the Church in the West would not
admit.
Here, however, we are concerned with nothing but
S. Augustine s political influence. Of the citations
which make up the Decretum/ 530 come from his
writings. Only about a dozen are out of the De Civitate
Dei. Many of them are of no importance. Some
are of incalculable import. Comparatively little use
may be made of the De Civitate Dei ; but this lack
is more than made up by the quotations from the treatises
against the Donatists. In vulgar journalese, the author
has gutted the anti-Donatist treatises of S. Augustine
(c. xxiii. q. iv. 37-44). The section dealing with persecu
tion is largely made up from them. Skilful but not
unfair use is made of S. Augustine s concessions. We
have, it is true, no right to say that Augustine would
have approved the capital punishment of heretics or of
the mediaeval inquisition (which was later than Gratian).
But, as we saw, Augustine admitted the use of com
pulsion, and argued that the only reason why it was
92 THE CITY OF GOD
not employed by the early Christians was their numeri
cal weakness. Another passage often thought to be
an anticipation of the original contract occurs in the
Confessions/ and is given by Augustine from Cicero,
Generale pactum humanae societatis obedire regibus. It is
S. Augustine again (in his sermon on the Centurion s son)
who is cited in justification of lawful war (c. xxiii. i. 2)
together with three other passages. The Decretum
of Gratian is one of the most important elements in the
construction of mediaeval society. The use it makes of
Augustine s maxims in all political and semi-political
matters is decisive as to his influence.
After this it may seem needless to allude to a merely
literary effort. The Chronicon of Otto of Freisingen,
the historian of Frederic Barbarossa, was mentioned
in its place in discussing S. Augustine s philosophy of
history. It is an interesting illustration of the twelfth
century. Otto sets himself deliberately to relate the
history of the world on the line of the De Civitate
Dei with the help of Augustine and Orosius. The
most interesting pieces are the prologues. In that
prefixed to Book III there is a balanced and reflective
estimate of the Praeparatio Evangelica/ as afforded
by the universal empire of Rome. The prologue to
Book IV contains a moderate statement of the imperialist
position. There are two powers in the Church. Otto
never puts out the idea of two distinct societies of Church
and State, as was done in later times. It is with him
(as always in the Middle Ages) a question of the balance
of two powers in the same society. Christ desired the
two swords to be in the hands of two different repre
sentatives : He uses the render to Caesar to support
the rights of the crown, and quotes the pertinent passage
of S. Augustine addressed to the Donatists in which he
laid down that property can be rightly possessed only
by human law at the bidding of kings, who are of divine
appointment. Kings he holds to reign by the ordination
DE CIVITATE DEI IN MIDDLE AGES 93
of God and the election of the people, and Constantine
with the approval of the Church ecclesiae juste regalia
contulisse.
In the prologue to Book V he admits that the two
cities have coalesced into one the Church, with its
content of tares and wheat.
Henceforward, since not merely every nation, but the
princes also with few exceptions, became Catholics, I seem
to myself to have composed the history no longer of two
cities, but almost entirely of one i.e. which I call the
Church. For I should not, as before, speak of these two
cities, as two (since the elect and the reprobate are now in
one home), but strictly as one, but of a mixed sort as grain
together with chaff.
In the prologue to Book VI, after lamenting the
arrogance of the hierarchy who seek to strike the kingdom
with that sword, which they only hold through the
favour of kings, he goes on to say that he must not be
taken as intending to separate the Empire from the
Church, since in the Church of God the two functions,
the sacerdotal and the regal, are known to exist ; and
he refers to his previous statement, that the history
now relates to one society only. In the prologue to
Book VIII he once more repeats his acknowledgment
to S. Augustine. This last book is occupied with
discussion of the last things, like the later books of
the De Civitate Dei. Following S. Augustine, Otto
definitely rejects the Chiliastic doctrine, that our Lord
will return for a terrestrial millennium and reign visibly
in any sense in which He is not now reigning. This
work alone is evidence of the way in which the great
Christian Commonwealth can be regarded alike as
Empire and Church, and is thought of as Civitas Dei.
Let us go forward a century. In S. Thomas Aquinas
the mediaeval world has its most authoritative state-
94 THE CITY OF GOD
ment, just as Dante gave it its imaginative symbol.
The ordered intelligence of S. Thomas was different
in the extreme from the highly emotional and stormy
intellect of S. Augustine. In the writings of S. Thomas
we have a minutely articulated system of mediaeval
thought as it had come to be in the day of the supreme
achievements of the Papacy. Born ten years after
the death of Innocent III, S. Thomas lived through
most of the latter phases of the Hohenstauffen struggle,
more especially the Council of Lyons and the despotism
of the stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis Frederic II.
We do well to take him as the central point for the
understanding of mediaeval thought.
S. Thomas s system of politics is expressed in several
places. First there is the commentary on Aristotle s
* Politics. With that we are not concerned in this
connection. There is the not inconsiderable discussion
of fundamentals in politics in the Summa Theologica,
ii. 2, qq. 90-109, and also in certain other passages of
the same work anent heretics, and so forth. Lastly
we have the little treatise De Regimine Principum.
Of this only the first book and four chapters of the
second are written by S. Thomas. The rest is by Ptolemy
of Lucca.
S. Thomas has been called the first Whig. His
discussion of forms of government follows on Aristotle s.
Of all that I make abstraction to-day. When you study
him in detail you see that he develops his system
in dependence on three main authorities Scripture,
Aristotle, and Augustine. I do not know how many
times S. Augustine is cited in the Summa, but I should
suppose it must be quoted thousands of times. In the
parts which deal with politics, we find a great deal of
dependence upon him. We do not hear of the doctrine
of the two cities, for the obvious reason that it was no
longer held to fit, now that the kingdom of this world
had become the kingdom of our God and His Christ :
DE CIVITATE DEI IN MIDDLE AGES 95
and the other use of the terms (that maintained by
Otto), to denote merely the elect and the reprobate,
does not, strictly speaking, concern politics.
S. Thomas quotes most from S. Augustine s De
Libero Arbitrio, but we have important arguments
drawn from the De Civitate Dei/ He makes much
use of that definition the Ciceronian which makes
justice the essence of a Stafe^Jii the passage" which
justifies war (ii. 2, q. 40, i) no fewer than eight passages
are adduced. Further on, in article 3, he argues,
from Augustine s words in the De Civitate Dei/ that
stratagems in warfare are legitimate. S. Thomas dis
cusses whether it be right to carry the doctrine of the
Christianity of the State so far as to make vice equivalent
to crime. This he decides in the negative. He was too
wise to want a Puritan tyranny. He does this on grounds
derived entirely from S. Augustine. At the same time
he disclaims any idea of treating Augustine as an infallible
guide. On the treatment of heretics he bases his argu
ment for persecution upon three passages of S. Augustine.
Like Augustine also he condemns compulsion of the
heathen. He even goes so far as to say that a Christian
governor would be right to tolerate heathen ceremonies.
A heretic or schismatic is an erring and rebellious child,
and is therefore to be corrected. Quite other is the
case of the Jew or the Pagan. His treatment of neigh
bours lives and property is in line with S. Augustine,
especially the remarkable passages in which he defends
the social and industrial legislation of the Mosaic system,
on the ground that it is all based on the idea of
fellowship.
Further evidence is to be found in the De Regimine
Principum/ In treatment and manner it is unlike
S. Augustine. But we find more than one reference to
the De Civitate Dei/ especially the reproduction of the
Mirror of Princes. Even more,, "relevant is the argu
ment from ends. The true end ancT reward of a godly
1
g6 THE CITY OF GOD
prince must be beyond this life. We have arguments
much the same as those of S. Augustine, only applied
rather to the prince than the respublica. In I, 14,
there is a long and elaborate argument to show that
the end of a well-governed commonwealth must be
virtuous life, which leads to the fruition of God. Since
the lord of the ultimate end must obviously direct those
who are concerned only with subordinate ends, the
Roman pontiff must have the ultimate authority over
Christian kings, just as among the ancient Gauls the
Druids held the control.
It is interesting, and for our purpose not imper
tinent, to go on with the book and consider the later
parts written by Ptolemy of Lucca. They are fair
evidence of the mediaeval ideals and were written not
much later. Here we have a direct and continuous
dependence on the De Civitate Dei/ It is not merely
a question of the influence of ideas, but of the following
of the book. References to it are numerous. Many
arguments are drawn from it. S. Augustine is the
writer s acknowledged authority for the claim that
the Romans were entrusted with the dominion of the
world as a reward for their virtue ; and Christians are
bidden to imitate this self-sacrifice. From S. Augustine
is cited the interpretation of the words about the image
and superscription of Caesar ; that the image of Caesar
was (as it were) the image of God. Ptolemy accepts
Augustine s account of the difference between despotic
and properly political power, arguing that the former
would never have been known but for sin. The writer
seems to have had the aim of harmonising Aristotle and
Augustine. We need not follow him in his description
of the Empire or in his criticism of ancient constitutions.
All that we need observe is this, that in this book, which
is a moderate but definite expression of the hierarchical
theory of the State, we have ample evidence that the
influence of S. Augustine was not merely an universally
<DE CIVITATE DEI IN MIDDLE AGES 97
pervading force in the Middle Ages, but was consciously
adopted and felt.
Towards the close of the Middle Ages we can still
trace the direct influence of S. Augustine in political
thought. One writer (I think a Frenchman) arguing
in favour of national States, at a time when the imperial
authority was no more than a name, at least in France,
makes free use of the passage in the De Civitate Dei
which maintains the value of a multitude of small societies.
Dante s De Monarchia is the best known, as it
is the most impressive, of the accounts of the Holy
Roman Empire. It is, as you know, Ghibelline, i.e.
Imperialist, and is designed to show that the Emperor
holds his sceptre by grace of God immediately, not
mediately through the Pope. The claim was not new.
Henry IV made it against Hildebrand. So also did the
Hohenstauffen. Dante s grandiose conception is still
that of the mediaeval unity a great world Church-State.
I do not think that the book as a whole can be said to
depend on S. Augustine. But it is hardly possible not
to suspect that the second book did owe much to the
De Civitate Dei. In that book Dante proves that
the Empire of the world was given to the Romans for
all time, as a reward of virtue. It is noticeable that
Dante quotes the De Civitate Dei once.
Very interesting is the book On the Origin and
Progress of the Roman Empire, from which a quota
tion has already been made. It is by Engelbert,
Abbot of Admont, in Austria. 8 The writer founds his
argument to a large extent on the De Civitate
Dei. Most of the book is little more than a com
ment on this. It was written at the time (1310) of
the last strictly mediaeval revival of the Empire under
Henry of Luxemburg, and after the final defeat of the
Hohenstauffen, i.e. about the same time as Dante s
book. The writer had to face the existing conditions,
9 8 THE CITY OF GOD
with the de facto independence of France. Therefore
he takes into account S. Augustine s view that the world
would fare better under a number of independent com
munities, joined in one bond of harmony and respecting
each other. This he counters in the following argument.
Such, he says, is the mutual jealousy between nations,
that no such harmony is to be looked for. The only
chance of peace is for the world to become one State.
The argument has reference mainly to Catholic Chris
tendom in the West. One remarkable passage takes
into account the existence of non-Christian States.
They, he says, are equally bound by national law and
must recognise the principle of justice which is suum
cuique tribuere. In other words the principle at the
bottom of international amity is seen to be the maxim
to love one another, which is supposed to govern the
human race. This is not far from the maxim of
William of Ockham, which was a little later, that all
men compose one society. What for our purpose is
most noteworthy is the author s view, that Christianity
has now become the law of the greater part of the
world, and a Christian Empire is therefore the ideal.
One most interesting passage is of prophetic import.
Arguing, as Engelbert did, in favour of the imperial
ideal at a time when the most progressive States of Europe
had freed themselves and the national monarchies were
being consolidated, he declares that the unity of the
Holy Roman Empire is two-fold, both secular and
ecclesiastical, and that if the nations withdraw them
selves from recognition of the Emperor, it will not be
long before they throw off allegiance to the Pope.
Even more prophetic are the writings of Wyclif
Wyclif is enormously dependent on S. Augustine. He
develops that other side in Augustine s conception of the
Church which was at times conveniently ignored by the
clericalists that which insists on its primary application
to the elect and no one else. He does this with conscious
<DE CIVITATE DEI IN MIDDLE AGES 99
use of S. Augustine. This leads straight to the doctrine
of the Invisible Church.
Finally, he uses S. Augustine to support his radical
Erastianism. From him he develops the doctrine that
the clergy must always be subordinate to the civil power,
for royalty represents the fatherhood of God and the
priesthood the sonship. He cites S. Augustine in regard
to the image and superscription of Caesar. Wyclif was
the most thoroughgoing Erastian who ever lived. He
wrote after Marsilius of Padua, and was probably in
fluenced by the Defensor Pacis with its programme
of democratic Erastianism. Most of Wyclif s works
are a plea for the disendowment of the Church. The
De Dominio Civili is not mainly a treatise on politics,
as its name might seem to imply. It is concerned with
property, and especially with corporate property. Wyclif
wants the Church to be disendowed. Then, he says,
the lords, having more lands, will have less motive to
oppress the poor. In the Speculum Militantis Ecclesiae
he treats of the Church as equivalent to the common
wealth, and declares that it consists of the lords, the
clergy and the labouring classes ! 9 His doctrine of
dominion founded on grace is intended to argue that
property has duties as well as rights, i.e. that the right
of private property is not absolute. That indeed was
the view of S. Thomas and S. Augustine. It was the
Roman pagan conception of absolute property that
triumphed at the close of the Middle Ages. This idea,
which is the foundation of modern capitalism, led at
the time to further attempts to depress the peasants
into slavery. It has been fraught with a thousand
evils, from which even now the world is slowly and with
many struggles trying to recover. The reception/ as
it is called, of Roman Law in 1495 in Germany may be
taken as the date when the Middle Ages came to an end
and the Roman ideas of property had conquered the
West.
ioo THE CITY OF GOD
The great mediaeval unity was always largely an
ideal. Still it was the ideal. It was a unity of religion,
of government, of economics, of morals, of social life
and of outward culture. This unity, if not determined
by S. Augustine, owed much to his influence. It was
not the direct or intended result of his writing. He
spoke, indeed, of things not being so bad as people
thought, of a possible revival of the Roman power.
For this he has been blamed. It is said he showed lack
of prescience. But was it so ? The actual Roman
Empire lasted in the West for more than half a century
after S. Augustine s death. Then came the Ostrogothic
kingdom of Theodoric. That too vanished. Justinian s
conquest is not to be ignored. Why should it be ?
Augustine did not foresee the Holy Roman Empire
of the German people, or the cry of Gerbert to Otto III,
Nostrum, nostrum est imperium Romanum. Yet such
a phrase may be held to have justified his words. For
it was the Roman ideal that stood for peace and culture
in those troublous times.
Easier is it to trace this influence in the doctrine of
the whole world as the Civitas Dei, connecting this with
S. Augustine s undoubted belief in the unity and universal
mission of the Church, and his assimilation of it to a
society.
Easier still is it to trace his influence in the other
worldly reference which lay behind all mediaeval develop
ments, in the growth of Western monasticism with its
characteristic qualities, with the widespread acceptance
of his principle of property.
Some would trace to S. Augustine the whole develop
ment of the Papal power. This was hardly a legitimate
development, but not at all impossible.
Clearly we cannot understand the Middle Ages on
this political and social side without Augustine. He it
is who helped much to make the Western world compact.
VI
THE DE CIVITATE DEI IN LATER DAYS
THE mediaeval unity was the grandest attempt in human
history to base the structure of institutions upon
righteousness, political, social and economic, no less than
religious. When this unity broke up, a new world as
Luther said came into being. It might seem as though
the ideals connected with the mediaeval projection of
the Civitas Dei were gone beyond recall. That is true
only partially. The break up of the ancient order did
destroy this idea for Europe as a whole. Take such
works as the Utopia of Sir Thomas More and the
* II Principe of Macchiavelli. We can see how men s
dreams were changed no less than the facts. The
Renaissance appeared to have put an end to all such
hopes as those which animated S. Thomas.
Macchiavelli s remorseless study of the facts of the
inter-state scramble in Italy is more remarkable for
what it leaves out than for what it puts in. The con
ception of natural law has vanished. The passion of
nationality furnishes the one ideal. In the moving and
pathetic eloquence of the last chapter he cries for a
saviour, who shall do for distressed Italy what other
saviours have done for their people.
If, as I said, in order to show the valour of Moses it was
necessary for the people of Israel to be enslaved in Egypt ;
and, for the magnanimity of Cyrus to be seen, it was needful
for the Persians to be oppressed by the Medes ; and, to
illustrate the excellence of Theseus, the Athenians had to
102 THE CITY OF GOD
be dispersed : so now, for the virtue of an Italian spirit to
be seen, it was needful that Italy should be reduced to the
state in which she now is, and to be more enslaved than
were the Hebrews, more oppressed than the Persians, more
scattered than the Athenians, without head, without order,
beaten, dispirited, lacerated, hunted, and in fact enduring
every kind of ruin.
Nothing can be nobler than Macchiavelli s desire for
a redeemer of his people. But of justice, whether in
the internal government or in the external relations of
a people, he took no thought. Everything is reason of
state.
Savonarola s ideal for Florence, to be a godfearing
city with a true democracy, had been given a trial.
It had failed. With this failure, so far as the Italian
States were concerned, there disappeared all efforts at
ideal politics, until in the nineteenth century Macchia
velli s ideals triumphed by Macchiavelli s own methods.
Italy became united under the headship of Victor
Emmanuel and the astute diplomacy of Cavour. There
was a man after Macchiavelli s heart. He had his
reward.
In Europe as a whole the Reformation destroyed
the last hopes of a united Christendom. The Balance
of Power became the guiding-star of statesmen. From
the League of Cambrai to the Partition of Poland was
a natural development. We too have seen it even go
further. Acton said Calvin preached, and Bellarmin
lectured, but Macchiavelli reigned. Here, however,
a faint shadow of the old ideal can be discerned in the
ideas and principles which underlay modern International
Law.
In regard to both these developments it is possible to
trace the influence, if not the direct ancestry of ideas,
to S. Augustine.
It has been thought that the second definition of a
commonwealth in the De Civitate Dei, that in which
THE DE CIVITATE DEI IN LATER DAYS 103
the ideas of justice and religion do not appear, may
have had something to do with the development of the
non-moral doctrine of the State. It is doubtful how
far this can be proved. This much is clear. Augustine
emphasised the aim of the terrene State as being earthly
peace and no more. This limitation has much to do
with the rapidly developing theory of the secular State.
That was developed largely by the Jesuits, in order the
better to exalt the Church, the Respublica Christiana.
Jesuit writers and others on that side developed frankly
a doctrine of the civil State as being purely secular and
having no ends that were not material. It can have to
do with higher ideals only in so far as it is directed to
these ends by the supreme religious guide. That is the
principle of Bellarmin developed frankly and without
disguise. This is different from the principles of writers
like Augustinus Triumphus at the end of the Middle
Ages, or of Bozius in the sixteenth century. These
definitely make the whole world a single State, of which
the Pope as King of Kings and Lord of Lords is head.
Bellarmin s doctrine of the indirect power of the Papacy
allows to the civil State a being and purpose of its own.
On one side it is frankly secular. The State of the
Jesuits, when once it threw off its ecclesiastical tutelage,
would be rnore, not less, indifferent in matters of
religion more also than was the old pagan State.
The distinction on which all this argument depends
unfortunately comes through S. Augustine. We saw
that he was not always thinking of politics. Yet it
remains true that the whole conception of the State as
Civitas terrena is precisely what enabled the Jesuits to
set up their doctrine of the civil State. Since also it
virtually coincided with the doctrine of pure politics,
which emerged at the Renaissance, it helped to produce
our general modern notions.
On the other hand the influence of Augustine on the
growth of International Law is certain. That he laid
104 THE CITY OF
down principles which might prove fruitful, if they were
needed, cannot be denied. The conception of a world
of equal States living in harmony and exchanging mutual
services we owe to his mind, -expressed in the passage
about a world consisting of small States. We cannot
say that the founders of International Law depended
upon S. Augustine. In Albericus Gentilis, De Jure
Belli/ there are no citations from the De Civitate Dei/
In the great work of Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis/
Augustine is frequently cited. This need not mean
much. Here and there important arguments are based
on these quotations. Yet so many authorities are
adduced that it is hard to attribute priority to any
single one. The avowed doctrine of Grotius is Natural
Law. Certainly that is in S. Augustine, but Grotius
did not take it from him. Still the general conceptions
which are to be found in the De Civitate Dei/ of the
mitigation of warfare through Christianity, of the sense
of a common bond between nations, the insistence upon
justice, the bitter condemnation of a policy of mere
conquest all these were among the many influences
that helped to keep alive some flickering brands of Chris
tendom, implying something better than the law of
the beasts/ I am not certain that we can say more.
The great ideal of a world ruled by justice had gone.
If, however, the nations, now definitely recognised as
sovereign and independent, should ever come to concord,
they might point to the passage of which I have so often
spoken, as laying down the ideal of world-politics in a
body of States independent but mutually concordant.
So much for Christendom and the great State. When
we come to reduce the scale, the story is different. In
the narrower field of compact territorial sovereignty,
governments were not necessarily irresponsive to the
same ideals that we saw embodied in the Holy Roman
Empire. Moreover, during the long period of the wars
of religion until at least 1609, when the Dutch won their
THE DE CIVITATE DEI IN LATER DAYS 105
long truce, and in a less degree until 1648, when absolute
differences of religion were guaranteed at the Peace of
Westphalia, the idea of some sort of Christendom survived.
The State, as conceived by the Renaissance, the embodi
ment of power and nothing but power, did not triumph
finally, except later on in Prussia. That was prevented
by the Reformation, with its emphasis on theocratic
and scriptural ideas of government.
In the first place, the concentrated territorialism of
the new States in Germany made the unity of religion
with them a feasible aim a Lutheran could leave a
Calvinist State and live elsewhere still under the same
Kultur/ So much so that one elector could say that
his subjects consciences belonged to him/ What
triumphed everywhere was Erastianism the lay power
in a Christian State ruling over the clerical. Luther
did not desire a State religiously heterogeneous. He
did not desire a State founded on power alone. Luther
and Melanchthon desired to transfer to civic and family
life all the consecration of aim associated heretofore with
monastic devotion. Erastus himself declared that he
was considering the case of a State in which one religion
and one only was tolerated, and that the true one. The
control of the inner life of the Church by a Parliament,
which might be composed of Jews, Turks, infidels and
heretics/ was the last thing that Erastus contemplated.
What he desired was to take all coercive authority out
of the hands of the clergy, and transfer it to the civil
magistrate. Stubbs says of Henry VIII that he would
be the Pope, the whole Pope and something more than
the Pope/ referring to the jurisdiction. The movement
was a layman s movement, not in itself anti-religious.
Its ideal is the godly prince/ Its State is a common
wealth in which Christ is King, no whit less than was
the mediaeval theocracy. All through the period of the
Reformation this ideal expresses itself.
With this expression there grew a more explicit
106 THE CITY OF GOD
recognition of the Commonwealth and the Church as
two aspects of the same society. This doctrine was
not confined to men of any especial opinion. It is the
doctrine of Luther and Musculus and of John Knox,
but also of Whitgift and Laud and the more extreme
Gallican lawyers in France, but not of Bossuet. We
in England have this doctrine enshrined for ever by the
serene and gracious intelligence of Hooker. Nothing
could be clearer than his statement :
When we oppose the Church, therefore, and the Com
monwealth in a Christian society, we mean by the Common
wealth that society with relation unto all the public affairs
thereof, only the matter of true religion excepted ; by the
Church the same society with only reference unto the matter
of true religion, without any other affairs besides ; when
that society which is both a Church and a Commonwealth
doth flourish in these things which belong to it as a Common
wealth, we then say the Commonwealth doth flourish ;
when in the things which concern it as a Church, the Church
doth flourish ; when in both, then the Church and the
Commonwealth flourish together/ (Hooker, Ecclesiastical
Polity, viii. 15 ; Works, iii. 420.)
The opposite doctrine of the two kingdoms, as found
in Hooker s adversary, Thomas Cartwright, is greeted
by Whitgift with surprise as a strange monstrous birth.
This doctrine, that of Church and State as two distinct
societies, was developed by Huguenots in France, by
Independents like Robert Browne in his treatise Refor
mation without tarrying for any (any meaning the civil
magistrate), but above all by the second generation of
Presbyterians. It might be alleged by the Presbyterians
that their doctrine was more akin to S. Augustine than
that of the Middle Ages. No more than S. Augustine
did the Presbyterians leave the State free in the interests
of religion, but demanded that the Prince should use
force to direct men for their good. The famous words of
THE DE CIVITATE DEI IN LATER DAYS 107
Andrew Melville to James I in 1606 are a classical
expression of it.
It was, however, the earlier doctrine that long ruled
the conception of the State as in sort a Church inside
a compact unitary State. The argument for unity
which in the Middle Ages had been employed partly
on behalf of the Emperor, but more effectively on that
of the Pope, could now be made the ground for treating
the civil power as over all persons and in all causes
supreme. This principle of religious unity as a founda
tion of the Commonwealth and the only possible source
of justice, was proclaimed by people of widely different
opinions. In France we have the une loi, un roi, une foi
of pamphleteers like Louis d Orleans. This cry produced
the conversion of Henri Quatre, and ultimately the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, parallel with the
assertion of extreme royalism in the Gallican Articles
of 1682 and the threat to break off from Rome. On the
other side we have Erastus proclaiming that there could
be no coercive authority in the spiritual power, hinting
that if necessary the prince could teach and administer
the sacraments, developing into the doctrine of the
Lord s Anointed as a persona mixta, partly lay, partly
ecclesiastical. A little later we see it expressed in the
absolutism of Hobbes ; and symbolised on his famous
frontispiece. On the largest scale we see Hooker apply
ing it to a nation-state. But it is not confined to that.
Anabaptists are often treated as mere anarchists. That
is only one side of them. The constructive governing
side was shown in the attempt to secure a State inspired
in every detail by Christian principles. Knipperdolling,
the King, as he was called, of Minister, put this into
practice. It is adumbrated in the Restitution of
Rothmann, who argues against the Chiliasts and in favour
of a Kingdom of Christ on earth now, thus recalling
S. Augustine.
Calvin at Geneva and the Puritan polities illustrate
io8 THE CITY OF GOD
the same principle. The reign of the saints, so called,
was but the counterpart, on the narrower scale, of the
doctrine of the rule of Christ in a truly just republic
of that rule which the Canonists and Ultramontanes
gave to the Pope.
Let us take a literary expression of this. Nova
Solyma/ which appeared in 1648, is an attempt to
imagine the city of God upon earth, to build Jerusalem/
as the name implies. It is a work of amazing interest
both for its educational and political ideals. Despite
much that was irritating in his manner, Mr. Begley,
who published a translation in 1902, has done service
in recalling this didactic romance from limbo. Let me
quote from an article in the Church Quarterly which I
wrote on the topic in the following year.
Puritanism, like nearly all ascetic ideals, had in it a
strong Manichean bias. We know it chiefly by its enmities.
It was active for destruction. It destroyed the monarchy,
the aristocracy, and finally the representative system. It
abolished the drama, it proscribed the Liturgy, it persecuted
the bishops, it knocked down statues, overturned altars and
shattered windows. It first abolished tyranny and then
destroyed liberty and finally completed its career of devas
tation by giving the coup de grace to itself. Few movements
have been to all appearances more uniform in their destruc
tive tendencies than was English political Puritanism. But
it is no more right to judge Puritanism by its antipathies
than it is Christianity. ... It is the constructive side of
Puritanism that " Nova Solyma " expresses. . . .
Puritanism at its best was constructive. Starting from
the conception, made familiar to us all by Mr. James, of
the twice-born soul, it desired to see a new " city of God "
upon earth, in which, with whatever latitude for political
and natural differences, the life of the Christian should be
properly trained and guarded by a State directed by religious
principles and acting solely from the highest aims. . . .
This ideal of a Christian State in accordance with Puritan
principles is the whole purpose of " Nova Solyma." ... It is
THE DE CIVITATE DEI IN LATER DAYS 109
the XVIIth Century Civitas Dei, as indeed its name implies.
. . . Though Puritanism as a politico-religious party was
not long in the ascendant, many of its governing ideas found
their way into the more serious-minded of all classes, and
have had a profound effect upon the national character.
These or some of them will be found in " Nova Solyma," where
we can learn that the Puritan was no Little Englander, no
mere ascetic, no opponent of war, or hunting, or reading as
such ; but that his ideal was a State governed on principles
of righteousness, training its members body, mind, and
spirit in all the faculties and sentiments which may
minister to the efficiency and energy appropriate to the con
duct of a Christian member of an orderly and self-controlling
society. Religion since the Reformation, said Sir A. F.
Hort, has been departmental, and given up the aim of
controlling the whole of human life in the way that mediaeval
Catholicism attempted. This is unfortunately to a certain
extent true, but was not so always or in aim ; and such
books as " Nova Solyma " are the proof of a broader ideal.
(C.Q.R., Ivii. No. 113, Oct. 1903, 125-130.)
That work is English. Take one which is not.
Johann Valentin Andreae in Christianopolis affords
a similar illustration. 1 Here, too, the main interest
of the whole is in its ideals of education. But it is on
a smaller scale and in every way inferior to Nova
Solyma. Both of them show how deeply men s
imaginations were affected by the doctrine of an ideal
Christian Commonwealth.
Let us now take instances from men of opposite
political sympathies. The doctrine of the Divine
Right of Kings/ on its religious as distinct from its
legal and historical side, is an expression of the notion
that the civil State ought to be a commonwealth of
Christians, the Civitas Dei. It is this half-romantic,
half-sacramental doctrine which consecrated to many
the cause of the Stuarts. This religious side of the
doctrine was as a rule stronger in England than in France.
no THE CITY OF GOD
Yet Bossuet s Politique Tiree de 1 Ecriture Sainte
is a good illustration of it. Bossuet prided himself on
this dull work which looked towards the past, although
it must be admitted that Bossuet never merged the
Church in the State, but always regarded them as two
societies. It is well to take this work as an illustration.
With the beginning of the eighteenth century the end
had come, so far as this country was concerned. The
Nonjuring schism had considerable importance It
developed strongly in the minds of men like William
Law (in his letters to Hoadly) the doctrine of the
Church, as a society in itself distinct from the State,
though it might be composed of the same persons. Each
body was, in the later phrase of Leo XIII, a societas
genere et jure perfecta. The Bangorian controversy
which was aroused by Hoadly s sermon The Kingdom
of Christ/ showed the same notion in the religious sphere.
Hoadly was dominated by the ancient notion which
made the Church co-extensive with the nation ; and
therefore desired the comprehension within it of any
body and everybody. Sherlock and his other opponents
asserted the distinctness and historic independence of
the Church, and the incompetence of the civil power
to control it. This tendency had been increased by
other causes. The Toleration Act and the Union with
Scotland destroyed the notion of a uniform religious
State. True it left some basis, for the Toleration Act
stopped short of Unitarianism or the Papacy, and the
Scots refused to tolerate episcopacy. But now the
Kingdom, united as never before, was not even pro
fessedly uniform in religion. It boasted two different
established churches. Naturally, this led to a resuscita
tion, even among establishment Divines, of the doctrine
of the two Societies.
Warburton s Alliance between Church and State
is a better book than many people think. It lays down
that the two bodies are entirely distinct in nature*
THE * DE CIVITATE DEI IN LATER DAYS in
though they may be composed of the same individuals.
But the State establishes a Church from a utilitarian, not
from a religious motive. It is not the business of the State
to seek the truth, but merely to take the religion of the
majority of its members and establish that. As the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries proceeded, the old
Augustinian doctrine of a Christian Church-State pre
vailing in the Middle Ages, and through the Reformation,
gradually disappeared. Toleration gave way to complete
civil rights for Dissenters, Roman Catholics, Jews, and
finally Atheists. It has been recently decided in the
Courts that a bequest to a Free Thinking Association
was legal. Religious heterogeneity is recognised as
a principle of the modern State. In Mr. Gladstone s
early book, The State in its Relations with the Church/
we find a last echo of the old view. But he does not
contemplate, like Hooker, a single society. Rather,
he treats the Church as the conscience of the State,
and deprecates on that ground the admission of the
Jews to full political rights.
The notion of a theocracy has more and more receded
from discussions on general politics. The notion of
the principles of Christian ethics i.e. the golden rule,
which is held by many non-Christians on different grounds
as the governing doctrine of political and social justice,
has tended to increase in importance. Not merely
Christian socialism, but many more general doctrines
of humanity, are content to argue that (in this sense)
the world is or ought to be Christian, and its legislation
ought to be framed according to the Jewish-Christian
rule of fraternity. This tendency has been enhanced
by the war. Many who before regarded Christianity
as an effete system of impossible dogmas awakened to
find that the real difference between the belligerents
was nothing less than the prevalence of certain ethical
ideals, of which the most eminent if not the only ex
pression was the Christian system. Reconstruction,
ii2 THE CITY OF GOD
it is alleged, in order to be stable, must follow these
lines whether applied to Europe as a whole in the
relations between States, or to the domestic economy of
peoples, or to the relations of classes. As the doctrine
of absolute state-sovereignty is criticised, so also is
the companion doctrine of absolute rights in private
property. Neither of these criticisms is new, even in
modern times. Both have been rendered more acute
by the war, i.e. the ideal of a State is more and more
seen to be dependent on justice.
Only, as S. Augustine failed to see, justice in politics
and in social economy has reference only to those ideals
of cuique suum tribuere and the Golden Rule, which
are not necessarily in fact bound up with religion. Men
can unite in those, who yet differ in toto on the theological
foundation. In this sense indeed it may be natural to
look forward to a Christian State ; but certainly it is
neither natural nor wise to do so in the sense of a State
which promulgates the Christian religion and none other.
Consequently, while legislation or custom may well be
pressed on the ground of its accordance with Christian
principles, so far as they are confined to the social doctrine,
it is impolitic and even wrong to condemn or promote
legislation on the ground that it conflicts with the law
of the Christian Church. That is to attempt to make
what is true only of one society govern the whole.
To sum up, with" the Renaissance the secular or
pagan State tended to become the ideal. This effect
was counteracted by the Reformation. Yet that de
stroyed the ancient unity of Western Christendom and
made impossible the ideal of the Holy Roman Empire,
of a single Catholic Commonwealth of princes and lords
and peoples, a unity of all culture. Vestiges of this
lingered on and helped towards the beginning of modern
International Law. On the smaller scale of the separate
State, the effect of the Reformation was different. It
tightened instead of loosening all those ties that made
THE DE CIVITATE DEI IN LATER DAYS 113
for a concentrated unitary State. So much so, that it
is even now but slowly and with infinite reluctance
that political problems can be discussed on any other
basis. For the more part within that State it shifted
the balance of power from the clergy to the laity, the
Church to the State, the Pope to the King. If we
recognise that change, we can say that the ideal of a
uniform Christian commonwealth was as real to Hooker
as it was to Alfred the Great. This was the aim of the
great national States like England and France, of the
smaller territorial sovereignties in Germany, with their
maxim cujus regio ejus religio, and even of bodies like
the Anabaptists and Pilgrim Fathers, as soon as they
obtained rule. We see this expressed on the grand scale
by Hooker and Whitgift, on the smaller scale by Roth-
mann and Nova Solyma. In some of the arguments
adduced in favour of established churches, and in certain
vague appeals to Christian principles, it can be discerned
in our own days, and can be traced right back to S.
Augustine. On the whole, however, religious hetero
geneity is recognised as a fundamental part of the
modern State, but in regard to certain fundamental
ethical principles of neighbourliness, mutual love and
so forth, Christian morals (as apart from any kind of
theology) are increasingly recognised as integral to a
just and even to a stable organisation of life.
On the other hand, the development of the secular,
this-worldly theory of the State, whether by Jesuits
or Presbyterians in their own interest, owes much to
the other and more commonly neglected side of S.
Augustine that in which he openly discarded the
principles of religion in the idea of a commonwealth.
The sharp distinction between secular and sacred, holy
and profane, which ruled historical writing until recently,
though not introduced, was enormously strengthened
by S. Augustine.
The problem which S. Augustine discussed in this
H4 THE CITY OF GOD
book is fundamental, nor has it ever been finally resolved.
It is a conflict not primarily between two polities. To
make it that, is to externalise it and to make it relatively
superficial, deep down in history though even that
goes. Rather the conflict is one between two religions
Christianity and Paganism. That is S. Augustine s
primary and predominating thought. It never leaves
him. These two religions are conceived as the binding
force of two societies, the expression of two opposing
passions : Fecerunt itaque civitates duas amores duo
the passion for God and the passion for self. That is
the direction alike of angelic and human wills, which
makes the whole time-process since the fall of Lucifer
a drama of eternal tragedy, and conditions the
Redemption. If we seek to understand S. Augustine
mainly by the outcome to which his system led in history,
we shall do wrong. Rather we must seek to understand
that by the deeper antagonism between the other
worldly and the this-worldly reference of all institutions.
This we shall realise better by a more intimate per
sonal knowledge of the most intimate and personal of all
divines until John Henry Newman. In Augustine there
were struggling two men, like Esau and Jacob in the
womb of Rebecca. There was Augustine of Thagaste,
of Madaura, of Carthage, of Rome, of Milan, the brilliant
boy, the splendid and expansive youthful leader,
skilled in all the wisdom of the Egyptians/ possessed
of the antique culture, rhetorical, dialectic, Roman
the man of the world, the developed humanist with
enough tincture of Platonism to gild the humanism ;
and there is the Augustine of the Confessions/ of the
Sermons/ of the De Civitate/ the monk, the ascetic,
the other-worldly preacher, the biblical expositor, the
mortified priest. These two beings struggle for ever
within him, the natural man filled with the sense of
beauty and the joy of living, expansive, passionate,
artful and the supernatural Christian fleeing from
THE DE CIVITATE DEI IN LATER DAYS 115
the world, shunning it, burning what he adored, and
adoring what he burnt, celibate and (at times) almost
anti-social.
This book itself is too great to be consistent. We
can see in it traces of this ceaseless conflict. The other
worldly aim is predominant, the annihilation of all
earthly values in comparison with the summum bonnw.
But evidences, we have noted, remain of the humane,
social, cultured ideal. The conflict is eternal in human
life. No change of religion will put a term to it. Not
even as some think, as I suppose Augustine thought,
the abolition of all eternal values. On the one hand is
the world, the present, the course of life, the immediate
nice things ; and on the other the Eternal, the far-
off, the spiritual city, the altar of sacrifice, the chalice
of suffering each calls us, each finds response in our
nature. How can this problem be resolved ? One way
is by complete world-flight, the extreme of asceticism,
i.e. asceticism not as discipline but as self-annihilation,
or, as seen in the sphere of institutions, in the utter
subjection of the city of this world to the rule of those
who speak in the name of the Eternal. On the other
is the pagan solution, frankly materialistic, developing
on its better side a grand picture of human society, and
a high development of all human arts, but ruling out
as irrelevant all interests that look beyond. Neither
by itself can satisfy.
The real change in S. Augustine took place when
he was converted to Platonism by reading Cicero s
Hortensius and not in the later well-known scene in
the garden at Milan. From that first moment related
in the Confessions he had the nostalgia of the infinite,
and all earthly goods were annihilated to his restless
spirit. The charge brought by Nietzsche against Plato
that he did the real damage, preparatory to Christianity,
by setting up the doctrine of another world is true,
12
n6 THE CITY OF GOD
Perhaps it is this which makes Augustine s apologetic
more impressive on the general theistic, than it is on
its distinctively Christian, side.
Yet that fact suggests the solution. Plato, and still
more the Neo-Platonists, showed that a mere human
istic culture is bankrupt at the last, for man s heart is
restless until he find God. Even humanism as an ideal
cannot be carried out without an infusion of the other
worldly principle present pleasure must be given up
for future bliss even by an Alexander.
Augustine calls attention to this. The Romans, he
said, were moved by earthly motives of ambition, no
more. To that end they were prodigal of sacrifice.
Christians for their end, which is so much higher, would
do well if they were to learn the devotion to the heavenly
patria which the Romans gave to an earthly one. In
other words, the Roman State, the earthly aim, could
not be maintained except by sacrifice. True, the sacrifice
is for an end of this world alone. Yet it is equally
sacrifice of the immediate for a far-off end, for an
individual and even for a community like Saguntum
it means the surrender of life itself for the good of the
whole. What makes this possible ?
Even earthly ambitions apart from the State, even
sheer individualism, can make no progress without sacri
fice and what Christians call the Cross. Any successful
merchant knows that. Even the hardest voluptuary
must postpone immediate goods in the Christian phrase,
must die to live and take risks, or he will not fulfil
the demands of his passions.
Thus then the edifice of humane culture cannot but
rest its foundations on the principle of the Cross, and
also upon social and communal interdependence. Man
cannot live for himself alone/ Yet this principle has
in many cases no meaning and no appeal to the individual,
if there be no world beyond.
Take the other side. Sheer world-flight is not
THE DE CIVITATE DEI IN LATER DAYS 117
possible. The extremes! ascetic S. Simon on his
pillar must be fed. In the De Opere Monachorum
S. Augustine points this out. 2 It is all very well, he
says, for people to say that a man ought to be entirely
occupied with the things of God, and therefore need
do no labour. This cannot be. The dinner must be
cooked. Some manual work is a necessity in any self-
sufficing society. Therefore it cannot be contrary to
true monastic life to do some secular work.
Besides, whether for the selfish end which we con
sidered above, or for the religious, sheer individualism
would be the final abutment of either, world-flight or
world-acceptance, taken by itself. Sheer individualism
is literally unthinkable. A selfish man of culture needs
the help of society at every turn. A world-renouncing
monk cannot do without security. Social and communal
activities are of the essence of human life, for no one
can dispense with them. If they are, then sacrifice of
what we want, even, on occasion, of life itself, becomes
a necessity at times, a fact of which to-day we have
lurid evidence. Nor in the long run can such sacrifice
be justified to the individual apart from an other-worldly
aim. The goods of human sacrifice are real goods.
But just as the individual is driven to the larger life
of the community by the natural fact of the family,
so human society and all human culture is possible only
by the ultimate recognition of the eternal goal. Other
wise there will come the decadence, such as overcame
Greece and Rome and the Renaissance. That is the
lesson of the De Civitate Dei. Our ideals of beauty
must be rooted in the hope of eternal life earthly glories
are symbols and sacraments if they be not evil ; for
God created man to be immortal and made him an
image of his own eternity/ or in his own words : Thou
t hast made us for thyself, and our heart is restless until
it find thee.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE LITERATURE OF THE DE CIVITATE DEI
BERNHARD DOMBART has an interesting posthumous
paper on the text. It is printed in Harnack & Gebhardt s
Texte und Untersuchungen/ 1908, with the title :
Zur Textgeschichte der Ci vitas Dei. (Dombart having
died before the publication, it was produced by Otto
Stahlin.)
The first printed edition appeared at Subiaco in 1467.
Mentelin produced an important edition at Strasburg
about the year following, which included the earliest
commentary that of Thomas Valois and Nicholas
Triveth. This commentary is full in the earlier parts
but meagre later. In 1522 J. L. Vives published the
first edition which was made from a collation of the
MSS., with a commentary of his own in which he attacked
violently all the scholastic commentators. He makes
many annotations. Some of them are amusing. We
have interesting portraits of scholars like Sir Thomas
More and Bude (Budaeus), shrewd gibes that relieve a
mass of detail, quips at scholastics, along with a defence
of traditional religion against the unquiet spirit of Luther.
With the comments of Vives are sometimes printed
those of Leonard Coquaeus (1661).
Of modern editions of the De Civitate Dei/ the
best is that in the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum by E.
Hoffmann. A smaller and later one, also in two volumes,
by Dombart is useful. It lacks that elaborate table of
contents which closes certain less important editions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 119
This table is not authoritative, but it is useful. Scholz
gives an account of its origin.
In the late sixteenth century J. Healey made a fine
translation. The folio edition of it issued in 1610 and
1620 gives also Vives commentary. This translation (less
the commentary) was recently reprinted in the Ancient
and Modern Theological Library/ What purports to be
the same appeared subsequently in three volumes in the
Temple Classics. At the end of Vol. Ill we are told that
Dr. Bussell, its editor, has rearranged and abridged it. He
has done this without telling the reader where the cuts are
made. Consequently all the references are useless except
at the beginning, e.g. it has been compressed into eighteen
books instead of twenty-two. It is difficult to know
where we are, although the wording of the translation
has not been changed. Another modern translation
is that by Dr. Marcus Dods in the Library of the
Fathers also there is one by Dr. Gee (London, 1894).
Literature on the De Civitate Dei is large.
Heinrich Scholz s Glaube und Unglaube in der Welt-
geschichte (Leipzig, 1911) is indispensable and every
where interesting. It takes account of Renter s view,
but is independent. Bruno Seidel s thesis, Die Lehre
des heiligen Augustinus vom Staate is the most help
ful single book. It is printed in Sdralek s Kirchen-
geschichtliche Abhandlungen/ ix. i (1909). Hermann
Reuter s Augustinische Studien (Gctha, 1887) is
illuminating ; but his anti-hierarchical bias must be
borne in mind. The third essay, that on the Church
as the Kingdom of God, is the most important for the
understanding of the De Civitate Dei. But no part
of it can be ignored.
Dorner s large book on Augustine ( Augustinus/
Berlin, 1873) has about one hundred pages bearing
on the topics discussed here. It is important as it
takes the view, followed by Ritschl and others, which
makes Augustine the father of the Papacy.
120 THE CITY OF GOD
Ritschl s Essay, Ueber die Methode der alteren
Dogmengeschichte, which appeared in the Jahrbucher
fur Deutsche Theologie, Bd. XVI, 191-214 (Gotha, 1871),
is reprinted in the first volume of his Gesammelte
Aufsatze/ pp. 147-169. It contains certain important
statements about Augustine, which I have discussed.
So also does the great work of Otto Gierke, Das deutsche
Genossenschaftsrecht/ These maximise the clericalist
side (in order to condemn it). The same is true of
H. von Eicken in his book, Geschichte und System
der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung (Stuttgart, 1887).
Hertling severely, but not unfairly, attacked this in his
Beitrage zur Philosophic/ Important essays on the
subjects here discussed are hidden away in journals,
e.g. Reuter laments the common ignorance of H.
Schmidt s essays. They are published in the Jahrbucher
fur Deutsche Theologie. Vol. vi. pp. 197-255 (1861)
contains that on Des Augustinus Lehre von der Kirche/
vols. vii. 237-281 and viii. 261-325 that on Origen and
Augustine as apologists. Those are important. Ferdi
nand Kattenbusch is said to be the first to call attention
to Augustine s identification of the Church with the
apocalyptic kingdom. His Kritische Studien zur Sym-
bolik (the second essay) will be found in Theologische
Studien und Kritiken (Gotha, 1878). Feuerlein, who
takes Augustine as a typical mediaeval, wrote his essay,
Ueber die Stellung Augustins in der Kirchen- und
Culturgeschichte/ in Sybel s Historische Zeitschrift/
1869, vol. xxii. 270. It is not otherwise valuable.
Edmond Boissier s Fin du Paganisme has a good
many pages bearing on this topic. So also an interesting
thesis from Columbia University by E. Humphreys,
Politics and Religion in the Days of Augustine/ On
the philosophy of history there is Reinkens rectorial
address at Breslau (1865), to which I alluded in my
second lecture. He was afterwards an Old Catholic
bishop. This essay has been over-praised. Others are
BIBLIOGRAPHY 121
those of G. S. Seyrich, Die Geschichtsphilosophie
Augustins nach seiner Schrift de Civitate Dei (1891), and
A. Niemann, Augustins Geschichtsphilosophie (1895).
Two books that are indispensable are Joseph Maus-
bach s Die Ethik desheiligen Augustinus, two volumes
(Freiburg, 1909), and Ernest Troeltsch, Augustin, die
christliche Antike und die Mittelalter (1915). The
latter is written in strong reaction against the view of
Augustine as essentially mediaeval. Mausbach writes an
apologetic of S. Augustine against all who, like Ritschl,
make him hostile to the State and to culture.
An American, Dr. Anson, wrote on the sources of
the first ten books, and Dr. Frick has discussed those of
the eighteenth.
A good account will be found in Dr. Cunningham s
Hulsean Lectures (1885), S. Austin and his Place in
the History of Christian Thought. Dr. Carlyle in his
History of Political Theories in the West says
surprisingly little. Professor Dunning says even less
in his History of Political Thought/ There is an
unsympathetic dissertation from Geneva by F. Thomas,
S. Augustin, La Cite de Dieu (1886). Harnack in the
History of Dogma says some important things on the
same lines as Ritschl and Gierke. Beard has some pages
in his book on the Reformation. The former German
Chancellor, Count Georg von Hertling, has a book on
Augustine ( Der Untergang der antiken Kultur, Augustin/
1902) in the series Weltgeschichte in Karakterbilden ;
the pp. 98 and sqg. treat of the De Civitate Dei/ He
declares this to be the most potent in influence of all
S. Augustine s works. Hertling takes the view which
I have taken in Lectures III and IV, and refuses to
identify the two cities sans phrase with Church and
State. Roundly he declares that of any hostility to
the State on the part of the Church, Augustine knew
nothing. A large book on Augustine ( Augustinus/
Paderborn, 1898) by Cardinal Rauscher, and published
122 THE CITY OF GOD
after his death, may be mentioned. Theo Sommerlad s
two works, Das Wirtschaftsprogramm der Kirche des
Mittelalters (Leipzig, 1903) and Die wirtschaftliche
Thatigkeit der Kirche in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1910),
carry to the farthest point the notion of Augustine as the
author of a system of gigantic social reform. Robert
son s Rejnum Dei may also be consulted. Much use
therein is made of Reuter.
APPENDIX
THE following passages from Vives may interest the reader :
(II, 7.) Thus farre Lucian. We have rehearsed it in
the words of Thomas Moore, whom to praise negligently,
or as if one were otherwise imployed, were grossnes. His
due commendations are sufficient to exceed great volumes.
For what is he that can worthily lim forth his sharpness
of wit, his depth of judgement, his excellence and variety
of learning, his eloquence of phrase, his plausibility and
integrity of manners, his judicious foresight, his exact execu
tion, his gentle modesty and uprightness and his unmoved
loyalty ? Unlesse in one word he will say that they are
all perfect, intirely absolute, and exact in all their full pro
portions ? Unlesse he will call them (as they are indeed)
the patterns and lusters, each of his kind ? I speake much,
and many that have not known Moore will wonder at me,
but such as have, will know I speake but truth : so will such
as shall either reade his workes or but heare or looke upon his
actions : but another time shall be more fit to spred our
sailes in this man s praises as in a spacious ocean, wherein
we will take this full and prosperous wind and write both
much in substance and much in value of his worthy honours,
and that unto favourable readers.
(VIII, 4.) It is a great question in our schooles whether
Logic be speculative or practike. A fond question truly I
thinke, and fellow with most of our philosophicall theames
of these times, where the dreams of practice and speculation
do nought but dull young apprehensions. . . . But these
Schoolemen neyther know how to speculate in nature nor
action, nor how the life s actions are to be ordered.
(XI, 10.) Words, I thinke, adde little to religion, yet
must we have a care to keep the old path and received
doctrine of the Church ; for, divinity being so farre above
our reach, how can wee give it the proper explanation ?
124 THE CITY OF GOD
All words are man s inventions for humane uses, and no
man may refuse the old approved words to bring in new
of his own invention ; for whenas proprieties are not to
bee found out by man s wit, those are the fittest to declare
things by, that ancient use hath left us, and they that have
recorded most part of our religion. This I say for that a
sort of smattering rash fellowes impiously presume to cast
the old formes of speech at their heeles, and to set up their
owne masterships, being grossly ignorant both in the matters,
and their bare formes, and will have it lawful for them at
their fond likings to frame or fashion the phrases of the
Fathers in matter of religion into what forme they list, like
a nose of waxe.
(XVIII, 18.) To create is to make something of
nothing ; this God onely can do ; as all the Divines afnrme :
but then they dispute whether hee can communicate this
power unto a creature. Saint Thomas hath much concern
ing this ; and Scotus seekes to weaken his arguments to
confirme his owne ; and Occam is against both, and Petrus
de Aliaco against him : thus each one screweth the celestiall
power into what forme he please. How can manners be
amended, how can truth be taught, how can contentions
be appeased as long as there is this confused obstinate
jangling, and this haling too and fro in matter of Divinity,
according as each man stands affected.
(XIX, 21.) For we may not imagine man s unjust
decrees to be lawes ; all men defining law to arise out of the
fountaine of justice. (Cicero, De Leg. i.)
Vives : It was not the people s command (saith he)
nor Prince s decrees nor Judge s sentences, but the very
rule of nature that gave original unto law. And again
. . . Thus Tully out of Plato, and thus the Stoikes held
against Epicurus, who held that nature accounted nothing
just, but feare did. Seneca, Epist. 16. This holy law that
lyeth recorded in every man s conscience, the civilians call
right and reason. ... So that Ulpian defmeth law to be ars
aequi et boni ; an art of right and reason, making him only a
lawyer"; that can skill of this right and reason : and such that,
as Tully said of Sulpitius, referre all unto equity, and had
rather end controversies than procure them, that peace might
generally be kept amongst men, and each be at peace with
himself e, which is the chief e joy of nature/
NOTES
NOTES TO LECTURE I
1 Weinand, H., Die Gottesidee der Grundzug der Weltanschauung
des hi. Augustins, 1910, in Ehrhard und Kirsch, Forschungen, X. ii. p. i.
Wie die Geisteswerte der heidnischen Kulturwelt in ihm zusammen-
fliessen, so hat vom fiinften Jahrhundert ab die christliche Kulturwelt
in ihm Wurzeln und Fasern. . . .
Man hat darauf hinangewiesen, wie jede Neuerung bis herab auf
den Socialismus unserer Tage, ihn zu dem Ihrigen zu machen sich
bemiiht.
8 E. Feuerlein, Ueber die Stellung Augustins in der Kirchen- und
Culturgeschichte in Sybel s Historische Zeitschrift. Bd. 22, 1869,
p. 300.
Dieser Eine Mann mit dem brennenden und rur Ruhe gekommenen
Herzen ist der Typus der mittelalterlichen Christenheit. Sein ziigelloses
und doch zuletzt geziigeltes Temperament reprasentirt jenen wilden
Volksgeist, der mit der V61kerwanderung sich erhebt und seiner
Zahmung durch die Kirche harrt, die ganze Hitze und Heftigkeit des
Volksthums, das sich gleich ihm in der Versenkung ins Eine, Gottliche,
in der religiosen Andacht abkiihlen soil. Er der Sohn eines gebildeten
Naturvolks, topographisch ausserhalb des Gebiets der neueuropaischen
Menschheit gestellt, sollte den zu erwartenden Naturvolkern Weg
und Steg ihrer ersten Cultur weisen diirfen.
3 H. Renter, Augustinische Studien, p. 121 n. Das ganze Werk
De Civitate bewegt sich auf dem scharf gefassten Gegensatz des Diesseits
und Jenseits, der Gegenwart und der Zukunft als auf seiner Basis/
4 Reuter, Augustinische Studien, p. 45. Nicht indem er "Die
Heilsbedeutung " der Kirche verteidigte ist er ein Neuerer geworden,
sondern durch die Art, wie er diese nach Massgabe seines Begriffs der
gratia erortert.
Nicht in dem Kirchenbegriff e ist die prinzipale Differenz zwischen
dem System Augustin s und dem der Jelagianer zuhochst zu suchen,
sondern in dem Begriffe der Gnade.
NOTES TO LECTURE II
1 Reinkens, Die Geschichtsphilosophie des Heiligen Augustinus
(Schaffhausen, 1866), inaugural address as Rector of Breslau University,
p. 36.
Die ganze Verfassung und das ganze Gesetzbuch des himmlischen
Staates ist in Einem Wort enthalten, und dies Wort heisst : Freiheit.
Denn die Macht des freien Willens ist in dem Menschen dann wie bei
den guten Engeln bis zu dem Grade fur das Gute in seiner gottlichen
Rangordnung gesteigert, dass ihm cine Abweichung von der Ordnung
126 THE CITY OF GOD
der Liebe nicht inehr m6glich ist, ebenso wenig wie ein Riickfall aus
dem verklarten Zustand in den unverklarten. Ein Nothigen in die
Ordnung der Liebe durch aussere Gesetze und Befehle unter Androhung
von Strafen ist undenkbar in dem Gottesstaate ; in seinem ewigen
Sabbate existirt auch der Begriff des knechtischen Dienstes nicht
mehr. Gott selbst tragt die Krone ; aber die Burger des himmlischen
Staates sind von Ihm mitgekront : sie herrschen mit Ihm, in dem sie
Ihm haldigen, und da sie Ihm loben, empfangen sie Ehre, und die
Geehrten erkennen ohne Ueberhebung, dass sie der Ehre wiirdig
sind, und Niemand raubt und Niemand neidet sie ihnen. So wird
es sein am Ende ohne Ende ; denn welches andere Endziel hatten
wir, als zu gelangen in das Reich ohne Ende ?
1 H. Schmidt s two articles are to be found in the Jahrbucher fur
Deutsche Theologie (Gotha, 1861) ; Des Augustinus Lehre von der
Kirche, vi. 197-255 ; and Origenes und Augustin als Apologeten, vii. 237-
281 and viii. 261-325.
8 H. Scholz, Glaube und Unglaube in der Weltgeschichte, p. 47.
Wenn es richtig ist dass Geschichtsphilosophie und Soziologie
zusammengehoren, so ist Augustin der erste gewesen, der diesen
Zusammenhang innerlich erfasst und wirksam ausgesprochen hat.
Zwar hat schon Aristoteles den Menschen als <oov 7ro\iTi<6v gewiirdigt,
aber nur um den Staat daraus abzuleiten. . . Augustin hat den
Fortschritt rur Geschichte gemacht, und die Moglichkeit des geschicht-
lichen Lebens auf den geselligen Zusammenschluss der Individuen
gegriindet. Er hat erkannt, dass es Geschichte nur da gibt und dass
Geschichte erst da beginnt, wo Menschen sind, die sich zu geordnetem
Mit- und Aufeinander wirken verbinden. Er hat diesen Zusammenhang
nicht nur geahnt, sondern deutlich ausgesprochen : unde Dei civitas . .
vel inchoaretur exortu vel progrederetur excursu vel adprehenderet
debitos fines, si non esset socialis vita sanctorum ? (xix. 5). Es ist
nicht zuviel, wenn mann behauptet, dass Augustin sich durch diesen
einen Satz ein bleibendes Verdienst um die Philosophie der Geschichte
erworben hat ; denn solange es eine Philosophie der Geschichte gibt,
wird sie mit diesem Satz beginnen und insofern immer auf Augustin
als ihren geistigen Vater zuriickblicken diirfen/
4 Cf. the following passages. There are many more :
(a) De Civ. Dei, v. i. Divina providentia regna constituuntur
humana.
(b) Ibid. v. ii. Sed nee exigui et contemptibilis animantis
viscera, nee avis pennulam, nee herbae flosculum, nee arboris folium
sine suarum partium convenientia et quadam veluti pace dereliquit ;
nullo modo est credendus regna hominum, eorumque dominationes
et servitutes a suis providentiae legibus alienas esse voluisse.
(c) Ibid. iv. 33. Deus igitur ille felicitatis auctor et dator, quia
solus est verus Deus, ipse dat regna terrena et bonis et malis. Neque
hoc temere et quasi fortuitu, quia Deus est, non fortuna, sed pro rerum
ordine ac temporum occulto nobis, notissimo sibi, cui tamen ordini
temporum non subditus servit, sed eum ipse tanquam dominus regit
moderatorque disponit. Felicitatem vero non dat nisi bonis. Hanc
enim possunt et non habere et habere servientes, possunt et non habere
et habere regnantes ; quae tamen plena in ea vita erit, ubi nemo
jam serviet. Et ideo regna terrena et bonis ab illo dantur et malis
NOTES 127
ne eius cultores adhuc in provectu animi parvuli haec ab eo
munera quasi magnum aliquid concupiscant. Et hoc est sacramentum
Veteris Testamenti, ubi occultum erat novum, quod illic promissa et
dona terrena sunt, intelligentibus et tune spiritalibus quamvis nondum
in manifestatione praedicantibus, et quae illis temporalibus rebus
significaretur aeternitas, et in quibus Dei donis esset vera felicitas.
6 The Rules of Tyconius, edited by F. C. Burkitt. This should
be read to see how close is the parallel. Augustine knew this book
and made a lengthy summary of it in the third book of De Doctrina
Christiana. Scholz, Glaube und Unglaube in der Weltgeschichte, has
much in detail about the dependence of S. Augustine on Tyconius. The
topic has been worked out by Hahn, Tyconius Studien, in Bonwetsch
und Seeberg, Studien ; see vi. 2, also Haussleiter, Prot. Real-Encyclopddie,
xx. 851-5.
6 Nourisson, Philosophic de S. Augustin, ii. 173. Sa conception
d une republic eternelle et naturelle, la meilleure possible dans
chacune de ses especes et ordonnee par la Providence divine, n est
qu une application ou une transformation savante de 1 idee mere
de la Cite de Dieu.
NOTES TO LECTURE III
1 Seidel, Die Lehre des heiligen Augustinus vom Staate (in Sdralek s
KirchengeschichtlicheAbhandlungen,igog, IX. i.), p. 4534, d.n, Band 8-10.
Es ist wohl zu optimistisch, wenn Mausbach meint, es sei allgemein
anerkannt, dass der Ausdruck civitas terrena meist nicht den Staat
als solchen bezeichne. Meines Erachtens riihren viele Irrtiimer eben
gerade daher, dass man immer wieder civitas terrena mit " Staat "
iibersetzt.
2 Reuter, p. 131.
Indessen scheint es mir doch nicht uberniissig zu sein, daran zu
erinnern, dass das Wort nicht mit Staat, sondern Stadt zu ubersetzen
sei.
3 T. Sommerlad, Das Wirtschaftsprogramm der Kirche des Mittel
alters, p. 216. (This book emphasises his differences from all fore
runners. They are reactionary, he is communistic.)
Es liegt in all dem Gesagten begriindet, weshalb Augustin, der
eine Staats- und Gesellschaftstheorie geben wollte, entgegen seiner
Absicht ein Staatsprogramm und ein Wirtschaftsprogramm geschaffen
hat.
4 Reuter, p. 477.
In dem Liber de opere monachorum, S. 438-443, vielleicht dei
bedeutendsten Schrift in der Geschichte der Wirtschaftslehre seit
Ende des vierten Jahrhunderts, sind Gedanken entwickelt, welche
praktisch geworden, die auch von Aug. festgehaltene Differenz des
weltlichen und geistlichen Lebens hatten auflosen, eine soziale Reform
(Revolution ?) in romische Reiche hatten motivieren mussen.
8 Somerlad, Wirtschaftsprogramm, p. 210.
Die Eigentiimlichkeit der Staatstheorie Augustins besteht nun
darin dass jene teleologische Betrachtung, wie sie das Evangelium
den wirtschaftlichen Institututionen gegeniiber eingeschlagen hatte,
auch auf die Institution des Staates angewandt wird.
128 THE CITY OF GOD
6 Ritschl, Ueber die Methods der dlteren Dogmengeschichte, in
Gesammelte Aufsdtze, i. 156.
Er in ihrer katholischen Gestalt das Reich Gottes selbst erkennt,
welches seit dem Siindenfalle seine Existenz gegeniiber dem irdischen
Reiche hat ; dieses aber ist der Weltstaat, wie er in der romischen
Herrschaft jener Zeit gegenwartig war. Wie nun die Kirche als die
Civitas Dei der Organismus des Guten aus dem Prinzip der gottgemassen
Gerechtigkeit ist, so gilt dem Augustin der Staat als die Gemeinschaft
der Menschen aus dem Princip der Siinde. 1
7 H. von Eicken, Geschichte und System der Mittelalterlichen Weltan
schauung, p. 119. So bald die Kirche sich gesetzlich geschiitzt sah,
gab sie ihrer Geringachtung gegen den Staat einen noch offeneren,
riickhaltsloseren, Ausdruck als vordem.
8 Reuter, p. 151.
Man kann die Staatslehre Augustin s nur mit ausserster Vorsicht
und selbst dann nicht vollstandig aus den Lib. de Civ. schopfen. Sie
ist korrekt nur unter Vergleichung anderer Schriften, namentlich der
anti-donatistischen aufzubauen.
9 Reuter, p. 143.
Je schr offer die letzteren [Donatisten] die alte Ansicht von dem
Staate als einem profanen, dem Christentum fremden Gemeinwesen
erneuerten und uberspannten, um so mehr wurde der Apologet des
Katholicismus genotigt, die sittliche Wiirde desselben darzulegen.
10 De Civitate, xix. 23.
Quapropter ubi non est ista justitia, ut secundum suam gratiam
civitati oboedienti Deus imperet unus et summus, ne cuiquam sacrificet
nisi tantum sibi ; et per hoc in omnibus hominibus ad eandem civitatem
pertinentibus atque oboedientibus Deo animus etiam corpori, atque
ratio vitiis, ordine legitimo fideliter imperet ; ut quemadmodum
Justus unus, ita coetus populusque justorum vivat, ex fide quae opera tur
per dilectionem, qua homo diligit Deum, sicut diligendus est Deus, et
proximum sicut seipsum ubi ergo non est ista justitia, profecto
non est coetus hominum juris consensu, et utilitatis communione
sociatus. Quod si non est, utique populus non est, si vera est haec
populi definitio. Ergo nee respublica est, quia res populi non est, ubi
ipse populus non est.
11 Seidel, p. 21.
Wenn also der Staat auch nicht die veritas iustitiae haben muss,
um Staat zu sein, so muss er doch eine iustitia haben, um nicht als
Rauberbande zu gelten. Es ist die auf der Vernunft beruhende natiir-
liche Gerechtigkeit, welche Augustin dem Staate als wesentlich
zuschreibt. Er findet diese iustitia auchbei den heidnischen Romern.
C/. Reuter, 137 sqq.
13 Seidel, p. 20.
Mit allem Nachdruck ist hervorzuheben, dass der heilige
Augustinus die Wesensbestimmung, welche Cicero vom Staate gibt,
als zu eng ablehnt.
13 Eckstadt, Augustins Anschauung vom Staat (Kirkhain, 1912),
pp. 27-29, argues that the real importance lies in the word concord.
Beriicksichtigt man alle diese Stellen, so kann nach meiner
Meinung gar nicht bezweifelt werden dass die concordia dem Augustin
unerlasslich ist fur das Wesen des Staates ; und dies bestatigt sich uns
NOTES 129
welter, wenn wir auf das hochste Gut sehen, das Augustin fiir den
Staat fordert : pax.
14 Mausbach, ii. 364.
Also handelt es sich nicht um Umwandlung eines Bosen zum
Guten, sondern um die Vermehrung und Erhohung eines Guten.
15 Seidel, p. 25.
Die Begriffe des " christlichen " oder " nichtchristlichen " Staates
finden sich also nicht bei Augustin, sondern diese Bezeichnungen sind
von uns gewahlt, um vom Christentum beeinflusste oder nichtbeein-
flusste Staat en zu unterscheiden.
1(5 Eckstadt, p. 40.
So nach Augustins eigenen Urteil, ist der Staat um so besser,
je besser das ist was er liebt. So ist der christliche Staat nicht dem
Wesen nach der ideale Staat, wohl aber seinem Inhalte nach der
Werthvollste.
17 F. Dahn, Die Konige der Germanen (Leipzig, 1908), xi. 209.
Die Unterschatzung von Recht und Staat gegeniiber der Kirche
... ist die notwendige Folge der Lehre Sankt Augustins, einer
logisch falschen, sittlich krankhaften, politisch verderblichen, mit den
Pflichten gegen den Staat unvereinbaren.
18 Seidel, p. 26.
So wird auch der Staat als naturgemasse und darum berechtigte
menschliche Ordnung durch das t)bernatiirliche des Christentums
nicht als unberechtigt aufgehoben, sondern von Mangeln befreit, in
seinem Wesen vervollkommnet und in seiner Bedeutung erhoht.
19 H. Weinand, Die Gottesidee der Grundzug der Weltanschauung
des hi. Augustinus, p. 127.
Die Welt zu entwerten stellte er sie mit all ihren Giiten neben
Gott, verglich beide miteinander, wog sie gegeneinander ab ; kein
Wunder dass sie zu leicht befunden ward und ihm Gott gegeniiber
als nicht- gut, nicht-schon ; ja als ein Nicht-Sein erschien.
to Mausbach, i. 350.
Was aber Augustins Stellung zur Kultur in ganzen angeht, so
unterliegt es nach unsern Untersuchungen keinem Zweifel, dass er
alle Werte und Ziele, die wir heute zum Begrifle der Kultur rechnen,
zur Geltung und zu Ehren kommen lasst.
NOTES TO LECTURE IV
1 Reuter, p. 151.
Die Libri de Civitate Dei haben nicht den direkten Zweck, die
Frage nach " dem Verhaltnis der christlichen Kirche zum Staate,"
im Sinne des heutigen Sprachgebrauchs zu beantworten, sondern
sind prinzipiell zum Zwecke der Verteidigung der Christentums (der
christlichen Kirche) gegen das Heidentum abgefasst.
Die Civitas terrena bedeutet erstens den heidnischen Staat,
zweitens, die bis zum Ende der Welt, also auch in der christlichen
Zeit bestehende societas improborum.
Die Civitas Dei ist erstens die historische sichtbare Kirche
zweitens die communio sanctorum (electorum) .
1 De Civitate, xix. 17.
Haec ergo coelestis civitas dum peregrinatur in terra, ex omnibus
gentibus cives evocat, adque in, omnibus linguis peregrinam colligit
I 3 o THE CITY OF GOD
societatem, non curans quidquid in moribus legibus institutisque
diversum est, quibus pax terrena vel conquiritur vel tenetur, nihil
eorum rescindens vel destruens, immo etiam servans ac sequens ;
quod licet diversum sit in diversis nationibus, ad unum tamen
eundemque finem terrenae pacis intenditur, si religionem qua unus
summus et verus Deus colendus docetur, non impedit.
Utitur ergo etiam coelestis civitas, in hac sua peregrinatione,
pace terrena, et de rebus ad mortalem hominum naturam pertinentibus,
humanarum voluntatum compositionem, quantum salva pietate ac
religione conceditur, tuetur adque adpetit, eamque terrenam pacem
refert ad coelestem pacem ; quae vere ita pax est, ut rationalis dumtaxat
creaturae sola pax habenda adque dicenda sit, ordinatissima scilicet
et concordissima societas fruendi Deo et invicem in Deo ; quo cum
ventum fuerit, non erit vita mortalis, sed plane certeque vitalis ; nee
corpus animale quod dum corrumpitur aggravat animam, sed spiritale
sine ulla indigentia ex omni parte subditum voluntati. Hanc pacem,
dum peregrinatur in fide, habet, adque ex hac fide juste vivit, cum
ad illam pacem adipiscendam refert quidquid bonarum actionum gerit
erga Deum et proximum, quoniam vita civitatis utique socialis est.
3 F. Kattenbusch, Kritische Studien zur Symbolik, p. 200.
In dem Augustinischen Kirchenbegriff wird gewohnlich ein
Gedanke iibersehen, der aber doch von der hochsten Tragweite ist.
Das ist der dass die Kirche das tausendjahrige Reich und in so fern
bereits das Reich Gottes darstellt.
4 Reuter, p. 150.
Die Formel, " die Kirche ist das Reich Gottes " ist prinzipiell
nicht von der verfassungsmassig organisierten, von den Bischofen
regierten Kirche ausgesagt, sondern von derjenigen, welche als com
munio sanctorum vorgestellt wird, bestimmter von dem Teile derselben
denn der Grundbestandtheil gehort dem Himmel an welcher hier
auf Erden sich befindet.
Cf. also Schmidt (Jahrbucher, vi. 238) Die Kirche ist in erster Linie
Leib Christi als Communio Sanctorum.
Scholz, Glaube und Unglaube, 119. Criticises Reuter s view of
regnum Dei as equivalent to communio sanctorum, and points to
Augustine s use of Tyconius.
* Reuter, p. 499.
Durch Augustin ist die Idee der Kirche in einer Weise, die dem
Orient fremd geblieben, die Zentralmacht in der religiosen Stimmung,
in dem kirchlichen Handeln des Abendlandes geworden. Sein eigenes
Denken war allerding beherrscht worden durch jene andere, welche
wir oben (S. 97) nachgewiesen haben ; aber die Formel " die Kirche
ist das Reich Gottes," schon von ihm nicht immer in dem genuinen
Sinne gebraucht, friih von anderen in Widerspruch mit der urspriing-
lichen Intention des Verfassers verstanden, ist thatsachlich wider
seine Absicht das Fundament der Anspriiche der romischen Hierarchie,
" das Programm jener romisch-katholischen Weltherrschaft," an
welche Augustin nie gedacht hatte die Schwungkraft des Gregorian-
ismus geworden.
Schmidt, H., Des Augustinus Lehre von der Kirche, in Jahrbuchw
fiir Deutsche Theologie, vi. p. 198.
NOTES 131
Das Selbstbewusstsein der Kirche konnte sich vollstandiger nur
entwickeln, wenn es sich nicht allein der Harese, sondern auch dem
Schisma gegeniiber auszusprechen hatte.
This situation was produced by the Donatist controversy : and
this helped to mould the Church into a State-religion.
7 Weinand, pp. 109, no.
(Augustin hat) den Kreis der Kirche weit iiber den Rahmen
der sichtbaren Gemeinde erweitert. Wie weitherzig das zeigt die
Grundauffassung der Civitas Dei, die Kirche sei so alt wie die Welt.
Res ipsa quae nunc Christiana veligio nuncupatur erat apud antiques,
nee defuit ab initio generis humani.
8 Kattenbusch, p. 197.
In so fern ist doch Augustin der Vater auch des Papsttums,
p. 201. Wir haben in jenem Gedanken Augustins den eigentlichen
Rechtstitel und das leitende Motiv fur die Politik, welche die Papste
bis auf die Gegenwart festhalten. Diese Politik ist eben nichts anderes,
als die riicksichtslose kiihne, wenn man will, grossartige und imposante
Durchfiihrung der Idee, dass die Kirche als das Reich Gottes die
berufene Herrin aller Verhaltnisse sei.
Ritschl, i. 1 66.
Daran sind in der Lehre von der obersten Auctoritat der Kirche
die Ideen nachzuweisen, auf Grund deren der romische Primat sich
iiber den Episkopat erhob und die Stellvertretung Gottes in sich zu
concentriren unternahm. Ist auch Augustin kein absichtlicher Urheber
dieser Entwickelung, so war sie doch durch seine Ansicht, dass die
Kirche die Civitas Dei sei, veranlasst. Und diesen Primat an Gottes
Statt haben ja die mittelaltrigen Vertreter desselben in Praxis und
Theorie an einem Verhaltniss zwischen Kirche und Staat durchzu-
fiihren gesucht, dessen Bestimmung direkt von den Grundsatzen
Augustin s abstammt, und, wie die Gegenwart bestatigt, dogmatischen
Werth hat, also auch in der Dogmengeschichte vorgetragen werden
muss/
9 Gierke, Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, iii. 124.
In der konsequenten Ausgestaltung, die sie durch Augustinus
erfuhr, erkannte diese Theorie ausschliesslich den unmittelbar von
Gott gestifteten und geleiteten Verband der universellen und einheit-
lichen Kirche, den " Staat dessen Konig Christus ist," als Ausdruck
der sittlichen Weltordnung an. Sie liess daher den weltlichen Staat
mit alien seinen Gliederungen und Einrichtungen nur gelten insofern
derselbe sich dem in der Kirche realisirten gottlichen Staat, als dienender
Bestandtheil ein- und unterordnete. Sie postulirte den Christlichen
Staat und verstand unter dem Christlichen Staat einen Staat, welcher
ausschliesslich in der Kirche die Quelle und das Ziel seiner Existenz
erblickte.
10 Dorner, p. 303.
Mit einem Worte, nur der der Kirche dienende Staat, welcher
die wahre Gottesverehrung schutzt, entspricht seinem Begriff, und
vermag in seiner Sphare etwas Erspriessliches zu leisten. Dass der
Staat ein eigenes in sich werthvolles Princip, eine gottliche Idee seiner-
seits vertrete, erkennt Augustin nicht. Seine Ansicht vom Staate
ist nicht weit von dem Satze entfernt, dass er der Mond sei, welcher
von der Sonne seinen Glanz empfange.
132 THE CITY OF GOD
NOTES TO LECTURE V
1 De ortu progressu et fine Romani imperil in Goldast, Politico,
(Frankfurt, 1614), pp. 754~773-
2 For Erastus see the essay appended to Divine Right of Kings
(2nd edition, 1914), pp. 293 and ff ; for Respublica Christiana, see
Churches in the Modern State, Appendix I, pp. 175 and ff.
3 C. Mirbt, Die Stellung Augustins in der Publicistik des Gregorian-
ischen Kirchenstreits (Leipzig, 1888), p. in.
In der Erorterung fast aller Fragen, welche die Controverslitteratur
zu behandeln hatte, zeigt sich der Einfluss Augustins ; besonders :
in der Lehre von der Kirche, in der Erorterung des Verhaltnisses
von Kirche und Staat, in der Besprechung der Excommunication,
in dem Streit iiber die Objectivitat der Sakramente.
4 Cj. the following letter of Henry IV in 1073. Jaffe, Bibl. Rer.
Germ, ii (Monumenta Gregoriana), p. 46.
Cum enim regnum et sacerdotium ut in Christo rite administrata
subsistant, vicaria sui ope semper indigeant, oportet nimirum, domine
mi et pater amantissime, quatinus ab invicem minime dissentiant.verum
potius Christi glutino conjunctissima indissolubiliter sibi cohaereant.
6 Walram of Naumburg, De Unitate Ecclesie conseruanda, i. 17,
in Libelli de lite (Mon. Germ. Hist.), ii. pp. 184 and ff.
6 Gregory, Reg. viii. 21. Migne, P.L., cxlviii. 596, 598.
7 Humbertus, Adv. Simoniacos, iii. 29, in Martene, Thes. v. 819 sq.
Quis fidelium dubitare jam poterit Spiritum sanctum . . . totam
replere ecclesiam, ut pro qualitate ministrorum et rerum eius singnla
quae illi connectuntur et debentur sanctificet ? Est enim clericalis
ordo in ecclesia praecipuus tanquam in capite oculi. . . . Est et laicolis
potestas tanquam pectus et brachia ad obediendum et defendendum
ecclesiam valida et exerta. Est deinde vulgus tanquam inferiora
vel extrema membra ecclesiasticis et saecularibus potestatibus pariter
subditum et peraecessarium.
8 See note i .
9 Compare also Wyclif, De Officio Regis, 58, 59.
Necesse est esse tres hierarchias in regno quae omnes unam
personam unicordem constituant, scilicet sacerdotes vel oratores, secu-
lares dominos vel defensores, et plebeos vel laboratores.
NOTES TO LECTURE VI
1 Christianopolis, trs. by Dr. F. E. Held (Oxford University Press,
New York, 1916).
2 De opere monachorum, C. xvii.
Quid enim agant qui operari corporaliter nolunt, cui rei vacent
scire desidero. Orationibus inquiunt et psalmis et lectioni et verbo
dei. Sancta plane vita, et Christi suauitate laudabilis. Sed si ab
his auocandi non sumus, nee manducandum est, nee ipsae escae quotidie
praeparandae ut possint apponi et adsumi. Si autem ad ista vacare
seruos dei certis interuallis temporum ipsius infirmitatis necessitas
cogit, cur non et apostolicis- praeceptis obseruandis aliquas partes
temporum deputamus ?
Printed by SPOTTISWOODE, BALLANTYNE &&gt; Co. LTD.
Colchester, London & Eton, England
BR 65 .A65F5 1921
SMC
FIGGIS, JOHN NEVILLE,
1866-1919,
THE POLITICAL ASPECTS OF
S. AUGUSTINE S "CITY OF
AKA-4964 (MCAB)
