The City of God

“ Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how men would believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! ”

“ And when he speaks of the 'beatific vision' of the City of God, our hearts are stirred in response. We too seek a 'continuing city' of life in its grandeur. We, too, see the promise of that city here, even in the very failures of our own. ”

“ Having begun to speak of the city of God, I have thought it necessary first of all to reply to its enemies, who, eagerly pursuing earthly joys, and gaping after transitory things, throw the blame of all the sorrow they suffer in them—rather through the compassion of God in admonishing, than His severity in punishing—on the Christian religion, which is the one salutary and true religion. ”

“ That city is eternal. There none are born, for none die. There is true and full felicity,—not a goddess, but a gift of God. Thence we receive the pledge of faith whilst on our pilgrimage we sigh for its beauty. ”

“ How much more must that Presence make holy the place where it dwells, where it fixes its permanent abode! So much is this the case, that the place where God dwells came to be called the holy place, ‘the holy place of the habitation of the Most High.’ All around where God dwelt was holy: the holy city, the mountain of God’s Holiness, His holy house, till we come within the veil, to the most holy place, the holy of holies. It is as the indwelling God that He sanctifies His house, that He reveals Himself as the Holy One in Israel, that He makes us holy too. ”

“ Come, O ye poor and wayward Christians, and have your hearts established unblameable in holiness. Come, ye who are in bondage of sect captivity, and learn your way out of the wilderness unto the city that is set upon a hill, which hath foundations, and whose builder and maker is God. Come from far and near, whoever seeks the old paths and the peace of Jerusalem. ”

“ It is idle to deny that the place itself is favorable to meditation and to prayer. It makes a solemn stillness in the midst of a great city, as if we were in the solitude of a mountain or a desert. The pillared arches are like the arches of a sacred grove. Let those who will cast away such aids to devotion, and say they can worship God anywhere—in any place. ”

“ We read, "The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men built:" it was not the sons of God, but that society which lived in a merely human way, and which we call the earthly city. God, who is always wholly everywhere, does not move locally; but He is said to descend when He does anything in the earth out of the usual course, which, as it were, makes His presence felt. ”

“ Wherever the humble and contrite heart silently offers up its adoration, under the overarching trees, in the open, level meadows, on the hill-side, in the glen, or in the city's swarming streets; there is God's House and the New Jerusalem. ”

“ We possess a City which was founded with the divine approval as revealed in auguries and auspices; in it there is not a spot which is not full of religious associations and the presence of a god; the regular sacrifices have their appointed places no less than they have their appointed days. Are you, Quirites, going to desert all these gods - those whom the State honours, those whom you worship, each at your own altars? ”

“ I want to search for a tangible reality, "a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God," as the scriptures speak of a city that one of those ancient men of God, when under the inspiration of the Almighty, had a vision of, and contemplated its glory. ”

“ What great thing, therefore, is it for that eternal and celestial city to despise all the charms of this world, however pleasant, if for the sake of this terrestrial city Brutus could even put to death his son,—a sacrifice which the heavenly city compels no one to make? ”

“ After the organization of a new heaven and a new earth it was taught that upon the latter would descend a beautiful city, with pearly gates and golden streets, called the City of God, the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven or New Jerusalem, in which the host of the redeemed would, with their Lord and Saviour, enjoy the Millennium, or thousand years of happiness unalloyed with evil; and such was the Kingdom for the speedy coming of which the votaries of Astral worship were taught to pray in what is known as the Lord's Prayer. ”

“ Though, nevertheless, they who are not citizens of the eternal city, which is called the city of God in the sacred Scriptures, are more useful to the earthly city when they possess even that virtue than if they had not even that. But there could be nothing more fortunate for human affairs than that, by the mercy of God, they who are endowed with true piety of life, if they have the skill for ruling people, should also have the [Pg 217] power. ”

“ Let us compare whatever modern writers have been able to do in this class of books with The City of God; if no work of modern times, can be found either so original, so extensive, so erudite, or so profound as The City of God, written fourteen centuries ago, we must necessarily agree that a return to this centre of Catholic wisdom is the only method of giving impetus and improvement to philosophical speculations. ”

“ The description given of heaven: it is a city, a regular society, well established, well defended, and well supplied: it is a city that hath foundations, even the immutable purposes and almighty power of God, the infinite merits and mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the promises of an everlasting covenant, its own purity, and the perfection of its inhabitants: and it is a city whose builder and maker is God. ”

“ Further, we read, in that blessed vision which stands at the far-off end of all the knowledge of the future which is given to humanity, the vision of the City of God 'that came down from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband,' that only they enter in there who are 'written in the Lamb's Book of Life.' Only citizens are capable of entrance into the city. Aliens are necessarily shut out. ”

“ There was indeed on earth, so long as it was needed, a symbol and foreshadowing image of this city, which served the purpose of reminding men that such a city was to be, rather than of making it present ”

“ If we fling away these truths to which our predecessors clung so firmly, if they who shall come after us fling them away, then on us and on them will come the shame and the woe of making the well- ordered "city of the living God," the walls of which are salvation and its gates praise, to be "like a city that is broken down and without walls." ”

“ Maximus frowns on the mortals made of earth's dust, and the Jehovah who has called forth woman meets the first smile of Eve. A Divine City indeed, holding in its innumerable chambers and its courts of granite and of porphyry all that man has ever dreamed of, in his hope and in his terror, of the Unknown God. ”

“ For Scripture, which proves the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, gives no false information; and it is too absurd to say, that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man. Wherefore let us seek if we can find the city of God that sojourns on earth among those human races who are catalogued as having been divided into seventy-two nations and as many languages. ”

“ But the interest attaching to the City of God is not merely historical. It is the earnestness and ability with which he develops his own philosophical and theological views which gradually fascinate the reader, and make him see why the world has set this among the few greatest books of all time. ”

“ On the one hand it limited it, for the Stoic City of Man became the City of God, who was to be sought and worshipped in one prescribed order. On the other hand it deepened it, for the springs of a common humanity were found to go beneath the superficial facts of a citizen life into the depths of souls which have identical relations with eternal things, with sin and suffering and hopes of the future. ”

“ He who builds his life after the Divine model, reading the Christ-life into his own, will build up another city of God on earth, four-square and compact together, a city of peace, because a city of righteousness and a city of love. ”

“ The street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. 21:22 I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb, are its temple. 21:23 The city has no need for the sun, neither of the moon, to shine, for the very glory of God illuminated it, and its lamp is the Lamb. 21:24 The nations will walk in its light. The kings of the earth bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. ”

“ From the patriarch Abraham down to the time of the Israelite kings, at which we close our sixteenth book, and thence down to the advent of Christ Himself in the flesh, to which period the seventeenth book reaches, the city of God appears from my way of writing to have run its course alone; whereas it did not run its course alone in this age, for both cities, in their course amid mankind, certainly experienced chequered times together just as from the beginning. ”

“ They that valiantly labour in quest of God’s will, when once they have renounced all else but Him, will be so attached and wedded to that City that a moment’s separation from it would to them be unthinkable. They will hearken unto infallible proofs from the Hyacinth of that assembly, and receive the surest testimonies from the beauty of its Rose and the melody of its Nightingale. Once in about a thousand years shall this City be renewed and re-adorned. ”

“ The symbolism of the city of God as given in the Book of Revelation represents the character of its citizens, and all the glories of the new Jerusalem have correspondences in the souls who live and move in that radiant land. ”

“ I have seen this mighty city grow from comparatively small and mean conditions. And I have watched slowly growing here a new City of the Soul, the gradual development of civilization itself into a joyous religion whose God is Justice and Righteousness. ”

“ When these two cities began to run their course by a series of deaths and births, the citizen of this world was the first-born, and after him the stranger in this world, the citizen of the city of God, predestinated by grace, elected by grace, by grace a stranger below, and by grace a citizen above. ”

“ Yet I trust we have already done justice to these great and difficult questions regarding the beginning of the world, or of the soul, or of the human race itself. This race we have distributed into two parts, the one consisting of those who live according to man, the other of those who live according to God. And these we also mystically call the two cities, or the two communities of men, of which the one is predestined to reign eternally with God, and the other to suffer eternal punishment with the devil. ”

“ Or if, when they carry on war among themselves, the gods are not overcome by men, but some gods who are peculiar to certain cities are perchance overcome by other gods, it follows that they have quarrels among themselves which they uphold, each for his own part. Therefore a city ought not to worship its own gods, but rather others who aid their own worshippers. ”

“ I replied. "In like manner," he continued, "no one shall enter into the kingdom of God unless he receive His holy name. For if you desire to enter into a city, and that city is surrounded by a wall, and has but one gate, can you enter into that city save through the gate which it has?" "Why, how can it be otherwise, sir?" I said. "If, then, you cannot enter into the city except through its gate, so, in like manner, a man cannot otherwise enter into the kingdom of God than by the name of His beloved Son. You saw," he added, "the multitude who were building the tower?" ”

“ Even the heavenly city, therefore, while in its state of pilgrimage, avails itself of the peace of earth, and, so far as it can without injuring faith and godliness, desires and maintains a common agreement among men regarding the acquisition of the necessaries of life, and makes this earthly peace bear upon the peace of heaven ”

“ And I see that, as I have now spoken of the rise of this city among the angels, it is time to speak of the origin of that part of it which is hereafter to be united to the immortal angels, and which at present is being gathered from among mortal men, and is either sojourning on earth, or, in the persons of those who have passed through death, is resting in the secret receptacles and abodes of disembodied spirits. ”

“ When we shall have reached that peace, this mortal life shall give place to one that is eternal, and our body shall be no more this animal body which by its corruption weighs down the soul, but a spiritual body feeling no want, and in all its members subjected to the will. In its pilgrim state the heavenly city possesses this peace by faith; and by this faith it lives righteously when it refers to the attainment of that peace every good action towards God and man; for the life of the city is a social life. ”

“ But that which is the house of God is also a city. For the house of God is the people of God; for the house of God is the temple of God....This is Jerusalem: she hath guards: as she hath builders, labouring at her building up, so also hath she guards. ”

“ The earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeks an earthly peace, and the end it proposes, in the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and rule, is the combination of men's wills to attain the things which are helpful to this life. The heavenly city, or rather the part of it which sojourns on earth and lives by faith, makes use of this peace only because it must, until this mortal condition which necessitates it shall pass away. ”

“ For this is none other, as we read and sing, than the house of God in which to pray, the court of God to offer praise, the choir of God to sing unto Him, the altar of God whereon to celebrate, the gate of God whereby to enter heaven, the ladder of God to rise above the clouds. As a noble city is preserved with walls and gates and bars, so also is the monastery of the religious with many devout brethren, with sacred books, and with learned men. ”