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ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
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by St Augustine of Hippo |
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Ch 15. Faith is buttressed by the
resurrection and ascension of Christ, and is stimulated by His
coming to judgment |
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14. The belief of the resurrection of our Lord from the dead, and
of His ascension into heaven,
has strengthened our faith by adding a great buttress of hope. For
it clearly shows how freely He
laid down His life for us when He had it in His power thus to take
it up again. With what
assurance, then, is the hope of believers animated, when they
reflect how great He was who
suffered so great things for them while they were still in
unbelief! And when men look for Him to
come from heaven as the judge of quick and dead, it strikes great
terror into the careless, so that
they retake themselves to diligent preparation, and learn by holy
living to long for His approach,
instead of quaking at it on account of their evil deeds. And what
tongue can tell, or what
imagination can conceive, the reward He will bestow at the last,
when we consider that for our
comfort in this earthly journey He has given us so freely of His
Spirit, that in the adversities of this
life we may retain our confidence in, and love for, Him whom as
yet we see not; and that He has
also given to each gifts suitable for the building up of His
Church, that we may do what He
points out as right to be done, not only without a murmur, but
even with delight?
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Ch 16. Christ purges His church by
medicinal afflictions |
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15. For the Church is His body, as the apostle's teaching shows us;and it is even called His
spouse. His body, then, which has many members, and all performing
different functions, He holds
together in the bond of unity and love, which is its true health.
Moreover He exercises it in the
present time, and purges it with many wholesome afflictions, that
when He has transplanted it
from this world to the eternal world, He may take it to Himself as
His bride, without spot or
wrinkle, or any such thing.
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Ch 17. Christ, by forgiving our sins,
opened the way to our home |
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Christ, by forgiving our sins, opened the way to our home
16. Further, when we are on the way, and that not a way that lies
through space, but through a
change of affections, and one which the guilt of our past sins
like a hedge of thorns barred against
us, what could He, who was willing to lay Himself down as the way
by which we should return,
do that would be still gracious and more merciful, except to
forgive us all our sins, and by being
crucified for us to remove the stern decrees that barred the door
against our return?
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Ch 18. The keys given to the Church |
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17. He has given, therefore, the keys to His Church, that
whatsoever it should bind on earth
might be bound in heaven, and whatsoever it should loose on earth
might be loosed in heaven;
that is to say, that whosoever in the Church should not believe
that his sins are remitted, they
should not be remitted to him; but that whosoever should believe,
and should repent, and turn
from his sins, should be saved by the same faith and repentance on
the ground of which he is
received into the bosom of the Church. For he who does not believe
that his sins can be pardoned,
falls into despair, and becomes worse, as if no greater good
remained for him than to be evil,
when he has ceased to have faith in the results of his own
repentance.
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Ch 19. Bodily and spiritual death and
resurrection |
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18. Furthermore, as there is a kind of death of the soul, which
consists in the putting away of
former habits and former ways of life, and which comes through
repentance, so also the death of
the body consists in the dissolution of the former principle of
life. And just as the soul, after it has
put away and destroyed by repentance its former habits, is created
anew after a better pattern, so
we must hope and believe that the body, after that death which we
all owe as a debt contracted
through sin, shall at the resurrection be changed into a better
form;--not that flesh and blood shall
inherit the kingdom of God (for that is impossible), but that this
corruptible shall put on
incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. And thus
the body, being the source of no
uneasiness because it can feel no want, shall be animated by a
spirit perfectly pure and happy, and
shall enjoy unbroken peace.
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Ch 20. The resurrection to damnation |
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19. Now he whose soul does not die to this world and begin here to
be conformed to the truth,
falls when the body dies into a more terrible death, and shall
revive, not to change his earthly for a
heavenly habitation, but to endure the penalty of his sin.
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