"Thou, O Lord, in Thy city wilt despise their image."(3) But as for the son of Seth, the son of the resurrection, let him hope to call on the name of the Lord God.For he prefigures that society of men which says, "But I am like a green olive-tree in the house of God: I have trusted in the mercy of God."(4) But let him not seek the empty honors of a famous name upon earth, for "Blessed is the man that maketh the name of the Lord his trust, and respecteth not vanities nor lying follies."(5) After having presented the two cities, the one founded in the material good of this world, the other in hope in God, but both starting from a common gate opened in Adam into this mortal state, and both running on and running out to their proper and merited ends, Scripture begins to reckon the times, and in this reckoning includes other generations, making a recapitulation from Adam, out of whose condemned seed, as out of one mass handed over to merited damnation, God made some vessels of wrath to dishonor and others vessels of mercy to honor; in punishment rendering to the former what is due, in grace giving to the latter what is not due: in order that by the very comparison of itself with the vessels of wrath, the heavenly city, which sojourns on earth, may learn not to put confidence in the liberty of its own will, but may hope to call on the name of the Lord God.For will, being a nature which was made good by the good God, but mutable by the immutable, because it was made out of nothing, can both decline from good to do evil, which takes place when it freely chooses, and can also escape the evil and do good, which takes place only by divine assistance.
CHAP.22.--OF THE FALL OF THE SONS OF GOD WHO WERE CAPTIVATED BY THEDAUGHTERS OF
MEN, WHEREBY ALL, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF EIGHT PERSONS, DESERVEDLY PERISHEDIN THE
DELUGE.
When the human race, in the exercise of this freedom of will, increased and advanced, there arose a mixture and confusion of the two cities by their participation in a common iniquity.And this calamity, as well as the first, was occasioned by woman, though not in the same way; for these women were not themselves betrayed, neither did they persuade the men to sin, but having belonged to the earthly city and society of the earthly, they had been of corrupt manners from the first, and were loved for their bodily beauty by the sons of God, or the citizens of the other city which sojourns in this world.Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.And thus, when the good that is great and proper to the good was abandoned by the sons of God, they fell to a paltry good which is not peculiar to the good, but common to the good and the evil; and when they were captivated by the daughters of men, they adopted the manners of the earthly to win them as their brides, and forsook the godly ways they had followed in their own holy society.
And thus beauty, which is indeed God's handiwork, but only a temporal, carnal, and lower kind of good, is not filly loved in preference to God, the eternal, spiritual, and unchangeable good.When the miser prefers his gold to justice, it is through no fault of the gold, but of the man; and so with every created thing.
For though it be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately;evilly, when inordinately, It is this which some one has briefly said in these verses in praise of the Creator:(1) "These are Thine, they are good, because Thou art good who didst create them.There is in them nothing of ours, unless the sin we coimmit when we forget the order of things, and instead of Thee love that which Thou hast made."But if the Creator is truly loved, that is, if He Himself is loved and not another thing in His stead, He cannot be evilly loved; for love itself is to be ordinately loved, because we do well to love that which, when we love it, makes us live well and virtuously.
So that it seems to me that it is a brief but true definition of virtue to say, it is the order of love; and on this account, in the Canticles, the bride of Christ, the city of God, sings, "Order love within me."(2) It was the order of this love, then, this charity or attachment, which the sons of God disturbed when they forsook God, and were enamored of the daughters of men.(3) And by these two names (sons of God and daughters of men) the two cities are sufficiently distinguished.For though the former were by nature children of men, they had come into possession of another name by grace.For in the same Scripture in which the sons of God are said to have loved the daughters of men, they are also called angels of God; whence many suppose that they were not men but angels.
CHAP.23.--WHETHER WE ARE TO BELIEVE THAT ANGELS, WHO ARE OF A SPIRITUALSUBSTANCE, FELL IN LOVE WITH THE BEAUTY OF WOMEN, AND SOUGHT THEM IN MARRIAGE, AND THATFROM THIS CONNECTION GIANTS WERE BORN.
