BOOK TWENTY-SECOND.
ARGUMENT.
THIS BOOK TREATS OF THE END OF THE CITY OF GOD, THAT IS TO SAY, OF THE ETERNAL HAPPINESS OF THE SAINTS; THE FAITH OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY IS ESTABLISHED AND EXPLAINED; AND THE WORK CONCLUDES BY SHOWING HOW THE SAINTS, CLOTHED IN IMMORTAL AND SPIRITUAL BODIES, SHALL BE EMPLOYED.
- 1. Of the creation of angels and men.
- 2. Of the eternal and unchangeable will of God.
- 3. Of the promise of eternal blessedness to the saints, and everlasting punishment to the wicked.
- 4. Against the wise men of the world, who fancy that the earthly bodies of men cannot be transferred to a heavenly habitation.
- 5. Of the resurrection of the flesh, which some refuse to believe, though the world at large believes it.
- 6. That Rome made its founder Romulus a god because it loved him; but the Church loved Christ because it believed Him to be God.
- 7. That the world's belief in Christ is the result of divine power, not of human persuasion.
- 8. Of miracles which were wrought that the world might believe in Christ, and which have not ceased since the world believed.
- 9. That all the miracles which are done by means of the martyrs in the name of Christ testify to that faith which the martyrs had in Christ.
- 10. That the martyrs who obtain many miracles in order that the true God may be worshipped, are worthy of much greater honour than the demons, who do some marvels that they themselves may be supposed to be God.
- 11. Against the Platonists, who argue from the physical weight of the elements that an earthly body cannot inhabit heaven.
- 12. Against the calumnies with which unbelievers throw ridicule upon the Christian faith in the resurrection of the flesh.
- 13. Whether abortions, if they are numbered among the dead, shall not also have a part in the resurrection.
- 14. Whether infants shall rise in that body which they would have had had they grown up.
- 15. Whether the bodies of all the dead shall rise the same size as the Lord's body.
- 16. What is meant by the conforming of the saints to the image of the Son of God.
- 17. Whether the bodies of women shall retain their own sex in the resurrection.
- 18. Of the perfect Man, that is, Christ; and of His body, that is, the Church, which is His fulness.
- 19. That all bodily blemishes which mar human beauty in this life shall be removed in the resurrection, the natural substance of the body remaining, but the quality and quantity of it being altered so as to produce beauty.
- 20. That, in the resurrection, the substance of our bodies, however disintegrated, shall be entirely reunited.
- 21. Of the new spiritual body into which the flesh of the saints shall be transformed.
- 22. Of the miseries and ills to which the human race is justly exposed through the first sin, and from which none can be delivered save by Christ's grace.
- 23. Of the miseries of this life which attach peculiarly to the toil of good men, irrespective of those which are common to the good and bad.
- 24. Of the blessings with which the Creator has filled this life, obnoxious though it be to the curse.
- 25. Of the obstinacy of those individuals who impugn the resurrection of the body, though, as was predicted, the whole world believes it.
- 26. That the opinion of Porphyry, that the soul, in order to be blessed, must be separated from every kind of body, is demolished by Plato, who says that the supreme God promised the gods that they should never be ousted from their bodies.
- 27. Of the apparently conflicting opinions of Plato and Porphyry, which would have conducted them both to the truth if they could have yielded to one another.
- 28. What Plato or Labeo, or even Varro, might have contributed to the true faith of the resurrection, if they had adopted one another's opinions into one scheme.
- 29. Of the beatific vision.
- 30. Of the eternal felicity of the city of God, and of the perpetual Sabbath.
