shall suffer eternal misery. "In our conflicts here on earth, either the pain is victor, and so death
expels the sense of it, or nature conquers, and expels the pain. But there, pain shall afflict
eternally, and nature shall suffer eternally, both enduring to the continuance of the inflicted
punishment" (Ch. 28).
There are two resurrections, that of the soul at death, and that of the body at the Last Judgement.
After a discussion of various difficulties concerning the millennium, and the subsequent doings of
Gog and Magog, he comes to a text in II Thessalonians ( II, 11, 12): "God shall send them strong
delusion, that they should believe a lie, that all they might be damned who believed not the truth,
but had pleasure in unrighteousness." Some people might think it unjust that the Omnipotent
should first deceive them, and then punish them for being deceived; but to Saint Augustine this
seems quite in order. "Being condemned, they are seduced, and, being seduced, condemned. But
their seducement is by the secret judgement of God, justly secret, and secretly just; even His that
hath judged continually, ever since the world began." St. Augustine holds that God divided
mankind into the elect and the reprobate, not because of their merits or demerits, but arbitrarily.
All alike deserve damnation, and therefore the reprobate have no ground of complaint. From the
above passage of Saint Paul, it appears that they are wicked because they are reprobate, not
reprobate because they are wicked.
After the resurrection of the body, the bodies of the damned will burn eternally without being
consumed. In this there is nothing strange; it happens to the salamander and Mount Etna. Devils,
though incorporeal, can be burnt by corporeal fire. Hell's torments are not purifying, and will not
be lessened by the intercessions of saints. Origen erred in thinking hell not eternal. Heretics, and
sinful Catholics, will be damned.
The book ends with a description of the Saints' vision of God in heaven, and of the eternal felicity
of the City of God.
From the above summary, the importance of the work may not be clear. What was influential was
the separation of Church and State, with the clear implication that the State could only be part of
the City of God by being submissive towards the Church in all religious matters. This has been the
doctrine of the Church ever since. All