The City of God stands as Augustine's masterwork of theological defense and construction, written over thirteen years in response to accusations that Christianity brought ruin upon Rome. This first volume contains the first ten books of sustained refutation—demolishing pagan claims that traditional worship secured either temporal prosperity or eternal happiness—followed by the beginning of his positive vision in Books Eleven through Thirteen, where he traces the origin of two societal orders to the primordial division among the angels. What emerges is not merely an apology for Christianity but a philosophy of history that subordinate the fate of empires to the hidden providence of the one true God, whose sovereignty extends from creation through the fall to the final judgment.
This divine providence, mediated through the holy angels, stands in stark contrast to the activities of the demons. Augustine therefore establishes a criterion for choosing between competing miraculous claims. We are faced with a choice between two types of spirits: those who demand that we pay them divine honour and sacrifice to them, and those who teach us to render holy service, not to themselves, but to God alone. The former perform marvels to induce us to worship them; the latter perform miracles to induce us to worship the one God. The former do not forbid us to worship God, while the latter forbid us to worship themselves. Which angels are we to believe regarding the way to eternal life? If neither party had wrought miracles, but had merely uttered commands, a godly mind would have been at no loss to discern which command proceeded from proud arrogance and which from true religion. If miracles had been wrought only by those who demand sacrifice for themselves, while those who forbade this and enjoined sacrificing to the one God only thought fit entirely to forego the use of visible miracles, the authority of the latter would still have been preferred by all who use their reason. But since God, for the sake of commending to us the oracles of His truth, has wrought miracles of surpassing grandeur through the immortal messengers who proclaim His majesty and not their own pride, who is so unreasonable as not to choose and follow the truth when he finds it heralded by even more striking evidences than falsehood? We must trust the angels who forbid us to worship them and direct us to God, rather than those who demand worship for themselves. The miracles of the true God are greater and lead to eternal blessedness, whereas demonic miracles lead to idolatry and eternal misery.
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