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enjoys a peace which it had not while there were opposing parties who contested for the
enjoyment of those things which were too small to satisfy both. This peace is purchased by
toilsome wars; it is obtained by what they style a glorious victory. Now, when victory remains with
the party which had the juster cause, who hesitates to congratulate the victor, and style it a
desirable peace? These things, then, are good things, and without doubt the gifts of God. But if they
neglect the better things of the heavenly city, which are secured by eternal victory and peace
never-ending, and so inordinately covet these present good things that they believe them to be the
only desirable things, or love them better than those things which are believed to be better,--if this
be so, then it is necessary that misery follows and ever increases.

Book 19. CHAP. 17.--What Produces Peace, And What Discord, Between The Heavenly And Earthly
Cities.
But the families which do not live by faith seek their peace in the earthly advantages of this life;
while the families which live by faith look for those eternal blessings which are promised, and use
as pilgrims such advantages of time and of earth as do not fascinate and divert them from God, but
rather aid them to endure with greater ease, and to keep down the number of those burdens of the
corruptible body which weigh upon the soul. Thus the things necessary for this mortal life are used
by both kinds of men and families alike, but each has its own peculiar and widely different aim in
using them. The earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeks an earthly peace, and the end it
proposes, in the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and rule, is the combination of men's wills
to attain the things which are helpful to this life. The heavenly city, or rather the part of it which
sojourns on earth and lives by faith, makes use of this peace only because it must, until this mortal
condition which necessitates it shall pass away. Consequently, so long as it lives like a captive and a
stranger in the earthly city, though it has already received the promise of redemption, and the gift
of the Spirit as the earnest of it, it makes no scruple to obey the laws of the earthly city, whereby
the things necessary for the maintenance of this mortal life are administered; and thus, as this life is
common to both cities, so there is a harmony between them in regard to what belongs to it. But, as
the earthly city has had some philosophers whose doctrine is condemned by the divine teaching,
and who, being deceived either by their own conjectures or by demons, supposed that many gods
must be invited to take an interest in human affairs; and as the celestial city, on the other hand,
knew that one God only was to be worshipped, it has come to pass that the two cities could not
have common laws of religion, and that the heavenly city has been compelled in this matter to
dissent, and to become obnoxious to those who think differently, and to stand the brunt of their
anger and hatred and persecutions, except in so far as the minds of their enemies have been
alarmed by the multitude of the Christians and quelled by the manifest protection of God accorded
to them. This heavenly city, then, while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens out of all nations, and
gathers together a society of pilgrims of all languages, not scrupling about diversities in the
manners, laws, and institutions whereby earthly peace is secured and maintained, but recognizing
that, however various these are, they all tend to one and the same end of earthly peace. It
therefore is so far from rescinding and abolishing these diversities, that it even preserves and
adopts them, so long only as no hindrance to the worship of the one supreme and true God is thus
introduced. Even the heavenly city, therefore, while in its state of pilgrimage, avails itself of the
peace of earth, and, so far as it can without injuring faith and godliness, desires and maintains a
common agreement among men regarding the acquisition of the necessaries of life, and makes this
earthly peace bear upon the peace of heaven; for this alone can be truly called and esteemed the
peace of the reasonable creatures, consisting as it does in the perfectly ordered and harmonious
enjoyment of God and of one another in God. When we shall have reached that peace, this mortal