Chapter 8.–Of the Binding and Loosing of the Devil.

“After that,” says John, “he must be loosed a little season.” If the
binding and shutting up of the devil means his being made unable to
seduce the Church, must his loosing be the recovery of this ability?
By no means. For the Church predestined and elected before the
foundation of the world, the Church of which it is said, “The Lord
knoweth them that are His,” shall never be seduced by him. And yet
there shall be a Church in this world even when the devil shall be
loosed, as there has been since the beginning, and shall be always, the
places of the dying being filled by new believers. For a little after
John says that the devil, being loosed, shall draw the nations whom he
has seduced in the whole world to make war against the Church, and that
the number of these enemies shall be as the sand of the sea. “And they
went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the
saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of
heaven and devoured them. And the devil who seduced them was cast into
the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet
are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” [1351]
This relates to the last judgment, but I have thought fit to mention it
now, lest any one might suppose that in that short time during which
the devil shall be loose there shall be no Church upon earth, whether
because the devil finds no Church, or destroys it by manifold
persecutions. The devil, then, is not bound during the whole time
which this book embraces,–that is, from the first coming of Christ to
the end of the world, when He shall come the second time,–not bound in
this sense, that during this interval, which goes by the name of a
thousand years, he shall not seduce the Church, for not even when
loosed shall he seduce it. For certainly if his being bound means that
he is not able or not permitted to seduce the Church, what can the
loosing of him mean but his being able or permitted to do so? But God
forbid that such should be the case! But the binding of the devil is
his being prevented from the exercise of his whole power to seduce men,
either by violently forcing or fraudulently deceiving them into taking
part with him. If he were during so long a period permitted to assail
the weakness of men, very many persons, such as God would not wish to
expose to such temptation, would have their faith overthrown, or would
be prevented from believing; and that this might not happen, he is
bound.

But when the short time comes he shall be loosed. For he shall rage
with the whole force of himself and his angels for three years and six
months; and those with whom he makes war shall have power to withstand
all his violence and stratagems. And if he were never loosed, his
malicious power would be less patent, and less proof would be given of
the steadfast fortitude of the holy city: it would, in short, be less
manifest what good use the Almighty makes of his great evil. For the
Almighty does not absolutely seclude the saints from his temptation,
but shelters only their inner man, where faith resides, that by outward
temptation they may grow in grace. And He binds him that he may not,
in the free and eager exercise of his malice, hinder or destroy the
faith of those countless weak persons, already believing or yet to
believe, from whom the Church must be increased and completed; and he
will in the end loose him, that the city of God may see how mighty an
adversary it has conquered, to the great glory of its Redeemer, Helper,
Deliverer. And what are we in comparison with those believers and
saints who shall then exist, seeing that they shall be tested by the
loosing of an enemy with whom we make war at the greatest peril even
when he is bound? Although it is also certain that even in this
intervening period there have been and are some soldiers of Christ so
wise and strong, that if they were to be alive in this mortal condition
at the time of his loosing, they would both most wisely guard against,
and most patiently endure, all his snares and assaults.

Now the devil was thus bound not only when the Church began to be more
and more widely extended among the nations beyond Judea, but is now and
shall be bound till the end of the world, when he is to be loosed.
Because even now men are, and doubtless to the end of the world shall
be, converted to the faith from the unbelief in which he held them.
And this strong one is bound in each instance in which he is spoiled of
one of his goods; and the abyss in which he is shut up is not at an end
when those die who were alive when first he was shut up in it, but
these have been succeeded, and shall to the end of the world be
succeeded, by others born after them with a like hate of the
Christians, and in the depth of whose blind hearts he is continually
shut up as in an abyss. But it is a question whether, during these
three years and six months when he shall be loose, and raging with all
his force, any one who has not previously believed shall attach himself
to the faith. For how in that case would the words hold good, “Who
entereth into the house of a strong one to spoil his goods, unless
first he shall have bound the strong one?” Consequently this verse
seems to compel us to believe that during that time, short as it is, no
one will be added to the Christian community, but that the devil will
make war with those who have previously become Christians, and that,
though some of these may be conquered and desert to the devil, these do
not belong to the predestinated number of the sons of God. For it is
not without reason that John, the same apostle as wrote this
Apocalypse, says in his epistle regarding certain persons, “They went
out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they
would no doubt have remained with us.” [1352] But what shall become
of the little ones? For it is beyond all belief that in these days
there shall not be found some Christian children born, but not yet
baptized, and that there shall not also be some born during that very
period; and if there be such, we cannot believe that their parents
shall not find some way of bringing them to the laver of regeneration.
But if this shall be the case, how shall these goods be snatched from
the devil when he is loose, since into his house no man enters to spoil
his goods unless he has first bound him? On the contrary, we are
rather to believe that in these days there shall be no lack either of
those who fall away from, or of those who attach themselves to the
Church; but there shall be such resoluteness, both in parents to seek
baptism for their little ones, and in those who shall then first
believe, that they shall conquer that strong one, even though
unbound,–that is, shall both vigilantly comprehend, and patiently bear
up against him, though employing such wiles and putting forth such
force as he never before used; and thus they shall be snatched from him
even though unbound. And yet the verse of the Gospel will not be
untrue, “Who entereth into the house of the strong one to spoil his
goods, unless he shall first have bound the strong one?” For in
accordance with this true saying that order is observed–the strong one
first bound, and then his goods spoiled; for the Church is so increased
by the weak and strong from all nations far and near, that by its most
robust faith in things divinely predicted and accomplished, it shall be
able to spoil the goods of even the unbound devil. For as we must own
that, “when iniquity abounds, the love of many waxes cold,” [1353] and
that those who have not been written in the book of life shall in large
numbers yield to the severe and unprecedented persecutions and
stratagems of the devil now loosed, so we cannot but think that not
only those whom that time shall find sound in the faith, but also some
who till then shall be without, shall become firm in the faith they
have hitherto rejected and mighty to conquer the devil even though
unbound, God’s grace aiding them to understand the Scriptures, in
which, among other things, there is foretold that very end which they
themselves see to be arriving. And if this shall be so, his binding is
to be spoken of as preceding, that there might follow a spoiling of him
both bound and loosed; for it is of this it is said, “Who shall enter
into the house of the strong one to spoil his goods, unless he shall
first have bound the strong one?”

[1351] Rev. xx. 9, 10.

[1352] 1 John ii. 19.

[1353] Matt. xxiv. 12.

Chapter 7.–What is Written in the Revelation of John Regarding the Two Resurrections, and the Thousand Years, and What May Reasonably Be Held on These Points.

The evangelist John has spoken of these two resurrections in the book
which is called the Apocalypse, but in such a way that some Christians
do not understand the first of the two, and so construe the passage
into ridiculous fancies. For the Apostle John says in the foresaid
book, “And I saw an angel come down from heaven. . . . Blessed and holy
is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second
death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ,
and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” [1339] Those who, on the
strength of this passage, have suspected that the first resurrection is
future and bodily, have been moved, among other things, specially by
the number of a thousand years, as if it were a fit thing that the
saints should thus enjoy a kind of Sabbath-rest during that period, a
holy leisure after the labors of the six thousand years since man was
created, and was on account of his great sin dismissed from the
blessedness of paradise into the woes of this mortal life, so that
thus, as it is written, “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years,
and a thousand years as one day,” [1340] there should follow on the
completion of six thousand years, as of six days, a kind of seventh-day
Sabbath in the succeeding thousand years; and that it is for this
purpose the saints rise, viz., to celebrate this Sabbath. And this
opinion would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys
of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual, and consequent on the
presence of God; for I myself, too, once held this opinion. [1341]
But, as they assert that those who then rise again shall enjoy the
leisure of immoderate carnal banquets, furnished with an amount of meat
and drink such as not only to shock the feeling of the temperate, but
even to surpass the measure of credulity itself, such assertions can be
believed only by the carnal. They who do believe them are called by
the spiritual Chiliasts, which we may literally reproduce by the name
Millenarians. [1342] It were a tedious process to refute these
opinions point by point: we prefer proceeding to show how that passage
of Scripture should be understood. [1343]

The Lord Jesus Christ Himself says, “No man can enter into a strong
man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man”
[1344] –meaning by the strong man the devil, because he had power to
take captive the human race; and meaning by his goods which he was to
take, those who had been held by the devil in divers sins and
iniquities, but were to become believers in Himself. It was then for
the binding of this strong one that the apostle saw in the Apocalypse
“an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss, and a
chain in his hand. And he laid hold,” he says, “on the dragon, that
old serpent, which is called the devil and Satan, and bound him a
thousand years,”–that is, bridled and restrained his power so that he
could not seduce and gain possession of those who were to be freed.
Now the thousand years may be understood in two ways, so far as occurs
to me: either because these things happen in the sixth thousand of
years or sixth millennium (the latter part of which is now passing), as
if during the sixth day, which is to be followed by a Sabbath which has
no evening, the endless rest of the saints, so that, speaking of a part
under the name of the whole, he calls the last part of the
millennium–the part, that is, which had yet to expire before the end
of the world–a thousand years; or he used the thousand years as an
equivalent for the whole duration of this world, employing the number
of perfection to mark the fullness of time. For a thousand is the cube
of ten. For ten times ten makes a hundred, that is; the square on a
plane superficies. But to give this superficies height, and make it a
cube, the hundred is again multiplied by ten, which gives a thousand.
Besides, if a hundred is sometimes used for totality, as when the Lord
said by way of promise to him that left all and followed Him “He shall
receive in this world an hundredfold;” [1345] of which the apostle
gives, as it were, an explanation when he says, “As having nothing, yet
possessing all things,” [1346] –for even of old it had been said, The
whole world is the wealth of a believer,–with how much greater reason
is a thousand put for totality since it is the cube, while the other is
only the square? And for the same reason we cannot better interpret
the words of the psalm, “He hath been mindful of His covenant for ever,
the word which He commanded to a thousand generations,” [1347] than by
understanding it to mean “to all generations.”

“And he cast him into the abyss,”–i.e., cast the devil into the
abyss. By the abyss is meant the countless multitude of the wicked
whose hearts are unfathomably deep in malignity against the Church of
God; not that the devil was not there before, but he is said to be cast
in thither, because, when prevented from harming believers, he takes
more complete possession of the ungodly. For that man is more
abundantly possessed by the devil who is not only alienated from God,
but also gratuitously hates those who serve God. “And shut him up, and
set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more till
the thousand years should be fulfilled.” “Shut him up,”–i.e.,
prohibited him from going out, from doing what was forbidden. And the
addition of “set a seal upon him” seems to me to mean that it was
designed to keep it a secret who belonged to the devil’s party and who
did not. For in this world this is a secret, for we cannot tell
whether even the man who seems to stand shall fall, or whether he who
seems to lie shall rise again. But by the chain and prison-house of
this interdict the devil is prohibited and restrained from seducing
those nations which belong to Christ, but which he formerly seduced or
held in subjection. For before the foundation of the world God chose
to rescue these from the power of darkness, and to translate them into
the kingdom of the Son of His love, as the apostle says. [1348] For
what Christian is not aware that he seduces nations even now, and draws
them with himself to eternal punishment, but not those predestined to
eternal life? And let no one be dismayed by the circumstance that the
devil often seduces even those who have been regenerated in Christ, and
begun to walk in God’s way. For “the Lord knoweth them that are His,”
[1349] and of these the devil seduces none to eternal damnation. For
it is as God, from whom nothing is hid even of things future, that the
Lord knows them; not as a man, who sees a man at the present time (if
he can be said to see one whose heart he does not see), but does not
see even himself so far as to be able to know what kind of person he is
to be. The devil, then, is bound and shut up in the abyss that he may
not seduce the nations from which the Church is gathered, and which he
formerly seduced before the Church existed. For it is not said “that
he should not seduce any man,” but “that he should not seduce the
nations”–meaning, no doubt, those among which the Church exists–”till
the thousand years should be fulfilled,”–i.e., either what remains of
the sixth day which consists of a thousand years, or all the years
which are to elapse till the end of the world.

The words, “that he should not seduce the nations till the thousand
years should be fulfilled,” are not to be understood as indicating that
afterwards he is to seduce only those nations from which the
predestined Church is composed, and from seducing whom he is restrained
by that chain and imprisonment; but they are used in conformity with
that usage frequently employed in Scripture and exemplified in the
psalm, “So our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until He have mercy
upon us,” [1350] –not as if the eyes of His servants would no longer
wait upon the Lord their God when He had mercy upon them. Or the order
of the words is unquestionably this, “And he shut him up and set a seal
upon him, till the thousand years should be fulfilled;” and the
interposed clause, “that he should seduce the nations no more,” is not
to be understood in the connection in which it stands, but separately,
and as if added afterwards, so that the whole sentence might be read,
“And He shut him up and set a seal upon him till the thousand years
should be fulfilled, that he should seduce the nations no more,”–i.e.,
he is shut up till the thousand years be fulfilled, on this account,
that he may no more deceive the nations.

[1339] Rev. xx. 1-6. The whole passage is quoted.

[1340] 2 Pet. iii. 8.

[1341] Serm.259.

[1342] Milliarii.

[1343] [Augustin, who had formerly himself entertained chiliastic
hopes, revolutionized the prevailing ante-Nicene view of the
Apocalyptic millennium by understanding it of the present reign of
Christ in the Church. See Schaff, Church History, vol. ii. 619.--P.S.]

[1344] Mark iii. 27; “Vasa” for “goods.”

[1345] Matt. xix. 29.

[1346] 2 Cor. vi. 10.

[1347] Ps. cv. 8.

[1348] Col. i. 13.

[1349] ^ 2 Tim. ii. 19.

[1350] Ps. cxxiii. 2.

Chapter 6.–What is the First Resurrection, and What the Second.

After that He adds the words, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour
is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of
God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in
Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.” [1334]
As yet He does not speak of the second resurrection, that is, the
resurrection of the body, which shall be in the end, but of the first,
which now is. It is for the sake of making this distinction that He
says, “The hour is coming, and now is.” Now this resurrection regards
not the body, but the soul. For souls, too, have a death of their own
in wickedness and sins, whereby they are the dead of whom the same lips
say, “Suffer the dead to bury their dead,” [1335] –that is, let those
who are dead in soul bury them that are dead in body. It is of these
dead, then–the dead in ungodliness and wickedness–that He says, “The
hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the
Son of God; and they that hear shall live.” “They that hear,” that is,
they who obey, believe, and persevere to the end. Here no difference
is made between the good and the bad. For it is good for all men to
hear His voice and live, by passing to the life of godliness from the
death of ungodliness. Of this death the Apostle Paul says, “Therefore
all are dead, and He died for all, that they which live should not
henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and
rose again.” [1336] Thus all, without one exception, were dead in
sins, whether original or voluntary sins, sins of ignorance, or sins
committed against knowledge; and for all the dead there died the one
only person who lived, that is, who had no sin whatever, in order that
they who live by the remission of their sins should live, not to
themselves, but to Him who died for all, for our sins, and rose again
for our justification, that we, believing in Him who justifies the
ungodly, and being justified from ungodliness or quickened from death,
may be able to attain to the first resurrection which now is. For in
this first resurrection none have a part save those who shall be
eternally blessed; but in the second, of which He goes on to speak,
all, as we shall learn, have a part, both the blessed and the
wretched. The one is the resurrection of mercy, the other of
judgment. And therefore it is written in the psalm, “I will sing of
mercy and of judgment: unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing.” [1337]

And of this judgment He went on to say, “And hath given Him authority
to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man.” Here He shows
that He will come to judge in that flesh in which He had come to be
judged. For it is to show this He says, “because He is the Son of
man.” And then follow the words for our purpose: “Marvel not at
this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves
shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good,
unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the
resurrection of judgment.” [1338] This judgment He uses here in the
same sense as a little before, when He says, “He that heareth my word,
and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not
come into judgment, but is passed from death to life;” i.e., by having
a part in the first resurrection, by which a transition from death to
life is made in this present time, he shall not come into damnation,
which He mentions by the name of judgment, as also in the place where
He says, “but they that have done evil unto the resurrection of
judgment,” i.e., of damnation. He, therefore, who would not be damned
in the second resurrection, let him rise in the first. For “the hour
is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of
God; and they that hear shall live,” i.e., shall not come into
damnation, which is called the second death; into which death, after
the second or bodily resurrection, they shall be hurled who do not rise
in the first or spiritual resurrection. For “the hour is coming” (but
here He does not say, “and now is,” because it shall come in the end of
the world in the last and greatest judgment of God) “when all that are
in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth.” He does not
say, as in the first resurrection, “And they that Hear shall live.”
For all shall not live, at least with such life as ought alone to be
called life because it alone is blessed. For some kind of life they
must have in order to hear, and come forth from the graves in their
rising bodies. And why all shall not live He teaches in the words that
follow: “They that have done good, to the resurrection of
life,”–these are they who shall live; “but they that have done evil,
to the resurrection of judgment,”–these are they who shall not live,
for they shall die in the second death. They have done evil because
their life has been evil; and their life has been evil because it has
not been renewed in the first or spiritual resurrection which now is,
or because they have not persevered to the end in their renewed life.
As, then, there are two regenerations, of which I have already made
mention,–the one according to faith, and which takes place in the
present life by means of baptism; the other according to the flesh, and
which shall be accomplished in its incorruption and immortality by
means of the great and final judgment,–so are there also two
resurrections,–the one the first and spiritual resurrection, which has
place in this life, and preserves us from coming into the second death;
the other the second, which does not occur now, but in the end of the
world, and which is of the body, not of the soul, and which by the last
judgment shall dismiss some into the second death, others into that
life which has no death.

[1334] John v. 25, 26.

[1335] Matt. viii. 22.

[1336] 2 Cor. v. 14, 15.

[1337] Ps. ci. 1.

[1338] John v. 28, 29.