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nydus/The City of God, Volume IPublic

Saint Augustine defends the Christian religion against accusations that the sack of Rome by the Goths resulted from the abandonment of polytheistic worship. This twenty-two-book treatise refutes pagan arguments regarding worldly prosperity and divine worship before establishing the author's own theology concerning the origin, history, and destiny of the city of God and the city of the world.

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Table of Contents

BOOK ELEVENTH.

  1. Of the seventh day, in which completeness and repose are celebrated.

But, on the seventh day (i.e., the same day repeated seven times, which number is also a perfect one, though for another reason), the rest of God is set forth, and then, too, we first hear of its being hallowed. So that God did not wish to hallow this day by His works, but by His rest, which has no evening, for it is not a creature; so that, being known in one way in the Word of God, and in another in itself, it should make a twofold knowledge, daylight and dusk (day and evening). Much more might be said about the perfection of the number seven, but this book is already too long, and I fear lest I should seem to catch at an opportunity of airing my little smattering of science more childishly than profitably. I must speak, therefore, in moderation and with dignity, lest, in too keenly following "number," I be accused of forgetting "weight" and "measure." Suffice it here to say, that three is the first whole number that is odd, four the first that is even, and of these two, seven is composed. On this account it is often put for all numbers together, as, "A just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again,"462—that is, let him fall

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