{"author":null,"backreferences":[{"context_html":"<p>And if they maintain that no one can attain to the blessedness\r\nof the world to come, unless in this life he has been indoctrinated\r\nin those cycles in which bliss and misery relieve\r\none another, how do they avow that the more a man loves God,\r\nthe more readily he attains to blessedness,—they who teach\r\nwhat paralyzes love itself? For who would not be more remiss\r\nand lukewarm in his love for a person whom he thinks\r\nhe shall be forced to abandon, and whose truth and wisdom he\r\nshall come to hate; and this, too, after he has quite attained\r\nto the utmost and most blissful knowledge of Him that he is\r\ncapable of? Can any one be faithful in his love, even to a<span class=\"pagenum\"><a id=\"Page_511\">[Pg 511]</a></span>\r\nhuman friend, if he knows that he is destined to become his\r\nenemy?<a id=\"FNanchor_558_558\"></a><a class=\"fnanchor pginternal\" href=\"#Footnote_558_558\">[558]</a> God forbid that there be any truth in an opinion\r\nwhich threatens us with a real misery that is never to end, but\r\nis often and endlessly to be interrupted by intervals of fallacious\r\nhappiness. For what happiness can be more fallacious and\r\nfalse than that in whose blaze of truth we yet remain ignorant\r\nthat we shall be miserable, or in whose most secure citadel we\r\nyet fear that we shall be so? For if, on the one hand, we are to\r\nbe ignorant of coming calamity, then our present misery is not so\r\nshortsighted, for it is assured of coming bliss. If, on the other\r\nhand, the disaster that threatens is not concealed from us in\r\nthe world to come, then the time of misery which is to be at\r\nlast exchanged for a state of blessedness, is spent by the soul\r\nmore happily than its time of happiness, which is to end in a\r\nreturn to misery. And thus our expectation of unhappiness\r\nis happy, but of happiness unhappy. And therefore, as we\r\nhere suffer present ills, and hereafter fear ills that are imminent,\r\nit were truer to say that we shall always be miserable,\r\nthan that we can some time be happy.</p>","headings":["THE WORKS OF AURELIUS AUGUSTINE,","BOOK TWELFTH.","ARGUMENT."],"marker_anchor":null,"paragraph_id":"pg45304-paragraph-875"}],"canonical_references":[],"date_end":null,"date_start":null,"deduplication_fingerprint":"83a996c4584cbcb9276e3a1c9baddcdfbc2cdc3e3b5636cd1a726dff7827f77e","edition_title":"The City of God, Volume I","edition_translators":["Marcus Dods","George Wilson (Book IV)","J. J. Smith (Books V-VIII)"],"edition_year":1871,"explicit_reference_candidates":[],"headings":[],"id":"pg45304-Footnote_558_558","license_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html","public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"original-editor-translator-note","review_required":["work and recension attribution","original-work chronology","Bible reference numbering and citation kind","English edition rights and attribution"],"review_status":"needs_review","rights_evidence":"Provider catalog reports public domain in the USA. Original transcription title leaves state T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1871; printed translator allocation retained. Gutenberg credits Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries without an exact scan identifier. Full provider license preserved with acquired original; republication and per-work metadata remain unreviewed.","source_anchor":"Footnote_558_558","source_ebook":45304,"source_html":"<div class=\"footnote\">\n<p><a id=\"Footnote_558_558\"></a><a class=\"pginternal\" href=\"#FNanchor_558_558\"><span class=\"label\">[558]</span></a> Cicero has the same (<i>de Amicitia</i>, 16): \"Quonam modo quisquam amicus\r\nesse poterit, cui se putabit inimicum esse posse?\" He also quotes Scipio to the\r\neffect that no sentiment is more unfriendly to friendship than this, that we should\r\nlove as if some day we were to hate.</p></div>","source_sha256":"d89e9a2b80bb59f394f0fb1bf313b39fab162f06af6642166d62c5912c1195f1","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/45304/pg45304-images.html#Footnote_558_558","text_sha256":"2625ff5f08f96fc47e0b221709ddee60e04c2689617526fbc4d64214fbbb8183","verified":false,"work_id":null}