{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/102/1020358.htm","path":"chr/ecf/102/1020358.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/102/1020358.htm","text":"Chapter 19.\u2014Of Worlds Without End, or Ages of Ages. 561\nI do not presume to determine whether God does so, and whether these times which are called \u201cages of ages\u201d are joined together in a continuous series, and succeed one another with a regulated diversity, and leave exempt from their vicissitudes only those who are freed from their misery, and abide without end in a blessed immortality; or whether these are called \u201cages of ages,\u201d that we may understand that the ages remain unchangeable in God\u2019s unwavering wisdom, and are the efficient causes, as it were, of those ages which are being spent in time. Possibly \u201cages\u201d is used for \u201cage,\u201d so that nothing else is meant by \u201cages of ages\u201d than by \u201cage of age,\u201d as nothing else is meant by \u201cheavens of heavens\u201d than by \u201cheaven of p. 239 heaven.\u201d For God called the firmament, above which are the waters, \u201cHeaven,\u201d and yet the psalm says, \u201cLet the waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord.\u201d 562 Which of these two meanings we are to attach to \u201cages of ages,\u201d or whether there is not some other and better meaning still, is a very profound question; and the subject we are at present handling presents no obstacle to our meanwhile deferring the discussion of it, whether we may be able to determine anything about it, or may only be made more cautious by its further treatment, so as to be deterred from making any rash affirmations in a matter of such obscurity. For at present we are disputing the opinion that affirms the existence of those periodic revolutions by which the same things are always recurring at intervals of time. Now whichever of these suppositions regarding the \u201cages of ages\u201d be the true one, it avails nothing for the substantiating of those cycles; for whether the ages of ages be not a repetition of the same world, but different worlds succeeding one another in a regulated connection, the ransomed souls abiding in well-assured bliss without any recurrence of misery, or whether the ages of ages be the eternal causes which rule what shall be and is in time, it equally follows, that those cycles which bring round the same things have no existence; and nothing more thoroughly explodes them than the fact of the eternal life of the saints.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II: City of God: Cha...","type":"page"}