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The Church Fathers · 413–426
The City of God
De Civitate Dei
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
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What it is
Begun after Rome fell in 410 and pagans blamed the Christians. Augustine answers with a history of two cities founded on two loves — one on love of God to the contempt of self, the other on love of self to the contempt of God — running intermingled to the end of the age.
Why it lasted
The foundational text of Christian political thought. Every later account of how the church should relate to empire, nation, or state is a response to it.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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