Manny’s Reviews > The City of God: Books 11-22 (I/7) > Status Update

As for purgatorial punishments, however, he should not imagine that they will have any place following that last and terrible judgment. But, even so, it is certainly not to be denied that the eternal fire itself will be milder for some and harsher for others, according to their differing merits...

One of them, the earthly city, has made for itself whatever false gods it wanted, creating them from anything at all, even from human beings, and serving them with sacrifices. The other, the heavenly city, which is on pilgrimage here on earth, does not make up false gods but is itself created by the true God and is itself his true sacrifice.

We search out these hidden meanings of Divine Scripture as best we can, sometimes more aptly and sometimes less so, but always holding faithfully to the certainty that these things were not done and recorded without some prefiguration of things to come and that they are to be referred to nothing other than Christ and his Church, which is the city of God.

Here, then, we have the two cities set before us, the one existing in the reality of this world, the other in the hope of God. They came forth, as it were, from the common door of mortality, which was opened in Adam, to pursue and complete their respective courses to their own distinct and destined ends.