Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book XV/Chapter 19

Chapter 19.—The Significance Of Enoch&#8217;s Translation.

For that line also of which Seth is the father has the name “Dedication” in the seventh generation from Adam, counting Adam.&#160; For the seventh from him is Enoch, that is, Dedication.&#160; But this is that man who was translated because he pleased God, and who held in the order of the generations a remarkable place, being the seventh from Adam, a number signalized by the consecration of the Sabbath.&#160; But, counting from the diverging point of the two lines, or from Seth, he was the sixth.&#160; Now it was on the sixth day God made man, and consummated His works.&#160; But the translation of Enoch prefigured our

deferred dedication; for though it is indeed already accomplished in Christ our Head, who so rose again that He shall die no more, and who was Himself also translated, yet there remains another dedication of the whole house, of which Christ Himself is the foundation, and this dedication is deferred till the end, when all shall rise again to die no more.&#160; And whether it is the house of God, or the temple of God, or the city of God, that is said to be dedicated, it is all the same, and equally in accordance with the usage of the Latin language.&#160; For Virgil himself calls the city of widest empire “the house of Assaracus,” meaning the Romans, who were descended through the Trojans from Assaracus.&#160; He also calls them the house of &#198;neas, because Rome was built by those Trojans who had come to Italy under &#198;neas. &#160; For that poet imitated the sacred writings, in which the Hebrew nation, though so numerous, is called the house of Jacob.