1 Adv. Academicos, 1. ii. c. 2, § 5: "Etiam mihi ipsi de me incredibile incendium concitarunt." And in several passages of the Civitas Dei (viii. 3-12 xxii. 27) he speaks very favourably of Plato, and also of Aristotle, and thus broke the way for the high authority of the Aristotelian philosophy with the scholastics of the middle age.
2 He died, according to the Chronicle of his friend and pupil Prosper Aquitanus, the 28th of August, 430 (in the third month of the siege of Hippo by the Vandals); according to his biographer Possidius he lived seventy-six years. The day of his birth Augustin states himself, De vita beata, § 6 (tom. i. 300): "Idibus Novemoris mihi natalis dies erat."
3 He received baptism shortly before his death.
1 Conf. i. 1: "Fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in Te." In all his aberrations, which we would hardly know, if it were not from his own free confession, he never sunk to anything mean, but remained, like Paul in his Jewish fanaticism, a noble intellect and an honorable character, with burning love for the true and the good.
2 For particulars respecting the course of Augustin's life, see my work above cited, and other monographs. Comp. also the fine remarks of Dr. Baur in his posthumous Lectures on Doctrine-History (1866), vol. i. Part ii. p. 26 sqq. He compares the development of Augustin with the course of Christianity from the beginning to his time, and draws a parallel between Augustin and Origen.
3 Conf. ix. c. 8: "Quae me parturivit et carne, ut in hanc temporalem, et carde, ut in aeternam lucem nascerer." L. v. 9: "Non enim satis eloquor, quid erga me habebat anima, et quanto majore sollicitudine nie partur iebat spiritu, quam carne pepererat." In De dono persev. c. 20, he ascribes his conversion under God "to the faithful and dairy tears" of his mother.
4 Conf. l. ix. c. 11: "Tantum illud vos rogo, ut ad Domini altare memineritis mei, ubs fuertis." This must be explained from the already prevailing custom of offering prayers for the dead, which, however, had rather the form of thanksgiving for the mercy of God shown to them, than the later form of intercession for them.
5 He is still known among the inhabitants of the place as "the great Christian" (Rumi Kebir). Gibbon (ch. xxxiii. ad ann. 430) thus describes the place which became so famous through Augustin: "The maritime colony of Hippo, about two hundred miles westward of Carthage, had formerly acquired the distinguishing epithet of Regius, from the residence of the Numidian kings; and some remains of trade and populousness still adhere to the modern city, which is known in Europe by the corrupted name of Bona." Sallust mentions Hippo once in his history of the Jugurthine War. A part of the wealth with which Sallust built and beautified his splendid mansion and gardens in Rome, was extorted from this and other towns of North Africa while governor of Numidia. Since the French conquest of Algiers Hippo Regius was rebuilt under the name of Bona and is now one of the finest towns in North Africa, numbering over 10,000 inhabitants, French, Moors, and Jews.
6 He mentions a sister, "soror mea, sancta proposita" [monasterii], without naming her, Epist. 211, n. 4 (ed. Bened.), alias Ep. 109. He also had a brother by the name of Navigius.
7 Possidius says, in his Vita Aug.: "Caeterum episcopatu suscepto multo instantius ac ferventius, majore auctoritate, non in una tantum regione, sed ubicunque rogatus venisset, verbum satutis alacriter, ac suaviter pullulante atque crescente Domini ecclesia, praedicavit."
8 Possidius, c. 28, gives a vivid picture of the ravages of the Vandals, which have become proverbial. Comp. also Gibbon, ch. xxxiii.
9 I freely combine several passages.
10 Comp. Opera, tom. vi. p. 117 (Append.); Daniel: Thesaurus hymnol. i. 116 sqq., and iv. 203 sq., and Mone: Lat. Hymner, i. 422 sqq., Mone ascribes the poem to an unknown writer of the sixth century, but Trench (Sacred Latin Poetry, 2d ed., 315) and others attribute it to Cardinal Peter Damiani, the friend of Pope Hildebrand (d. 1072). Augustin wrote his poetry in prose.
11 Possidius says, Vita, c. 31: "Testamentum nullum fecit, guia unde faceret, pauper Dei non habuit. Ecclesiae bibliothecam omnesgue codices diligenter posteris custodiendos semper jubebat."
12 The inhabitants escaped to the sea. There appears no bishop of Hippo after Augustin. In the seventh century the old city was utterly destroyed by the Arabians, but two miles from it Bona was built of its ruins. Comp. Tillemont, xiii. 945, and Gibbon, ch. xxxiii. Gibbon says, that Bona, "in the sixteenth century, contained about three hundred families of industrious, but turbulent manufacturers. The adjacent territory is renowned for a pure air, a fertile soil, and plenty of exquisite fruits." Since the French conquest of Algiers, Bona was rebuilt in 1832, and is gradually assuming a French aspect. It is now one of the finest towns in Algeria, the key to the province of Constantine, has a public garden, several schools, considerable commerce, and a population of over ten thousand of French, Moors, and Jews, the great majority of whom are foreigners. The relics of St. Augustin have been recently transferred from Pavia to Bona. See the letters of abbé Sibour to Poujoulat sur la translation de ia relique de saint Augustin de Pavie à Hippone, in Poujoulat's Histoire de saint Augustin, tom. i. p. 413 sqq.
13 Even in Africa Augustin's spirit reappeared from time to time notwithstanding the barbarian confusion, as a light in darkness, first in Vigilius, bishop of Thapsus, who, at the close of the fifth century, ably defended the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and the person of Christ, and to whom the authorship of the so-called Athanasian Creed has sometimes been ascribed; in Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe, one of the chief opponents of Semi-Pelagianism, and the later Arianism, who with sixty catholic bishops of Africa was banished for several years by the Arian Vandals to the island of Sardinia, and who was called the Augustin of the sixth century (died 533); and in Facundus of Hermiane (died 570), and Fulgentius Ferrandus, and Liberatus, two deacons of Carthage, who took a prominent part in the Three Chapter controversy.
14 Or, as he wrote to a friend about the year 410, Epist. 120, C. 1, § 2 (tom. ii. p. 347, ed. Bened. Venet.; in older ed., Ep. 122): "Ut quod credis intelligas...non ut fidem resinas, sed ea quae fidei firmitate jam tenes, etiam rationis luce conspicias." He continues, ibid. c. 3: "Absit namque, ut hoc in nobis Deus oderit, in quo nos reliquis animalibus exccellentiores creavit. Absit, inquam, ut ideo credamus, ne rationem accipiamus vel quaeramus; cum etiam credere non possemns, nisi rationales animas haberemus." In one of his earliest works, Contra Academ. l. iii. c. 20, § 43, he says of himself: "Ita sum affectus, ut quid sit verum non credendo solum, sed etiam intelligendo apprehendere impatienter desiderem."
15 Ea'n mh' pisteu/shte, on/de' mh' sunte. But the proper translation of the Hebrew is: "If ye will not believe [in me, yeb@;
for yeb@;
], surely ye shall not be established (or, not remain)."
16 Comp. De praed. sanct. cap. 2, § 5 (tom. x. p. 792): "Ipsum credere nihil aliud est quam cum assensione cogiitare. Nom enim omnis qui cogitat, credit, cum ideo cogitant, plerique ne credant: sed cpgitat omnis qui credit, et credendo cogitat et cogitando credit. Fides si non cogitetur, nulia est." Ep. 120, cap. 1, § 3 (tom. ii. 347), and Ep. 137, c. 4, § 15 (tom. ii. 408): "Intellectui fides aditum aperit, infidelitas claudit." Augustin's view of faith and knowledge is discussed at large by Gangauf, Metaphysische Psychologie des heil. Augustinus, i. pp. 31-76, and by Nourrisson, La phliosophie de saint Augustin, tom. ii. 282-290.
17 Prosper Aquitanus collected in the year 450 or 451 from the works of Augustin 392 sentences (see the Appendix to the tenth vol. of the Bened. ed. p. 223 sqq., and in Migne's ed. of Prosper Aquitanus, col. 427-496), with reference to theological purport and the Pelagian controversies. We recall some of the best which he has omitted:
"Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet, Vetus in Novo pates."
"Distingue tempora, et concordabit Scriptura."
"Cor nostrum inquietum est, donec requiescat in Te."
"Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis."
"Non vincit nisi veritas, victoria veritatis est caritas."
"Ubi amor, ibi trinitas."
"Fides praecedit intellectum."
"Deo servire vera libertas est."
"Nulia infelicitas frangit, quem felicitas nulla corrumpit."
The famous maxim of ecclesiastical harmony: "In necessarlis unitas, in dublis (or, non ccessarlis) libertas, in omnibus (in utrisque) caritas,"-which is often ascribed to Augustin, dates in this form not from him, but from a much later period. Dr. Lucke (in a special treatise on the antiquity of the author, the original form, etc., of this sentence, Göttingen, 1850) traces the authorship to Rupert Meldenius, an irenical German theologian of the seventeenth century. Baxter, also, who lived during the intense conflict of English Puritanism and Episcopacy, and grew weary of the "fury of theologians," adopted a similar sentiment. The sentence is held by many who differ widely in the definition of what is "necessary" and what is "doubtful." The meaning of "charity in all things" is above doubt, and a moral duty of every Christian, though practically violated by too many in all denominations.
18 Vorlesungen über die christl. Dogmengeschichte, vol. 1. P. 11. p. 30 sq.
19 It is sometimes asserted that he had no knowledge at all of the Greek. So Gibbon, for example, says (ch. xxxiii.): "The superficial learning of Augustin was confined to the Latin language." But this is a mistake. In his youth he had a great aversion to the glorious language of Hellas because he had a bad teacher and was forced to it (Confi. i. 14). He read the writings of Plato in a Latin translation (vii. 9). But after his baptism, during his second residence in Rome, he resumed the study of Greek with greater zest, for the sake of his biblical studies. In Hippo he had, while presbyter, good opportunity to advance in it, since his bishop, Aurelius, a native Greek, understood his mother tongue much better than the Latin. In his books he occasionally makes reference to the Greek. In his work Contra Jul. i. c. 6 § 21 (tom. x. 510), he corrects the Pelagian Julian in a translation from Chrysostom, quoting the original. "Ego ipsa verba Graeca quae a Joanne dicta sunt ponam dia' tou=to kai' ta' paidia baptizomen, kai/toi a/marth/mata ou'k e_xonta, quod est Latine: Ideo et infantes baptizamus, quamvis peccata non habentes." Julian had freely rendered this: "cum non sint coinquinati peccato," and had drawn the inference: "Sanctus Joannes Constantinopolitanus [John Chrysostom] negat esse in parvulis originale peccatum." Augustin helps himself out of the pinch by arbitrarily supplying propria to a/marth/mata, so that the idea of sin inherited from another is not excluded. The Greek fathers, however, did not consider hereditary corruption to be proper sin or guilt at all, but only defect, weakness, or disease. In the City of God, lib. xix. c. 23, he quotes a passage from Porphyry's e'k logiwn filosofia, and in book xviii. 23, he explains the Greek monogram ixun/j. He gives the derivation of several Greek words, and correctly distinguishes between such synonyms as genna/w and tiktw, eu/xh/ and proseuxh/, pnoh/ and pneu=ma. It is probable that he read Plotin, and the Panarion of Epiphanius or the summary of it, in Greek (while the Church History of Eusebius he knew only in the translation of Rufinus). But in his exegetical and other works he very rarely consults the Septuagint or Greek Testament, and was content with the very imperfect Itala, or the improved version of Jerome (the Vulgate). The Benedictine editors overestimate his knowledge of Greek. He himself frankly confesses that he knew very little of it. De Trinit. 1. iii Procaem. ("Graaecae linguae non sit nobis tantus habitus, ut talium rerum libris legendis et intelligendis ullo modo reperiamur idonei"), and Contra literas Petiliani (written in 400),1. ii. c. 38 ("Et ego quidem Graecae linguae perparum assecutus sum, et prope nihil"). On the philosophical learning of Augustin may be compared Nourrissonl. c. ii. p. 92 sqq.
20 Ellies Dupin (Bibliothégue ecclésiastique, tom. iii. 1 partie, p. 818) and Nourrisson (l. c. tom. ii. p. 449) apply to Augustin the term magnus opinator, which Cicero used of himself. There is, however, this important difference that Augustin, along with his many opinions on speculative questions in philosophy and theology, had very positive convictions in all essential doctrines, while Cicero was a mere eclectic in philosophy.
21 He was not "intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity," as a modern English statesman (Lord Beaconsfield) charged his equally distinguished rival (Mr. Gladstone) in Parliament.
22 In his Retractations, he himself reviews ninety-three of his works (embracing two hundred and thirty-two books, see ii. 67), in chronological order: in the first book those which he wrote while a layman and presbyter, in the second those which he wrote when a bishop. See also the extended chronological index in Schönemann's Biblioth. historico-literaria Patrum Latinorum, vol. ii (Lips, 1794), p. 340 sqq. (reprinted in the supplemental volume, xii., of Migne's ed. of the Opera, p. 24 sqq.); and other systematic and alphabetical lists in the eleventh volume of the Bened. ed (p. 494 sqq., ed. Venet.), and in Migne, tom. xi.
23 For this reason the Benedictine editors have placed the Retractations and the Confessions at the head of his works.
24 He himself says of them, Retract. 1. ii. c. 6: "Maltis fratribus eos [Confessionum libros tredecim] multum placuisse et, placere scio." Comp. De donon perseverantiae, c. 20: "Quid autem meorum opusculorum freguentius et deleciabilius innotescere potuit qam libri Confessionum mearum?" Comp. Ep.. 231 Dario comiti.
25 Schönnemann (in the supplemental volume of Migne's ed. of Augustin, p. 134 sqq.) cites a multitude of separate editions of the Confessions in Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, and German, from A.D. 1475 to 1776. Since that time several new editions have been added. One of the best Latin editions is that of Karl von Raumer (Stuttgart, 1856), who used to read the Confessions with his students at Erlangen once a week for many years. In his preface he draws a comparison between them and Rousseau's Confessions and Hamann's Gedanken über meinen Lebenslauf. English and German translations are noticed above in the Lit. Dr. Shedd (in his ed., Pref. p. xxvii) calls the Confessions the best commentary yet written upon the seventh and eighth chapters of Romans. "That quickening of the human spirit, which puts it again into vital and sensitive relations to the holy and eternal; that illumination of the mind, whereby it is enabled to perceive with clearness the real nature of truth and righteousness; that empowering of the will, to the conflict of victory-the entire process of restoring the Divine image in the soul of man-is delineated in this book, with a vividness and reality never exceeded by the uninspired mind."... "It is the life of God in the soul of a strong man, rushing and rippling with the freedom of the life of nature. He who watches can almost see the growth; he who listens can hear the perpetual motion; and he who is in sympathy will be swept along."
26 We mean his sexual sins. He kept a concubine for sixteen years, the mother of his only child, Adeodatus, and after her separation he formed for a short time a similar connection in Milan; but in both cases he was faithful. Conf. IV. 2 (unam habebam...servans tori fidem): VI. 15. Erasmus thought very leniently of this sin as contrasted with the conduct of the priests and abbots of his time. Augustin himself deeply repented of it, and devoted his life to celibacy.
27 Nourrisson(1. c. tom. i. p. 19) calls the Confessions "cet ouvrage unique, souvent imité, toujours parodié, où il s'accuse, se condamne et s'humilie, priére ardente, récit entrainant, metaphysique incomparable, histoire de tout un monde qui se refléte dans l'histoire d' une ame." Comp. also an article on the Confessions in "The Contemporary Review" for June, 1867, pp 133-160.
28 Prov. x. 19. This verse (ex multiloquio non effugies peccatum) the Semi-Pelagian Gennadius (De viris illustr. sub Aug.) applies against Augustin in excuse for his erroneous doctrines of freedom and predestination.
30 I Cor. xi. 31. Comp. his Prologus to the two books of Retractationes.
31 J. Morell Mackenzie (in W Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. i. p. 422) happily calls the Retractations of Augustin "one of the noblest sacrifices ever laid upon the altar of truth by a majestic intellect acting in obedience to the purest conscientiousness."
32 In tom. i. of the ed. Bened., immediately after the Retractationes and Confessiones, and at the close of the volume. On these philosophical writings, see Brucker: Historia critica philosophiae, Lips. 1766, tom. iii. pp. 485-507: H Ritter: Geschichte der Philosphie, vol. vi. p. 153 sqq.; Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, I. 333-346 (Am. ed.): Erdmann, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, I. 231-240: Bindemann, l. c. I. 282 sqq. Huber, l. c. I. 242 sqq.; Gangauf, l. c. p. 25 sqq., and Nouerisson, l. c. ch. i. and ii. Nourrisson makes the just remark (i. p. 53): "Si la philosophie est la recherché de la verité, jamais sans douse il ne s'est rencontre une ame plus philosophe que celle de saint Augustin. Car jamais ame n'a supporté avec plus d' impatience les anxiétés du doute et n'a fait plus d' efforts pour dissiper les fantomes de l'erreur."
33 Or on the question: "Utrum omnia bona et mala divinae providentie ordo contineat?" Comp. Retract. i. 3.
34 Augustin, in his Confessions (l. ix. c. 6), expresses himself in this touching way about this son of his illicit love: "We took with us [on returning from the country to Milan to receive the sacrament of baptism] also the boy Adeodatus, the son of my carnal sin, Thou hadst formed him well. He was but just fifteen years old, and he was superior in mind to many grave and learned men. I acknowledge Thy gifts, O Lord, my God, who createst all, and who canst reform our deformities: for I had no part in that boy but sin. And when we brought him up in Thy nurture, Thou, only Thou, didst prompt us to it; I acknowledge Thy gifts. There is my book entitled, De magistro: he speaks with me there. Thou knowest that all things there put into his mouth were in his mind when he was sixteen years of age. That maturity of mind was a terror to me; and who but Thou is the artificer of such wonders? Soon Thou didst take his life from the earth; and I think more quietly of him now, fearing no more for his boyhood, nor his youth, nor his whole life. We took him to ourselves as one of the same age in Thy grace, to be trained in Thy nurture; and we were baptised together; and all trouble about the past fled from us." He refers to him also in De vita beata, § 6: "There was also with us, in age the youngest of all, but whose talents, if affection deceives me not, promise something great, my son Adeodatus." In the same book (§ 18), he mentions an answer of his: "He is truly chaste who waits on God, and keeps himself to Him only."
35 The books on grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, and the ten Categories of Aristotle, in the Appendix to the first volume of the Bened. ed., are spurious. For the genuine works of Augustin on these subjects were written in a different form (the dialogue) and for a higher purpose, and were lost in his own day. Comp. Retract. i. c. 6. In spite of this, Prantl. (Geschichte der Logik in Abendlande, pp. 665-674, cited by Huber, l. c. p. 240) has advocated the genuineness of the Principia dialecticae, and Huber inclines to agree. Gangauf, l. c. p. 5, and Nourrisson, i. p. 37, consider them spurious.
36 =H ma/uhsij on0k a_llo ti h0 a0na/msij. On this Plato, in the Phaedo, as is well known, rests his doctrine of pre-existence. Augustin was at first in favor of the idea, Solit. ii. co, n. 35; afterwards he rejected it, Retract. i. 4, § 4: but after all he assumes in his anthropology a sort on unconscious, yet responsible, pre-existence of the whole human race in Adam as its organic head, and hence taught a universal fall in Adam's fall.
37 History of Philosophy, vol. i. 333 sq., translated by Pro. Geo. S. Morris.
38 In the Bened. ed. tom. vii. Comp. Retract. ii. 43, and Ch. Hist. III. § 12. The City of God and the Confessions are the only writings of Augustin which Gibbon thought worth while to read (chap. xxxiii.). Huber (l. c. p. 315) says: "Augustin's philosophy of history, as he presents it in his Civitas Dei, has remained to this hour the standard philosophy of history for the church orthodoxy, the bounds of which this orthodoxy, unable to perceive in the motions of the modern spirit the fresh morning air of a higher day of history, is scarcely able to transcend." Nourrisson devotes a special chapter to the consideration of the two cities of Augustin, the City of the World and the City of God (tom. ii. 43-88). Compare also the Introduction to Saisset's Traduction de la Cité de Dieu, Par. 1855, and Reinken's (old Cath. Bishop), Geschichtsphilosophie des heil. Aug. 1866. Engl. translation of the City of God by Dr. Marcus Dods, Edinburgh, 1872, 2 vols., and in the second vol. of this Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.
39 Separately edited by Krabinger, Tubingen, 1861.
40 This work is also incorporated in the Corpus haereseoloicum of Fr. Oehler, tom. i. pp. 192-225.
41 Contra Epist. Manichaei quam vocant fundamenti, 1. i. 2.
42 The earliest anti-Manichaean writings (De libero arbitrio; De moribus eccl. cath. et de Moribus Manich.) are in tom. i. ed. Bened.; the latter in tom viii.
2 Jas. iv. 6, and 1 Pet. v. 5.
3 Augustin begins with praise, and the whole book vibrates with praise. He says elsewhere (in Ps. cxlix.), that "as a new song fits not well an old man's lips, he should sing a new song who is a new creature and is living a new life;" and so from the time of his new birth, the "new song" of praise went up from him, and that "not of the lip only," but (ibid. cxlviii.) conscientia lingua vita.
4 And the rest which the Christian has here is but an earnest of the more perfect rest hereafter, when, as Augustin says (De Gen. ad. Lit.. xii. 26), " all virtue will be to love what one sees, and the highest felicity to have what one loves." [Watts, followed by Pusey, and Shedd, missed the paronomasia of the Latin: "cor nostrum inquietum est donec requiescat in Te," by translating: "our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee." It is the finest sentence in the whole book, and furnishes one of the best arguments for Christianity as the only religion which leads to that rest in God.-P. S.]
8 That is, Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who was instrumental in his conversion (vi. sec. 1; viii. sec. 28, etc.). "Before conversion," as Leighton observes on I Pet. ii. 1, 2, "wit or eloquence may draw a man to the word, and possibly prove a happy bait to catch him (as St. Augustin reports of his hearing St. Ambrose), but, once born again, then it is the milk itself that he desires for itself."
13 In this section, and constantly throughout the Confessions, he adverts to the materialistic views concerning God held by the Manichaeans. See also sec. 10; iii. sec. 12; iv. sec. 31, etc. etc.
16 Supererogatur tibi, ut debeas.
17 "As it is impossible for mortal, imperfect, and perishable man to comprehend the immortal, perfect and eternal, we cannot expect that he should be able to express in praise the fulness of God's attributes. The Talmud relates of a rabbi, who did not consider the terms, `the great, mighty, and fearful God, 0' which occur in the daily prayer, as being sufficient, but added some more attributes-`What! 0' exclaimed another rabbi who was present, `imaginest thou to be able to exhaust the praise of God? Thy praise is blasphemy. Thou hadst better be quiet. 0' Hence the Psalmist's exclamation, after finding that the praises of God were inexhaustible: hlhx h@ypwIr io
, `Silence is praise to Thee. 0' "-Breslau.
19 Moriar ne moriar, ut eam videam. See Ex. xxxiii. 20.
20 Ps. xix. 12, 13. "Be it that sin may never see the light, that it may be like a child born and buried in the womb; yet as that child is a man, a true man, there closeted in that hidden frame of nature, so sin is truly sin, though it never gets out beyond the womb which did conceive and enliven it."-Sedgwick.
24 Ps xxvi. 12, Vulg. "The danger of ignorance is not less than its guilt. For of all evils a secret evil is most to be deprecated, of all enemies a concealed enemy is the worst. Better the precipice than the pitfall; better the tortures of curable disease than the painlessness of mortification; and so, whatever your soul's guilt and danger, better to be aware of it. However alarming, however distressing self-knowledge may be, better that than the tremendous evils of self-ignorance."-Caird.
29 "Mercy," says Binning, "hath but its name from misery, and is no other thing than to lay another's misery to heart."
34 Ex. xvi. 15. This is one of the alternative translations put against " it is manna" in the margin of the authorized version. It is the literal significance of the Hebrew, and is so translated in most of the old English versions. Augustin indicates thereby the attitude of faith. Many things we are called on to believe (to use the illustration of Locke) which are above reason, but none that are contrary to reason. We are but as children in relation to God, and may therefore only expect to know "parts of His ways." Even in the difficulties of Scripture he sees the goodness of God. "God," he says, "has in Scripture clothed His mysteries with clouds, that man's love of truth might be inflamed by the difficulty of finding them out. For if they were only such as were readily understood, truth would not be eagerly sought, nor would it give pleasure when found."-De Ver. Relig. c. 17.
38 See some interesting remarks on this subject in Whately's Logic, Int. sec. 5.
39 Ps. ix. 9, and xlvi. 1, and xlviii. 3.
41 "A rite in the Western churches, on admission as a catechumen, previous to baptism, denoting the purity and uncorruptedness and discretion required of Christians. See S. Aug. De Catechiz. rudib. c. 26; Concil. Carth. 3, can. 5; and Liturgies in Assem. Cod. Liturg. t. i."-E. B. P. See also vi. 1, note, below.
43 Baptism was in those days frequently (and for similar reasons to the above) postponed till the hour of death approached. The doctors of the Church endeavoured to discourage this, and persons baptized on a sick-bed ("clinically") were, if they recovered, looked on with suspicion. The Emperor Constantine was not baptized till the close of his life, and he is censured by Dr. Newman (Arians iii. sec. 1) for presuming to speak of questions which divided the Arians and the Orthodox as "unimportant," while he himself was both unbaptized and uninstructed. On the postponing of baptism with a view to unrestrained enjoyment of the world, and on the severity of the early Church towards sins committed after baptism,see Kaye's Tertullian, pp. 234-241.
45 See note, v. sec. 2, below.
46 Ps. lxxviii. 39, and Jas. iv. 14.
49 "The `vail 0' was an emblem of honour, used in places of worship, and subsequently in courts of law, emperors' palaces, and even private house. See Du Fresne and Hoffman sub v. That between the vestibule, or proscholium, and the school itself, besides being a mark of dignity, may, as St. Augustin perhaps implies, have been intended to denote the hidden mysteries taught therein, and that the mass of mankind were not fit hearers of truth."-E.B. P.
51 Exaggerated statements have been made as to Augustin's deficiency in the knowledge of Greek. In this place it is clear that he simply alludes to a repugnance to learn a foreign language that has often been seen in boys since his day. It would seem equally clear from Bk. vii. sec. 13 (see also De Trin. iii. sec. 1), that when he could get a translation of a Greek book, he preferred it to one in the original language. Perhaps in this, again, he is not altogether singular. It is difficult to decide the exact extent of his knowledge, but those familiar with his writings can scarcely fail to be satisfied that he had a sufficient acquaintance with the language to correct his Italic version by the Greek Testament and the LXX., and that he was quite alive to the importance of such knowledge in an interpreter of Scripture. See also Con. Faust, xi. 2-4; and De Doctr. Christ. ii. 11-15.
52 So in Tract. II. on John, he has: "The sea has to be crossed, and dost thou despise the wood?" explaining it to mean the cross of Christ. And again: "Thou art not at all able to walk in the sea, be carried by a ship-be carried by the wood-believe on the Crucified," etc.
54 Terence, Eunuch. Act 3, scene 6 (Colman).
55 Until very recently, the Eunuchus was recited at "the play" of at least one of our public schools. See De Civ. Dei, ii. secs. 7, 8, where Augustin again alludes to this matter.
56 Aeneìd, i. 36-75 (Kennedy).
63 Literally, "takes care not by a slip of the tongue to say inter hominibus, but takes no care lest hominem auferat ex hominibus."
65 Matt. xix. 14. See i. sec. 11, note 3, above.
66 "To be is no other than to be one. In as far, therefore, as anything attains unity, in so far it `is. 0' For unity worketh congruity and harmony, whereby things composite are in so far as they are; for things uncompounded are in themselves, because they are one; but things compounded imitate unity by the harmony of their parts, and, so far as they attain to unity, they are. Wherefore order and rule secure being, disorder tends to not being."-Aug. De Morib. Manich. c. 6.
9 Ps. xciii. 20, Vulg. "Lit. `Formest trouble in or as a precept. 0' Thou makest to us a precept out of trouble, so that trouble itself shall be a precept to us, i. e. hast willed so to discipline and instruct those Thy sons, that they should not be without fear, lest they should love something else, and forget Thee, their true good."-S. Aug. ad loc.-E. B. P.
10 "Formerly an episcopal city: now a small village. At this time the inhabitants were heathen. St. Augustin calls them `his fathers, 0' in a letter persuading them to embrace the gospel.-Ep. 232."-E. B. P.
12 Nondum fideli, not having rehearsed the articles of the Christian faith at baptism. See i. sec. 17, note, above; and below, sec. 1, note.
18 Sallust, De Bello Catil. c. 9.
24 "For even souls, in their very sins, strive after nothing else but some kind of likeness of God, in a proud and preposterous, and, so to say, slavish liberty. So neither could our first parents have been persuaded to sin unless it had been said, `Ye shall be as gods. 0' "-Aug. De Trin. xi. 5.
1 The early Fathers strongly reprobated stage-plays, and those who went to them were excluded from baptism. This is not to be wondered at, when we learn that "even the laws of Rome prohibited actors from being enrolled as citizens" (De Civ. Dei, ii. 14), and that they were accounted infamous (Tertullian, De Spectac. sec. xxii.). See also Tertullian, De Pudicitia, c. vii
3 An allusion, probably, as Watts suggests, to the sea of Sodom, which, according to Tacitus (Hist. book v.), throws up bitumen "at stated seasons of the year." Tacitus likewise alludes to its pestiferous odour, and to its being deadly to birds and fish. See also Gen. xiv. 3, 10.
4 Song of the Three Holy Children, verse 3.
6 Eversores. "These for their boldness were like our `Roarers, 0' and for their jeering like the worser sort of those that would be called `The Wits. 0' "-W. W. "This appears to have been a name which a pestilent and savage set of persons gave themselves, licentious alike in speech and action. Augustin names them again, De Vera Relig. c. 40; Ep. 185 ad Bonifac. c. 4; and below, v. c. 12; whence they seemed to have consisted mainly of Carthaginian students, whose savage life is mentioned again, ib. c. 8."-E. B. P.
7 Up to the time of Cicero the Romans employed the term sapientia for filosofi/a (Monboddo's Ancient Metaphys. i. 5). It is interesting to watch the effect of the philosophy in which they had been trained on the writings of some of the Fathers. Even Justin Martyr, the first after the "Apostolic," has traces of this influence. See the account of his search for "wisdom," and conversion, in his Dialogue with Trypho, ii. and iii.
11 In connection with the opinion Augustin formed of the Scriptures before and after his conversion, it is interesting to recall Fénélon's glowing description of the literary merit of the Bible. The whole passage might well be quoted did space permit:-"L'Ecriture surpasse en naïveté, en vivacité, en grandeur, tous les écrivains de Rome et de la Grèce. Jamais Homère même n'a approché de la sublimité de Moïse dans ses cantiques....Jamais nulle ode Grecque ou Latine n'a pu atteindre à la hauteur des Psaumes....Jamais Homerè ni aucun autre poëte n'a égalé Isaïe peignant la majesté de Dieu....Tantôt ce prophète à toute la douceur et toute la tendresse d'une églogue, dans les riantes peintures qu'il fait de la paix, tantôt il s' élevè jusqu' à laisser tout au-dessous de lui. Mais qu'y a-t-il, dans l'antiquité profane, de comparable au tendre Jérémie, déplorant les maux de son peuple; ou à Nahum, voyant de loin, en esprit, tomber la superbe Ninive sous les efforts d'une armée innombrable? On croit voir cette armée, ou croft entendre le bruit des armes et des chariots; tout est dépeint d'une manière vive qui saisit l'imagination; il laisse Homère loin derrière lui....Enfin, il y a autant de différence entre les poëtes profanes et les prophètes, qu'il y en a entre le véritable enthousiasme et le faux."-Sur l' Eloq. de la Chaire, Dial. iii.
12 That is probably the "spiritual" meaning on which Ambrose (vi. 6, below) laid so much emphasis. How different is the attitude of mind indicated in xi. 3 from the spiritual pride which beset him at this period of his life! When converted he became as a little child, and ever looked to God as a Father, from whom he must receive both light and strength. He speaks, on Ps. cxlvi., of the Scriptures, which were plain to "the little ones," being obscured to the mocking spirit of the Manichaeans. See also below, iii. 14, note.
13 So, in Book xxii. sec. 13 of his reply to Faustus, he charges them with "professing to believe the New Testament in order to entrap the unwary;" and again, in sec. 15, he says: " They claim the impious liberty of holding and teaching, that whatever they deem favourable to their heresy was said by Christ and the apostles; while they have the profane boldness to say, that whatever in the same writings is unfavourable to them is a spurious interpolation." They professed to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, but affirmed (ibid. xx. 6) "that the Father dwells in a secret light, the power of the Son in the sun, and His wisdom in the moon, and the Holy Spirit in the air." It was this employment of the phraseology of Scripture to convey doctrines utterly unscriptural that rendered their teaching such a snare to the unwary. See also below, v. 12, note.
15 There was something peculiarly enthralling to an ardent mind like Augustin's in the Manichaean system. That system was kindred in many ways to modern Rationalism. Reason was exalted at the expense of faith. Nothing was received on mere authority, and the disciple's inner consciousness was the touchstone of truth. The result of this is well pointed out by Augustin (Con. Faust, xxxii. sec. 19): "Your design, clearly, is to deprive Scripture of all authority, and to make every man's mind the judge what passage of Scripture he is to approve of, and what to disapprove of. This is not to be subject to Scripture in matters of faith, but to make Scripture subject to you. Instead of making the high authority of Scripture the reason of approval, every man makes his approval the reason for thinking a passage correct." Compare also Con. Faust, xi. sec. 2, and xxxii. sec. 16.
18 Luke xv. 16; and see below, vi. sec. 3, note.
19 See below, xii. sec. 6, note.
20 "Of this passage St. Augustin is probably speaking when he says, `Praises bestowed on bread in simplicity of heart, let him (Petilian) defame, if he will, by the ludicrous title of poisoning and corrupting frenzy. 0' Augustin meant in mockery, that by verses he could get his bread; his calumniator seems to have twisted the word to signify a love-potion.-Con. Lit. Petiliani, iii. 16."-E. B. P.
24 The strange mixture of the pensive philosophy of Persia with Gnosticism and Christianity, propounded by Manichaeeus, attempted to solve this question, which was "the great object of heretical inquiry" (Mansel's Gnostics, lec. i.). It was Augustin's desire for knowledge concerning it that united him to this sect, and which also led him to forsake it, when he found therein nothing but empty fables (De Lib. Arb. i. sec. 4). Manichaeus taught that evil and good were primeval, and had independent existences. Augustin, on the other hand, maintains that it was not possible for evil so to exist (De Civ. Dei, xi. sec. 22) but, as he here states, evil is "a privation of good." The evil will has a causa deficiens, but not a causa efficiens (ibid. xii. 6), as is exemplified in the fall of the angels.
27 Gen. i. 27 see vi. sec. 4, note.
30 The law of the development of revelation implied in the above passage is one to which Augustin frequently resorts in confutation of objections such as those to which he refers in the previous and following sections. It may likewise be effectively used when similar objections are raised by modern sceptics. In the Rabbinical books there is a tradition of the wanderings of the children of Israel, that not only did their clothes not wax old (Deut. xxix. 5) during those forty years, but that they grew with their growth. The written word is as it were the swaddling-clothes of the holy child Jesus; and as the revelation concerning Him-the Word Incarnate-grew, did the written word grow. God spoke in sundry parts !polue/mrwj@ and in divers manners unto the fathers by the prophets (Heb. i. 1); but when the "fulness of the time was come" (Gal. iv. 4), He completed the revelation in His Son. Our Lord indicates this principle when He speaks of divorce in Matt. xix. 8. "Moses," he says, "because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so." (See Con. Faust. xix. 26, 29.) When objections, then, as to obsolete ritual usages, or the sins committed by Old Testament worthies are urged, the answer is plain: the ritual has become obsolete, because only intended for the infancy of revelation, and the sins, while recorded in, are not approved by Scripture, and those who committed them will be judged according to the measure of revelation they received. See also De Ver. Relig. xvii.; in Ps. lxxiii. 1, liv. 22; Con. Faust. xxii. 25; Trench, Hulsean Lecs. iv., v. (1845); and Candlish's Reason and Revelation, pp. 58-75.
32 Here, as at the end of sec. 17, he alludes to the typical and allegorical character of Old Testament histories. Though he does not with Origen go so far as to disparage the letter of Scripture (see De Civ. Dei, xiii. 21), but upholds it, he constantly employs the allegorical principle. He (alluding to the patriarchs) goes so far, indeed, as to say (Con Faust, xxii. 24), that "not only the speech but the life of these men was prophetic; and the whole kingdom of the Hebrews was like a great prophet;" and again: "We may discover a prophecy of the coming of Christ and of the Church both in what they said and what they did". This method of interpretation he first learned from Ambrose. See note on "the letter killeth," etc. (below, vi. sec. 6), for the danger attending it. On the general subject, reference may also be made to his in Ps. cxxxvi. 3; Serm. 2; De Tentat. Abr. sec. 7; and De Civ. Dei, xvii. 3.
33 Deut. vi. 5, and Matt. xxii. 37-39.
34 Ps. cxliv. 9 "St. Augustin (Quaest in Exod. ii. qu. 71) mentions the two modes of dividing the ten commandments into three and seven, or four and six, and gives what appear to have been his own private reasons for preferring the first. Both commonly existed in his day, but the Anglican mode appears to have been the most usual. It occurs in Origen, Greg. Naz., Jerome, Ambrose, Chrys. St. Augustin alludes to his division again, Serm. 8, 9, de x. Chordis, and sec. 33 on this psalm: `To the first commandment there belong three strings because God is trine. To the other, i.e., the love of our neighbour, seven strings. These let us join to those three, which belong to the love of God, if we would on the psaltery of ten strings sing a new song. 0'"-E.B.P.
39 The Manichaeans, hke the deistical writers of the last century, attacked the spoiling of the Egyptians, the slaughter of the Canaanites, and such episodes. Referring to the former, Augustin says (Con Faust. xxii. 71), "Then, as for Faustus' objection to the spoiling of the Egyptians, he knows not what he says. In this Moses not only did not sin, but it would have been sin not to do it. It was by the command of God, who, from His knowledge both of the actions and of the hearts of men, can decide upon what every one should be made to suffer, and through whose agency. The people at that time were still carnal, and engrossed with earthly affection; while the Egyptians were in open rebellion against God, for they used the gold, God's creature, in the service of idols, to the dishonour of the Creator, and they had grievously oppressed strangers by making them work without pay. Thus the Egyptians deserved the punishment, and the Israelites were suitably employed in inflicting it." For an exhaustive vindication of the conduct of the children of Israel as the agents of God in punishing the Canaanites, see Graves on the Pentateuch, Part iii. lecture I. See also De Civ. Dei, i. 26; and Quaest. in Jos. 8, 16, etc.
40 See note on sec. 14, above.
42 According to this extraordinary system, it was the privilege of the "elect" to set free in eating such parts of the divine substance as were imprisoned in the vegetable creation (Con. Faust. xxxi. 5) They did not marry or work in the fields, and led an ascetic life, the "hearers" or catechumens being privileged to provide them with food. The "elect" passed immediately on dying into the realm of light, while, as a reward for their service, the souls of the "hearers" after death transmigrated into plants (from which they might be most readily freed), or into the "elect," so as, in their turn, to pass away into the realm of light. See Con. Faust. v. 10, xx. 23; and in Ps. cxl.
43 Augustin frequently alludes to their conduct to the poor, in refusing to give them bread or the fruits of the earth, lest in eating they should defile the portion of God contained therein. But to avoid the odium of their conduct, they would inconsequently give money whereby food might be bought. See in Ps. cxl. sec. 12; and De Mor. Manich. 36, 37, and 53.
45 He alludes here to that devout manner of the Eastern ancients, who used to lie flat on their faces in prayer.-W. W.
46 Symbolical of the rule of faith. See viii. sec. 30, below.
48 We can easily understand that Augustin's dialectic skill would render him a formidable opponent, while, with the zeal of a neophyte, he urged those difficulties of Scripture (De Agon. Christ. iv ) which the Manichaeans knew so well how to employ. In an interesting passage (De Duab. Anim. con. Manich. ix.) he tells us that his victories over "inexperienced persons" stimulated him to fresh conquests, and thus kept him bound longer than he would otherwise have been in the chains of this heresy.
1 Augustin tells us that he went not beyond the rank of a "hearer," because he found the Manichaean teachers readier in refuting others than in establishing their own views, and seems only to have looked for some esoteric doctrine to have been disclosed to him under their materialistic teaching as to God-viz. that He was an unmeasured Light that extended all ways but one, infinitely (Serm. iv. sec 5.)-rather than to have really accepted it.-De Util. Cred. Praef. See also iii. sec. 18, notes 1 and 2, above.
6 Isa. xlii. 3, and Matt. xii. 20.
8 "He alone is truly pure who waiteth on God, and keepeth himself to Him alone " (Aug. De Vita Beata, sec. 18). "Whoso seeketh God is pure, because the soul hath in God her legitimate husband. Whosoever seeketh of God anything besides God, doth not love God purely. If a wife loved her husband because he is rich, she is not pure, for she loveth not her husband but the gold of her husband" (Aug. Serm. 137). "Whoso seeks from God any other reward but God, and for it would serve God, esteems what he wishes to receive more than Him from whom he would receive it. What, then? hath God no reward? None, save Himself. The reward of God is God Himself. This it loveth; if it love aught beside, it is no pure love. You depart from the immortal flame, you will be chilled, corrupted. Do not depart; it will be thy corruption, will be fornication in thee" (Aug. in Ps. lxxii. sec. 32). "The pure fear of the Lord (Ps xix. 9) is that wherewith the Church, the more ardently she loveth her husband, the more diligently she avoids offending Him, and therefore love, when perfected, casteth not out this fear, but it remaineth for ever and ever" (Aug.in loc.). "Under the name of pure fear is signified that will whereby we must needs be averse from sin, and avoid sin, not through the constant anxiety of infirmity, but through the tranquillity of affection" (De Civ. Dei, xiv. sec. 65).-E. B. P.
10 "Indisputably we must take care, lest the mind, believing that which it does not see, feign to itself something which is not, and hope for and love that which is false. For in that case it will not be charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned, which is the end of the commandment" (De Trin. viii. sec. 6). And again (Confessions, i. 1): "For who can call on Thee, not knowing Thee? For he that knoweth Thee not may call on Thee as other than Thou art."
12 Augustin classes the votaries of both wizards and astrologers (De Doctr. Christ. ii. 23; and De Civ. Dei, x. 9; compare also Justin Martyr, Apol. ii. c. 5) as alike "deluded and imposed on by the false angels, to whom the lowest part of the world has been put in subjection by the law of God's providence;" and he says, "All arts of this sort are either nullities, or are part of a guilty superstition springing out of a baleful fellowship between men and devils, and are to be utterly repudiated and avoided by the Christian, as the covenants of a false and treacherous friendship." It is remarkable that though these arts were strongly denounced in the Pentateuch, the Jews-acquiring them from the surrounding Gentile nations-have embedded them deeply in their oral law, said also to be given by Moses (e.g. in Moed Katon 28, and Shabbath 156, prosperity comes from the influence of the stars; in Shabbath 61 it is a question whether the influence of the stars or a charm has been effective; and in Sanhedrin 17 magic is one of the qualifications for the Sanhedrim). It might have been expected that the Christians, if only from that reaction against Judaism which shows itself in Origen's disparagement of the letter of the Old Testament Scriptures (see De Princip. iv. 15, 16), would have shrunk from such strange arts. But the influx of pagans, who had practiced them, into the Christian Church appears gradually to have leavened it in no slight degree. This is not only true of the Valentinians (see Kaye's Clement of Alex. vi.) and other heretics, but the influence of these contacts is seen even in the writings of the "orthodox." Those who can read between the lines will find no slight trace of this (after separating what they would conceive to be true from what is manifestly false) in the story told by Zonaras, in his Annals, of the controversy between the Rabbis and Sylvester, Bishop of Rome, before Constantine. The Jews were worsted in argument, and evidently thought an appeal to miracles might, from the Emperor's education, bring him over to their side. An ox is brought forth. The Jewish wonder-worker whispers a mystic name into its ear, and it falls dead; but Sylvester, according to the story, is quite equal to the occasion, and restores the animal to life again by uttering the name of the Redeemer. It may have been that the cessation of miracles may have gradually led unstable professors of Christianity to invent miracles; and, as Bishop Kaye observes (Tertullian, p. 95), "the success of the first attempts naturally encouraged others to practice similar impositions on the credulity of mankind." As to the time of the cessation of miracles, comparison may be profitably made of the views of Kaye, in the early part of c. ii. of his Tertullian, and of Blunt, in his Right Use of the Early Fathers, series ii. lecture 6.
15 Rom. ii. 6, and Matt. xvi. 27.
17 This physician was Vindicianus, the "acute old man" mentioned in vii. sec. 8, below, and again in Ep. 138, as "the most eminent physician of his day." Augustin's disease, however, could not be reached by his remedies. We are irresistibly reminded of the words of our great poet:-
"Canst thou minister to a mind diseased;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart!"-Macbeth, act. v. scene 3.
18 1 I Pet. v. 5, and Jas. iv. 6.
22 Ps xxxvi. 6, and Rom. xi. 33.
23 See i. sec, 17, note 3, above.
26 The mind may rest in theories and abstractions, but the heart craves a being that it can love; and Archbishop Whately has shown in one of his essays that the idol worship of every age had doubtless its origin in the craving of mind and heart for an embodiment of the object of worship. "Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us," says Philip (John xiv. 8), and he expresses the longing of the soul; and when the Lord replies, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," He reveals to us God's satisfaction of human wants in the incarnation of His Son. Augustin's heart was now thrown in upon itself, and his view of God gave him no consolation. It satisfied his mind, perhaps, in a measure, to think of God as a "corporeal brightness" (see iii. 12; iv. 3, 12, 31; v. 19, etc.) when free from trouble, but it could not satisfy him now. He had yet to learn of Him who is the very image of God-who by His divine power raised the dead to life again, while, with perfect human sympathy, He could "weep with those that wept,"-the "Son of Man" (not of a man, He being miraculously born, but of the race of men [anqrw=pou]), i. e. the Son of Mankind. See also viii. sec. 27, note, below.
27 For so it has ever been found to be:-
"Est quaedam flere voluptas;
Expletur lacrymis egeriturque dolor."
-Ovid, Trist. iv. 3, 38.
30 Ovid, Trist. iv. eleg. iv. 72.
31 Augustin's reference to this passage in his Retractions is quoted at the beginning of the book. He might have gone further than to describe his words here as declamatio levis, since the conclusion is not logical.
32 "The great and merciful Architect of His Church, whom not only the philosophers have styled, but the Scripture itself calls texni/thj (an artist or artificer), employs not on us the hammer and chisel with an intent to wound or mangle us, but only to square and fashion our hard and stubborn hearts into such lively stones as may both grace and strengthen His heavenly structure."-Boyle.
33 See iii. 9; iv. 3, 12, 31; v. 19.
34 As Seneca has it: "Quad ratio non quit, saepe sanabit mora" (Agam. 130).
35 See iv. cc. 1, 10 12, and vi. c. 16.
36 "Friendship," says Lord Bacon, in his essay thereon,-the sentiment being perhaps suggested by Cicero's "Secundas res splendidiores facit amicitia et adversas partiens communicansque leviores" (De Amicit. 6),-"redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves." Augustin appears to have been eminently open to influences of this kind. In his De Duab. Anim. con. Manich. (c. ix.) he tells us that friendship was one of the bonds that kept him in the ranks of the Manichaeans; and here we find that, aided by time and weeping, it restored him in his great grief. See also v. sec. 19, and vi. sec 26, below.
40 Ps. cxix. 142, and John xvii. 17.
43 See iv. cc. 1, 12, and vi. c. 16, below.
44 It is interesting in connection with the above passages to note what Augustin says elsewhere as to the origin of the law of death in the sin of our first parents. In his De Gen. ad Lit. (vi. 25) he speaks thus of their condition in the garden, and the provision made for the maintenance of their life: "Aliud est non posse mori, sicut quasdam naturas immortales creavit Deus; aliud est autem posse non mori, secundum quem modum primus creatus est homo immortalis." Adam, he goes on to say, was able to avert death, by partaking of the tree of life. He enlarges on this doctrine in Book xiii. De Civ. Dei. He says (sec. 20): "Our first parents decayed not with years, nor drew nearer to death-a condition secured to them in God's marvellous grace by the tree of life, which grew along with the forbidden tree in the midst of Paradise." Again (sec. 19) he says: "Why do the philosophers find that absurd which the Christian faith preaches, namely, that our first parents were so created, that, if they had not sinned, they would not have been dismissed from their bodies by any death, but would have been endowed with immortality as the reward of their obedience, and would have lived eternally with their bodies?" That this was the doctrine of the early Church has been fully shown by Bishop Bull in his State of Man before the Fall, vol. ii. Theophilus of Antioch was of opinion (Ad Autolyc. c. 24) that Adam might have gone on from strength to strength, until at last he "would have been taken up into heaven." See also on this subject Dean Buckland's Sermon on Death; and Delitzsch, Bibl. Psychol. vi. secs. 1 and 2.
48 A similar illustration occurs in sec. 15, above.
49 Augustin is never weary of pointing out that there is a lex occulta (in Ps. lvii. sec. 1), a law written on the heart, which cries to those who have forsaken the written law, "Return to your hearts, ye transgressors." In like manner he interprets (De Serm. Dom. in Mon. ii. sec. 11) "Enter into thy closet," of the heart of man. The door is the gate of the senses through which carnal thoughts enter into the mind. We are to shut the door, because the devil (in Ps. cxli. 3) si clausum invenerit transit. In sec. 16, above, the figure is changed, and we are to fear lest these objects of sense render us "deaf in the ear of our heart" with the tumult of our folly. Men will not, he says, go back into their hearts, because the heart is full of sin, and they fear the reproaches of conscience, just (in Ps. xxxiii. 5) "as those are unwilling to enter their houses who have troublesome wives." These outer things, which too often draw us away from Him, God intends should lift us up to Him who is better than they, though they could all be ours at once, since He made them all; and "woe," he says (De Lib. Arb. ii. 16), "to them who love the indications of Thee rather than Thee, and remember not what these indicated."
51 See iv. cc. 1, 10, above, and vi. c. 16, below.
57 "The Son of God," says Augustin in another place, "became a son of man, that the sons of men might be made sons of God." He put off the form of God-that by which He manifested His divine glory in heaven-and put on the "form of a servant" (Phil. ii. 6, 7), that as the outshining [a0pau/gasma] of the Father's glory (Heb. i. 3) He might draw us to Himself. He descended and emptied Himself of His dignity that we might ascend, giving an example for all time (in Ps. xxxiii. sec. 4); for, "lest man should disdain to imitate a humble man, God humbled Himself, so that the pride of the human race might not disdain to walk in the footsteps of God." See also v. sec. 5, note, below.
59 "There is something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something in pride which debases it. This seems, indeed, to be contradictory, that loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious humility enables us to submit to what is above us; and nothing is more exalted above us than God; and therefore humility, by making us subject to God, exalts us."-De Civ. Dei, xiv. sec. 13.
65 Augustin tells us (De Civ. Dei, xix. 1) that Varro, in his lost book De Philosophia, gives two hundred and eighty-eight different opinions as regards the chief good, and shows us how readily they may be reduced in number. Now, as then, philosophers ask the same questions. We have our hedonists, whose "good" is their own pleasure and happiness; our materialists, who would seek the common good of all; and our intuitionists, who aim at following the dictates of conscience. When the pretensions of these various schools are examined without prejudice, the conclusion is forced upon us that we must have recourse to Revelation for a reconcilement of the difficulties of the various systems: and that the philosophers, to employ Davidson's happy illustration (Prophecies, Introd.), forgetting that their faded taper has been insensibly kindled by gospel light, are attempting now, as in Augustin's time (ibid. sec. 4), "to fabricate for themselves a happiness in this life based upon a virtue as deceitful as it is proud." Christianity gives the golden key to the attainment of happiness, when it declares that "godliness is profitable for all things, having the promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to come " (I Tim. iv. 8). It was a saying of Bacon (Essay on Adversity), that while "prosperity is the blessing of the old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New." He would have been nearer the truth had he said that while temporal rewards were the special promise of the Old Testament, spiritual rewards are the special promise of the New. For though Christ's immediate followers had to suffer "adversity" in the planting of our faith, adversity cannot properly be said to be the result of following Christ. It has yet to be shown that, on the whole, the greatest amount of real happiness does not result, even in this life, from a Christian life, for virtue is, even here, its own reward. The fulness of the reward, however, will only be received in the life to come. Augustin's remark, therefore, still holds good that "life eternal is the supreme good, and death eternal the supreme evil, and that to obtain the one and escape the other we must live rightly" (ibid. sec. 4); and again, that even in the midst of the troubles of life, "as we are saved, so we are made happy, by hope. And as we do not as yet possess a present, but look for a future salvation, so it is with our happiness,...we ought patiently to endure till we come to the ineffable enjoyment of unmixed good." See Abbé Anselme, Sur le Souverain Bien, vol. v. serm. 1; and the last chapter of Professor Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics, for the conclusions at which a mind at once lucid and dispassionate has arrived on this question.
66 "Or `an unintelligent soul: 0' very good Mss. reading `sensu, 0' the majority, it appears, `sexu. 0' If we read `sexu, 0' the absolute unity of the first principle or Monad, may be insisted upon, and in the inferior principle, divided into `violence 0' and `lust, 0' `violence, 0' as implying strength, may be looked on as the male, `lust 0' was, in mythology, represented as female if we take `sensu, 0' it will express the living but unintelligent soul of the world in the Manichaean, as a pantheistic system."-E. B. P.
67 Ps. xviii. 28. Augustin constantly urges our recognition of the truth that God is the "Father of lights." From Him as our central sun, all light, whether of wisdom or knowledge proceedeth, and if changing the figure, our candle which He hath lighted be blown out, He again must light it. Compare Enar. in Ps. xciii. 147; and Sermons, 67 and 341.
71 Jas. iv, 6, and I Pet. v. 5.
73 It may assist those unacquainted with Augustin's writings to understand the last three sections, if we set before them a brief view of the Manichaean speculations as to the good and evil principles, and the nature of the human soul:-(1) The Manichaeans believed that there were two principles or substances, one good and the other evil, and that both were eternal and opposed one to the other. The good principle they called God, and the evil, matter or Hyle (Con. Faust. xxi. 1, 2). Faustus, in his argument with Augustin, admits that they sometimes called the evil nature "God," but simply as a conventional usage. Augustin says thereon (ibid. sec. 4): "Faustus glibly defends himself by saying, `We speak not of two gods, but of God and Hyle: 0' but when you ask for the meaning of Hyle, you find that it is in fact another god. If the Manichaeans gave the name of Hyle, as the ancients did, to the unformed matter which is susceptible of bodily forms, we should not accuse them of making two gods. But it is pure folly and madness to give to matter the power of forming bodies, or to deny that what has this power is God." Augustin alludes in the above passage to the Platonic theory of matter, which, as the late Dean Mansel has shown us (Gnostic Heresies, Basilides, etc.), resulted after his time in Pantheism, and which was entirely opposed to the dualism of Manichaeus. It is to this "power of forming bodies" claimed for matter, then, that Augustin alludes in our text (sec. 24) as "not only a substance but real life also." (2) The human soul the Manichaeans declared to be of the same nature as God, though not created by Him-it having originated in the intermingling of part of His being with the evil principle, in the conflict between the kingdoms of light and darkness (in Ps. cxl. sec. 10). Augustin says to Faustus: " You generally call your soul not a temple, but a part or member of God " (Con. Faust. xx. 15): and thus, "identifying themselves with the nature and substance of God" (ibid. xii. 13), they did not refer their sin to themselves, but to the race of darkness, and so did not "prevail over their sin." That is, they denied original sin, and asserted that it necessarily resulted from the soul's contact with the body. To this Augustin steadily replied, that as the soul was not of the nature of God, but created by Him and endowed with free will, man was responsible for his transgressions. Again, referring to the Confessions, we find Augustin speaking consistently with his then belief, when he says that he had not then learned that the soul was not a "chief and unchangeable good" (sec. 24), or that "it was not that nature of truth" (sec. 25): and that when he transgressed "he accused flesh" rather than himself: and, as a result of his Manichaean errors (sec. 26), "contended that God's immutable substance erred of constraint, rather than admit that his mutable substance had gone astray of free will, and erred as a punishment."
76 As the mathematicians did their figures, in dust or sand.
77 "The categories enumerated by Aristotle are o0usi/a, po/son, poi=on, pro/sti, pou=, po/te, keisqai, e_xein, poiei=n, pa/sxein; which are usually rendered, as adequately as perhaps they can be in our language, substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, possession, action, suffering. The catalogue which certainly is but a very crude one) has been by some writers enlarged, as it is evident may easily be done by subdividing some of the heads; and by others curtailed, as it is no less evident that all may ultimately be referred to the two heads of substance and attribute, or, in the language of some logicians, `accident 0'" (Whately's Logic, iv. 2, sec. 1, note). "These are called in Latin the praedicaments, because they can be said or predicated in the same sense of all other terms, as well as of all the objects denoted by them, whereas no other term can be correctly said of them, because no other is employed to express the full extent of their meaning" (Gillies, Analysis of Aristotle, c. 2).
83 See iii. 12; iv. 3, 12; v. 19.
86 See xi. sec. 5, note, below.
3 St. Paul speaks of a "minding of the flesh" and a "minding of the spirit" (Rom. viii. 6, margin), and we are prone to be attracted and held by the carnal surroundings of life; that is, "quae per carnem sentiri querunt id est per oculos, per aures, ceterosque corporis sensus" (De Vera Relig.. xxiv.). But God would have us, as we meditate on the things that enter by the gates of the senses, to arise towards Him, through these His creatures. Our Father in heaven might have ordered His creation simply in a utilitarian way, letting, for example, hunger be satisfied without any of the pleasures of taste, and so of the other senses. But He has not so done. To every sense He has given its appropriate pleasure as well as its proper use. And though this presents to us a source of temptation, still ought we for it to praise His goodness to the full, and that corde are opere.-Bradward, ii. c. 23. See also i. sec. 1, note 3, and iv. sec. 18, above.
4 Augustin frequently recurs to the idea, that in God's overruling Providence, the foulness and sin of man does not disturb the order and fairness of the universe. He illustrates the idea by reference to music, painting, and oratory. "For as the beauty of a picture is increased by well-managed shadows, so, to the eye that has skill to discern it, the universe is beautified even by sinners, though, considered by themselves, their deformity is a sad blemish" (De Civ. Dei, xi. 23). So again, he says, God would never have created angels or men whose future wickedness he foreknew, unless He could turn them to the use of the good, "thus embellishing the course of the ages as it were an exquisite poem set off with antitheses" (ibid. xi. 18); and further on, in the same section, "as the oppositions of contraries lend beauty to language, so the beauty of the course of this world is achieved by the opposition of contraries, arranged, as it were, by an eloquence not of words, but of things." These reflections affected Augustin's views as to the last things. They seemed to him to render the idea entertained by Origen (De Princ. i. 6) and other Fathers as to a general restoration !a/pokata/stasij@ unnecessary. See Hagenbach's Hist. of Doct. etc. i. 383 (Clark).
5 "In Scripture they are called God's enemies who oppose His rule not by nature but by vice, having no power to hurt Him, but only themselves. For they are His enemies not through their power to hurt, but by their will to oppose Him. For God is unchangeable, and wholly proof against injury" (De Civ. Dei, xii. 3).
9 He also refers to the injury man does himself by sin in ii. sec. 13, above; and elsewhere he suggests the law which underlies it: "The vice which makes those who are called God's enemies resist Him, is an evil not to God but to themselves. And to them it is an evil solely because it corrupts the good of their nature." And when we suffer for our sins we should thank God that we are not unpunished (De Civ. Dei, xii. 3). But if, when God punishes us, we still continue in our sin, we shall be more confirmed in habits of sin, and then, as Augustin in another place (in Ps. vii. 15) warns us, "our facility in sinning will be the punishment of God for our former yieldings to sin." See also Butler's Analogy, Pt. i. ch. 5, "On a state of probation as intended for moral discipline and improvement."
13 Ps. xxxiv. 18, and cxlv. 18.
14 See Book iv. sec. 19, note, above.
15 He makes use of the same illustrations on Psalms viii. and xi., where the birds of the air represent the proud, the fishes of the sea those who have too great a curiosity, while the beasts of the field are those given to carnal pleasures. It will be seen that there is a correspondence between them and the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, in I John ii. 16. See also above, Book iii. sec. 16; and below, Book x. sec. 41, etc.
22 In Sermon 123, sec. 3, we have: "Christ as God is the country to which we go-Christ as man is the way by which we go." See note on Book iv. sec. 19, above.
30 What a contrast does his attitude here present to his supreme regard for secular learning before his conversion! We have constantly in his writings expressions of the same kind. On Psalm ciii. he dilates lovingly on the fount of happiness the word of God is, as compared with the writings of Cicero, Tully, and Plato; and again on Psalm xxxviii. he shows that the word is the source of all true joy. So likewise in De Trin. iv. 1: "That mind is more praise-worthy which knows even its own weakness, than that which, without regard to this, searches out and even comes to know the ways of the stars, or which holds fast such knowledge already acquired, while ignorant of the way by which itself to enter into its own proper health and strength....Such a one has preferred to know his own weakness, rather than to know the walls of the world, the foundations of the earth, and the pinnacles of heaven." See iii. sec. 9, note, above.
35 Job xxviii. 28 in LXX. reads: Idou' h9 qeose/beia/ e0sti sofi/a.
36 This claim of Manichaeus was supported by referring to the Lord's promise (John xvi. 12, 13) to send the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, to guide the apostles into that truth which they were as yet "not able to bear." The Manichaeans used the words "Paraclete" and "Comforter," as indeed the names of the other two persons of the blessed Trinity, in a sense entirely different from that of the gospel. These terms were little more than the bodily frame, the soul of which was his own heretical belief. Whenever opposition appeared between that belief and the teaching of Scripture, their ready answer was that the Scriptures had been corrupted (De Mor. Ecc. Cath. xxviii. and xxix.); and in such a case, as we find Faustus contending (Con. Faust. xxxii. 6), the Paraclete taught them what part to receive and what to reject, according to the promise of Jesus that He should "guide them into all truth," and much more to the same effect. Augustin's whole argument in reply is well worthy of attention. Amongst other things, he points out that the Manichaean pretension to having received the promised Paraclete was precisely the same as that of the Montanists in the previous century. It should be observed that Beausobre (Histoire, i. 254, 264, etc.) vigorously rebuts the charge brought against Manichaeus of claiming to be the Holy Ghost. An interesting examination of the claims of Montanus will be found in Kaye's Tertullian, pp. 13 to 33.
38 See vi. sec. 12, note, below.
40 "This was the old fashion of the East, where the scholars had liberty to ask questions of their masters, and to move doubts as the professors were reading, or so soon as the lecture was done. Thus did our Saviour with the doctors (Luke ii. 46). So it is still in some European Universities."-W. W.
41 We have referred in the note on iii. sec. 10, above, to the way in which the Manichaeans parodied Scripture names. In these "fables" this is remarkably evidenced. "To these filthy rags of yours," says Augustin (Con. Faust. xx. 6), "you would unite the mystery of the Trinity; for you say that the Father dwells in a secret light, the power of the Son in the sun, and His wisdom in the moon, and the Holy Spirit in the air." The Manichaean doctrine as to the mixture of the divine nature with the substance of evil, and the way in which that nature was released by the "elect," has already been pointed out (see note iii. sec. 18, above). The part of sun and moon, also, in accomplishing this release, is alluded to in his De Mor. Manich. "This part of God," he says (c. xxxvi.), "is daily being set free in all parts of the world, and restored to its own domain. But in its passage upwards as vapour from earth to heaven, it enters plants, because their roots are fixed in the earth, and so gives fertility and strength to all herbs and shrubs." These parts of God, arrested in their rise by the vegetable world, were released, as above stated, by the "elect". All that escaped from them in the act of eating, as well as what was set free by evaporation, passed into the sun and moon, as into a kind of purgatorial state-they being purer light than the only recently emancipated good nature. In his letter to Januarius (Ep. lv. 6), he tells us that the moon's waxing and waning were said by the Manichaeans to be caused by its receiving souls from matter as it were into a ship, and transferring them "into the sun as into another ship." The sun was called Christ, and was worshipped; and accordingly we find Augustin, after alluding to these monstrous doctrines, saying (Con. Faust. v. 11): "If your affections were set upon spiritual and intellectual good instead of material forms, you would not pay homage to the material sun as a divine substance and as the light of wisdom." Many other interesting quotations might be added, but we must content ourselves with the following. In his Reply to Faustus (xx. 6), he says: "You call the sun a ship, so that you are not only astray worlds off, as the saying is, but adrift. Next, while every one sees that the sun is round, which is the form corresponding from its perfection to his position among the heavenly bodies, you maintain that he is triangular [perhaps in allusion to the early symbol of the Trinity]; that is, that his light shines on the earth through a triangular window in heaven. Hence it is that you bend and bow your heads to the sun, while you worship not this visible sun, but some imaginary ship, which you suppose to be shining through a triangular opening".
44 See iii. sec. 6, note, above.
46 See vi. sec. 2, note, below.
48 Eph. ii. 15, and Col. i. 20, etc.
49 The Manichaean belief in regard to the unreal nature of Christ's body may be gathered from Augustin's Reply to Faustus: "You ask," argues Faustus (xxvi. i.), "if Jesus was not born, how did He die?...In return I ask you, how did Elias not die, though he was a man? Could a mortal encroach upon the limits of immortality, and could not Christ add to His immortality whatever experience of death was required?... Accordingly, if it is a good argument that Jesus was a man because He died, it is an equally good argument that Elias was not a man because he did not die.... As, from the outset of His taking the likeness of man, He underwent in appearance all the experiences of humanity, it was quite consistent that He should complete the system by appearing to die." So that with him the whole life of Jesus was a "phantasm." His birth, circumcision, crucifixion, baptism, and temptation were (ibid. xxxii. 7) the mere result of the interpolation of crafty men, or sprung from the ignorance of the apostles, when as yet they had not reached perfection in knowledge. It is noticeable that Augustin, referring to Eph. ii. 15, substitutes His cross for His flesh, he, as a Manichaean, not believing in the real humanity of the Son of God. See iii. sec. 9, note, above.
51 See also iv. sec. 8, above, where he derides his friend's baptism.
54 Watts gives the following note here:-"Oblations were those offerings of bread, meal, or wine, for making of the Eucharist, or of alms besides for the poor, which the primitive Christians every time they communicated brought to the church, where it was received by the deacons, who presented them to the priest or bishop. Here note: (1) They communicated daily; (2) they had service morning and evening, and two sermons a day many times," etc. An interesting trace of an old use in this matter of oblations is found in the Queen's Coronation Service. After other oblations had been offered, the Queen knelt before the Archbishop and presented to him "oblations" of bread and wine for the Holy Communion. See also Palmer's Origines Liturgicae, iv. 8, who demonstrates by reference to patristic writers that the custom was universal in the primitive Church:-"But though all the churches of the East and West agreed in this respect, they differed in appointing the time and place at which the oblations of the people were received." It would appear from the following account of early Christian worship, that in the time of Justin Martyr the oblations were collected after the reception of the Lord's Supper. In his First Apology we read (c. lxvii.): "On the day called Sunday !tou= h9li/ou legohe/nh h9me/ra,@ all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits them. When the reader has ceased, the president !o9 proestw'j@ verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray !eu0xa'j pe/mpomen@, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings according to his ability [Kaye renders (p. 89) eu0xa'j o9moiwj kai' eu0xaristiaj o_sh su/namij au0tw=, a/nape/mpei, "with his utmost power"], and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks had been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well-to-do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected !to' sullego/meno!\ is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows, and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds, and the stranger sojourning among us, and, in a word, takes care of all who are in need." The whole passage is given, as portions of it will be found to have a bearing on other parts of the Confessions. Bishop Kaye's Justin Martyr, c. iv., may be referred to for his view of the controverted points in the passage. See also Bingham's Antiquities, ii. 2-9; and notes to vi. sec. 2, and ix. secs. 6 and 27, below.
59 See iv. sec. 1, note, above.
60 iv. sec. 26, note 2, above.
62 Ps. cxli. 3, 4, Old Vers. See also Augustin's Commentary on the Psalms, where, using his Septuagint version, he applies this passage to the Manichaeans.
63 "Amongst these philosophers," i.e. those who have founded their systems on denial, "some are satisfied with denying certainty, admitting at the same time probability, and these are the New Academics; the others, who are the Pyrrhonists, have denied even this probability, and have maintained that all things are equally certain and uncertain" (Port. Roy. Log. iv. 1). There are, according to the usual divisions, three Academies, the old, the middle, and the new; and some subdivide the middle and the new each into two schools, making five schools of thought in all. These begin with Plato, the founder (387 B. C.), and continue to the fifth school, founded by Antiochus (83 B. C.), who, by combining his teachings with that of Aristotle and Zeno, prepared the way for Neo-Platonism and its development of the dogmatic side of Plato's teaching. In the second Academic school, founded by Arcesilas,-of whom Aristo, the Stoic, parodying the line in the Iliad (vi. 181), IIro/sqe le/wn, o_piqen de' dra/kwn, me/ssh de' ximaira, said sarcastically he was "Plato in front, Pyrrho behind, and Diodorus in the middle,"-the "sceptical" tendency in Platonism began to develope itself, which, under Carneades, was expanded into the doctrine of the third Academic school. Arcesilas had been a pupil of Polemo when he was head of the old Academy. Zeno also, dissatisfied with the cynical philosophy of Crates, had learnt Platonic doctrine from Polemo, and was, as Cicero tells us (De Fin. iv. 16), greatly influenced by his teaching. Zeno, however, soon founded his own school of Stoical philosophy, which was violently opposed by Arcesilas (Cicero, Acad. Post. i. 12). Arcesilas, according to Cicero (ibid.), taught his pupils that we cannot know anything, not even that we are unable to know. It is exceedingly probable, however, that he taught esoterically the doctrines of Plato to those of his pupils he thought able to receive them, keeping them back from the multitude because of the prevalence of the new doctrine. This appears to have been Augustin's view when he had arrived at a fuller knowledge of their doctrines than that he possessed at the time referred to in his Confessions. In his treatises against the Academicians (iii. 17) he maintains the wisdom of Arcesilas in this matter. He says: "As the multitude are prone to rush into false opinions, and, from being accustomed to bodies, readily, but to their hurt, believe everything to be corporeal, this most acute and learned man determined rather to unteach those who had suffered from bad teaching, than to teach those whom he did not think teachable." Again, in the first of his Letters, alluding to these treatises, he says: "It seems to me to be suitable enough to the times in which they flourished, that whatever issued pure from the fountain-head of Platonic philosophy should be rather conducted into dark and thorny thickets for the refreshment of a very few men, than left to flow in open meadow-land, where it would be impossible to keep it clear and pure from the inroads of the vulgar herd. I use the word `herd 0' advisedly, for what is more brutish than the opinion that the soul is material?" and more to the same purpose. In his De Civ. Dei, xix 18, he contrasts the uncertainty ascribed to the doctrines of these teachers with the certainty of the Christian faith. See Burton's Bampton Lectures, note 33, and Archer Butler's Ancient Philosophy, ii. 313, 348, etc. See also vii. sec. 13, note, below.
65 See iv. secs. 3, 12, and 31, above.
68 The dualistic belief of the Manichaean ever led him to contend that Christ only appeared in a resemblance of flesh, and did not touch its substance so as to be defiled. Hence Faustus characteristically speaks of the Incarnation (Con. Faust. xxxii. 7) as "the shameful birth of Jesus from a woman," and when pressed (ibid. xi 1) with such passages as, Christ was "born of the seed of David according to the flesh" (Rom. i. 3), he would fall back upon what in these days we are familiar with as that "higher criticism," which rejects such parts of Scripture as it is inconvenient to receive. Paul, he said, then only "spoke as a child" (I Cor. xiii. 11), but when he became a man in doctrine, he put away childish things, and then declared, "Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more." See above, sec. 16, note 3.
70 On this matter reference may be made to Con. Faust. xviii. 1, 3; xix. 5, 6; xxxiii. 1, 3.
71 They might well not like to give the answer in public, for, as Augustin remarks (De Mor. Eccles. Cath. sec. 14), every one could see "that this is all that is left for men to say when it is proved that they are wrong. The astonishment that he experienced now, that they did "not bring forward any uncorrupted copies," had fast hold of him, and after his conversion he confronted them on this very ground. "You ought to bring forward," he says (ibid. sec. 61), "another manuscript with the same contents, but incorrupt and more correct, with only the passage wanting which you charge with being spurious....You say you will not, lest you be suspected of corrupting it. This is your usual reply, and a true one." See also De Mor. Manich. sec. 55; and Con. Faust. xi. 2, xiii. 5, xviii. 7, xxii. 15, xxxii. 16.
76 I Cor. xiii. 12, and 2 Cor. iii. 6. See vi. sec. 6, note, below.
77 He frequently alludes to this scoffing spirit, so characteristic of these heretics. As an example, he says (in Ps. cxlvi. 13): "There has sprung up a certain accursed sect of the Manichaeans which derides the Scriptures it takes and reads. It wishes to censure what it does not understand, and by disturbing and censuring what it understands not, has deceived many." See also sec. 16, and iv. sec. 8, above.
78 See above, sec. 19, and note.
79 See vi. sec. 2, note, below.
80 In his Benefit of Believing, Augustin adverts to the above experiences with a view to the conviction of his friend Honoratus, who was then a Manichaean.
2 See iv. sec. 18, note, above.
4 Fidelem Catholicum-those who are baptized being usually designated Fideles. The following extract from Kaye's Turtullian (pp. 230, 231) is worthy of note:-"As the converts from heathenism, to use Tertullian's expression, were not born, but became Christians [fiunt, nascuntur, Christiani], they went through a course of instruction in the principles and doctrines of the gospel, and were subjected to a strict probation before they were admitted to the rite of baptism. In this stage of their progress they were called catechumens, of whom, according to Suicer, there were two classes,-one called `Audientes, 0' who had only entered upon their course, and begun to hear the word of God; the other, sunaitou=ntej, or `Competentes, 0' who had made such advances in Christian knowledge and practice as to be qualified to appear at the font. Tertullian, however, appears either not to have known or to have neglected this distinction, since he applies the names of `Audientes 0' and `Auditores 0' indifferently to all who had not partaken of the rite of baptism. When the catechumens had given full proof of the ripeness of their knowledge, and of the stedfastness of their faith, they were baptized, admitted to the table of the Lord, and styled Fideles. The importance which Tertullian attached to this previous probation of the candidates for baptism, appears from the fact that he founds upon the neglect of it one of his charges against the heretics. `Among them, 0' he says, `no distinction is made between the catechumen and the faithful or confirmed Christian; the catechumen is pronounced fit for baptism before he is instructed; all come in indiscriminately; all hear, all pray together. 0' " There were certain peculiar forms used in the admission of catechumens; as, for example, anointing with oil, imposition of hands, and the consecration and giving of salt; and when, from the progress of Christianity, 'I'ertullian's above description as to converts from heathenism had ceased to be correct, these forms were continued in many churches as part of the baptismal service, whether of infants or adults. See Palmer's Origines Liturgicae, v. 1, and also i. sec. 17, above, where Augustin says: "I was signed with the sign of the cross, and was seasoned with His salt, even from the womb of my mother."
6 "Sermons," says Goodwin in his Evangelical Communicant, "are, for the most part, as showers of rain that water for the instant; such as may tickle the ear and warm the affections, and put the soul into a posture of obedience. Hence it is that men are oft-times sermon-sick, as some are sea-sick; very ill, much troubled for the present, but by and by all is well again as they were."
7 That is, as is explained further on in the section, the Martyrs. Tertullian gives us many indications of the veneration in which the martyrs were held towards the close of the second century. The anniversary of the martyr's death was called his natalitium, or natal day, as his martyrdom ushered him into eternal life, and oblationes pro defunctis were then offered. (De Exhor. Cast. c. 11; De Coro. c. 3). Many extravagant things were said about the glory of martyrdom, with the view, doubtless, of preventing apostasy in time of persecution. It was described (De Bap. c. 16; and De Pat. c. 13.) as a second baptism, and said to secure for a man immediate entrance into heaven, and complete enjoyment of its happiness. These views developed in Augustin's time into all the wildness of Donatism. Augustin gives us an insight into the customs prevailing in his day, and their significance, which greatly illustrates the present section. In his De Civ. Dei, viii. 27, we read: "But, nevertheless, we do not build temples, and ordain priests, rites, and sacrifices for these same martyrs; for they are not our gods, but their God is our God. Certainly we honour their reliquaries, as the memorials of holy men of God, who strove for the truth even to the death of their bodies, that the true religion might be made known, and false and fictitious religions exposed....But who ever heard a priest of the faithful, standing at an altar built for the honour and worship of God over the holy body of some martyr, say in the prayers, I offer to thee a sacrifice, O Peter, or O Paul, or O Cyprian? For it is to God that sacrifices are offered at their tombs,-the God who made them both men and martyrs, and associated them with holy angels in celestial honour; and the reason why we pay such honours to their memory is, that by so doing we may both give thanks to the true God for their victories, and, by recalling them afresh to remembrance, may stir ourselves up to imitate them by seeking to obtain like crowns and palms, calling to our help that same God on whom they called. Therefore, whatever honours the religious may pay in the places of the martyrs, they are but honours rendered to their memory [ornamenta memoriarum], not sacred rites or sacrifices offered to dead men as to gods. And even such as bring thither food-which, indeed, is not done by the better Christians, and in most places of the world is not done at all-do so in order that it may be sanctified to them through the merits of the martyrs, in the name of the Lord of the martyrs, first presenting the food and offering prayer, and thereafter taking it away to be eaten, or to be in part bestowed upon the needy. But he who knows the one sacrifice of Christians, which is the sacrifice offered in those places, also knows that these are not sacrifices offered to the martyrs." He speaks to the same effect in Book xxii. sec. 10; and in his Reply to Faustus (xx. 21), who had charged the Christians with imitating the Pagans, "and appeasing the `shades 0' of the departed with wine and food." See v. sec. 17, note.
8 Following the example of Ambrose, Augustin used all his influence and eloquence to correct such shocking abuses in the churches. In his letter to Alypius, Bishop of Thagaste (when as yet only a presbyter assisting the venerable Valerius), he gives an account of his efforts to overcome them in the church of Hippo. The following passage is instructive (Ep. xxix. 9):-"I explained to them the circumstances out of which this custom seems to have necessarily risen in the Church, namely, that when, in the peace which came after such numerous and violent persecutions, crowds of heathen who wished to assume the Christian religion were kept back, because, having been accustomed to celebrate the feasts connected with their worship of idols in revelling and drunkenness, they could not easily refrain from pleasures so hurtful and so habitual, it had seemed good to our ancestors, making for the time a concession to this infirmity, to permit them to celebrate, instead of the festivals which they renounced, other feasts in honour of the holy martyrs, which were observed, not as before with a profane design, but with similar self-indulgence."
9 See v. sec. 17, note 5, above.
10 On another occasion, when Monica's mind was exercised as to non-essentials, Ambrose gave her advice which has perhaps given origin to the proverb, "When at Rome, do as Rome does." It will be found in the letter to Casulanus (Ep. xxxvi. 32), and is as follows:-"When my mother was with me in that city, I, as being only a catechumen, felt no concern about these questions; but it was to her a question causing anxiety, whether she ought, after the custom of our own town, to fast on the Saturday, or, after the custom of the church of Milan, not to fast. To deliver her from perplexity, I put the question to the man of God whom I have first named. He answered, `What else can I recommend to others than what I do myself? 0' When I thought that by this he intended simply to prescribe to us that we should take food on Saturdays,-for I knew this to be his own practice,-he, following me, added these words: `When I am here I do not fast on Saturday, but when I am at Rome I do; Whatever church you may come to, conform to its custom, if you would avoid either receiving or giving offence. 0' " We find the same incident referred to in Ep. liv. 3.
12 In his Reply to Faustus (vi. 7), he, conformably with this idea, explains the division into clean and unclean beasts under the Levitical law symbolically. "No doubt," he says, "the animal is pronounced unclean by the law because it does not chew the cud, which is not a fault, but its nature. But the men of whom this animal is a symbol are unclean, not by nature, but from their own fault; because, though they gladly hear the words of wisdom, they never reflect on them afterwards. For to recall, in quiet repose, some useful instruction from the stomach of memory to the mouth of reflection, is a kind of spiritual rumination. The animals above mentioned are a symbol of those people who do not do this. And the prohibition of the flesh of these animals is a warning against this fault. Another passage of Scripture (Prov. xxi. 20) speaks of the precious treasure of wisdom, and describes ruminating as clean, and not ruminating as unclean: `A precious treasure resteth in the mouth of a wise man, but a foolish man swallows it up. 0' Symbols of this kind, either in words or in things, give useful and pleasant exercise to intelligent minds in the way of inquiry and comparison."
14 Col. iii. 10, and Gen. i. 26, 27. And because we are created in the image of God, Augustin argues (Serm. lxxxviii. 6), we have the ability to see and know Him, just as, having eyes to see, we can look upon the sun. And hereafter, too (Ep. xcii. 3), "We shall see Him according to the measure in which we shall be like Him; because now the measure in which we do not see Him is according to the measure of our unlikeness to Him.
15 See iii. sec. 12, note, above.
16 2 Cor. iii. 6. The spiritual or allegorical meaning here referred to is one that Augustin constantly sought, as did many of the early Fathers, both Greek and Latin. He only employs this method of interpretation, however, in a qualified way-never going to the lengths of Origen or Clement of Alexandria. He does not depreciate the letter of Scripture, though, as we have shown above (iii. sec. 14, note), he went as far as he well could in interpreting the history spiritually. He does not seem, however, quite consistent in his statements as to the relative prominence to be given to the literal and spiritual meanings, as may be seen by a comparison of the latter portions of secs. 1 and 3 of book xvii. of the City of God. His general idea may be gathered from the following passage in the 21st sec. of book xiii.:-"Some allegorize all that concerns paradise itself, where the first men, the parents of the human race, are, according to the truth of Holy Scripture, recorded to have been; and they understand all its trees and fruit-bearing plants as virtues and habits of life, as if they had no existence in the external world, but were only so spoken of or related for the sake of spiritual meanings. As if there could not be a real terrestrial paradise! As if there never existed these two women, Sarah and Hagar, nor the two sons who were born to Abraham, the one of the bond-woman, the other of the free, because the apostle says that in them the two covenants were prefigured! or as if water never flowed from the rock when Moses struck it, because therein Christ can be seen in a figure, as the same apostle says: `Now that rock was Christ 0' (I Cor. x. 4)....These and similar allegorical interpretations may be suitably put upon paradise without giving offence to any one, while yet we believe the strict truth of the history, confirmed by its circumstantial narrative of facts." The allusion in the above passage to Sarah and Hagar invites the remark, that in Galatians iv. 24, the words in our version rendered, "which things are an allegory," should be, "which things are such as may be allegorized." [Atina/ e'stin a/llhgorou/mena. See Jelf, 398, sec. 2.] It is important to note this, as the passage has been quoted in support of the more extreme method of allegorizing, though it could clearly go no further than to sanction allegorizing by way of spiritual meditation upon Scripture, and not in the interpretation of it-which first, as Waterland thinks (Works, vol. v. p. 311), was the end contemplated by most of the Fathers. Thoughtful students of Scripture will feel that we have no right to make historical facts typical or allegorical, unless (as in the case of the manna, the brazen serpent, Jacob's ladder, etc.) we have divine authority for so doing; and few such will dissent from the opinion of Bishop Marsh (Lecture vi.) that the type must not only resemble the antitype, but must have been designed to resemble it, and further, that we must have the authority of Scripture for the existence of such design. The text, "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life," as a perusal of the context will show, has nothing whatever to do with either "literal" or "spiritual" meanings. Augustin himself interprets it in one place (De Spir. et Lit. cc. 4, 5) as meaning the killing letter of the law, as compared with the quickening power of the gospel. "An opinion," to conclude with the thoughtful words of Alfred Morris on this chapter ( Words for the Heart and Life, p. 203), "once common must therefore be rejected. Some still talk of `letter 0' and `spirit 0' in a way which has no sanction here. The `letter 0' with them is the literal meaning of the text, the `spirit 0' is its symbolic meaning. And, as the `spirit 0' possesses an evident superiority to the `letter, 0' they fly away into the region of secret senses and hidden doctrines, find types where there is nothing typical, and allegories where there is nothing allegorical; make Genesis more evangelical than the Epistle to the Romans, and Leviticus than the Epistle to the Hebrews; mistaking lawful criticism for legal Christianity, they look upon the exercise of a sober judgment as a proof of a depraved taste, and forget that diseased as well as very powerful eyes may see more than others. It is not the obvious meaning and the secret meaning that are intended by `letter 0' and `spirit, 0' nor any two meanings of Christianity, nor two meanings of any thing or things, but the two systems of Moses and of Christ." Reference may be made on this whole subject of allegorical interpretation in the writings of the Fathers to Blunt's Right Use of the Early Fathers, series i. lecture 9.
17 Augustin frequently dilates on this idea. In sermon 88 (cc. 5, 6, etc.), he makes the whole of the ministries of religion subservient to the clearing of the inner eye of the soul and in his De Trin. i. 3, he says: "And it is necessary to purge our minds, in order to be able to see ineffably that which is ineffable [i. e. the Godhead], whereto not having yet attained, we are to be nourished by faith, and led by such ways as are more suited to our capacity, that we may be rendered apt and able to comprehend it."
18 He similarly exalts the claims of the Christian Church over Manichaeanism in his Reply to Faustus (xxxii. 19): "If you submit to receive a load of endless fictions at the bidding of an obscure and irrational authority, so that you believe all those things because they are written in the books which your misguided judgment pronounces trustworthy, though there is no evidence of their truth, why not rather submit to the evidence of the gospel, which is so well-founded, so confirmed, so generally acknowledged and admired, and which has an unbroken series of testimonies from the apostles down to our own day, that so you may have an intelligent belief, and may come to know that all your objections are the fruit of folly and perversity?" And again, in his Reply to Manichaeus' Fundamental Epistle (sec. 18), alluding to the credulity required in those who accept Manichaean teaching on the mere authority of the teacher: "Whoever thoughtlessly yields this becomes a Manichaean, not by knowing undoubted truth, but by believing doubtful statements. Such were we when in our inexperienced youth we were deceived."
19 He has a like train of thought in another place (De Fide Rer. quae non Vid. sec. 4): "If, then (harmony being destroyed), human society itself would not stand if we believe not that we see not, how much more should we have faith in divine things, though we see them not; which if we have it not, we do not violate the friendship of a few men, but the profoundest religion-so as to have as its consequence the profoundest misery." Again, referring to belief in Scripture, he argues (Con. Faust. xxxiii. 6) that, if we doubt its evidence, we may equally doubt that of any book, and asks, "How do we know the authorship of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero Varro, and other similar writers, but by the unbroken chain of evidence?" And once more he contends (De Mor. Cath. Eccles. xxix 60) that, "The utter overthrow of all literature will follow and there will be an end to all books handed down from the past, if what is supported by such a strong popular belief, and established by the uniform testimony of so many men and so many times, is brought into such suspicion that it is not allowed to have the credit and the authority of common history."
20 See i. sec. 10, note, above.
22 In the Benedictine edition it is suggested that this was probably Valentinian the younger, whose court was, according to Possidius (c. i. ), at Milan when Augustin was professor of rhetoric there, who writes (Con. Litt. Petil. iii. 25) that he in that city recited a panegyric to Bauto, the consul, on the first of January, according to the requirements of his profession of rhetoric.
24 Here, as elsewhere, we have the feeling which finds its expression in i. sec. 1, above: "Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee."
25 Compare v. sec. 17, note, above, and sec. 15, note, below.
27 The games in the Provinces of the empire were on the same model as those held in the Circus Maximus at Rome, though not so imposing. This circus was one of those vast works executed by Tarquinius Priscus. Hardly a vestige of it at the present time remains, though the Cloaca Maxima, another of his stupendous works, has not, after more than 2500 years, a stone displaced, and still performs its appointed service of draining the city of Rome into the Tiber. In the circus were exhibited chariot and foot races, fights on horseback, representations of battles (on which occasion camps were pitched in the circus), and the Grecian athletic sports introduced after the conquest of that country. See also sec. 13, note, below.
28 Augustin, in book v. sec. 9, above, refers to the reputed sanctity of Manichaeus, and it may well be questioned whether the sect deserved that unmitigated reprobation he pours out upon them in his De Moribus, and in parts of his controversy with Faustus. Certain it is that Faustus laid claim, on behalf of his sect, to a very different moral character to that Augustin would impute to them. He says (Con. Faust. v. 1): "Do I believe the gospel? You ask me if I believe it, though my obedience to its commands shows that I do. I should rather ask you if you believe it, since you give no proof of your belief. I have left my father, mother, wife, and children, and all else that the Gospel requires (Matt. xix. 29); and do you ask if I believe the gospel? Perhaps you do not know what is called the gospel. The gospel is nothing else than the preaching and the precept of Christ. I have parted with all gold and silver, and have left off carrying money in my purse; content with daily food; without anxiety for to-morrow; and without solicitude about how I shall be fed, or wherewithal I shall be clothed: and do you ask if I believe the gospel? You see in me the blessings of the gospel (Matt. v. 3-11); and do you ask if I believe the gospel? You see me poor, meek, a peacemaker, pure in heart, mourning, hungering, thirsting, bearing persecutions and enmity for righteousness' sake; and do you doubt my belief in the gospel?" It is difficult to understand that Manichaeanism can have spread as largely as it did at that time, if the asceticism of many amongst them had not been real. It may be noted that in his controversy with Fortunatus, Augustin strangely declines to discuss the charges of immorality that had been brought against the Manichaeans; and in the last chapter of his De Moribus, it appears to be indicated that one, if not more, of those whose evil deeds are there spoken of had a desire to follow the rule of life laid down by Manichaeus.