'STOM

:7IUGUSTIN
 '^*
PRINCETON, N. J.

BR 1705 .S32 1891

Schaff, Philip, 1819-1893.
Saint Chrysostom and Saint
Augustin
Shelf
 STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY.

SAINT CHRYSOSTOM
AND

SAINT AUGUSTIN.

BY

PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D.,

Professor of Church History in the Union Theological Seminary, New York.

NEW YORK
THOMAS W II I T T A K E R,
2 AND 3 Bible Housl.
 Copyright, 1891,
Bt THOMAS WHITTAKER
 TO THE REVERED MEMORY OF

J. B. LIGHTFOOT, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D.,

Late Lord Bishop of Durham.
 PREFACE.

My friend, Mr. Thomas Whittaker, proposes to pub-

lish a series of Studies in Christian Biography devoted y

to the leaders of Christian thought and Christian life, in

ancient, mediaeval, and modern times.
He requested me to open the series with biographical
sketches of St. Chrysostom, the greatest of the Greek,
and St. Augustin, the greatest of the Latin Fathers.
To this proposal I readily consented, with the under-
standing that I could make free use of material which I
had previously prej)ared and recently enlarged as editor
of translations of the chief works of these Fathers.*
The memory of St. Chrysostom and St. Augustin can
never die. They left their mark on every page of Church
history, and their teaching and example will continue to
prepare preachers and divines for their work. Petrarch
carried the Confessions of St. Augustin always in his
pocket he called him " the philosopher of Christ" and
;

" the sun of the Church," and made him his confessor
in the autobiographical Dialogue on the Conterapt of
the World. A high admiration of these truly great and
good men is quite consistent with an acknowledgment
of their defects and errors. There is a safe medium be-

* The Nlcene and Post-Mcene Library, First Series, contains the

works of St Augustin in 8 vols., and the works of St. Chrysostom in 6
vols., with Prolegomena and notes. Theywere published (as subscrip-
tion books) by the Christian Literature Company, New York, 1886-90.
Vi PREFACE.

tween a slavish overestimate and a liauglity underesti-

mate of the Fathers. No man is perfect save Christ,
and no man can be our master in the highest sense but
Christ. Amicus Chrysostomus, amicus Augustinus, sed
magis arnica Veritas.
It was in this spirit of free evangelical catholicity that
the lamented Bishop Lightfoot, the greatest patristic
scholar of England, prepared his monumental work on
the Apostolic Fathers. 1 have taken the liberty to dedi-
volume to his memory. I
cate this unpretending little
regret I have nothing more worthy to offer, but I know
he would receive it with the kindness of a friend and
co-worker in the service of truth. He wrote to me
once that he had received the first impulse to his histori-
cal studiesfrom my History of the Apostolic Church / and
yet I have learned more from him than he could ever
learn from me. He and Dr. Westcott invited me to con-
tribute to Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian
biography (then under his charge). He sent me all his
works as they appeared. Only a few days ago I re-
'^
ceived, with the compliments of the Trustees of the
LiGUTFooT Fund," his posthumous edition of St. Clement
of Borne, with an autotype of the Constantinopolitan
text —
a worthy companion of his St. Ignatius and St.
Folycarp. The Bible Eevision labors brought us into
closer relations.
Btill His book on Eevision (which I re-
published with his consent), and his admirable commen-
taries on Galatians, Colossians, and Philippians, greatly
aided the movement in this country. I shall not forget
my pleasant interviews with himCambridge, London,
at
Durham, and Auckland Castle. He left a rare example
of reverent and modest Christian scholarship that aims
first and last at the investigation and promotion of truth.

New York^ December 12, 1890. P. S.

 COE"TEE"TS.

SAINT CHRYSOSTOM.
PAGB
Introdoctohy 11
Chapter I. Chrysostom's Youtli and Training, a.d. 347-370. 13
Chaptee, II. His Conversion and Ascetic Life, a.d. 370-374. ... 15
Chapter III. Chrysostom evades Election to a Bishopric. His
Work on tlie Priesthood 18
Chapter IV. Chrysostom as a Monk, a.d. 374-381 21
Chapter V. Chrysostom as Deacon, Priest and Preacher at An-
tioch, A.D. 381-398 28
Chapter VI. Chrysostom as Patriarch of Constantinople, a.d.
398-404 28
Chapter VII. Chrysostom and Theophilus. His First Banish-
ment 30
Chapter VIII. Chrysostom and Eudoxia. His Second Banish-
ment, A.D. 403 33
Chapter IX. Chrysostom in Exile, and his Death, a.d. 404-407 35
Chapter X. His Character 38
Chapter XI. The Writings of Chrysostom 41
Chapter XII. His Theology and Exegesis 43
Chapter XIII. Chrysostom as a Preacher 50
Literature 54

SAINT AUGUSTIN.
Introductory 57
Chapter I. Augustin's Youth C3
Chapter II. Augustin at Carthage 09
Chapter III. Cicero's Hortensius 'J'l

Chapter IV. Augustin Among the Manichasans 73

Chapter V. The Loss of a Friend 76
Chapter VI. Augustin Leaves Manichseism 78
Chapter VII. Error Overruled for Truth 80
Viii COIS^TEXTS.

PAGE
CnAPTER VIII. Augustin a Skeptic in Rome 82
CUAPTER IX. Auorustia at Milan. St. Ambrose 85
Chapter X. Augustin a Catechismau in the Catholic Church. 91
Chapter XI. Moimica's Arrival 96
Chapter Moral Conflicts. Project of Marriage
XII. 97
Chapter XIII. Mental Conflicts 100
Chapter XIV. Influence of Platonism 103
Chapter XV. Study of the Scriptures 104
Chapter XVI. Augustin's Conversion 106
Chapter XVII. Sojourn in the Country 113
Chapter XVIII. Augustin's Baptism 118
Chapter XIX. Moanica's Last Days and Death 120
Chapter XX. Second Visit to Rome, and Return to Africa . . 127
Chapter XXI. Augustin is Appointed Priest and Bishop of
Hippo „ 129
Chapter XXII. Augustin's Domestic Life 131
Chapter XXIII. Administration of the Episcopal Ofiice and
Public Activity 133
Chapter XXIV. Last Years and Death 136
Chapter XXV. Augustin's Writings 138
Chapter XXVI. Influence of Augustin on His Own and Suc-
ceeding Ages , 148
Chapter XXVII. The Augustinian System 155
Literature 158
SAINT CHRYSOSTOM.
 SAITvTT CHBYSOSTOM.
*' Glory be to God for all things." Chrysostom' s Motto.

INTEODUCTOEY.
"Almighty God, who hast given us grace at this time -with one ac-
cord to make our common supplications unto Thee and dost ;

promise, that when two or three are gathered together in Thy name
Tho a wilt grant their requests: fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and
petitions of Thy servants, as may be most expedient for them ;
granting us in this world knowledge of Thy truth, and in the world
to come life everlasting. Amen."

This beautiful and compreliensive prayer, wliicli is

translated from the Greek Liturgy of St. Clirysostora,
and goes under his name, has made him a household
word wherever the Anglican Book of Common Prayer
is known and used.

JoHJsr, surnamed Cheysostom Xpvffoaro-

(^iGoavyrji
Mo^)y the greatest pulpit orator and commentator of the
is

Greek Church, and still deservedly enjoys the highest

honor in the whole Christian world. No one of the
Oriental Fathers has left a more spotless reputation no ;

one is so much read and so often quoted by modern

preachers and commentators. An admiring posterity,
since the close of the fifth century, has given him tlie

surname Chrysostom {The Golden Mouth) which has ^

entirely superseded his personal name John^ and which

best expresses the general estimate of his merits.
12 SAI^T CIIKYSOSTOM.

His life may be divided into five periods (1) His :

youth and training till liis conversion and baptism, a.d.

347-70. (2) His conversion, and ascetic and monastic life,
370-81. (3) His public life as priest and preacher at
Antioch, 381-98. (4) His episcopate at Constantinople,
398-404. (3) His exile to his death, 404-407.
 CHAPTEE I.

chrysostom's youth and training, a.d. 347-3 to.

John (the name by which alone he is known among

contemporary writers and his first biographers) was born
in 347, at Antioch, the capital of Syria, and the home
of the mother church of Gentile Christianity, where the
disciples of Jesus were first called '' Christians."
His father, Secundus, was a distinguished military
officer {magister militum) in the imperial army of Syria,
and died during the infancy of John, without professing
Christianity, as far as we know. His mother, Anthusa,
was a rare woman. Left a widow at the age of twenty,
she refused all offers of marriage, and devoted herself
exclusively to the education of her only son and his older
sister. She was probably from principle averse to a
second marriage, according to a prevailing view of the
Fathers. She shines, with Nonna and Monnica, among
the most pious mothers of the fourth century, who
prove the ennobling influence of Christianity on the
character of woman, and through her on all the family
relations. Anthusa gained general esteem by her ex-
emplary life. The famous advocate of heathenism, Li-
banius, on hearing of her consistency and devotion, felt
constrained to exclaim :
'^
Bless me what wonderful
!

women there are among the Christians.'"

She gave her son the best education then attainable,
and early planted in his soul the germs of piety, which
afterward bore rich fruits for himself and the Church.
By her admonitions and the teaching of the Bible, he
14 SAIKT CHEYSOSTOM.

was secured against the seductions of heathenism which

at that time still was the religion of half of the popula-
tion of Antioch.
Yet he was not baptized till he had reached the age of
maturity. In that period of transition from heathenism to
Christianity, the number of adult baptisms far exceeded
that of infant baptisms. Plence the large baptisteries;
for the baptism of crowds of converts ; hence the many
sermons and lectures of Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem,
and other preachers to catechumens, and their careful
instruction before baptism and admission to the Missa
Fidelium or the holy communion. Even Christian
parents, as the father and mother of Gregory Nazianzen,
the mother of Chrysostom, and the mother of Augustin,
put off the baj)tism of their offspring, partly no doubt
from a very high conception of baptism as the sacrament |

of regeneration, and from the superstitious fear that early

baptism involved the risk of a forfeiture of baptismal
grace. This was the argument which Tertullian in the
second century nrged against infant baptism, and this
was the reason why many professing Christians put off
their baptism till the latest hour ;
just as now so many
from the same motive delay repentance and conversion
to their death-bed. The Emperor Constantino who
favored Christianity as early as 312, and convened the
(Ecumenical Council of ^icsea in 325, postj)oned baptism
till 337, shortly before his death. The orthodox Em-
peror Theodosius the Great was not baptized till the
lirst year of his reign (380), when attacked by a serious

illness. Chrysostom, however, did not approve such

delay, but often rebuked it.
Chrysostom received his literary training chiefly from
Libanius, the admirer and friend of t]ie Emperor Julian
the Apostate, and the first classical scholar and rheto-
 HIS COKVERSIO:^" AiTD ASCETIC LIFE. 15

rician of liis age, who after a long career as public

teacher at Athens and Constantinople, returned to his
native Antioch and had the misfortune to outlive the
revival of heathenism under Julian and to lament the
triumph of Christianity under his successors. He was
introduced by him into a knowledge of the Greek classics
and the arts of rhetoric, wliich served him a good pur-
pose for his future labors in the Church. He was his
best scholar, and when Libanius, shortly before his death
(about 393), was asked whom he wished for his successor,
he replied: ''John, if only the Christians had not
stolen him from us."
After the completion of his studies Chrysostom be-,
came a rhetorician, and began the profitable practice of
law, which opened to him a brilliant political career.
The amount of litigation was enormous. The display of
talent in the law courts was the high-road to the dignities
of vice-prefect, prefect, and consul. Some of his
speeches at the bar excited admiration and were highly
commended by Libanius. For some time, as he says,
he was " a never- failing attendant at the courts of law,
and passionately fond of the theatre." But he was not
satisfied. The temptations of a secular profession in a
corrupt state of society discouraged him. To accept a
making the worse cause appear the
fee for better cause,
seemed to him to take Satan's wages.

CHAPTEE II.

HIS CONVEKSION AND ASCETIC LIFE.

The quiet study of the Scriptures, the example of his

pious mother, the acquaintance with Bishop Meletius,
16 SAIJS'T CHKYSOSTOM.

and the influence of his- intimate friend Basil, who was

of the same age and devoted to ascetic life, combined to
produce a gradual change in his character.
He entered the class of catechumens, and after the
usual period of three years of instruction and probation,
he was baptized by Meletius in his twenty-third year
(369 or 370). From this time on, says Palladius, '^ he
neither swore, nor defamed any one, nor spoke falsely,
nor cursed, nor even tolerated facetious jokes. " His bap-
tism marked, as in the case of St. Augustin, the turning
point in his life, an entire renunciation of this world and
dedication to the service of Christ. The change was
radical and permanent.
Meletius, who foresaw the future greatness of the
young lawyer, wished to secure him for the active ser-
vice of the Church, and ordained him to the subordinate
ofiice of lector (anagnostes, reader), about a.d. 370.

The lectors had to read the Scripture lessons in the first

part of divine service (the ''
Missa Catechumenorum"),
and to call upon the people to pray, but could not preach
nor distribute the sacraments.
The first inclination of Chrysostom after baptism was
to adopt the monastic life. This was, according to the
prevaihng notions of the Church in that age, the safest
mode of escaping the temptations and corruptions of the
world, cultivating holiness, and securing the salvation of
the soul. But the earnest entreaties of his mother pre-
vailed on him to delay the gratification of his desire.
He rehites the scene with dramatic power.
She took
him to herchamber, and by the bed where she had
given him birth, she adjured him with tears not to for-
sake her. " My son," she said in substance, " my only
comfort in the midst of the miseries of this earthly life
is to see thee constantly, and to behold in thy traits the
 HIS COlS'VErtSIOK AN"© ASCETIC LIFE. 17

faithful image of my beloved husband

no more. who is

This comfort commenced with your infancy before you

could speak. I ask only one favor from you do not :

make me a widow a second time ; wait at least till 1

die ;
perhaps I shall soon leave this world. When you
have buried me and joined my ashes with those of your
fatlier, nothing will then prevent you from retiring into

monastic life. But as long as I breathe, support me by

your presence, and do not draw down upon you the
wrath of God by bringing such evils upon me who have
given you no offence."
These tender, simple, and impressive words suggest
many heart-rending scenes caused by the ascetic enthusi-
asm for separation from the sacred ties of the family. It
is honorable to Chrysostom that he yielded to the reason-
al)le wishes of his devoted mother. lie remained with
her, but turned his liome into a monastery. He secluded
himself from the world and practised a rigid asceticism.
He and seldom, and only the plainest food, slept
ate little
on the bare floor, and frequently rose to prayer. He
kept almost unbroken silence to prevent a relapse into
the habit of slander or uncharitable censure.
His former associates at the bar called him unsociable
and morose. But two of his fellow-pupils under Libanius
joined him in his ascetic life, Maximus (afterward bishop
of Seleucia), andTheodore of Mopsuestia. They studied
the Scriptures under the direction of Diodorus (after-
ward bishop of Tarsus), the founder of the Antiochian
school of theology, of which Chrysostom and Theodore
became the chief ornaments.
Theodore v^as warmly attached to a young lady named
Hermione, and resolved to marry and to leave the ascetic
brotherhood. This gave rise to the earliest treatise of
—
Chrysostom namely, an Exhortation to Theodore, in
18 SAIKT CHRYSOSTOM.

two letters, lie plied all lils oratorical arts of sad sym-
pathy, tender entreaty, bitter reproach, and terrible
warning, to reclaim his friend to what he thought the
snrest and safest way to heaven. '^
To sin," he says, " is
hmnan, but to persist in sin is devilish ; to fall is not
ruinous to the soul, but to remain on the ground is."
The appeal had its desired effect ; Theodore resumed his
monastic life and became afterward bishop of Mopsuestia
in Cilicia and one of the first The
biblical scholars.
arguments which Chrysostom used would condemn all
who broke their monastic vows. They retain moral
force only if we substitute apostasy from faith for apos-
tasy from monasticism, which must be regarded as a
temporary and abnormal or exceptional form of Christian
life.

CHAPTER III.

CHETSOSTOM EVADES ELECTION TO A BISnOPEIC. HIS

WORK ON THE PRIESTHOOD.

About time several bishoprics were vacant in

this
Syria, and frequent depositions took place with the
changing fortunes of orthodoxy and Arianism, and the
interference of the court. The attention of the clergy
and the people turned to Chrysostom and his friend
Basil as suitable candidates for the episcopal office,
aUhough they had not the canonical age of thirty.
Chrysostom shrunk from the responsibilities and avoid-
ed an election by a pious fraud. He apparently assented
to an agreement with Basil that both should either ac-
cept, or resist the burden of the episcopate, but instead
of that he concealed himself and put forward his friend
 HIS WORK 02^ THE miESTnOOD. 10

whom he accounted much more worthy of the honor.

Basil, under the impression that Chrysostom had ah'eady
been consecrated, rehictantly submitted to the election.
When he discovered the cheat, he upbraided his friend
with the breach of compact, but Chrysostom laughed
and rejoiced at the success of his plot. This conduct,
which every sound Christian conscience must condemn,
caused no offence among the Christians of that age, still
less among the heathen, and was regarded as good man-

agement or ^' economy." The moral character of the ^

deception was supposed to depend altogether on the

motive, which made it good or bad. Chrysostom ap-
pealed in justification of laudable deception to the strat-
agems of war, to the conduct of physicians in dealing with
refractory patients, to several examples of the Old Testa-
ment (Abraham, Jacob, David), and to the conduct of
the Apostle Paul in circumcising Timothy for the sake
of the Jews (Acts xvi. 3) and in observing the cere-
monial law in Jerusalem at the advice of James (Acts
xxi. 26).
The Jesuitical maxim, '' the end justifies the means,"
is much older than Jesuitism, and runs through the whole
apocryphal, pseudo-prophetic, pseudo-apostolic, pseudo-
Clementine and pseudo-Isidorian literature of the early
centuries. Several of the best Fathers show a surprising
want of a strict sense of veracity. They introduce a
sort of cheat even into their strange theory of redemp-
tion, by supposing that the Devil caused the crucifixion
under the delusion that Christ was a mere man, and
thus lost his claim upon the fallen race. Origen, Chry-
sostom, and Jerome explain the offence of the collision
between Paul and Peter at Antioch (Gal. ii. 11 sqq.)
awayj by turning it into a theatrical and hypocritical
farce, which was shrewdly arranged by the two apostles
20 SAIiTT CHRYSOSTOM.

for the purpose of convincing Jewish Christians that

tlie

circumcision was not necessary. Against such wretched

exegesis the superior moral sense of Augustin rightly
protested, and Jerome changed his view on this particu-
lar passage. Here is a point where the modern standard
of ethics is far superior to that of the Fathers, and more
fully accords with the spirit of the ISew Testament,
which inculcates the strictest veracity as a fundamental
virtue.
The escape from the episcopate was the occasion for
one of the best and most popular works of Chrysostom,
the six books ^' On the Priesthood," which he wrote
probably before his ordination (between 375 and 381),
or during his diaconate (between 381 and 386). It is
composed in the form of a Piatonic dialogue between
Chrysostom and Basil. He first vindicates by argument
and examples his well-meant but untruthful conduct
toward his friend, and the advantages of timely fraud ;
and then describes with youthful fervor and eloquence
the importance, duties, and trials of the Christian min-
istry, without distinguishing between the priestly and
the episcopal office. He elevates it above all other
offices. He requires whole-souled consecration to Christ
and love to his flock. He points to the Scriptures
(quoting also from the Apocrypha) as the great weapon
of the minister. He assumes, as may be expected, the
then prevailing conception of a real priesthood and
sacrifice, baptismal regeneration, the corporal presence,
the virtue of absolution, prayers for the dead, but is

silent about pope and councils, the orders of the clerg}^,

pi'ayers to saints, forms of prayer, priestly vestments,
incense, crosses and other doctrines and ceremonies of
the Greek and Roman chur-ches. He holds up St. Paul
as a model for imitation. The sole object of the preacher
 CHRTSOSTOM AS A MOKK. 21

must be to please God rather than men (Gal. i. 10).

^' He must not
indeed despise approving demonstrations,
hut as little must he court them, nor trouble himself
when they are withheld." He should combine the
qualities of dignity and humility, authority and sociabil-
ity, impartiality and courtesy, independence and lowli-

ness, strength and gentleness, and keep a single eye to

the glory of Christ and the welfare of the Church.
This book is the most useful or at least the best known
among the works of Chrysostom, and is well calculated
to inspire a profound sense of the tremendous responsi-
bilities of the ministry. But it has serious defects, be-
sides the objectionable justification of pious fraud, and
cannot satisfy the demands of an evangelical minister.
In all that pertains to the proper care of souls it is in-
ferior to the " Keformed Pastor" of Eichard Baxter.

CHAPTER lY.

CIIEYSOSTOM AS A MONK. A.D. 374-381.

After the death of his mother, Chrj^sostom fled from

the seductions and tumults of city life to the monastic
solitude of the mountains south of Antioch, and there
spent six happy years in theological study and sacred
meditation and prayer. Monasticism was to him (as to
many other great teachers of the Church, and even to
Luther) a profitable school of spiritual experience and
self-government. He embraced this mode of life as
*'
the true philosophy" from the purest motives, and
brought into it intellect and cultivation enough to make
the seclusion available for moral and spiritual growth.
 '

22 SAINT CHRYSOSTOM.

Hegives us a lively description of the bright side of

this monastic life. The monks lived in separate cells or
huts {naXvftai)^ but according to a common rule and
under the authority of an abbot. They wore coarse gar-
ments of camel's hair or goat's hair over their linen
tunics. They rose before sunrise, and began the day by
singing a hymn of praise and common prayer under the
leadership of the abbot. Then they went to their allotted
task, some to read, others to write, others to manual
labor for the support of the poor. Four hours in each
day were devoted to prayer and singing. Their only
food was bread and vv^ater, except in case of sickness.
They slept on straw couches, free from care and anxiety.
There was no need of bolts and bars. They held all
things in common, and the words of " mine and thine,"
which cause innumerable strifes in the world, were un-
known among the brethren. If one died, he caused no
lamentation, but thanksgiving, and was carried to the
grave amid hymns of praise for he was not dead, but
;

*'
perfected," and permitted to behold the face of Christ.
For them to live was Christ, and to die was gain.
Chrysostom was an admirer of active and useful mon-
asticism, and warns against the dangers of idle contem-
plation. He shows that the words of our Lord, '^ One
thino; is needful ;" '' Take no anxious thouc^ht for the
morrow ;" " Labor not for the meat that perisheth," do
not inculcate total abstinence from work, but only undue
anxiety about worldly things, and must be harmonized
with the apostolic exhortation to labor and to do good.
He defends monastic seclusion on account of the prevail-
ing immorality in the cities, which made it almost im-
possible to cultivate there a higher Christian life.

In this period, from 374 to 381,Chrysostom composed

his earliest writings in praise of monasticisni and celibacy.
 CHRYSOSTOM AT AITTIOCH. 23

The letters ^'

to the fallen Theodore," have already been
mentioned. The three books against the Opponents of
Monasticism were occasioned by a decree of the Arian
Emperor Yalens in 373, which aimed at the destruction
of tliat system and compelled the monks to discharge
their duties to the state by military or civil service.
Chrysostom regarded this decree as a sacrilege, and the
worst kind of persecution.

CHAPTER Y.

CHRYSOSTOM AS DEACON, PRIEST, AND PREACHER AT

ANTIOCH. A.D. 381-398.

By John undermined his

excessive self -mortifications
health, and returned to Antioch. There he was imme-
diately ordained deacon by Meletius in 380 or 381, and
a few years afterward presbyter by Flavian (386).
As deacon he had the best opportunity to become ac-
quainted with the practical needs of the population, the
care of the poor and the sick. After his ordination to
the priesthood he preached in the presence of the bishop
liis first sermon to a vast crowd. It abounds in flowery
Asiatic eloquence, in humble confession of his own un-
worthiness, and exaggerated praise of Meletius and
Flavian.
He now entered upon a large field of usefulness, the.
real work of his life. The pulpit was his throne, and
he adorned it as much as any preacher of ancient or
modern times.
Antioch was one of the great capitals of the Roman
empire, along with Alexandria, Constantinople, and
24 SAIISTT CHRYSOSTOM.

Home. Nature and art combined to make it a delight

ful residence, though it was often visited bj inmidations
and earthquakes. An abundance of pure water from
tiie river Orontes, a large lake and the surrounding hills,

fertile plains, the commerce of the sea, imposing build-

ings of Asiatic, Greek, and Roman architecture, rich
gardens, baths, and colonnaded streets, were among its
chief attractions. A broad street of four miles, built by
Antiochus Epiphanes, traversed the city from east to
west the spacious colonnades on either side v/ere paved
;

with red granite. Innumerable lanterns illuminated the

main thoroughfares at night. The city was supplied
with good schools and several churches the greatest of
;

them, in which Chrysostom preached, was begun by the

Emperor Constantine and finished by Constantius. The
inhabitants were Syrians, Greeks, Jews, and Romans.
The Asiatic element prevailed. The whole population
amounted, as Chrysostom states, to 200,000, of whom
one-half were nominally Christians. Heathenism was
therefore still powerful as to numbers, but as a religion
it had lost all vitality. This was shown by the failure
of the attempt of the Emperor Julian the Apostate to re-
vive the sacrifices to the gods. When he endeavored, in
862, to restore the oracle of Apollo Daphneus in the famous
cypress grove at Antioch and arranged for a magnificent
procession, with libation, dances, and incense, he found
in the temple one solitary old priest, and this priest
ominously offered in sacrifice — a goose ! Julian himself
and vents his anger at the
relates this ludicrous farce,
Antiochians for squandering the rich incomes of the
temple upon Christianity, and worldly amusements.
Chrysostom gives us in sermons lively pictures of
his
the character of the people and the condition of the
Church. Tlie prevailing vices, even among Christians,
 CHRYSOSTOM AT ANTIOCH. 26

were avarice, luxury, sensuality, and excessive love of

the circus and the theatre. " So great," he says, 'Ms
the depravity of the times, that if a stranger were to
compare the precepts of the gospel with the actual prac-
tice of society, he would infer that men were not the
disciples, but the enemies of Christ." Gibbon thus de-
scribes the morals of Antioch " The warmth of the
;

climate disposed the natives to the most intemperate en-

joyment of tranquillity and opulence, and the lively licen-
tiousness of the Greeks was blended with the hereditary
softness of the Syrians. Fashion was the only law,
pleasure the only pursuit, and the splendor of dress and
furniture was the only distinction of the citizens of An-
tioch. The arts of luxury were honored, the serious and
manly virtues were the subject of ridicule, and the con-
tempt for female modesty and reverent age announced
the universal corruption of the capital of the East. The
love of spectacles was the taste, or rather passion of the
Syrians ; the most skilful artists were procured from the
adjacent cities. A considerable share of the revenue
was devoted to the public amusements, and the magnifi-
cence of the games of the theatre and circus was consid-
ered as the happiness and as the glory of Antioch."
The Church of Antioch was rent for eighty-five years
(330-415) by heresy and schism. There were three
parties and as many rival bishops. The Meletians, under
the lead of Meletius, were the party of moderate ortho-
doxy holding the Nicene Creed the Arians, headed by
;

Eudoxius, and supported by the Emperor Yalens, denied

the eternal divinity of Christ the Eustathians, under
;

the venerated priest Paulinus, were in communion with

Athanasius, but were accused of Sabellianism, v/liich
maintained the Divine unity and strict deity of Christ
and the Holy Spirit, but denied the tri-personality ex-
W SAII^T CHRYSOSTO^l.

cept in form of tliree modes of self-revelation.

the
Pope Damasus declared for Pauliniis and condemned
Meletius as a heretic. Alexandria likewise sided against
liim. Meletius was more than once banished from his
see, and recalled. He died during the sessions of the
Council of Constantinople, 381, over which he j^resided
for a while. His remains were carried with great sol-
emnities to Antioch and buried bj the side of Babjlas
the Martyr. Chrysostom reconciled Flavian, the suc-
cessor of Meletius, with Alexandria and Rome in 398.
Alexander, the successor of Flavian, led the Eustathians
back into the orthodox Church in 416, and thus unity
was restored.
Chrysostom preached Sunday after Sunday, and during
Lent sometimes twice or oftener during the week, even
five days in succession, on the duties and responsibilities
of Christians, and fearlessly attacked the immorality of
the city. He declaimed with special severity against the
theatre and the chariot-races and yet many of his hear-
;

ers would run from his sermons to the circus to witness

those exciting spectacles with the same eagerness as Jews
and Gentiles, He exemplified his preaching by a blame-
less life, and soon acquired great reputation and won the
love of the whole congregation. Whenever he preached
the church was crowded. He had to warn his hearers
against pickpockets, who found an inviting harvest in
these dense audiences.
A serious disturbance which took place during his
career at Antioch, called forth a remarkable effort of his
oratorical powers. The populace of the city, provoked
by excessive taxes, rose in revolt against the Emperor
Theodosius the Great, broke down his statues and those
of his deceased excellent wife Flacilla(d. 385), and his
son Arcadius, dragged the fragments through the streets^
 CHRYSOSTOM AT AITTIOCH. 27

and committed other acts of violence. The Emperor

threatened to destroy the whole clt}^ This caused gen-
eral consternation and agony, but the city was saved by
the intercession of Bishop Fhivian, who in his old age
proceeded to Constantinople and secured free pardon
from the Emperor. Although a man of violent tem23er,
Theodosius had profound reverence for bishops, and on
another occasion he submitted to the rebuke of St. Am-
brose for the wholesale massacre of the Thessalonians
(390).
In this period of public anxiety, which lasted several
months, Chrysostom delivered a series of extempore
orations, in wdiich he comforted the people and exhorted
them to correct their vices.These are his twenty-one
^'
Homilies on the Statues," so-called from the over-
tlirow of the imperial statues which gave rise to them.
Tliey were preached during Lent 387. In the same year
St. Augustin submitted to baptism at the hands of St.
Ambrose in Milan. One of the results of those sermons
was the conversion of a large number of heathens. Thus
the calamity was turned into a blessing to the Church.
During the sixteen or seventeen years of his labors in
Antioch Chrysostom wrote the greater part of his homi-
lies and commentaries a consolatory epistle to the de-
;

spondent Stagirius the excellent book on the martyr

;

Babylas, which illustrates by a striking example the

divine power of Christianity a treatise on Yirginity,
;

which he j)uts above marriage and an admonition to a

;

young widow on the glory of widowhood, and the duty

of continuing in it. He disapproved of second marriage,
not as sinful or illegal, but as inconsistent with an ideal
conception of marriage and a high order of piety.
28 SAIN"! CIIIIYSOSTOM.

CHAPTER YI.

CHRYSOSTOM AS PATKIAKCIT OF CONSTANTmOPLE. A.D.

398-404.

Aftek the death of Nectariiis (successor to Gregory

Nazianzen), toward the end of the year 397, Chrysostom
was chosen, entirely without his own agency and even
against his remonstrance, archbishop of Constantinople.
He was hurried away from Antioch by a military escort,
to avoid a commotion in the congregation and to make
resistance useless. He was consecrated February 26th,
398, by his enemy Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria,
who reluctantly yielded to the command of the Emperor
Arcadius or rather his prime minister, the eunuch Eutro-
pius, and nursed his revenge for a more convenient
season.
Constantinople, built by Constantino the Great in 330,
on the site of Byzantium, assumed as the Eastern caj)ital
of the Roman Empire the first ^Dosition among the epis-
copal sees of the East, and became the centre of court
theology, court intrigues, and theological controversies.
The second oecumenical council, which was held there in
381, under Theodosius the Great, the last Roman em-
peror worthy of the name (d. 395), decided the victory
of Nicene orthodoxy over the Arian lieresy, and gave
the bishop of Constantinople a primacy of honor, next
in rank to the bishop of old —
Rome. a position which
was afterward confirmed by the Council of Chalcedon in
451, but disputed by Pope Leo and his successors.
Chrysostom soon gained by his eloquent sermons the
admiration of the people, of the weak Emperor Area-
 CHRYSOSTOM AT COJs'STANTIKOPLE. 29

dms, and, even of liis wife Eudoxia, with whom

at first,
]]e afterward waged a deadly war. He extended his
pastoral care to the Goths wlio were becoming nmnerous
in Constantinople, had a part of the Bible translated for
them, often preached to them himself throngh an inter-
preter, and sent missionaries to the Gothic and Scythian
tribes on the Danube. He continued to direct by corre-
spondence these missionary operations even during his
exile. For a short time he enjo^xd the height of power
and popularity.
But he also made enemies by his denunciations of the
vices and follies of the clergy and aristocracy. He
emptied the episcopal palace of its costly plate and furni-
ture and sold them for the benefit of the poor and the hos-
]M*tals. He introduced his ascetic habits and re-
strict

duced the luxurious household of his predecessors to the

strictest simplicity. He devoted his large income to
benevolence. He refused mvitations to banquets, gave
no dinner and ate the simplest fare in his solitary
parties,
chamber. He
denounced unsparingly luxurious habits
in eating and dressing, and enjoined upon the rich the
duty of almsgiving to an extent that tended to increase
rather than diminish the number of beggars who swarmed
in the streetsand around the churches and public baths.
He disciplined the vicious clergy and opposed the peril-
ous and immoral habit of unmarried priests of living
under the same roof with ''spiritual sisters." This
habit dated from an earlier age, and was a reaction
against celibacy. Cyprian had raised his protest against
it, and the Council of Nicasa forbade unmarried priests

to live with any females except close relations. Chrysos-

tom's unpopularity was increased by iiis irritability and
obstinacy, and his subservience to a proud and violent
archdeacon, Serapion. The Empress Eudoxia was jeal-
30 SAINT CIIllYSOSTOM.

ous of Ills influence over lier liusbanrl, Arcadiiis, and

anpjrj at his uncompromising seventy against sin and
vice. Siie became the cliief instrument of liis downfalL
The occasion was furnished by an unauthorized use of
his episcopal power beyond the lines of his diocese,
which was confined to the city. At the request of the
clergy of Ephesus and the neighboring bishops, he vis-
ited that city in January, 401, held a synod and deposed
six bishops convicted of shameful simony. During his
absence of several months he left the episcopate of Con-
stantinople in the hands of Severian, bishop of Gabala,
an unworthy and adroit flatterer, who basely betrayed
his trust and formed a cabal headed by the Empress and
her licentious court ladies, for the ruin of Chrysostom.
On his return he used unguarded language in the pulpit,
and spoke of Elijah's relation to Jezebel in a manner
that Eudoxia understood it as a personal insnlt. The
clergy were anxious to get rid of a bishop who was too
severe for their lax morals.

CIIAPTEE Yll.

CHRYSOSTOM AND THEOPHILUS. HIS FIEST BANISHMENT

At this time Chrysostom became involved in the

which are amoni>: the most vio-
Orificenistic controversies
lent and most useless in ancient Church history, and full
of personal invective and calumny. The object in
dispute was the orthodoxy of the great Origen, which
long after his death was violently assailed and as vio-
lently defended.
Theophilus of Alexandria, an able and vigorous but
 CHETSOSTOM A^D THEOPHILUS. 31

domineering, contentious and unscrnpiiloQS prelate, was

at first an admirer of Origen, but afterward in conse-
quence of a personal quarrel joined the opponents, con-
demned his memory and banished the Origenistic monies
from Egypt. Some fifty of them, including the four
''
Tall Brethren," so-called on account of their extraor-
dinary stature, fl.ed to Constantinople and were hospit-
ably recei\^ed by Chrysostom (401). He had no sym-
pathy with the philosophical speculations of Origen, but
aj^preciated his great merits, and felt that injustice was
done to the persecuted monks. lie interceded in their
behalf with Theophilus, who replied with indignant re-
monstrance against protecting heretics and interfering
with the affairs of another diocese.
Theophilus, long desirous of overthrowing Chrysos-
tom, whom he had reluctantly consecrated, set every
instrument in motion to take revenge. He sent the
octogenaTian bishop Epiphanius of Salamis, a well-mean-
ing and learned but bigoted zealot for orthodoxy, to
(Constantinople, as a tool of his hierarchical plans (402) ;

but Epiphanius soon returned and died on the ship (403).

Theophilus now travelled himself to Constantinople,
accompanied by a body-guard of rough sailors and pro-
vided with splendid presents. He appeared at once as
accuser and judge, aided by Eudoxia and the disaffected
clergy. He held a secret council of thirty-six bishops,
all of them Egyptians, except seven, in a suburb of
Chalcedon on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, and
procured in this so-called synod at the Oak, the deposi-
tion and banishment of Chrysostom, on false charges of
immorality and high treason (403). Among the twenty-
nine charges were these that Chrysostom had called
:

the saintly Epiphanius a fool and a demon, that he

abused the clergy, that he received females without wit-
32 SAIKT CIIEYSOSTOM.

nesses, that lio atesumptuously alone and bathed alone,

that he had compared the Empress with Jezebel.
The innocent bishop refused to appear before a packed
synod of his enemies, and appealed to a general council.
As the sentence of banishment for life became known,
the indignation of the people was immense. A single
word from him would have raised an insurrection but ;

he surrendered himself freely to the imperial officers,

who conveyed him in the dark to the harbor and put
him on board a ship destined forHieron at the mouth of
the Pontus. Theophilus entered the city in triumph
and took vengeance on Chrysostom's friends.
The people besieged the palace and demanded the res-
toration of their bishop. Constantinople was almost in
a state of insurrection. The following night the city
"was convulsed by an earthquake, which w^as felt with
peculiar violence in the bedroom of Eudoxia and fright-
ened her into submission. She implored the Emperor to
avert the wrath of God by recalling Chrysostom. Mes-
sengers were despatched with abject apologies to bring
him back. A whole fleet of barks put forth to greet
him, the Cosphorus blazed with torches and resounded
with songs of rejoicing. On passing the gates he was
borne aloft by the people to the church, seated in the
episcopal chair and forced to make an address. His
triumfh was complete, but of short duration. The-
ophilus felt unsafe in Constantinople and abruptly sailed
in the nio;ht for Alexandria.
The feelings with which Chrysostom went into his
first and second exile, he w^ell describes in a letter to

Bishop Cyriacus *' When I was driven from the city,

:

1 felt no anxiety, but said to myself If the Empress

:

wishes to banish me, let her do so ;the earth is the

'

Lord's.' If she wants to have me sav/n asunder, I have

 CIIEYiSOSTOM AKD EUDOXIA. 33

Isaiah for an example. If she wants me to be drowned

in the ocean, I think of Jonah. If I am to be thrown
into the fire, tlie three men in the furnace suffered the
same. If cast before wild beasts, I remember Daniel in
the lion's den. If she wants me to be stoned, I have
before me Stephen, the first martyr. If she demands
my head, let her do so John the Baptist shines before
;

me. Naked I came from my mother's womb, naked

shall I leave this world. Paul reminds me, If I still '

pleased men, I would not be the servant of Christ.' "

CHAPTEE VIII.

CHEYSOSTOM AND EUDOXIA. HIS SECOND BANISHMENT,

A.D. 403.

The restored patriarch and the repentant Empress

seemed reconciled, and vied with one another in extrava-
gant and hypocritical laudations for two months, when
the feud broke out afresh and ended in Chrysostom's
perpetual exile and death.
Eudoxia was a beautiful, imperious, intriguing and
revengeful woman, who despised her husband and in-
dulged her passions. Not content with the virtual rule
of the Roman Empire, she aspired to semi-divine honors,
such as used to be paid to the heathen Caesars. A column
of porphyry with her silver statue for public adoration
was erected in September, 403, on the forum before the
church of St. Sophia, and dedicated amid boisterous and
which disturbed the sacred services.
licentious revelry,
Chrysostom ascended the pulpit on the commemora-
tion day of the martyrdom of John the Baptist, and
34 SAIKT CHRYSOSTOM.

thundered his righteous indignation against all who

shared in these profane amusements, the people, the
prefect, and the haughty woman on the throne. In the
heat of his zeal the imprudent words are said to have
escaped his lips Again Herodias is raging, again she
:
''

is dancing, again she demands the head of John on a

platter." The comparison of Eudoxia with Herodias,

and of himself (John) with John the Baptist was offen-
sively personal, like his former allusion to the relation
of Jezebel and Elijah. Whether he really spoke these
or similar words is at least doubtful, but they were re-
ported to Eudoxia, who as a woman and an empress
could never forgive such an insult. She demanded
from the Emperor signal redress. In the conflict of im-
perial and episcopal authority the former achieved a
physical and temporary, the latter a moral and enduring
victory.
The enemies of Chrysostom flocked like vultures down
to their prey. Theophilus directed the plot from a safe
distance. Arcadius was persuaded to issue an order for
the removal of Chrysostom. He continued to preach
and refused to leave the church over which God had
placed him, but he had to yield to armed force. He was
dragged by imperial guards from the cathedral on the
vigil of the resurrection in 404, while the sacrament of
baptism was being administered to hundreds of catechu-
mens. " The waters of regeneration," says Palladius,
^^were stained with blood." The female candidates,
half-dressed, were driven by licentious soldiers into the
dark The eucharistic elements were profaned
streets.

by pagan hands. The clergy in their ]3riestly robes were

ejected and chased through the city. The horrors of
that night were long afterward remembered with a shud-
der. During the greater part of the Easter week the
 CHRYSOSTOM IK EXILE, Al^B HIS DEATH. 35

city was kept in a state of consternation. Private dwell-

ings were invaded, and suspected Joannites —
tlie parti-

sans of Chrjsostom —
thrown into prison, scourged, and
tortured. Clirysostom, who was shut up in his episcopal
palace, twice narrowly escaped assassination.
At last on June 6, 404, the timid and long- hesitating
Arcadius signed the edict of banishment. Clirysostom
received it with calm submission, and after a final prayer
in the cathedral with some of his faithful bishops, and a
tender farewell to his beloved Olympias and her attend-
ant deaconesses, he surrendered himself to the guards
and was conveyed at night to the Asiatic shore. He had
scarcely left the city, when the cathedral ^vas, consumed
by fire. The charge of incendiarism was raised against
his friends, but neither threats, nor torture and mutila-
tion could elicit a confession of guilt. He refused to
acknowledge Arsacius and Atticus as his successors and ;

this was made a crime punishable with degradation, fine,

and imprisonment. The clergy who continued faithful
to him were deposed and banished. Pope Innocent of
Rome was appealed to, pronounced the synod which had
condemned Chrysostom irregular, annulled the depo-
sition, and wrote him a letter of sympathy. He urged
upon Arcadius the convocation of a general council, but
without effect.

CHAPTER IX.

CIIKYSOSTOM IN EXILE, AND HIS DEATH. A.D. 404—407.

Chrysostom was conveyed under the scorching heat of

July and August over Galatia and Cappadocia, to the
lonely mountain village Cucusus, on the borders of
36 SAINT CHRYSOSTOM.

Cilicia and Armenia, wliich the wrath of Eudoxia had

selected for his exile. The climate was inclement and
variable, the winter severe, the place was exposed to
Isaurian brigands. He suffered much from fever and
headache, and was more than once brought to the brink
of the grave, l^evertheless the bracing mountain air
invigorated his feeble constitution, and he was hopeful
of returning to his diocese. He
was kindly treated by
the bishop of Cucusus. He received visits, letters, and
presents from faithful friends, and by his correspondence
exerted a wider influence from that solitude than from
the episcopal throne.
His 242 extant letters are nearly all from the three
years of his exile, and breathe a noble Christian spirit,
in a clear, brilliant, and persuasive style. They exhibit
his faithful care for all the interests of the Church and
look calmly and hopefully to the glories of heaven.
They Western bishops,
aro addressed to Eastern and
presbyters, deacons, deaconesses, monks and mission-
aries ; they describe the fatigues of his journey, give
advice on a variety of subjects, strengthen and comfort
his distant flock, urge the destruction of heathen temples
in Phoenicia, the extirpation of heresy in Cyprus, and
encourage the missions in Persia and Scythia. Two
letters are addressed to the Roman bishop Innocent I.,
whose sympathy and assistance he courted. Seventeen
letters — the most important of all —are addressed to
Olympias, the deaconess, a widow of noble birth, per-
sonal beauty and high accomplishments, who devoted
her fortune and time to the poor and the sick. She died
between 408 and 420. To her he revealed his inner
life, and upon her virtues he lavished extravagant
praise, which offends modern taste as fulsome flattery.
For her consolation he wrote a special treatise on
 CHRYSOSTOM IN" EXILE, AKD HIS DEATH. 37

the theme that *'

No one is really injured except by
himself."
The cruel Emj3ress, stung by disappointment at the
continued power of the banished bishop, forbade all cor-

respondence and ordered his transfer by two brutal

guards, first to Arabissus, then to Pityus on the Caucasus,
the most inhospitable spots in the empire.
The journey months on foot was a slow mar-
of three
tyrdom to the feeble and sickly old man. He did not
reach his destination, but ended liis pilgriuiage five or
six miles from Comana in Pontus in the chapel of the
martyr Basiliscus on September 14:th, 407, in his sixtieth
year, the tenth of his episcopate. Clothed in his white
baptismal robes, he partook of the eucharist and com-
mended God. His last words were his accus-
his soul to
tomed doxology, the motto of his life ^' (rlory be to :

God for all things. Amen."

He was buried by the side of Basiliscus in the presence
of monks and nuns.
He was revered as a saint by the people. Thirty-one
years after his death, January 27, 438, his body was trans-
lated with great pomp to Constantinople and deposited
with the emperors and patriarchs beneath the altar of
the church of the Holy Apostles. The young Emperor
Theodosius II. and his sister Pulcheria met the proces-
sion at Chalcedon, kneeled down before the coffin, and
in the name of their guilty parents implored the forgive-
ness of Heaven for the grievous injustice done to the
greatest and saintliest man that ever graced the pulpit
and episcopal chair of Constantinople. The Eastern
Church of that age shrunk from the bold speculations of
Origen, but revered the narrow orthodoxy of Epiphanius,
and the ascetic piety of Chrysostom.
The personal appearance of the golden-mouthed orator
38 SAIIiTT CHRYSOSTOM.

was not imposing, but dignified and winning. He was

of small stature (like David, Paul, Atlianasius, Melancli-
tlion, John Y/eslej, Sclileiermaclier). He had an
emaciated frame, a large, bald head, a lofty, wrinkled
forehead, deep-set, bright, piercing ejes, pallid, hollow
cheeks, and a short, gray beard.

CHAPTER X.

HIS CIIAEACTEE.

CimTSosToisr was one of those rare men wlio combine

greatness and goodness, genius and piety, and continue
to exercise by and example a happy influ-
their writings
ence upon the Christian Church. He was a man for his
time and for all times. But we must look at the spirit
rather than the form of his piety, which bore the stamp
of his age.
He took Paul for his model, but had a good deal of
the practical spirit of James, and of the fervor and love-
liness ofJohn. The Scriptures were his daily food, and
he again and again recommended their study to laymen
as well as ministers. He
was not an ecclesiastical states-
man, like St. xlmbrose, not a profound divine like St.
Augustin, but a pure man, a practical Christian, and a
king of preachers. "He carried out in his own life,"
says Hase, " as far as mortal man can do it, the ideal of
the priesthood which he once described in youthful en-
thusiasm." He considered it the duty of every Chris-
tian to promote the spiritual welfare of his fellowmen.
"Nothing can be more chiUing," he says in his twen-
tieth homily on Acts, " than the sight of a Christian
 HIS CHARACTER. 39

who makes no effort to save others.

Neither poverty,
nor humble station, nor bodilj infirmity can exempt
men and women from the obligation of this great duty.
To hide our light under pretense of weakness is as great
an insult to God as if we were to say that He could not
make His sun to shine."
It is very much to his praise that in an age of narrow
orthodoxy and dogmatic intolerance he cherished a catiio-
lic and ironical spirit. He by no means disregarded the
value of theological soundness, and was in hearty agree-
ment with the Nicene Creed, which triumphed over the
Arians during his ministry in Antioch. But he took no
share in the persecution of heretics, and even sheltered
the Origenistic monks against the violence of Theophilus
of Alexandria. He hated sin more than error, and placed
charity above orthodoxy.
Like all the Nicene Fathers, he was an enthusiast for
ascetic and monastic virtue, which shows itself in seclu-

sion rather than in transformation of the world and the

natural ordinances of God. He retained as priest and
bishop his cloister habits of simplicity, abstemiousness
and unworldliness. He presents the most favorable
aspect of that mode of life, which must be regarded as a
wholesome reaction against the hopeless corruption of
])agan society. He thought with St. Paul that he could
best serve the Lord in single life, and no one can deny
that he was unreservedly devoted to the cause of religion.
He was not a man of affairs, and knew little of the
world. He had the harmlessness of the dove v/ithout
the wisdom of the serpent. He knew human nature
better than individual men. Li this respect he resembles
Neander, his best German biographer. Besides, he was
irritable, suspicious of his enemies, and easily deceived
and misled by such men as Serapion. He showed these
40 SAHS^T CHEYSOSTOM.

defects in liis quarrel witli the court and tlie aristocracy

of Constantinople. little more worldly wisdom
Witli a
and less ascetic severity lie might perhaps have concili-
ated and converted those whom he repelled by his pulpit
fulminations. Fearless denunciation of immorality and
vice in high places always commands admiration and re-
spect, especially in a bishop and court preacher who is
exposed to the temptations of flattery. But it is unwise
to introduce personalities into the pulpit and does more
harm than good. His relation to Eudoxia reminds one
of the attitude of John Knox to Mary Stuart. The
contrast between the pure and holy zeal of the preacher
and the reformer and the ambition and vanitv of a
woman on the throne is very striking and must be judged
by higher rules than those of gallantry and courtesy.
But after all, the conduct of Christ, the purest of the
pure, toward Mary Magdalene and the woman taken in
adultery is far more sublime. Mercy is better than
justice.
The Chrysostom with Eudoxia imparts to
conflict of
his later life the interest of a romance, and was over-
ruled for his benefit. In his exile his character shines
even brighter than in the pulpit of Antioch and Con-
stantinople. His character was perfected by suffering.
The gentleness, meekness, patience, endurance and devo-
tion to his friends and to his work which he showed dur-
ing the last three years of his life, are the crowning glory
of his career. Though he did not die a violent death,
he deserves to be numbered among the true martyrs,
who are ready for any sacrifice to the cause of virtue and
piety.
 ins WKITIKGS. 41

CIIAPTEr. XI.

THE WHITINGS OF CHilYSOSTOM.*

Chrysostom was the most fruitful antlior among the

Greek Fathers. Snidas makes the extrav aidant remark
that only the omniscient God could recount all liis writ-
ings. The best have been preserved and have al
ready been noticed in chronological order. They may
be divided into five classes : (1) Moral and ascetic trea-
tises, including the work on the priesthood ; (2) about
six hundred homilies and commentaries (3) occasional, ;

festal and panegyrical orations (4) letters (5) liturgy.

; ;

His most important and permanently useful works are

his homilies and commentaries, which fill eleven of the
thirteen folio volumes of the Benedictine edition. They
go together his homilies are expository, and his com-
;

mentaries are homiletical and practical. Continuous ex-

positions, according to chapter and verse, he wrote only
on the first six chapters of Isaiah, and on the Epistle to
the Galatians. All others are arranged in sermons with
a moral application at the close. Suidas and Cassiodorus
state that he wrote commentaries on the whole Bible.
We have from him homilies on Genesis, the Psalms, the
Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of John, the Acts, the
Pauline Epistles, including the Hebrews, which he con-
sidered Pauline. Besides, he delivered discourses on
separate texts of Scripture, on Church festivals, eulogies

* An Englisli translation of his principal works v/as edited by

Scbaff in the first series of *'
A Select Library of the Niceiie and Post-
Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church," published by the Christian
Literature Company, New York, 1889-'90, vols, ix.-xiv.
42 SAIiq"T CHKYSOSTOM.

on apostles and martyrs, sermons against tlio pagans,

against the Jews and Judaizing Christians, against the
Arians, and the famous twentj-one orations on the
Statues.
He published some of his sermons himself, but most
of them were taken down bj short-hand writers. Writ-
ten sermons were the exceptions in those days. The
preacher usually was seated, the people were standing.
Of the letters of Chrysostom we have already spoken.
The liturgy of St. Chrysostom so-called is an abridgment
and improvement of the liturgy of St. Basil (d. 379),
and both are descended from the liturgy of James,
which they superseded. They have undergone gradual
changes. It is impossible to determine the original text,
as no two Chrysostom frequently
cojDies precisely agree.
refers to different parts of the divine service customary
in his day, but there is no evidence that he composed a full
liturgy, nor is it probable. The liturgy which bears his
name is still used in the orthodox Greek and Russian
Church on all Sundays, except those during Lent, and
on the eve of Epiphany, Easter, and Christmas, when
the liturgy of Basil takes its place

CHAPTER XII.

HIS THEOLOGY AND EXEGESIS.

Chkysostom belonged to the Antiochian school of the-

ology and exegesis, and is its soundest and most popular
representative. was founded by his teacher Diodor
It
of Tarsus (d. 393), developed by himself and his fellow-
student Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 429), and followed
 HIS THEOLOGY AIs"D EXEGESIS. 43

bv Theodoret and the Syrian and Nestorian divines.

Theodore was the exegete, Chrysostom the homilist,
Theodoret the annotator. The school was afterward
condemned for its alleged connection with the ISTestorian
heresy hut that connection was accidental, not neces-
;

sary. Chrysostom's mind was not given to dogmatizing,

and too well balanced to run into heresy.
The Antiochian school agreed with the Alexandrian
school founded by Origen, in maintaining the divine in-
spiration and authority of the Scriptures, but differed
from it in the method of interpretation, and in a sharper
distinction between the Old and the New Testaments,
and tlie divine and human elements in the same.
To Origen belongs the great merit of having broken
the path of l)iblical science and criticism, bnt he gave
the widest scope to the allegorizing and mystical metliod
by which the Bible may be made to say anything that is
pious and edifying. Pliilo of Alexandria had used that
method for introducing the Platonic philosophy into the
Mosaic writings. Origen was likewise a Platonist, but
his chief object was to remove all that was offensive in
the literal sense. The allegorical method is imposition
rather than exposition. Christ sanctions parabolic teach-
ing and typical, but not allegorical, interpretation. Paul
uses it once or twice, but only incidentally, when arguing
from the rabbinical standpoint.
^The Antiochian school seeks to explain the obvious
grammatical and historical sense, which is rich enough
for all purposes of instruction and edification. It takes
out of the Y/ord what is actually in it, instead of putting
into it all sorts of foreign notions and fancies.
Chrysostom recognizes allegorizing iu theory, but
seldom uses it in practice, and then more by way of
rhetorical ornament and in deference to custom. lie
44 SAI2TT CHRYSOSTOM.

was generally guided by sound common sense and prac-

tical wisdom. He was more free from arbitrary and
fanciful interpretations than any otlier patristic com-
mentator. He pays proper attention to the connection,
and puts himself into the psychological state and histori-
cal situation of the writer. In one word, he comes very
near to what we now call the grammati co-historical ex-
egesis. This is the only solid and sound foundation for
any legitimate use of the Scriptures. The sacred writers
had one delinite object in view they wished to convey
;

one particular sense by the ordinary use of language,

and to be clearly understood by their readers. At the
same time the truths of revelation are so deep and so
rich that they can be indefinitely expanded and applied
to all circumstances and conditions. Interpretation is
one thing, application is another thing. Chrysostom
knew as well as any allegorist how to derive spiritual
nourishment from the Scriptures and to make them
*^
profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness ; that the man of God may
be complete, thoroughly furnished unto every good
work." — As to the text of the Greek Testament, he is
the chief witness of the Syro-Constantinopolitan recen-
sion, which was follovred by the later Greek Fathers.
He acce|)ts the Syrian canon of the Peshito, which in-
cludes the Old Testament with the Apocrypha, but
omits from the New Testament the Apocalypse and four
Catholic Epistles (2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude) ;

at least in the Synoj)sis Yeteris et novi Testamenti which

is found in his works, these five books are wanting, but

this does not prove that he did not know them.

The commentaries of Chrysostom are of unequal merit.
We must always remember that he is not a critical but a
homiletical and practical commentator who aimed at the
 niS THEOLOGY AND EXEGESIS. 45

conversion and edification of his hearers. He makes

frequent digressions, and neglects to explain the difficul-

ties of important texts. Grammatical remarks are rare,

but noteworthy on account of his familiarity with the
Greek as his mother tongue, though by no means coming
up to the accuracy of a modern expert in philology. In
th3 Old Testament he depended altogether on the Sep-
tuagint, being ignorant of Hebrew, and often missed the
mark. The homilies on the Pauline Epistles are consid-
ered his best, especially those to the Corinthians, where
he had to deal with moral and pastoral questions. The
doctrinal topics of Komans and Galatians were less to
his taste, and it cannot be said that he entered into the
dejDths of Paul's doctrines of sin and grace, or ascended
the height of his conception of freedom in Clirist. His
homilies on Romans are argumentative his continuous
;

notes on somewhat hasty and superficial.

Galatians
The eighty homilies on Matthew from his Antiochian
period are very valuable. Thomas Aquinas declared he
would rather possess them than be the master of all
Paris. The eighty-eight homilies on John, also preached
at Antioch, but to a select audience early in the morn-
ing, are more doctrinal and controversial, being directed
against the Anomoeans (Arians). We have no commen-
taries from him on Mark and Luke, nor on the Catholic
Epistles and the Apocalypse. The fifty-five homilies
on the Acts, delivered at Constantinople between Easter
and Whitsuntide, when that book was read in the public
lessons, contain much interesting information about the
manners and customs of the age, but are the least pol-
ished of his productions. Erasmus, who translated them
into Latin, doubted their genuineness. His life in Con-
stantinople was too much disturbed to leave him quiet
leisure for preparation. The homilies on the Hebrews,
46 SAIKT CIIRYSOSTO:-!.

likewise preached in Constantinople, were published

after liis death from notes of his friend, the presbyter
Constantine, and the text is in a confused state.
The homihes of Chrjsostom were a rich storehouse
for theGreek commentators, compilers and epitomizers,
such as Theodoret, (Ecumenius, Theophylact, and
Euthymius Zigabenus, and they are worth consulting to
this day for their exegetical as well as their practical
value.
The theology Chrysostom must be gathered chiefly
of
from his commentaries. He differs from the metaphysi-
cal divines of the Nicene age by his predominantly prac-
tical tendency, and in this respect he approaches the

genius of the Western Church. He lived between the

great trinitarian and christological controversies and was
only involved incidentally in the subordinate Origenistic
controversy, in which he showed a charitable and liberal
spirit. He accepted the Nicene Creed, but he died
before the rise of the Nestorian and Eutychian heresies.
Speculation was not his forte, and as a thinker he is

behind Athanasius, Gregory of ITyssa, and John of

Damascus. He was a rhetorician rather than a logician.
Like all the Greek Fathers, he laid great stress on free
will and the co-operation of the human will with divine
grace in the work of conversion. Cassian, the founder
of Semi-Pelagianism, was his pupil and appealed to his
authority. Julian of Eclanum, the ablest opponent of
Augustin, quoted Chrysostom against original sin ;

Augustin tried from several passages to prove the re-

verse, but could only show that Chrysostom was no
Pelagian. We may say that in tendency and spirit he
was a catholic Semi-Pelagian or Synergist before Semi-
Pelagianism was brought into a system.
Hio anthropology forms a wholesome contrast and sup-
 HIS THEOLOGY AKD EXEGESIS. 47

plement to the antliropology of liis younger contem-

porary, the great Bishop of Hippo, the champion of the
sLavery of the human will and the sovereignty of divine
grace.
We look in vain in Chrysostom's writings for the
Augustinian and Calvinistic doctrines of a douhle pre-
destination, total depravity, hereditary guilt, irresistible
grace, perseverance of saints, or for the Lutheran theory
of forensic and solifidian justification. lie teaches that
God foreordained all men and salvation, and
to holiness
that Christ died for all andboth willing and able to
is

save all, but not against their will and without their free
consent. The vessels of mercy were prepared by God
unto glory, the vessels of wrath were not intended by
God, but fitted by their own sin, for destruction. The
will of man, though injured by the power
Fall, has still the
to accept or to reject the offer of salvation.must first It
obey the divine caU. ''When we have begun," he
says, in commenting on John i. 38, " when we have sent
our will before, then God gives us abundant opportuni-
ties of salvation." God helps those who help them-
selves. " When God," he says, ''sees lis eagerly pre-
pare for the contest of virtue. He instantly supplies us
with His assistance, lightens our labors and strengthens
the weakness of our nature." Faith and good works
are necessary conditions of justification and salvation,
though Christ's merits alone are the efficient cause. He
remarks on John vi. 44, that while no man can come to
Christ unless drawn and taught by the Father, there is
no excuse for those who are unwilling to be thus drawn
and taught. Yet, on the other hand, he fully admits
the necessity of divine grace at the very beginning of
every good action. " We can do no good thing at all,"
he says, "except we are aided from above." And
43 SAIKT CHRYSOSTOM.

ill Ills dying hour lie gave glory to God ^' for all

things."
Angiistinians and Semi-Pelagians, Calvinists and
Armiiiians, widely as they differ in theory aboat human
freedom and divine sovereignty, meet in the common
feeling of personal responsibility and absolute depen-
dence on God. With one voice they disclaim all merit
of their own and give all glory to Him who is the giver
of every good and perfect gift and works in us '^ both
to will and to work, for His good pleasure" (Phil. ii.
12).
As which separate the Greek, E-oman,
to the doctrines
and Protestant churches, Chrysostom faithfully repre-
sents the Greek Catholic Church prior to the separation
from Kome. In addition to the oecumenical doctrines
of the Nicene Creed, he expresses strong views on
baptismal regeneration, the real presence, and the
cucharistic sacrifice, yet without a clearly defined theory,
which was the result of later controversies ;hence it
would be unjust to press his devotional and rhetorical
language into the service of transubstantiation, or con-
substantiation, or the Poman view of the mass.
His extravagant laudations of saints and martyrs pro-
moted that refined form of idolatry which in the Kicene
age began to take the place of the heathen hero-worship.
But it is all the more remarkable that he furnishes no
support to Mariolatry, which soon after his death
triumphed in the Greek as well as the Latin Church.
He was far from the idea of the sinless perfection and
immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary. He derives
her conduct at the wedding of Cana (John ii. 3, 4) from
undue haste and a sort of unholy ambition for the prema-
ture display of the miraculous power of her Son and ;

in commenting on Matthew xii. 46-49, he charges her

 HIS THEOLOGY AKD EXEGESIS. 49

and the brethren of with vanity and a carnal mind.

Clirist
He does not use the term theotokos (bearing God, Deir
jpara^ Mother of God), which twenty years after his death
gave rise to the Nestorian controversy, and which was
endorsed by the third and fourth (Ecumenical Councils.
As to the question of the papacy he considered the
bishop of Kome as the successor of Peter, the prince of
the apostles, and ap]3ealed to him in his exile against
the unjust condemnation of the Council at the Oak.
Such appeals furnished the popes a welcome opportunity
to act as judges in the controversies of the Easter Church,
and greatly strengthened their claims. But his epistle to
Innocent was addressed also to the bishops of Milan and
Aquileia, and falls far short of the language of submis-
sion to an infallible authority. He conceded to the pope
merely a primacy of honor inpoaraaia^ apxv)^ iiot a
supremacy of jurisdiction. He calls the Bishop of
Antioch (Ignatius and Flavian) likewise a successor of
Peter, who labored there according to the express testi-

mony of Paul. In commenting on Gal. i. 18, he repre-

sents Paul as equal in dignity {iaorip-oi) to Peter. He
was free from jealousy of Rome, but had he lived during
the violent controversies between the patriarch of new
Rome and the pope of old Rome, it is not doubtful on
which side he would have stood.
In one important point Chrysostom approaches the
evangelical theology of the Reformation, his devotion to
the Holy Scriptures as the only rule of faith. ^'
There
is no topic (says W. P. W. Stephens, his best English
biographer) on which he dwells more frequently and
earnestly than on the duty of every Christian man and
woman to study the Bible ; and what he bade others do,
that he did pre-eminently himself." He deemed the
reading of the Bible the best means for the promotion
50 SAIKT CHEYSOSTOM.

of Christian life. A Christian without the knowledge

of the Scriptures is to him a workman without tools.
Even the sight of the Bible deters from sin, how much
more the reading. and consecrates the soul,
It purifies
it introduces it into the holy of holies and brings it into

direct communion with God.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHKYSOSTOM AS A PKEACHEE.

The crowning merit of Chrysostom is his excellency

as a preacher. He is generally and justly regarded as
the greatest pulpit orator of the Greek Church. Nor
has he any superior or equal among the Latin Fathers.
He remains to this day a model for preachers in large
cities.

Hewas trained in the school of Demosthenes and

Libanius, and owed much of his literary culture to the
classics. He praises ^^
the polish of Isocrates, the gravity
of Demosthenes, the dignity of Thucydides, and the
sublimity of Plato." He assigns to Plato the first rank
among the philosophers, but he places St. Paul far above
him, and glories in the victory of the tent-maker and
fishermen over the wisdom of the Greeks.
He was not free from the defects of the degenerate
rhetoric of his age, especially a flowery exuberance of
styleand fulsome extravagance in eulogy of dead martyrs
and living men. But the defects are overborne by the
virtues the fulness of Scripture knowledge, the intense
:

earnestness, the fruitfulness of illustration and applica-

tion, the variation of topics, the command of language,
 CHRYSOSTOM AS A PREACHER. 51

the elegance and rhythmic flow of his Greek style, the

dramatic vivacity, the quickness and ingenuity of his
turns,and the magnetism of sympathy with his hearers.
He knew how to draw, in the easiest manner, sj^iritual
nourishment and lessons of practical wisdom from the
Word of God, and to make it a divine voice of warning
and comfort to every hearer. He was a faithful preacher
of truth and righteousness and told fearlessly the whole
duty of man. If he was too severe at times, he erred
on virtue's side. He preached morals rather than dog-
mas, Christianity rather than theology, active, practical
Christianity that proves itself in holy living and dying.
He was a martyr of the pulpit, for it was chiefly his
faithful preaching that caused his exile. The effect of
his oratory was enhanced by the magnetism of his per-
sonality, and is weakened to the reader of a translation
or even the Greek original. The living voice and glow-
ing manner are far more powerful than the written and
printed letter.

Chrysostom attracted large audiences, and among them

many who would rather have gone to the theatre than
hear any ordinary preacher. He held them spell-bound
to the close. Sometimes they manifested their admira-
tion by noisy applause, and when he rebuked them for it,
they would applaud his eloquent rebuke. You praise,
^
'

he would tell them, ''

what 1 have said, and receive my
exhortation with tumults of applause ;but show your
approbation by obedience ;that is the only praise I
seek."
The great mediseval poet Dante assigns to Chrysostom
a place in Paradise between !N^athan the prophet and
Anselm the theologian, because, like Nathan, he rebuked
the sins of the court, and, like Anselm, he suffered exile
for his conviction. The best French pulpit orators
52 SAIKT CHRYSOSTOM.

Bossuet, Massilon, Bourdaloue — have taken him for

their model, even in his faults, the flattery of living
persons. Yillemain praises him as the greatest orator
who combined all the attributes of eloquence. Hase
calls his eloquence " Asiatic, flowery, full of spirit and

of the Holy Spirit, based on sound exegesis, and with

steady application to life." English writers compare
him to Jeremy Taylor. Gibbon (who confesses, how-
ever, to have read very few of his homilies) attributes
to him ^' the happy art of engaging the passions in the
service of virtue, and of exposing the folly as well as
the turpitude of vice, almost with the truth and spirit of
a dramatic representation." Dean Milman describes
him as an ^'
unrivalled master in that rapid and forcible
application of incidental occurrences which gives such
life and reality to eloquence. He is at times, in the
highest sense, dramatic in manner." Stephens, in his
excellent biography, thus characterizes his sermons :

''
A power of exposition which unfolded in lucid order,
passage by passage, the meaning of the book in hand ;

a rapid transition from clear exposition, or keen logical

argument, to fervid exhortation, or pathetic appeal, or
indignant denunciation the versatile ease with which
;

he could lay hold of any little incident of the moment,

such as the lighting of the lamps in the church, and use
it to illustrate his discourse ; the mixture of plain com-
mon sense, simple boldness, and tender affection, with
which he would strike home to the hearts and con-
sciences of his hearers — all th^se are not only general
characteristics of theman, but /are usually to be found
manifested more or less in the compass of each discourse.
It is this rare union of powers which constitutes his
superiority to almost all other, Christian preachers with
whom he might be, or has beeti, compared. Savonarola
/
 CHRYSOSTOM AS A PREACHER. 53

had all, and more than all, his lire and vehemence, hut
untempered by his sober, calm good sense, and wanting
his rational method of interpretation. Chrysostom was
eager and impetuous at times in speech as well as in
action, but never fanatical. Jeremy Taylor combines,
like Chrysostom, real earnestness of purpose with rheto-
rical forms of expression and florid imagery but, on ;

the whole, his style more artificial, and is overlaid

is far
with a multifarious learning, from which Chrysostom 's
was entirely free. Wesley is almost his match in simple,
straightforward, practical exhortation, but does not rise
into flights of eloquence like his. The great French
preachers, again, resemble him in hismore ornate and
declamatory vein, but they lack that simpler common-
sense style of address which equally distinguished him."
I conclude this sketch with the eloquent tribute of
Archdeacon Farrar work, Lives of the
(in his recent
Fathers^ 1SS9) :
''
John Chrysostom is one of the most
splendid and interesting figures in the early liistory of
the Church. Less profound a theologian than Atha-
nasius, or Augustin, or Gregory of Nazianzen less inde- ;

pendent a thinker than Theodore of Mopsuestia less ;

learned than Origen or Jerome less practically success-

;

ful than Ambrose, he yet combines so many brilliant gifts

that he stands almost supreme among the Doctores
Ecclesim^ as an orator, as an exegete, as a great moral re-
former, as a saint and confessor who,

' For the testimony of truth has borne

Universal reproach, far worse to bear
Than violence for this was all his care
;

To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds

Judged him perverse.'

'*
The general purity and practical wholesomeness of
his doctrines, the loftiness of his moral standard, the in-
54 SAIN'T CIIRYSOSTOM.

domitable courage of bis testimony against tlie vices of

all classes, the glory of liis oratory, the prominent posi-
tion which he occnpied in his own generation, tlie tragedy
and failure of his life, surround his name with a halo as
briglit as that ofany of the great ecclesiastical leaders of
the early centuries. He was the ideal preacher to the
great capital of the world."

LITEEATUEE.
For a list of the literature on St, Clirysostom, the reader is referred
to Schafif's History of the Christian C/iurc/t (last revision, 1889), vol. III.,
933 and 1036 sq., and his JSflcene and Posi-Nicene Library, First
Series (1889). vol. IX., 3-5.
The best edition of St. Chrysostom's Works is the Benedictine of
Bernard db Montfaucon, Greek and Latin, Paris, 1718-38, in 13 vols.
fol., reprinted with various improvements by Gaume, Paris, 1834-39,

and in Migne's Patrologia Grceca, 1859-63. The best critical edition

of the Greek text of the Homilies on Matthew and the Pauline
Epistles is by Dr. Frederick Field, Cambridge and Oxford, 1839-
62, in 7 vols. The English edition has already been mentioned, p.
41.

The best biographers of St. Chrysostom are Neander in German

(Der heil. Ghrysostomus, 1821, 3d ed., Berlin, 1848, 2 vols.), and W. R.
W. Stephens in English (St. Chrysostom, his Life and Times, 1872,
3d ed., London, 1883). Tlie present sketch is substantially the same
as that contained in the author's Prolegomena to his edition of St.
Chrvsostom's works.
SAINT AUGUSTIN.
 SAIISTT AUGUSTIT^.
" Thou, O God, hast made tis for Thee, and our heart is restless
until it rests in Thee."

INTRODUCTORY.
The chief, almost the only source of the life of
St.Augustin till the time of his conversion is his auto-
biography his faithful friend, Possidius, added a few
;

notices ; his public labors till his death are recorded in

his numerous writings his influence ; is written on the
pages of mediaeval and modern church history.
Among religious autobiographies the Confessions of
Augustin still hold the first rank. In them this remark-
able man, endowed with a lofty genius and a burning
heart, lays open his inner life before God and the world,
and at the same time the life of God in his own soul,
which struggled for the mastery, and at last obtained it.
A more honest book was never written. He conceals
nothing, he palliates nothing. Like a faithful witness
against himself, standing at the bar of the omniscient
Judge, he tells the truth, the w^iole truth, and nothing
but the truth. Like King David, in the fifty-first

Psalm, he openly confesses his transgressions with un-

feigned sorrow and grief, yet in the joyous conscious-
ness of forgiveness. To his sense of sin corresponds his
sense of grace they are the controlling ideas of his
:

spiritual life and of his system of theology. The deeper

the descent into the hell of self-knowledge, the higher
the ascent to the knowledge of God.
Augustin might have kept the secret of his youthful
aberrations posterity knows them only from liis pen.
;
58 SAIJ7T AUGUSTII^.

He committed no murder nor adultery, like the King of

Israel he never denied his Saviour, like Peter he was
;
;

no persecutor of the Church, like Paul his sins preceded

;

his conversion and baptism, and they were compatible

with the highest honor in heathen society. But his
Christian experience quickened his sense of guilt, and he
told the story for his own humiliation and for the glory
of God's redeeming grace.
The Confessions are a solemn soliloquy before the
throne of the Searcher of hearts within the hearing of
the world. They enter into the deepest recesses of re-
ligions experience, and rise to the lofty summit of theo-
logical thought. They exhibit a mind intensely pious
and at the same time intensely speculative. His prayers
are meditations, and his meditations are prayers and;

both shine and burn like Africa's tropical sun. They re-
flect, as Guizot says, ^' a unique mixture of passion and

gentleness, of authority and symj^athy, of largeness of

mind and logical rigor. " Dr. Shedd ranks them among
those rare autobiographies in which 'Hhe ordinary ex-
periences of human life attain to such a j^itch of intensity
and such a breadth, range, and depth as to strike the
reader with both a sense of familiarity and a sense of
strangeness. It is his own human thought and human
feeling that he finds expressed ; and yet it is spoken
with so much greater clearness, depth, and energy than
he is himself capable of, or than is characteristic of the
mass of men, that it seems like the experience of another
sphere and another race of beings." *
Even in a psychological and literary point of view the
Confessions of Augustin rank among the most interest-

* See the thoughtful introduction to his edition of the Confessions

of Augustin, Andover, 18G0, p. ix.

 IKTRODUCTORY. 59

ing of autobiographies, and are not inferior to Rousseau's

Confessions and Goethe's Truth and Fiction / while in
reh'gious value there no comparison between them.
is

They are equally frank, and blend the personal with the
general human interest but while the French philoso-
;

pher and the German poet are absorbed in the analysis

of their own self, and dwell upon it with satisfaction, the
African father goes into the minute details of his sins
and follies with intense abhorrence of sin, and rises
above himself to the contemplation of divine mercy,
which delivered him from the degrading slavery. The
former wrote for the glory of man, the latter for the
glory of God. Augustin lived in an age when the West-
ern Roman Empire was fast approaching dissolution, and
the Christian Church, the true City of God, was being
built on its ruins. He was not free from the defects of
an artificial and degenerate rhetoric ; nevertheless he
rises not seldom to the height of passionate eloquence,

and scatters gems of the rarest beauty. He was master

of the antithetical power, the majesty and melody of the
language of imperial Rome. Many of his sentences have
passed into proverbial use, and become commonplaces in
theological literature.
Kext to Angustin himself, his mother attracts the
attention and excites the sympathy of the reader. She
walks like a guardian angel from heaven through his
book until her translation to that sphere. How pure and
strong and enduring her devotion to him, and his devo-
tion to her !She dried many tears of anxious mothers.
It is impossible to read of Monnica without a profound er
regard for woman and a feeling of gratitude for Chris-
tianity, which raised her to so high a position.
The Confessions were written about A.r>. 397, ten
years after Augustin's conversion. The historical part
GO SAINT AUGUSTIN.

closes witli Ins conversion and with tlie death of his

mother. The work contains much that can be fully
understood only by the theologian and the student of
history ; and the last four of the thirteen books are
devoted to subtle speculations about the nature of mem-
ory, eternity, time, and creation, which far transcend the
grasp of the ordinary reader. Nevertheless it was read
with great interest and profit in the time of the writer,
and ever since, in the original Latin and numerous trans-
lations in various languages. In all that belongs to eleva-
tion,depth, and emotion there are few books so edifying
and inspiring and so well worthy of careful study as
Augustin's Confessions.
We
shall endeavor to popularize the Confessions, and
to supplement the biography from other sources, for the
instruction and edification of the present generation.
The life of a great genius and saint like Augustin is one
of the best arguments for the religion he professed, and
to which he devoted his mental and moral energies.
Augustin had no other force but that of intellect
St.
and piety. And yet he exerted more influence than any
pope or emperor in the history of Christianity. Africa
relapsed into barbarism after his death, but Europe was
educated by his spirit. He has written his name indelibly
on every page of the Middle Ages and of the Reformation.
He was the teacher of Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, of
St. Bernard and Thomas a Kempis, of A¥iclif and Hus,
of Luther and Calvin, of Jansen and Pascal. He fur-
nished the programmefor the papal theocracy, and i-ided
in its dissolution he struck the key-note of scholasticism
;

and mysticism he instructed the Reformers in the mys-

;

teries of sin and grace, and led them to the abyss of

eternal predestination. Even now, fifteen hundred years
after his conversion, his theological opinions carry more
 TKTRODUCTOllY. 61

weiG^ht in the Catholic and Evangelical Churches than

those of any other uninspired man, and are likely to do
so till God sends a teacher who will descend deeper and
ascend higher than Angustin in the exploration of the
mysteries of divine truth.
Quite recently Dr. Adolf Ilarnack, who sits in Nean-
der's chair ofChurch History in Berlin, has given an ad-
miring estimate of the amazing influence of the Bishop
of Plippo.* He has also ]3ublished a suggestive essay on
the Confessions of Augustin,f in which he draws an
ingenious parallel between him and Goethe's Faust,
But the main points in the former —
repentance and con-
version — are
wanting in the latter. Faust became dis-
gusted with the world after enjoying its pleasures, and
regretted the consequences of his sins, but did not repent
of sin itself. He is carried down to hell by Mephis-
topheles in the first part of Goethe's tragedy, but he re-
appears in heaven in tlie second part, without any moral
change except that brought about by his own exertion
and the attraction of the '' ever-womanly," which is the
symbol of divine grace. In Augustin grace is not an
outward help merely (as with Pelagius and Goethe), but
a regenerating and sanctifying power without which man
can do nothing.

* In the third volume of his Lehrhuch der Dogmengeschichte, Frei-

burg i. B., 1890.

t Augustin's Confessioneyi. JSm Vortrag. Giesscn, 1888.

 SAINT AUGUSTIN.

CIIAPTEE I.

augustin's youth.

AuEELius Atjgustinus, the greatest and best, and the

most influential of the Latin church-fathers, was born
on the thirteenth of November, 854, at Tagaste, in
Numidia, North Africa. His birthplace was near HJppo
Kegius (now Bona), where he spent his public life as
presbyter and bishop, and where he died in the seventy-
sixth year of his age (Aug. 28, 430). He belonged to
the Punic race, which was of Phoenician origin, but be-
came Latinized in language, laws, and customs under
Poman rule since the destruction of Carthage (b.c. 146),
yet retained the Oriental temper and the sparks of the
genius of Hannibal, the sworn enemy of Rome. These
traits appear in the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian,
who preceded Angustin and prepared the way for his
theology. In Augustin we can trace the religious in-

tensity of the Semitic race, the tropical fervor of Africa,

the Catholic grasp and comprehensiveness of Rome, and
the germs of an evangelical revolt against its towering
ambition and tyrannical rule. His native land has long
since been laid waste by the barbarous Yandals (a.d. 439)
and tlie Mohammedan Arabs (647), and keeps mourn-
ful silence over dreary ruins \ but his spirit marched
 64 SAINT AUGUSTIK.

through the ages, and still lives and acts as a molding

and stimulating power in all the branches of Western
Christendom.
His father Patricius, was a member of the city
J

Council, and a man of kindly disposition, but irritable

temper and dissolute habits. He remained a heathen till
shortly before his death, but did not, as it appears, lay
p.^ny obstruction to the Christian course of his wife.
C^ Monnica,* the mother of Augustin, shines among the
most noble and pious women that adorn the grand tem-
ple of the Christian Church. She was born in the year
331 or 332, of Christian parents, probably at Tagaste.
She had rare gifts of mind and heart, which were de-
veloped by an excellent Christian education, and dedi-
cated to the Sas^iour. To the violent passion of her
husband she opposed an angelic meekness, and when the
outburst was over she reproached him so tenderly that
he was always shamed. Had the rebuke been adminis-
tered sooner it would only have fed the unhallowed fire.
His conjugal infidelity she bore with patience and for-
giving love. Her highest aim was to win him over to
—
the Christian faith not so much by words as by a truly
humble and godly conduct and the conscientious dis-
charge of her household duties. In this she was so suc-
cessful that, a year before his death, he enrolled himself
among the catechumens and was baptized. To her it
was the greatest pleasure to read the Holy Scriptures

* This is the correct spelling, according to the oldest MSS. of the

writings of Augustin, and is followed by Pusey, in his edition of the
Confessions,by Moule, in Smith and Wace, Did. of Christian Biogra-
phy, III. 932,and also by K. Braune, in Monnika und Augustinus
(Grimma, 1840). The usual spelling is Monica, in French Monique.
It is derived by some from fi6vog, single; by others from fidvvog or
LQwng, Lat, monile, a necklace {monilia, jewels).
 AUGUSTIN'S YOUTH. 65

and to attend clmrcli regularly every morning and even-

ing, ^'
not," as Augustin says, *'
to listen to vain fables,
but to the Lord, in the preaching of His servants, and to
offerup to Him her prayers." She esteemed it a pre-
cious privilege to lay on the altar each day a gift of love,
to bestow alms on the poor, and to extend hospitality to
strangers, especially to brethren in the faith. She
brought up her children in the nurture and admonition
of the Lord. She bare Augustin, as he boasts of her,
with greater pains spiritually^ than she had brought him
forth naturally into the world. "^ For thirty years she
prayed for the conversion of her distinguished son, until
at last, a short time before her death, after manifold
cares and burning tears, in the midst of which she never
either murmured against God or lost hope, she found
her prayers answered beyond her expectations. She has
l)ecome a bright example and rich comfort for mothers,
and end of time.
will act as an inspiration to the
From such parents sprang Augustin. Strong sensual
passions he inherited from his father, but from his
mother those excellent gifts of mind and heart which,
though long perverted, were at last reclaimed by the
regenerating grace of God, and converted into an incal-
culable blessing to the Church of all ages. He had a
brother, by the name of ]N"avigius, a widowed sister,
who presided over a society of pious women till the day
of her death, and a number of nephews and nieces.
Augustin says that with his mother's milk his heart
sucked in the name of the Saviour, which became so

* Confess. 1. V. c. 9 :
" Non enim
satis elnqnor, quid erga me habehaf.
nnimi, et quanto majore solUcitudineme partwiebat spiritu, quam came,
porpererat." Likewise 1. IX. c. 8 " Q>ice me parturlvU, et came, ut
:

in harm tem.pnralem, et corde, ut in a2tem.a,m lucem nascerer/^ Comp. his

whole description of Monnica, ix. 9-12.
 66 SAIJS^T AUGUSTIl?".

firmly lodged there that* nothing which did not savor of

that name, however learned and attractive it might other-
wise be, could ever fully charm him. He early lisped
out prayers to God, whose all-embracing love revealed
itself to his childish spirit. These germs of piety were
overgrown by the weeds of youthful vice and impure
lusts, but never v; holly smothered. Even in the midst
of his furthest wanderings he still heard the low, sad
echo of his youthful religious impressions, was attended
by the guardian genius of his praying mother, and felt
in the depths of his noble spirit the pulse-beat of that
strong desire after God, to which, in the opening of
his Co7ifessionSj he gives utterance in the incompar-
able words :
*'
Thou, O God, hast created us for Thy-
self, and our heart is v/ithout rest, until it rests in
Thee." *
He was not baptized in infancy, but merely offered to
the initiation of a catechumen by the sign of the cross
and the salting with salt.f There was at that time no
compulsory baptism of infants it was left to the free
:

choice of the parents. Monnica probably shared the

view of Tertullian that it was safer to postpone baptism
to years of discretion than to run the risk of forfeiting
its benefit by a relapse.

Augustin was sent to school at an early age, with the

hope on the part of his father that he might become dis-
tinguished in the world on that of his mother, that
;

* Covfesn. I. 1 : "Fecisti nos ad Te,

et inquietum est cor nostrum, donee

requiescat in Te." Dr. Pusey, in hia translation (based on an older

one), obliterates the paronomasia— irigme/wm, requiescat '':Thou
madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in
Thee." Dr. Shedd retains this translation.
f Confess. I. 11.
 augustik's youth. 67

"the common studies might not only prove innocent,

but also in some degree useful in leading him afterward
to God."
Elementary Instruction and mathematics were, how-
ever, too dry for the boy and he was, in consequence,
;

severely punished by his teachers. Play was his chief

delight. In order to shine as the first among his com-
panions he even cheated them and for the purpose of
;

providing himself with playthings, or of gratifying his

appetite, he went so far as to stealfrom the store-room
and the table of his parents. At public shows he pas-
sionately crowded himself into the front ranks of tlie

spectators.
And yet for all he had to endure the reproaches
this

of conscience. On one occasion, when, seized by a vio-

lent cramp in the stomach, he believed his last hour had
come, he earnestly begged to be baptized. But after
his mother had made the necessary preparations he sud-
denly grew better, and the baptism, according to a pre-
vailing notion of the age, was postponed, lest this pre-
cious means for the washing away of past sins might be
rendered vain by the contraction of new guilt, in which
case no other remedy was to be found. At a later
period he thought would have been far better for hira
it

had he been early received by baptism into the commu-

nion of the Church, and thus placed under her protecting
care.
His dislike for learning ceased when Augustin passed
over from rudimentary studies into the grammar school.
The poet Yergil charmed his fancy and filled him with
fresh enthusiasm. With the deepest interest he followed
^neas in his wanderings, and shed tears over the death
of Dido, who slew herself for love while at the same time,
;

as he tells us, he ought to have mourned over his own

68 SAINT AUGUSTIN.

deatli in estrangement from God.* The wooden horse

full of armed warriors, the burning of Troj, and the
sliade of Crensa were continually before his soul. The
Grecian classics were not so much to his taste, because
his defectiv^e knowledge of the language, which he never
had the patience to master, prevented the enjoyment of
their works.
By his gift of lively representation and brilliant orator-
ical talenthe made a figure in the school, and awakened
the fondest hopes in the hearts of his parents. His
father destined him to the then highly respectable and
influential office of rhetorician, or public teacher of
forensic eloquence. For further improvement he sent
him to the larger neighboring city of Madaura, where
heathenism still held almost exclusive sway. His resi-
dence there was probably injurious to him in a moral
point of view.
In the sixteenth year of his age he returned home in
order to prepare himself, in as cheap a manner as possi-
ble, for the University of the metropolis of Northern
Africa. But instead of growing better he entered upon
the path of folly, and plunged into the excesses of sensu-
ality. His mother earnestly exhorted him to lead a
chaste life but he was ashamed to heed the exhortation
;

of a woman. This false shame drove him even to pre-

tend frequently to crimes which he had never commit-
ted, so as not to seem to fall behind his comrades. He
himself confesses, '^
I was not able to distinguish the
brighter purity of love from the darkness of lust. Both

* Confess. I. 13 " Quid enim miserius mlsero non miserante seipsum,

:

et flenie Dldonis mortem, quce fiebat amando ^neam ; non flente aufem

mortem suam, quce fiebat mm amando Te, Deus lumen cordis mei, et
pa.vis oris inius animcE mece, et virtus maritans mentem meam, et sinum
cogiiationis mtcBf'
 AUGUSTIN AT CARTHAGE. 69

were mingled together in confusion ;

youth in its weak-
ness, hurried to the abyss of desire, was swallowed up in
the pool of vice."
Yet, amid these wild impulses, it was not well with
him. Thau longing after God, so deeply rooted in his
soul^ asserted its power again and again. He became
more and more discontented with himself, and after every
indulgence felt an inward pang. The guiding hand of
the Lord mixed in the cup of his enjoyment ^' the whole-
some bitterness that leads us back from destructive pleas-
ure, by which we are estranged from God."

CHAPTER II.

AUGUSTIN AT CARTHAGE.

In his seventeenth year, the same in which his father

died, he entered the High School of Carthage, sup-
ported by his mother and the richest citizen of Tagaste,
Romanianus, who was a distant relative. Carthage was
the Rome of Africa, with many marble palaces, numer-
ous schools, countless shows, and shameless vices. Mon-
nica did not see her son depart for the great and volup-
tuous city without fear and trembhng, but she was not
willing now to interrupt his career, and she knew Him
who is stronger tlian all temptation, and listens to tlie
prayers of His children. In Carthage Augustin studied
oratory and other sciences, astrology even, and raised
himself to the first rank by his talent. This increased
his ambition and fed his pride.
With his morals he fared badly. lie consorted with a
70 SAINT AUGUSTIN.

class of students who sought their honor in deriding

'^
good conduct, and called themselves Destroyers." Al-
though their rongli and vulgar doings were peculiarly
disagreeable to a nature so noble as his, yet their society
must have exerted over him a pernicious influence. He
frequently visited also the tragic theatre, because was
it

always, says he, ''

filled with pictures of my misery, and
tinder for my desires."
In his eighteenth year he took up with a woman, with
whom he lived thirteen years without marriage, and was
faithful to her. She bore him a son, Adeodatus, whoso
promising gifts gave his father much joy, but he died at
an early age. She walks veiled through the Confcs-
sions, a memory without a name, and disappears v/ith
a sigh of repentance and a vow to devote herself to a
pure and single life.
It should be borne in mind that the excesses of his
youth are known to us only from his own honest Con-
fessions. His worst sin was common in the best heathen
society, and sanctioned by the Roman law. It did not in
the least affect his respectability in the eyes of the world.
Even Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the model saint and
the
philosopher of ancient Rome, kept a concubine after the
death of his wife, without feeling the least scruple.

Tertullian, Cyprian, Jerome, and other eminent fathers

who embraced Christianity in adult years, were probably
no better than Augustin before his conversion, but they
left only vague allusions.Augustin never was a profli-
gate. He was strictly faithful to the one woman of his
affection, the first from Africa, the second from Italy.
"^'^

It is therefore an inexcusable slander to call him " the

* Covfesa. IV. 2 :
''
Tn iVlft anniaunam hahohim, . . Red uriam ianmn,
ei quoque servans tori fidem." Comp. VI. 15.
 CICERO'S nORTE:N"SIUS. 71

) promiscuous lover of the frail beauties of Carthage."

I It was wicked and brutal in Byron to write that Saint

I
Augustin^s " fine Confessions make the reader envy his
'\
transgressions." The wisdom of some parts of his Con-
fessions may be doubted, but they were made to impress
the reader with his own intense abhorrence of sin, and
we must admire the fearless honesty and keen moral
sensibility of the man in revealing the secrets of his
former life, which otherwise would never have been
known.

CHAPTER III.

CICEUO'S IIOBTENSIFS.

Meanwhile, beneath this rushing stream of external

activity, the soul ofAugustin sighed after true wisdom.
His ardent thirst for something ideal and enduring first
of all showed itself in the study of the Hortensius of
Cicero, which came up regularly in the course of his
education. This lost volume contained an encourage-
ment and gave the direction, in its
to true philosophy,
study, to aim at truth only, and, above all, to hail her
footsteps with enthusiasm and without regard to the in-
terest of party. This roused the young man to an ear-
nest struggle after truth.
*^
This book," says he, '^ transformed my inclinations
and turned my prayers to Thee, O God, and changed
my wishes and ray desires. Every vain hope was ex-
tinguished ; and I longed, with an incredible fervor of
spirit, after the immortality of wisdom. I began to raise
myself that 1 might retarn to Thee. I studied this book
72 SAIXT AUGUSTIN".

again and again, not for the refinement of my language

nor for aid in the art of speaking, hut in order that I
might he persuaded hy its doctrine. Oh, how I burned,
—
my God how I burned to ily back from the things of
earth to Thee. And I knew not what Thou hadst de-
signed with me. For with Thee is wisdom, and these
writings excited me toward love, toward wisdom, toward
philosophy. And this particularly deh'ghted me, that I
was not asked therein to love, to seek, to attain, and to
hold in firm embrace this or that school but w^isdom —
alone, as she might reveal herself. 1 was charmed and
inflamed."
But the volume contained one blemish the name of :

Christ was not there. Such a secret power did that

name, imprinted on his tender soul, exert over him,
even during his wanderings.
In this thirst after truth he laid hold of the records of
revelation —that holy book to which his mother clung
with such reverent devotion. But there was yet a great
gulf fixed between him and the Bible. In order to be
understood it requires an humble, childhke disposition.
To the proud in spirit it is a book with seven seals. The
natural man perceives not the things that belong to the
Spirit of God they are foolishness unto him, because
:

they are spiritually discerned. Augustin was not yet ac-

quainted with the depth of his corruption, which the
Holy Scriptures disclosed to him on every page. " The
Scriptures," he says, ''
thrive among the childhke but ;

1 refused to become a child, and thought myself great in

my own presumption." He desired not truth in her
simple beauty, but arrayed in a specious garb of rhetoric,
to flatter his vanity ; he desired her not as a chaste
virgin, but as a vohiptuous courtesan.
Hence he now turned to tlie t-.cct of the ManichoBans,
 AUGUSTIN^ AMONG THE MANICH^ANS. 73

who had the word truth always on their hps, but held
their disciples captive in the bondage of error.

CHAPTER lY.

ATJGUSTIN AMONG THE MANICH^ANS.

The Manichgeans, so called from their founder, the

Persian Mani, or Manichyeus (died 274), were a sect
alhed to the. Gnostics. They blended together heathen-
ism and Christianity in a fantastic s^^stem, which they set
up in opposition to Judaism and the Catholic Church.
The groundwork of their doctrine is the Old Persian
religion, intowhich a few Christian elements are intro-
duced in a distorted form. They were dualists they ;

taught, as Zoroaster, an original antagonism between

God and matter between the kingdom of light and the
;

kingdom of darkness between good and evil. Man

;

stands in the middle between both these kingdoms he ;

has a spark of light in him which longs after redemp-

tion, but, at the same time, is possessed of a corrupt
body and a corrupt soul, which are to be gradually anni-
hilated. To a certain degree they acknowledged Christ
as a Saviour, but confounded Ilim with the sun for ;

they were accustomed to drag down the spiritual ideas of

the gospel into the sphere of natural life. In the entire
economy of nature, which, along with the perfume of
the flower, sends the miasmatic breath, and causes the
gloomy night to succeed the clear day, tliey saw a con-
flict between the two opposite kingdoms in every plant
;

a crucilied Christ, an imprisoned spirit of light, which

74 SAIN"T AUGUSTIN".

worked itself up from the dark bosom of tlie earth and

strove toward the sun. The class of the perfect among
them durst slaj or wound no animal, pluck no flower,
break no stalk of grass, for fear of injuring the higher
spirit dwelling in it. They regarded the wliole Catholic
Church as contaminated by Judaistic elements. Mani is

the Paraclete or Advocate promised by Christ, who is to

restore again the true Church. They reproached the
orthodox Christians for believing blindly, on mere
authority, and for not elevating themselves to the stand-
point of independent knowledge. They, the Manichse-
ans, thought themselves, on the contrary, in the posses-
sion of perfect knowledge, of truth in her pure, unveiled
form. The words truth, science, reason, never out of
their mouths, were esteemed as excellent baits for stran-
gers.
These lofty pretensions and promises to unravel all the
riddles of existence, the longing after redemption, char-
acteristic of the system, its inward sympathy with the
life of nature, the dazzling show of its subtle dialectics
and polemics against the doctrines of the church, and the
ascetic severity of its course of life, explain the attractive
power which the ManicliEean philosophy exerted over
many of the more profound spirits of the age, and the
extensive propagation which it met with even in the
West.
We can readily imagine how Augustin, taken up with
his struggles after truth, but at the same time full of in-
tellectual pride, as he then was, should be won over by
its delusive charms. Tie enrolled himself in the class of
the auditors^ or catechumens. His mother mourned
over this new aberration, but was consoled by a dream,
in which a shining youth told her that her son should
stand just where she stood. Wlien she informed her son
 AUGUSTIN- AMONG THE MANICH^ANS. 75

of he interpreted the dream as implying the speedy

it,

conversion of his mother to his side. "No, no," an-

swered she, " it was not said to me, where he is there

shalt thou be also but, where thou art, there shall he be

;

also.'' Augustin confesses that this prompt reply made

a greater impression on him than the dream itself. She
was likewise comforted by a bishop, who, at a former
period, had been himself a Manichoean. She begged
him to convince her son of his error. But he thought
disputation would be of no avail. She should only con-
tinue to pray for him, and gradually, of his own accord,
through study and experience, he would come to a
clearer understanding. " As sure as you live," he add-
ed, '^
it isnot possible that a son of such tears should be
lost." Monnica treasured up these words as a prophetic
voice from heaven.
For nine years, up to the twenty- eighth of his life,
Auo:ustin remained in connection with tliese heretics
led astray, and leading others astray. Their discovery of
seeming contradictions in the doctrines of the Church,
their polemics against the Old Testament, their specula-
tions concerning the origin of evil, which they traced
back to a primordial principle co-existent with God Him-
self, spoke to his understanding, while their symbolical

interpretations of the varied aspects of nature addressed

his lively imagination.
And yet, for all this, the deepest want of his reason
remained unsatisfied. At the time of the high church
festivals particularly, when all Christians flocked to the
services of the altar, in order to die with the Lord on
Good Friday, and rise again with Him on Easter morn-
ing, he was seized with a strong desire after their com-
munion. For this reason he took no step toward enter-
ing the higher class of the initiated, or electa among the
76 SAINT AUGUSTII?'.

Manichseans, but devoted himself more zealously to

those studies which belonged to his calling as a rhetori-
cian.

CHAPTEJl Y.

THE LOSS OF A FEIEND.

After the completion of his course of study he re-

turned to Tagaste, in order to settle there as a teacher of
rhetoric. He was master of every qualification for in-
spiring his scholars with enthusiasm, and many of them,
especially Alypius, adhered to him through life with the
most heartfelt gratitude.
About tliis time he lost a very dear friend, who, with
an almost feminine susceptibility, had resigned himself
to thecommanding power of his creative intellect, and
had even followed him into the mazes of Manicheeism.
lie was suddenly prostrated by a fever. Baptism w^as
administered to him w^ithout his knowledge Augustin,
;

who was with him night and day, made a mock of it.
But his friend, when he again became conscious, with-
stood him with an independence that he had never be-
fore exhibited. The empty shadow of a Christ, the sun,
the moon, the air, and whatever else was pointed out by
Manichgeism to the soul thirsting after salvation, could
now yield him no comfort—but the simple, childlike
faith of the Catholic Churcli alone. In this faith he de-
parted, when the fever returned with renewed violence.
The death of this friend filled Augustin with inexpres-
sible anguish. J^^either the splendor of light, nor the
peaceful innocence of the flowers, nor the joys of the
 THE LOSS OF A FKIEKD. 77

banquet, nor the pleasures of sense, had any interest for

him now even his books, for a long while, lost their
;

charms. " Everything I looked upon was death. My

fatherland became a torment to me my father's house a —
scene of the deepest suffering. Above all, my eyes
sought after him ; but he was not given back to me
again. I hated everything because he was not there. 1
had become a great enigma to myself."
He afterward saw how wrong it was to place such un-
bounded dependence on the creature. " Oh, the folly,"
he laments, '' of not knowing how to love men as men !

Oh, foolish man, to suffer what is human beyond due

measure, as I then did !" " Blessed is he, O Lord, who
loves Thee," are his inimitable words, " and his friend
in Thee, and his enemy for Thy sake. He alone loses
no dear ones, to whom all are dear in Him, who can
never be lost to us. And who is He, but our God, the
God who made heaven and eartli, and tills them all !

Thee but he who forsakes Thee." *

'No one loses
And yet we see in this uncontrollable anguish what a
deep fountain of love was gushing in his bosom. Could
this love only find its proper object, and be purified by
the Spirit of God, what a rich ornament and source of
blessing must it become to the Church and the world !

At the same time this severe suffering reveals the inter-

nal weakness of the Manichseau dogmas and of mere
human wisdom. Their consolations cannot reach into
the dark hours of trouble their promises are convicted
;

* Confess. IV. 9 :
" Beatus quiamat Te, et amicum in Te, et inimicum
propter Te. Solas enim nullum carum omnes in illo cari sunt,
amittit, cui.

qui non amititur. El quis est isle, nisi Deus noster, Deus qui fecit coelum
et terram, et implet ea, quia implendo ea fecit ea ? Te nnno amittit, nisi
qui dimltlit ; et qui dimittit, quo it, aut quo fugii, nisi a Te placldo ad Te
iratumf"
78 SAINT AUGUSTUS.

of falsehood at the brink of the grave. It is true, in-

deed, that this visitation to his soul passed bj without
waking him up from his sleep of sin. Still, the death-
bed of his friend, which he could not banish from his
memory, had certainly the effect of undermining his
faith in the Manichsean system.

CHAPTER YI.

AUGUSTIN LEAVES MANICH^ISM.

In consequence of this loss, wdiich embittered his life

in his native city, and impelled also by an ambitious de-
sire for a distinguished career, Augustin went back to

Carthage, and opened there a school of forensic elo-

quence. Amid new relationships and in the society of
new friends his wounds were gradually healed, and he
went forward in his accustomed path with success,
though at times the recklessness of the students gave
him great pain.
He appeared also as an author, and published a large
philosophical work on Fitness and Beauty.^
For some time yet he adhered to Manichteism, until at
last, in his twenty-ninth year, a crisis arrived, ^j de-
grees many doubts had arisen in his mind concerning the
system. His confidence in the boasted sanctity of the
Manicligsan priesthood, the class of the electa was shaken
by the rumor of secret vices, which held sway among
them, under the hypocritical mask of peculiar, ascetic

^"
Dq Aplo ei Fulchro.
 AUGUSTIIsr LEAVES MANICH^ISM. 79

virtues. Bj the thorough study of philosophy he was

able to gain an insight into the many contradictions and
untenable points of Manichsean speculation. The notion
of evil as a substance co-eternal with God could not sat-
isfy his mind in its struggle after unity.
The Manichseans were unable to solve his doubts, and
instead of attempting it, promised to introduce him to
their famous bishop, Faustus, who was then regarded as
their oracle. He lived at Mileve, a city in the north-
western part of Xumidia. Augustin himself was very
desirous of becoming acquainted with him. This honor
was at last granted. They met in Carthage. lie discov-
ered in him a brilliant orator and a subtle dialectician,
but at the same time a man of moderate culture and
without any depth or earnestness of spirit. He compares
him to a cup-bearer who, with graceful politeness, pre-
sents a costly goblet without anything in it. ^'
With
such things," says he, in allusion to his discourses, *' my
ears are already satiated. They did not appear better
because beautifully spoken, nor true because eloquent,
nor spiritually wise because the look was expressive and
the discourse select. Thou, my God, hast taught me,
in wonderful and hidden ways, that a thing should not
seem true because portrayed with eloquence, nor false
because the breath of the lips is not sounded according
to the rules of art on the other hand, that a thing is
;

not necessarily true because conveyed in rude, nor false

because conveyed in brilliant, language but that wisdom
;

and folly are like wholesome and noxious viands both —

may be contained in tasteful or unadorned words, as
they in rough or finely-wrought vessels." In the pri-
vate conversations which he held with Faustus the latter
could not answer questions of vital importance to the
truth of the Manichasan system, and was obliged to re-
80 SAINT AUGUSTIN.

sort to the Socratic confession of ignorance. But that

did not agree well with the intellectual arrogance of this
sect.

T^ow, after their boasted champion had so sadlj disap-

pointed his expectations, Augustin resolved on breaking
with the heresy, although he did not yet formally re-
nounce his place among its adherents.

CHAPTEK YIL
ERROR OVERRULED FOR TRUTH.

Before we go on with our church-father let us take

a glance at the connection between his wanderings and
his later activity in the Church. The marvellous wisdom
of God reveals itself in bringing good out of evil and
making even the and errors of His servants contrib-
sins
ute to their own sanctification and an increase of their
usefulness. ''He overrules the wrath of men for His
glory." David's double crime followed by his repent-
ance, Peter's denial wiped out by his bitter tears, Paul's
persecuting zeal turned into apostolic devotion, have
been an unfailino; source of comfort and encourao^ement
to Christians in their struggle with temptation and sin.
And yet by no means does this render wickedness ex-
cusable. To the question, " Shall we continue in sin
that grace may abound ?" the Apostle Paul answers with
horror, " God forbid !"
The wild, reckless life of Augustin prepared him to
look afterward, in the light af grace, far down into the
abyss of sin —into the thorough corruption and ingrati-
 ERROR OVERRULED FOR TRUTH. 81

tnde of tlie human heart. The bare thought of it must

have deeply troubled him, but the humility that can say
with Paul, ^^ I am the chief of sinners," is one of the
most beautiful pearls in the crown of the Christian char-
acter, while spiritual pride and self -rij>:hteousn ess gnaw
like worms at the root of piety. There is no church-
father who, in regard to deep, unfeigned humility, bears
so much resemblance, or stands so near to the great
apostle of the Gentiles as Augustin. He manifests in
all his writings a noble renunciation of self in the pres-
ence of the Most Holy, and his spirit goes forth in
tliankfulness to the superabounding grace w^hich, in spito
of his unworthiness, had drawn him up out of the
depths of corruption and overwhelmed him with mercy.
By his own painful experience he was also fitted to
develop the doctrine of sin, with such rare penetration
and subtlety, to refute the superficial theories of Pelagius,
and thus to render an invaluable service to theology and
the Church. Further, his theoretical aberration into
Manichseism fitted him to overthrow this false and dan-
gerous system, and to prove, by a striking example, how
fruitless the search after truth mnst be outside of the
simple, humble faith in Christ. Thus also was St. Paul,
by his learned Pharisaic education, better qualified than
any other apostle for contending successfully against tlie
false exegesis and legal righteousness of his Judaistio
opponents.
8^ SAIIJT AUQUSTIN.

CHAPTER YIII.

ArGUSTIN" A SCEPTIC IN KOME.

Aftek Augustin had lost faith in Manichseism he

found himself in the same situation as he was ten years
before. There was the same longing after truth, but
linked now with a feeling of desolation, a bitter sense of
deception, and a large measure of scepticism. He was
no longer at ease in Carthage. He hankered after new
associations, new scenes, new fountains out of which to
drink the good so ardently desired.
This disposition of mind, in connection with a dislike
for the rudeness of the Carthaginian students and the
exactions of friends, made him resolve on a journey to
Rome, where he ventured to hope for a yet more brill-
iant and profitable career as a rhetorician. Thus he
drew nigher to the place where his inward change was to
be decided.
He endeavored to conceal his resolution from his
mother, who in the mean time had joined him at Car-
thage. But she found out something about it, and
wished either to prevent him from going, or to go with
him.
Augustin would listen to neither proposal, and resort-
ed to a trick to carry out his plan. One evening, in the
year 383, he went down to the sea-shore, in order to
take ship, near the place where two chapels had been
dedicated to the memory of the great church- father and
martyr, St. Cyprian. His mother suspected his design,
and followed him. He pretended that he merely wished
to visit a friend on board, and remain with him until his
denarture. As she was not satisfied with this explana-
 AUGUSTIN A SCEPTIC m ROME. 83

tion, and unwilling to turn back alone, he insisted on lier

spending at least that one night in the church of the
martyr, and then he would come for her.
While she was there in tears, praying and wrestling
with God to prevent his voyage, Augustin sailed for tlie
coasts of Italy, and his deceived mother found herself
the next morning alone on the shore of the sea. She
had learned, however, the heavenly art of forgiving, and
believing also, where she could not see. In quiet resig-
nation she returned to the city, and continued to pray for
tlie salvation of her son, waiting the time when the hand

of Supreme Wisdom would solve the dark riddle.

Tliough meaning well, she this time erred in her prayer,
for the journey of Augustin was the means of his salva-
tion. The denial of the prayer was, in fact, the answer-
ing of it. Instead of the form, God granted rather the
substance of her petition in the conversion of her son.
'^
Therefore," says he — '' therefore hadst Thou, O God,
regard to the aim and essence of her desires, and didst
not do what she then prayed for, that Thou mightest do
for me what she continually implored."
After a prosperous voyage across the Mediterranean
Augustin found lodging in Rome with a Manichgean
host, of the class of the auditors^ and mingled in the so-
ciety of the elect. He was soon attacked, in the house
of this heretic, by a disease brought on and aggravated
])y the agonies of his soul, dissatisfaction with his course
of life, homesickness, and remorse for the heartless
deception practised on his mother. The fever rose so
high that signs of approaching dissolution had already
jippeared, and yet Providence had reserved him for a
long and active life. ''
Thou, O God, didst permit me
to recover from that disease, and didst make the son of
Thy handmaid whole, first in body, thathe might be-
84 SAIN"! AUGUSTIJT.

come one on wliom Thou couldst bestow a better and

more secure restoration."
Again restored he began to counsel his com-
to health,
panions against Manichseism, to which before he had so
zealously labored to win over adherents. And yet he
could not lead them to the truth. His dislike to the
Church had rather increased. The doctrine of the in-
carnation of the Son of God had become particularly of-
fensive to him, as it was to all Gnostics and Manichseans.
He despaired of finding truth in the Church. Yet
scepticism could not satisfy him, and so he was tossed
wildly between two waters, that would not flow peace-
fully together. *'
The more earnestly and perse veringly
I reflected on the activity, the acuteness, and the deptlis
of the human soul, the more 1 was led to believe that
truth could not be a thing inaccessible to man, and came
thus to the conclusion that the right path to its attain-

ment had not hitherto been discovered, and that this path
nnist be marked out by divine authority. But now the
question arose what this divine autliority might be, since
among so many conflicting sects each professed to teach
in its name. A mazes stood again before
forest full of
my eyes, in which 1 was to wander about, and to be
compelled to tread, which rendered me fearful."
In this unsettled state of mind he felt himself drawn
toward the doctrines of the ISTew Academy."^ This sys-
tem, whose representatives were Arcesilaus and Car-
neades, denied, in most decided opposition to Stoicism,
the possibility of an infallible knowledge of any object ;

it could only arrive at a subjective probability, not truth.

* Covfess. V. 10 :
" Etevim suhorta est efiam mihi cogiiatio, pruden-
Uores CQsierls fulsse illos phUosophos, quos Academicos appdlnnt, quod
de omnUrds duVdandum. esse censuerani, 'nee aJiquid veri ab homine com-
prelundi posse decreveraid."
 AUGUSTUS IN" MILAN — ST. AMBROSE. 85

But oiir cliurch-father could not rest content with a

philosophy so sceptical. It only served to give him a
deeper sense of his emptiness, and thus, in a negative
manner, to pave the way for something better. A change
in his external circumstances soon occurred which has-
tened the great crisis of his life.

After he had been in Rome not quite a year the pre-

fect Symmachus, the eloquent advocate of declining
heathenism, was requested to send an able teacher of
rhetoric to Milan. The choice fell on Augustin. The
recommendation of Manichaean patrons, and still more
his trial-speech, him the honorable and
obtained for
lucrative post. He forsook Bome the more willingly
because the manners of the students did not please him.
Tliey were accustomed to leave one teacher in the n^idst
of his course, without paying their dues, and go to an-
other.
With removal to Milan we approach the great
this
crisis in the life of Augustin, when he was freed forever

from the fetters of Manichseism and scepticism, and be-

came a glorious light in the Church of Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER IX.

AUGUSTIN IN MILAN ST. AMBROSE.

In the spring of the year 384 Augustin, accompanied

by his old friend Alypius, journeyed to Milan, the sec-
ond capital of Italy and frequent residence of the Roman
Emperor.
The episcopal chair at that place was then filled by one
bo SAINT AUGUSTIN.

of the most venerable of the Latin fathers, one who not

only earned enduring honors in the sphere of theology,
but also in that of sacred poetry and sacred music, and
distinguished himself as an ecclesiastical prince by the
energetic and wise management of his diocese and his
bold defence of the interests of the Church, even against
the Emperor himself.
Ambrose was born at Treves, in the year 340, of a
very ancient and illustrious family. His father was gov-
ernor of Gaul, one of the three great dioceses of the
Western Roman Empire. When yet a little boy, as he
mouth open, a swarm
lay sleeping in the cradle with his
of beescame buzzing around, and flew in and out of his
mouth, without doing him any harm. The father, as-
tonished at the unexpected vanishing of the danger,
cried out in a prophetic mood :
*'
Truly, this child, if he
lives, will turn out something great !" A similar story
is told of Plato. After the early death of the prefect
his pious widow moved to Rome with her three children,
and gave them a careful education.
Ambrose was marked out for a brilliant worldly career
by man, but not by God, After the completion of his
studies he made his appearance as an attorney, and ac-
quitted himself so well by his eloquent discourses that
Probus, the governor of Italy, appointed him his coun-
sellor. Soon after he conveyed to him the prefecture or
viceregency of the provinces of Liguria and Emilia, in
Upper Italy, with the remarkable words, afterward in-
terpreted as an involuntary prophecy :
'*
Go, and act,
not as judge, but as bishop." Ambrose administered
his oflice with dignity, justice, and clemency, and won
for himself universal esteem.
The Church of Milan was then involved in a battle
between Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ,
 AUGUSTHq- IN MILAN — ST. AMBROSE. 87

and Mcene orthodoxy, wliicli maintained the essential

equality of the Son with the Father. Augentius, an
Arian, had succeeded in driving into exile the Catholic
bishop Dionysius, and usurping the episcopal chair. But
he died in the year 374.
At the election of a new bishop bloody scenes were
apprehended. Ambrose thought it his duty as governor
to go into the church and silence the uproar of the par-
ties. His speech to the assembled multitude was sud-
denly interrupted by the cry of a child '^ Ambrose, be —
bishop !" As swift as lightning the voice of the child
became the voice of the people, who with one accord
would have him and no other for their chief shepherd.
Ambrose was confounded. He was then still in the
class of catechumens, and hence not baptized, and had,
moreover, so high an opinion of the dignity and respon-
sibility of the episcopal office that he deemed himself
altogether unworthy of it and unlit for it. He resorted
to flight, cunning, and the strangest devices to evade the
call. But it availed nothing and when now also the
;

imperial confirmation of the choice arrived, he submitted

to the will of God, which addressed him so powerfully
through these circumstances. After being baptized by
an orthodox bishop, and having run through the different
clerical stages, he received episcopal consecration on the
eighth day.
His friend Basil, of Csesarea, was highly rejoiced at
the result. "We praise God," so he wrote, '^ that in
all ages He chooses such as are pleasing to Him. He
once chose a shepherd and set him up as ruler over His
people. Moses, as he tended the goats, was tilled with
the Spirit of God, and raised to the dignity of a prophet.
But in our days He sent out of the royal city, the metrop-
olis of the world, a man of lofty spirit, distinguished by
88 SAIKT AUGUSTIJT.

noble birth and the splendor of riches and by an elo-

quence, at which the world wonders ; one who renounces
all these earthly glories, and esteems them but he loss that
may win Christ, and accepts, on behalf of the Church,
the helm of a great ship made famous by his faith. So
be of good cheer, O man of Grod !"
From this time forward until the day of his death,
which occurred on Good Friday of the year 397, Am-
brose acted the part of a genuine bishop he was the
:

shepherd of the congregation, the defender of the op-

pressed, the watchman of the Church, the teacher of the
people, the adviser and reprover of kings. He began by
distributing his lands, his gold, and his silver among the
poor. His life was exceedingly severe and simple. He
took no dinner, except on Saturdays, Sundays, and the
festivals of celebrated martyrs. Invitations to banquets
he declined, except when his office required his presence,
and then he set an example of temperance. The day
was devoted to the duties of his calling, the most of the
night to prayer, meditation on divine things, the study
of the Bible and the Greek fathers, and the writing of
theological works. He preached every Sunday, and in
cases of necessity during the week, sometimes twice a
day. To his catechumens he attended with especial care,
but exerted an influence on a wider circle by means of
his writings, in which old Roman vigor, dignity, and
sententiousness were united with a deep and ardent prac-
tical Christianity. He was easy of access to all to the —
lowest as well as the highest. His revenues were given
to the needy, whom he called, on this account, his stew-
ards and treasurers. With dauntless heart he battled
against the Arian heresy, and, as the Athanasius of the
"West, helped Nicene orthodoxy to its triumph in Up2:)er
Italy.
 AUGUSTIl^ IN" MILAN — ST. AMBROSE. 89

was Ambrose. If anj one was fitted for win-

Such,
ning over to the Church the highly-gifted stranger who
came into his neighborhood, it was he. Augustin
visited the bishop, not as a Christian, but as a celebrated
and eminent man. He was received by him with pater-
nal kindness, and at once felt himself drawn toward him
in love. '^
Unconsciously was I led to him, my God, by
Thee, in order to be consciously led by him to Thee."
He also frequently attended his preaching, not that he
might be converted by him, and obtain food for his soul,
but that he might listen to a beautiful and eloquent ser-
mon. The personal character and renown of Ambrose
attracted him. The influence of curiosity was predomi-
nant and yet it could not but happen that the contents
;

of the discourses also should soon make an impression

on him, even against his will.
*'
1 began to love him," says he, ** not, indeed, at first
as a teacher of the truth, whi^h I despaired of finding in
Thy Church, but as a man worthy of my love. I often
listened to his public discourses, I confess, not with a
pure motive, but only to prove if his eloquence was equal
to his fame. I weighed his words carefully, while 1 had
no interest in their meaning, or despised it. I was de-
lighted with the grace of his language, which was moi'e
learned, more full of intrinsic value, but in delivery less
brilliant and flattering, than that of Faustus, the Mani-
chcean. In regard to the. contents, there was no com-
parison between them for while the latter conducted
;

into Manichsean errors, the former taught salvation in

the surest way. From sinners, like I was then, salvation
is indeed far off yet was 1 gradually and unconsciously
;

drawing near to it. For although it was not my wish to

learn what he said, but only to hear how he said it (this
vain interest was left me, who despaired of the truth),
JjO SAINT AUGUSTIN.

still, along with the words, which 1 loved, there stole

also into my spirit the substance, which I had no care
for, because I could not separate the two. And while I
opened my heart to receive the eloquence which he ut-
tered, the truth also which he spake found entrance,
though by slow degrees."*
By this preaching the Old Testament was filled with
new light to Augustin. He had imbibed a prejudice
against it from the Manichaeans. He regarded it as little
else than a letter that kills. Ambrose unfolded its life-
giving spirit by means of allegorical interpretation, which
was then in vogue among the Fathers, especially those
of the Alexandrian school. Its aim was, above all, to
spiritualize the historical parts of the Bible, and to resolve
the external husk into universal ideas. Thus gross vio-
lence was often done to the text, and things were dragged
into the Bible, which, to an unbiassed mind, were not
contained there, at least not in the exact place indicated.
And yet this mode of interpretation was born of the spirit
of faith and reverence, which bowed to the Word of God
as to a source of the most profound truths, and, so far,
was instructive and edifying. To Augustin, who himself
used it freely in his writings, often to capriciousness, al-
though he afterward inclined rather to a cautious, gram-
matical, and historical apprehension of the Scripture, it
was then very acceptable, and had the good effect of
weaning him still further from Manichseism. He soon
threw it aside altogether. But even the Platonic phil-
osophers, whom he preferred to it, he would not blindly
trust, because ''the saving name of Christ was wanting in
them," from which, according to that ineffaceable im-
pression of his pious childhood, he could never separate
the knowledge of the truth.
* Confess. V. 13, 14.
AUGUSTIN A CATECHUMEN IIJ" THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 91

CHAPTEE X.

AUGUSTIN A CATECHUMEN IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

We would suppose that he was now ready to cast him-

self into thearms of the Church, which approached him
by a representative so worthy and so highly gifted. But
he had not yet come so far. Yarious difficulties stood in
the way. To think of God as a purely spiritual sub-
stance gave him peculiar trouble. In this he was yet
under the influence of Manichifiism, which clothed the
spiritual idea of God in the garb of sense.
Nevertheless, he took a considerable step in advance,
lie enrolled himself in the class of the catechumens, to
which he had already belonged when a boy, and resolved
toremain there until he could arrive at a decision in his
own soul.* He says of his condition at this time, that
he had come so far already that any capable teacher
would have found in him a most devoted and teachable
scholar.
Thus did Augustin resign himself to the maternal care
of the communion in which he had received his earl 3^,
never-forgotten religious impressions. It could not hap-
pen otherwise than, after an honest search, he should at
last discover in her the supernatural glory, which, to the
offence of the carnal understanding, was concealed under
the form of a servant. A man possessed of his ardent
longing after God, his tormenting thirst for truth and
peace of mind, could obtain rest only in the asylum

* Confess. V. 14 " Siatui ergo iamdiu esse catechumenus in caiholim

:

eccJesia, inihi a parenlibus commendata, donee aliquid cerii elvceret, q^io

cursum dirigerem."
92 SAINT AUGUSTINT.

founded by God Himself, and see there all liis desires

fulfilled beyond bis bighest hopes.
The Church had then emerged from the bloody field
of those witnesses who had joyfully offered up their lives
to show their gratitude and fidelity to the Lord who had
died for them. Their heroic courage, which overcame
the world their love, which was stronger than death
;
;

their patience, which endured cruel tortures without a

murmur, as lambs led to the slaughter and their hope,
;

which burst out in songs of triumph at the stake and on

the cross, were yet fresh in her memory. Everywhere
altars and chapels were erected to perpetuate their vir-
tues. From a feeling of thankfulness for the victory, so
dearly purchased by their death, and in the consciousness
of an uninterrupted communion with the glorified war-
heavenly birthdays were celebrated.* While
riors, their

heathenism, in the pride of its power, its literature, and

its art,was falling into decay, the youthful Church, sure
of her promise of eternal duration, pressed triumphantly
forward into a new era, to take possession of the wild
hordes of the invading nations who destroyed the E-oman
Empire, arid communicate to them, along with faith in
the Redeemer, civilization, morality, and the higher
blessings of life. The most noble and profound spirits
sought refuge in her communion, in which alone they
could find rest for their souls and quench their thirst
after truth. She fearlessly withstood the princes and
])otentates of earth, and reminded them of righteousness
and judgment. In that stormy and despotic period she
afforded shelter to the oppressed, was a kind and loving
mother to the poor, the widow, and the orphan, and
opened her treasures to all -who needed help. They who

* So were tke days of their death called.

AUGUSTIN" A CATECHUMEJ^ 11^ THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 03

were v/eary of life found in the peaceful cells of her

monasteries, in communion with pilgrims of like spirit,
an undisturbed retreat, where tliej could give themselves
wholly up to meditation on divine things. Thns she
cared for all classes, and brought consolation and comfort
into every sphere of life. She zealously persevered in
preaching and exhorting, in the education of youth for a
better world, in pra^^er and in intercession for the bit-
terest enemies, and in ascriptions of glory to the Holy
Trinity.
Her devotion concentrated itself on the festivals,
recurring yearly in honor of the great facts of the Gos-
pel, especially on Easter and Whitsuntide, when multi-
tudes of catechumens, of both sexes and all ages, clad in
win'te garments, the symbol of purity, were received into
the ranks of Christ's warriors, amJd fervent prayers and
ani mating hymns of praise. The prince bowed with the
peasant in baptism before the common Lord the famous;

scholar sat like a child among the catechumens and ;

blooming virgins, "those lilies of Christ," as Ambrose

calls them, made their vow before the altar to renounce

the world and live for the heavenly bridegroom. The

activity of Ambrose was in this respect attended by the
richest results. lie would frequently, on the solemn
night before Easter, have as many incorporated into the
communion of the Church by baptism as five other bish-
ops together.
The Church of that time was still an undivided unity,
without excluding, however, great diversity of gifts and
powers. And this enabled her to overcome so victo-
riously heresies, schisms, persecutions, and the collected
might of heathenism itself. One body and one spirit,
one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father
of all— this declaration of the apostle was more applicable
94 SAINT AUGUSTIN".

to the first Church than to later periods.

centuries of the
The dweller on the Rhine found on the borders of the
African desert, and the Syrian on tlie shores of the
Rhone, the same confession of faith, the same sanctify-
ing power, and the same ritual of worship. The Chris-
tian of the fourth century felt himself in living commun-
ion with all the mighty dead, who had long before de-
parted in the service of the same Lord. That age had no
idea of an interruption in the history of God's kingdom,
a sinking away of the life-stream of Christ. From the
heart of God and His Son it has rolled down, from the
days of the apostles, through the veins of the Church
Catholic, amid certain infallible signs, in one unbroken
current to the present, in order gradually to fertilize the
whole round of earth, and empty itself into the ocean of
eternity.
And yet we have just as little reason to think the
Church at that time free from faults and imperfections
as at any other period. Some dream, indeed, of a
golden age of spotless purity. But such an age has
never been, and will only first appear after the general
resurrection. Even the Apostolic Church was, in regard
to its membership, by no means absolutely pure and
holy for we need only read attentively and with un-
;

biassed mind any Epistle of the Kew Testament or the

letters to the seven churches in the Apocalypse, in order
to be convinced that they collectiv^ely reproved the con-
gregations to which they were sent, for various faults,
excrescences, and perversions, and warned them of
manifold errors, dangers, and temptations. When,
moreover, through the conversion of Constantine, the
great mass of the heathen world crowded into the
Church, they dragged along with them also a vast
amount of corrujjtion. A
very sad and dreary picture
AUGUSTIK A CATECHUMEN I^- THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 05

of the Christianity of the Kicene period can be drawn

from the writings of the fathers of the fourth century
(Gregory Nazianzen, for example), so that the modern
Church in comparison appears in manj- respects hke a
great improvement. The march of Christianity is

steadily onward.
In spite of all these defects there were yet remedies
and salt enough to preserve the body from decay. The
militant Church, in her continuous conflict with a sinful
world, must ever authenticate and develop the power of
genuine sanctity, and this she did during the Nicene
period. We
cannot mistake the agency of the Holy
Spirit, who, amid the stormy and passionate battles with
Arianism and semi-Arianism, at last helped the Nicene
faith to victory. And we cannot refuse genuine admira-
tion to tho^e great heroes of the fourth century^ an
Athanasius, a Basil, a Gregory of ]N"yssa, a Gregory of
Nazianzum, a Chrysostom, an Ambrose, a Jerome, w^ho
were distinguished as much by earnestness and dignity of
character and depth and vigor of piety as by their emi-
nent learning and culture, and who are, even to this day,
gratefully honored by the Greek, the Roman, and the
Protestant communions as true GhnrGh-fath ers. Not-
withstanding all the corruption in her bosom, the Cath-
olic Church of immeasurably elevated
that age was still

above heathenism, sinking into hopeless ruin, and the

conceited and arrognnt schools of the Gnostics and Man-
ichfBans ; for she, and she alone, was the bearer of the
divine-human life-powers of the Christian religion, and
the hope of the world.
 '
'
96 SAINT AUGUSTUS".

CHAPTEE XL
AKKIVAL OF MONNICA.

Such was tlie state of the Church when Augustin

entered the class of catechumens and listened attentively
to her doctrines. His good genius, Monnica, soon came
to Milan, as one sent by God. She could no longer stay
in Africa without her son, and embarked for Italy.
While at sea a storm arose, which made the oldest sailors
tremble. But she, feeling strong and secure under the
protection of the Almighty, encouraged them all, and
confidently predicted a happy termination to the voyage ;

for God had promised it to her in a vision. In Milan

slie found her son delivered from the snares of Manichse-

ism, but not yet a believing professor. She was highly

rejoiced, and accepted the partial answer of her tearful
prayers as a pledge of their speedy and complete fulfil-
ment. " My son," said she, with strong assurance, '' I
believe in Christ, that before I depart this life I shall see
thee become a believing, Catholic Christian." *
She found favor with Ambrose, who often spoke of
her with great respect, and thought the son happy who
had such a motlicr. She regularly attended his minis-
trations, and willingly gave up certain usages, which,
though observed by lier at home, were not in vogue at
Milan, such as fasting on Saturdays and love-feasts at the
graves of the martyrs. "With renewed fervor and confi-

* Covfess. VI. 1: " Placidissime

el pedore plena fiducice respondit mihi,

credere se in Christo, quod priusquam de hac vita emigraret me visura

e.tseijidelein catholioum.''
 MORAL COiq"FLICTS — PROJECT OF MARRIAGE. 97

Jence she now prajed toGod, who had already led the
darling of her heart to the gates of the sanctuary. She
was soon to witness the fulfilment of her desires.

CHAPTER XII.

MORAL CONFLICTS —PROJECT OF MARRIAGE.

AiJGUSTiN continued to listen to the discourses of Am-

brose and visit him at his house, although the bishop,
on account of pressing duties, could not enter so fully
as he wished into his questions and doubts. He now
obtained a more just idea of the doctrines of the Script-
ures and the Church than the perversions of the Mani-
chaeans had afforded him. He saw '" that all the knots
of cunning misrepresentation which these modem be-
trayers of the Div^ine Word had tied up could be un-
loosed, and that for so many years he had been assailing,
not the real faith of the Church, but chimeras of a fleshly
imagination." He now began to prize and com-
first

prehend the Bible in some measure, while before it had

been to him a disagreeable volume, sealed with seven
seals; and such it ever is to all those who wilfully tear
it loose from living Christianity, and drag it into the

forum of the carnal understanding, '' which perceives

not the things of the Spirit of God," and thus factiously
constitute themselves judges over it, instead of surrender-
ing themselves to humble obedience.
it in
Meanwhile he had many practical and theoretical strug-
gles to pass through before reaching a final decision.
About this time, in conjunction with his friends, among
98 SAIIS^T AUGUSTIN.

whom were Alypius, who had come with him to Milan,

and l^ebridius, who had hitely left Africa, in order to
live together with Augiistin, " in the most ardent study of
truth and wisdom," he resolved to form a philosophical
union, and, in undisturbed retirement, with a community
of goods, to devote himself exclusively to the pursuit of
truth. In such a self-created ideal world, which com-
mended itself to the lofty imagination of one so gifted
and noble as Augustin was, he sought a substitute for the
reality of Christianity and the deeper earnestness of prac-
tical life and activ^ity. " Diverse thoughts were thus in
our hearts, but Thy counsel, O God, abides in eternity.
According to that counsel Thou didst laugh at ours, and
work out Thine own, to bestow on us the Spirit at the
set time." ''
While the winds were blowing from every
quarter and tossing my heart to and fro, time went b)%
and I delayed in turning to the Lord, and put off living
in Thee from day to day, and did not put off dying daily
in myself. Desiring a life of blessedness, I shunned the
place where it dwelt, and sought it by flying from it." ''^

The romantic scheme fell to pieces, because the friends

could not agree as to whether marriage ought to be wholly
forbidden in their philosophical hermitage, as Alypius
desired, in the fashion of the ascetic piety of that age,
or not, as Augustin proposed. He
was unable then to
give up the love of women. 1 believed I would be-
''

come very unhapp}^ if I was deprived of the embraces

of woman, and I did not consider the medicine of Thy
grace for the healing of this weakness, for 1 was inex-
perienced for I esteemed continoncy an affair of natural
;

ability of which I was not conscious, and was foolishly

* Confess. VI. 11:

'*
Amando heaiam vitam, iimebam illam in sede sua^
el ab eafugiens qucei^ebam earn."
 MORAL COISTFLICTS — PROJECT OF MARRIAGE. 99

ignorant of what the Scripture says (Wisdom viii. 21),

that no one can be continent unless God gives him power.
Surelj, Thou wouldst have given it to me had 1 praj^ed
to Thee with inward groaning, and with firm faith cast
my care upon Thee !" "^

On this account Augustin resolved to enter into formal

wedlock, though for certain reasons the resolution was
never carried into effect.
His mother, who, in common with the whole Church
of that era, regarded perfect abstinence as a higher
grade of virtue, still, under the circumstances, eagerly
laid hold of the plan. In the haven of marriage she
believed him secure from debauchery, and then every
hindrance to his baptism, which she so ardently desired,
was also taken away.
Both looked around for a suitable match. The choice
was not easily made, for Augustin wished to find beauty,
amiability, refinement, and some wealth united in one
person. In this matter the mother, as usual, took coun-
sel of God in prayer. At last a lady was discovered an-
swerable to their wishes, who also gave her consent, but
because of her yoath the nuptials had to be postponed
for two years longer.
Augustin immediately discharged his mistress, whom
he had brought with him from Carthage, and who, as
one would think, was best entitled to the offer of his
hand. This conduct is a serious blot on his character,
according to our modern notions of morality. But neither
he nor Monnica looked upon it in that light, and were
unconscious of doing any wrong. The unhappy outcast,
who appears to have loved him truly, and had been faith-
ful to him, as he to her, during the thirteen years of

* Confess. VI. 11.

100 SAINT AUGUSTIN".

heavy heart,
their intercourse, returned to Africa with a
and vowed that she would never know any other man.
Their natural son, Adeodatus, she with his father.
left

Just after the separation Augustin felt with bleeding

heart the strength of his unlawful attachment. So strong
had the power of sensuality become in him through
habit, that neither the recollections of the departed nor
respect for his bride could restrain him from forming a
new immoral connection for the interval. Along with
this carnal lust came also the seductions of ambition and
a longing after a brilliant career in the world. He felt

very miserable he must have been ashamed before his

;

own better self, before God and man. '' But the more
miserable I felt, the nearer didst Thou come to me, O
God." The Disposer of his life had His hand over all
this. ^'
and Thou wert with me I sighed,
1 thought, ;

and Thou heardst me I was tossed about, yet Thou

;

didst pilot me I wandered on the broad way, and still

;

Thou didst not reject me."

CHAPTER XIIL
MENTAL CONFLICTS.

Yet more violent and painful were his theoretical con-

flicts, the tormenting doubts of his philosophic spirit.
The which once
question concerning the origin of evil,

attracted him to the Manichs3eans, was again brooded

over with renewed interest. The heresy tliat evil is a
substance, and co-eternal with God, he had rejected.
But whence then was it ? The Church found its origin
 MENTAL CONFLICTS. lOl

in the will of the creature, who was in the beginning

good, and of his own free choice estranged himself from
God. But here tlie question arose, Is not the possibility
of evil, imprinted by God in its creation on the will,

itself already the germ of evil ? Or could not God, as

the Almighty, have so created the will as to render the
fall impossible ? How can He then be a Being of perfect
goodness ? And if we transfer the origin of evil, as the
Church does, from human race to Satan, through
the
whose temptation Adam fell, the difficulty is not thereby
settled, but only pushed further back. Whence, then,
the Devil ? and if he was first transformed from a good
angel into a devil by a wicked will, whence then that
wicked will ?

Here he was again met by the spectre of Gnostic and

Manichsean dualism, but soon reverted to the idea of the
absolute God, whom he had made the immovable ground-
pillar of his thinking, and who naturally cannot suffer
the admission of a second absolute existence. Perhaps
evil mere shadow.
is a But how can anything unreal
and empty prepare such fears and torments for the con-
science ?

He revolved such questions in his mind, and found no

peace. '^
—
Thou, my God Thou alone knowest what 1
suffered, but no one among men." He was not able to
communicate fully the tumult of his soul even to his most
intimate friends. But these conflicts had the good effect
of driving him to prayer and strengthening in him the
conviction that mind, left to itself, can never reach a satis-
factory result.
102 SAINT AUGUSTIN".

CHAPTER XIY.

INFLUENCE OF PLATONISM.

About this time, somewhere in the beginning of the

year 3S6, he fell in with certain Platonic and !New Pla-
tonic writings, translated into Latin by the rhetorician
Yictorinns, who afterward was converted to Christianity.
'No doubt he had a general acquaintance with this phi-
losophy before. But now, for the first time, he studied
it earnestly in its original sources, to which he was intro-
duced by an admiring disciple. He himself says that it
kindled in him an incredible ardor.*
Platonism is beyond dispute the noblest product of
heathen speculation, and stands in closer contact with
Revelation than any other philosophical system of an-
tiquity. It is in some measure an unconscious prophecy
of Christ, in whom alone its sublime ideals can ever be-
come truth and reality. Tiie Platonic philosophy is dis-

tinguished by a lofty ideality, wliich raises man above the

materialistic doings and sensual views of every-day life

into the invisible world, to the contemplation of truth,

beauty, and virtue. It is gQT\\\mQ philosophy^ or love of
—
wisdom, home-sickness deep longing and earnest search
after truth. It reminds man of his original likeness to
God, and thus gives him a glimpse of the true end of all
his endeavor.
Platonism also approaches Revelation in several of its

* Contr. Academ. II. 5 :

*'
Einm mrhi ip.ti dc- me ipso incredihlJe in-
cevdlnm in me cnvcJtarunt." Comp. tny History of the Aposl. Chvrch.
p. 150 sqq., and my Church History, vol. II. p. 95 sqq., whore the rela-
tim of Platonism to Christianity and to the Church Fathers is dis-
cnssed in detail.
 INFLUEN^CE OF PLATONISM. 103

doctrines, at least in the form of obscure intimation.

We may here mention its presentiment of the unity, and,
in a certain measure, the trinity of the Divine Being ;

the conception that the world of ideas is alone true and

eternal, and the world of sense copy and further, its ;

that the human soul has fallen away from a condition of

original purity, and merited its present suffering existence
in the prison of the body but that it should have long-
;

ing aspirations after its home, the higher world, free

itself from the bonds of sense, and strive after the high-

est spiritual and eternal good.

Hence it was no wonder that Platonism to many culti-
vated heathens and some of the most prominent fathers,
especially in the Greek Church, became a theoretical
schoolmaster for leading to Christ, as the Law was a
practical schoolmaster to the Jews. It delivered Au-
gustin completely from the bondage of Manich?ean dual-
ism and Academic scepticism, and turned his gaze inward
and upward. In the height of his enthusiasm he be-
lieved that he had already discovered the hidden foun-
tain of wisdom. But he had soon to learn that not the
abstract knowledge of the truth, bat living in it, could
alone give peace to the soul and that this end could only
;

be reached in the way of divine revelation and practical

experience of the heart.
Although the Platonic philosophy contained so many
elements allied to Christianity, there were yet two im-
portant points not found therein first, the great mys- :

tery, the Word made flesh and then love, resting on

;

the basis of humility.* The Platonic philosophy held

up before him beautiful ideals, without giving him power
* Confess. VII. 20 :
" Uhl enrm ernt ilia carUas wd[flcnns a fnvdt.
mcnio humiliJaiis; quod est Ctivisius Jesus? Aui quando illi libri [IHa-
ioidcl'] docerent me earn ?"
104 SAINT AUGUSTIN".

to attain them. he attempted to seize them ungodly

If
impulses would suddenly drag him down again into the
mire.

CHAPTER XY.
STUDY OF THE SCEIPTUEES.

Thus the admonition to study the Holy Scriptures was

addressed to him once more, and in a stronger tone than
ever. He now gave earnest heed to it, and drew near
the holy volume with deep reverence and a sincere de-
sire for salvation.
*
He was principally carried away with the study of the
Epistles of St. Paul, and read them through collectively
with the greatest care and admiration. Here he found
all those truths which addressed him in Platonism no

longer obscurely foreshadowed, bat fulfilled and yet ;

much more besides. Here he found Christ as the Medi-

ator between God and man, between heaven and eartli,
who alone can give us power to attain those lofty ideals
and embody them in life. Here he read that masterly de-
lineation of the conflict between the spirit and the flesh
(Rom. vii.), which was literally confirmed by his own ex-
perience. Here he learned to know aright the depth of
the ruin and the utter impossibility of being delivered
from it by any natural wisdom or natural strength, and,
at the same time, the great remedy which God graciously
ofli'ers to us in His beloved Son.

^uch light, such consolation, and such power the Pla-

* Confess. VII. 21 :
" Itaque avldissime arripui venerdbilem stllum
SpiritiLS tui, etprce caderis Apostolum Paulum," etc.
 STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 105

tonic writings had never yielded. "On tlieir pages,"

he says very beautifully, in the close of the seventh book
of his Confessions^ " no traces of piety like this can be
discovered tears of penitence
;
Tliy sacrifice, the broken
;

spirit; the humble and the contrite heart the healing ;

of the nations ; the Bride, the City of God ; the earnest

of the Holy Spirit ; the cup of our salvation. No one
sings there :
^
Truly my soul waiteth upon God from;

Him cometh my salvation He only is my ; rock and my

salvation ; He is my high tower I shall not ; be greatly
moved.' There no one hears the invi-
(Ps. Ixii. 1, 2.)
tation :Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-
*

laden, and 1 will give you rest.' (Matt. xi. 28.) They
[the Platonists] disdain to learn of Him who is meek and
lowly in heart they cannot imagine why the lowly should
;

teach the lowly, nor understand what is meant by His

taking the form of a servant. For Thou hast hidden it
from the wise and prudent, and revealed it unto babes.
It is one thing to see afar off, from the summit of a
woody mountain, the fatherland of peace, and without
any path leading thither, to wander around lost and weary
among byways, haunted by lions and dragons, that lurk
in ambush for their prey and quite another to keep
;

safely on a road that leads thither, guarded by the care

of a Celestial Captain, where no robbers, who have for-
saken the heavenly army, ever lie in wait. This made
a wonderful impression on my spirit, when 1 read the
humblest of Thine Apostles (1 Cor. xv. 9), and consid-
ered Thy works, and saw the depths of sin.
'
106 SAINT AUGUSTIN-.

CHAPTER XYI.

augijstin's conveksion.

We now stand on the threshold of his conversion.

Theoretically he was convinced of the truth of the doc-
trines of the Church, but practically had yet to undergo,
in his bitter experience, judgment of St. Paul
the :

''
The flesli lustetii against the spirit, and the spirit
against the flesh." (Gal. v. 17.) No sooner did his
soul rise into the pure ether of communion with God
tlian the cords of sense drew him down ajxain into the

foul atmosphere of earth. ''

The world," said he, " lost
its charms before Thy sweetness and before the glory of
Thy house, which I had learned to love but I was yet ;

bound by strong ties to a woman." ^' I had found the

beautiful pearl I should have sold all I possessed to buy
;

it, and yet I hesitated."

Amid the tumult of the world he often sighed after
solitude. Desiring counsel, and unwilling to disturb the
indefatigable Ambrose, he betook himself to the vener-
able priest Simplicianus, who had grown gray in the ser-
vice of his Master. The priest described to him, for his
encouragement, the conversion of his friend Yictorinus,
a learned teacher of rhetoric at Pome, and translator of
the Platonic writings, who had passed over from the
Platonic philosophy to a zealous study of the Scriptures,
and cordially embraced the Saviour with a sacrifice of
great worldly gain. For a long time he believed ho
could be a Christian without joining the Church, and
when Simplicianus replied to him :
''
I will not count
you a Christian before I see you in the Church of
Christ," Victorinus asked with a smile :
^'
Do the walls,
 AUGUSTIN''S CON'VERSION'. 107

then, make Christians ?" * Bnt afterward he came to

see that hewho does not confess Christ openly before the
world need not hope to be confessed by Him before His
Heavenly Father (Matt. x. 32, 33), and therefore submit-
ted in humble faith to the washing of baptism.
Angustin wished to do likewise, but his will was not
yet strong enough. He compares his condition to that
of a man drunk with sleep, who wishes to rise up, but
now for the first time rightly feels the sweetness of slum-
ber, and sinks back again into its arms. In a still more
w^arning and pressing tone the voice sounded in his ears :

^'
Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead,
and Christ shall shine upon thee" (Eph. v. 14-) but he ;

answered lazily '' Soon, yes, soon only wait a little ;"
: !

and the soon passed on into hours, days, and weeks. In

vain his inward man delighted in the law of God, for
another law in his members warred against the law of his
mind, and brought him into captivity to the law of sin.
(Rom. vii. 22, 23.) His disquietude rose higher and
higher his longing became violent agony.
; Oftentimes
he would tear his hair, smite his forehead, wiring his
hands about his knees, and cry out despairingly ''
O :

wretched man that I am who shall deliver me out of

!

the body of this death ?" (Rom. vii. 24.)

These conflicts, in connection with the weight of his
literary labors, had exerted such an injurious influence on
his health that he began to think seriously of resigning
his post as a rhetorician.
One day, as he sat in a downcast mood with his bosom
friend Alypius, who was involved in similar struggles,

* Cmfess. VITI, 2 Erqo parieles faciunt ChrisUanos ?" This pas-

:
*'

sage is stjuietimes torn from its connectiou and misused for a purpose
direct!}'' opnosito
; since Angustin quotes it to show that a man
could Dot 1)0 a Christian without joining the visible Church.
108 SAINT AUGUSTII?".

their countryman Pontitianus, a superior officer in the

Koman army, and at the same time a zealous Christian,
entered the chamber. He was surprised, instead of a
classic author or a ManicliSBan writer, to see the Epistles
of Paul lying on the table. lie beo^an a religious con-
versation, and in the course of his reniarks took occasion
to speak of the Egyptian hermit Anthony (died 35B),
who, in literal pursnance of the Saviour's advice to the
rich young man (Matt. xix. 21), had given up all his
property in order to lives to the Lord unrestricted and
undisturbed, in solitude, and there to work out the salva-
tion of his soul. The two friends had as yet heard noth-
ing of the wonderful saint of the desert, the venerable
father of monachism, and just as little of a cloister out-
side of the walls of Milan, under the supervision of Am-
brose, and were now charmed and ashamed at the infor-
mation. Their countryman related further how, during
his stay at Treves, two of his friends, who were both
engaged to be married, obtained, on a visit to a cell, the
biography of Anthony ascribed to Athanasius, the great
*'
father of orthodoxy," and on reading it fell so in love
with the contemplative life and the higher perfection
there portrayed, that they threw up their commissions in
the army and took leave of the world forever. Their
brides did likewise.
This was a sting for the conscience of Augustin. The
soldiers and their brides had heard the call of the Lord
only once, and obeyed it immediately. And
he ? It
was now more than twelve years since the Hortensius of
Cicero had stirred him up so powerfully to search after
truth, and ever clearer and clearer the voice of the Good
Shepherd had sounded in his ears. And yet his wdll rose
up in rebellion he was not ready
; to renounce the world
wJiolly^ but desired to retaiji at least some of its pleasures.
 augustin's coisrvERSioi^". 109

Pontltianus left the house. Then the storm in tlie

soul of Augustin broke loose with greater violence, and
expressed itself in the features of his countenance, his
looks, and his gestures still more than in his words.
*'
What has happened to us ?" said he to Alypius
— " what
is it ? What hast thou heard ? The unlearned rise up
and lay hold of tlie kingdom of heaven, and we, with
our heartless knowledge see how we wallow in flesh and—
blood Shall we be ashamed to follow tiiem because-
!

thej have gone before, and not ashamed not to follow

them at all f*
After he had said and more in a similar strain, he
this,

rushed out with the Epistles of Paul in his hand into an

adjoining garden, where no one would be likely to inter-
rupt the agitation of his soul until God Himself should
allay it. For it was, as he said, despair or salvation,
death or life. Alypius followed in his footsteps.
" We removed as far as possible from the house. 1
groaned in spirit, full of stormy indignation that I had not
entered into covenant and union with Thee, my God,
and all my bones cried out thither must thou go But ; !

it was not possible to go by ship, or wagon, or on foot, as

we go to any place we please. For going thither and

coming there is nothing else than to will to go thither,
and to will ^\i\\fidl power not to waver and be tossed —
to and fro with a divided will, which now rises up and
now sinks down in the struggle. " f He was angry at
the perverseness of his will " The spirit orders the :

body, and it obeys instantly ; the spirit orders itself, and

* Confess. VIII. 8.

•{• Coj^fess. VIII. 8 :

'*
Nam non solum ire, verum e'lam pervenire ilhic,
nihil erat aliud, quam ve.lle ire, sed velle fortiter et integre; non semisaucium
hac atque hac versare etjactare voluniatem, parte adsurgente cum alia parte
cadente ludantein."
liO SAIXT AUGUSTI1H-.

it refuses. The spirit orders the hand to move, and it

does it so quickly that one can scarcely distinguish be-

tween the act and the command the spirit commands ;

the spirit to will, and although the same, it will not do it.
AVhence this monstrosity ? It is a disease of the spirit
that prevents it from rising up the will is split and ;

divided thus there are two wills in conflict with each

;

other, one good and one evil, and I myself it was who
wilJcd and who did not will."
Thus was he pulled hither and thither, accusing him-
self more severely than ever, and turning and rolling in
his fetters until they should be wholly broken, by which,
indeed, he v/as no longer wholly bound, but only yefy.
And when he had thus dragged up all his misery from
its mysterious depths, and gathered it before the eye of

his soul, a huge storm arose that discharged itself in a

flood of tears.*
In such a frame of mind he wished to be alone with
his God, and withdrew from Alypius into a retired cor-
ner of the garden. Here Augustin, he knew not how,
threw himself down upon the earth, under a fig-tree, and
gave free vent to his tears. " Thou, my Lord," he
cried, with sobbing voice, ''how long yet? O Lord,
how long yet wilt Thou be angry ? Kemember not the
sins of my youth How long ? how long ? To-morrow,
!

and again, to-morrow ? Why not to-day, why not now ?

Why not in this hour put an end to my shame ?" f
* Confess. VIII. 12 :
" Oboria est procella ingens, fevens ingentem
imhrem lacrymarum/'
VIII. 12 " Et non quidem his vei'his, sed in hac sententia
t Confess. :

Etiu Domine, usquequof Usqiiequo, D()7nine,

miilia dixi iibi : irasceris' in

finemf Ne memorfufrlsiniquitaium nostrariim (I'diquarum / Seniiebnm

eyivm eis me ieneri. Jarltib'im, voces miserubUes : Quomdiuf Q^amdhif
Craset eras? Quare non niodo? Qimre non hac hor a finis iurpUudinis
meae? Dicvbam hcoc, elfitbam amaris.slma contritione cordis mei/*
 AUGUSTIN S CONVERSION. Ill

Thus lie prayed, supplicated, sighed, wrestled, and

wept bitterly. They were the birth-pangs of the new
life. From afar he saw the Church in the beauty of
lioliness. The glorified spirits of the redeemed, who
had been snatched from the abyss by the All-merciful
imd transplanted into a heavenly state of being, beckoned
to him. Still more powerfully the longing burned

within him still more hot and rapidly beat the pulse of
;

desire after the Saviour's embrace as a weary, hunted

;

stag after the fresh water-brooks, so panted his heart

after the living God and a draught from the chalice of
His grace.
The hour of deliverance had now come. The Lord
had already stretched out His hand to tear asnnder the
last cords that bound his prodigal son to the world, and
press him to a warm, true father's heart.
As Augustin was thus lying in the dust and ashes of
repentance, and agonizing with his God
he in prayer,
suddenly heard from a neighboring house, as though
from some celestial height, the sweet voice, whether of a
boy or a maiden he knew not, calling out again and
again, '''TolU lege, toUe lege P^ i.e., "Take and read."
It was a voic6 from God that decided his heart and life.
" Then 1 repressed," so he further relates in the last
chapter of the eighth book of his Confessions, '' the
gush of tears, and raised myself up, while I received the
word as nothing else than a divine injunction to open the
Scriptures and read the first chapter that would catch
my eye. I had heard how Anthony, once accidentally
present during the reading of the gospel in church, had
felt himself admonished, as though what was read had
been specially aimed at him Go, sell that thou hast,
:
'

and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in

heaven and come, follow me (Matt. xix. 20), and that,
;
'
112 SAINT AUGUSTIN".

by tills oracle, he bad been immediately converted, my

God, to Thee."
He hastened to the place where he had left the Holy
Book, and where Alypius sat snatched it np, opened,
;

and read "Let us walk honestly, as in the day

:
;

NOT IN REVELLING AND DRUNKENNESS, NOT IN CHAMBERING

AND WANTONNESS, NOT IN STRIFE AND JEALOUSY. BuT PUT
YE ON THE Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision
FOR the FLESH, TO FULFIL THE LUSTS THEREOF." (Rom.
xiii. 13, 14.)*
This passage of the Epistle to the Romans was exactly
suited to his circumstances. It called on him to renounce
his old, wild life, and begin a new life w^ith Christ. He
found still more in it, according to the ascetic spirit of
the age, and resolved to renounce all the honors and
pleasures of the world, even his contemplated marriage,
in order to devote himself, without restraint, to the ser-
vice of the Lord and His Church, and, if possible, to
attain the highest grade of moral perfection, f
He read no further. That single word of God was

* After the original and the Vulgate " et carnifi providentiam ne

:

feccritis in covcupiscendis," which Augustin, in bis present condi-

tion, understood as a challenge to renounce completely every desire
of the flesh. Luther, on the contrary, has translated it '* Wariet :

des Leibes, dock also, dass er nicht geil werde,'" which gives a different
sense. But in such a case co)[xa would be used in the Greek instead
of (Tdpf, and the conjunctive particle [li] would stand after and not
before irpovoiav.

\ Confess y 111. 12: "Convertisii meadte, utncc uxorem. qvaererem, nee

aliquam spem scecali hujus,'' etc. Anthony, whose example had wrought
powerfully in the conversion of Augustin, had, likewise, in literal
accordance with the words of Christ (Mitt, xix, 21), soJd all that he
had, and given it to the poor. According to the views of the ancient
Church, which can Ite traced back as far as the second century, vol-
untary poverty, celibacy, and martyrdom were the way to a more
literal following of Christ and a higher grade of holiness and bliss.
 SOJOURN" IN THE COUN^TRY. 113

sufficient to decide whole future. The gloomy

his
clouds of doubt and despondency rolled away the for- ;

giveness of his sins was sealed to him peace and joy ;

streamed into his bosom. With his finger on the passage

read, he shut the book, and told Alypius what had hap-
pened. The latter wished to read the words, and hit
upon the next following verse {xiv. 1),
*^
Him that is

weak in the faith receive ye.'* He apphed the warning

to himself.
Both hastened, in the first ardor of conversion, to
Monnica. The must hear the glad tidings
faithful soul
before others. She cried aloud and exulted, and her
heart overflowed with thankfulness to the Lord, who, at
last, after long, long delay, had answered beyond her

prayers and comprehension.

This occurred in September of the year 386, in the
tliirty-third year of his life. Truly says Augustin *^ All :

who worship Thee must, when they hear this, cry out :

Blessed be the Lord, in heaven and on earth great and ;

wonderful is His name !"

CHAPTER XVII.

SOJOUKN EST THE COUNTEY.

AuGTJSTiN continued in office the few remaining weeks,

tillthe autumnal holidays, and then handed in his resig-
nation as public teacher of forensic eloquence, partly on
account of a weakness of the breast, but chiefly because
he had firmly resolved to consecrate himself hencefortli
wholly and entirely to the pursuit of divine things.
114 SAINT AUGUSTIiq^.

Along with his mother, his son, and his brother Navi-
jO^ius, Aljpins, and other friends, he now witlidrew to
Cassiciacum, a villa lying near Milan, wliicli belonged to
his friend Yerecundus."^' He passed six months there
under the serene Italian sky, in view of tlie glorious
Swiss Alps, devoted to quiet meditation and preparation
for the rite of holy baptism.
He had asked the advice of Ambrose as to what parts
of Scripture he ought to study under his peculiar circum-
stances. The bishop recommended the Prophecies of
Isaiah. Bat as Augustin could not rightly understand
them he selected the Psalms, and found there just what
he desired —the hallowed expression of his deepest relig-
ious feelings, from the low, sad wail of penitence and
contrition up to the inspiring song of praise to the
Divine Mercy. Half the night he spent in their study
and in pious meditation, and enjoyed most blessed hours
of intimate communion with God. He now mourned
over and pitied the Manichaeans for being so blind in
regard to the Old Testament, which they rejected. " I
wished only," he once thought, '^ they could have been
in my neighborhood without my knowing it, and could
have seen my face and heard my voice when, in that re-
tirement I read the Fourth Psalm, and how that Psalm
wrought upon me."
A great part of the day he devoted to the education of
two young men from His propensity for
his native city.
speculative meditation was so strong that he resorted
with his company, in good weather, to the shade of a
lar^e tree, and in bad to the halls of the baths belono;iii<r
to the vilhj, and, walking up and down in the freest

* Probably near the town Casciago in Loml>arcT3% at the foot of a

group of hills, from which there is a sublime view of the Monte Kosa.
 SOJOURI^ IK THE COUNTRY. 115

manner, delivered discourses on those philosopliical sub-

jects which stood in the nearest rehition to the most
weighty practical interests of the heart such as the —
knowledge of the trtith, the idea of genuine wisdom, the
life of blessedness and the way to it. Monnica took part
in the discussion, and showed a rare degree of good

sense and strength of intellect, so that the men forgot her

sex and thought that ^' some great man was in their cir-
cle." These discourses were written dov/n, and thus the
earliest works of the great theologian, mostly philosophi-
cal in their contents, took their rise.
Of these the most important are First, three books :

against the sceptical school of the Later Academy {Con-

tra Academicos), which denied the possibility of know-
ing the truth. In opposition it was shown that scepti-
cism either abrogates itself or, in a modified form, as a
scheme of probabilities, bears witness to the existence of
truth, for the probable must presuppose the true. JNot
the mere striving after truth, only the possession of it,

can render happy. But it is only to be found in God,

since He alone is happy who is in God and God in Ilim.
The second discourse is a tract on the Life of Blessedness
{De Beata Vita), in which these latter thoughts are
further developed. And last, his ''
Soliloquies," or
Discourses with his own Soul, concerning God, concern-
ing the highest good, concerning his own nature, immor-
tality, and the like. From these we will cpiote a single
passage, to show the state of his mind at that time.
" O God, —
Creator of the world" thus he prayed to the Lord
" grant me, first of all, grace to call upon Thee in a manner well-
pleasing unto Thee that I may so conduct myself, that Thou mayest
;

hear and then help me. Thou God, through whom all, that cannot
be of itself, rises into being who even dost not suffer to fall into
;

destruction what would destroy itself ; who never workest evil and
rulest over the power of evil ; who revealest unto the fow who ^etk
116 SAINT AUGUSTIlJr.

after a true existence that evil can be overcome God, to whom the ;

universe, in spite of evil, is God, whom what can love, loves

perfect ;

consciously or uuconsciously God, in whom all is, and whom yet

;

neither the infamy of the creature can disgrace, nor his wickedness
defile, nor his error lead astray God, who hast preserved the knowl-
;

edgo of the truth for the pure alone Father of truth. Father of ;

wisdom, Father of true and perfect life, Fiitherof blessedness, Father

of the good and the beautiful, Father of our awakening and enlight-
ening, Father of the promise by which we are encouraged to return
unto Thee, I invoke Thee, Trutb, in which and from which and
by which all is true, that is true O Wisdom, in which and from
;

which and by which all is wise, that is wise O true and most per- ;

fect Life, in which and from which and by which all lives, that lives ;

O Blessedness, in which and from which and by which all is blessed,

that is blessed O Beauty and Goodness, in which and from which
;

and by which all is good and beautiful, that is good and beautiful ;

spiritual Light, in which and from which and by which all is spirit-
ually light, that is spiritually light God, from whom to turn away
;

is to fall, to whom to turn again is to rise, in whom to remain is to

endure God, from whom to withdraw is to die, to whom to return

;

is to live again, in whom to dwell is to live O God, Thou who dost ;

sanctify and prepare us for an everlasting inheritaDce, bow down Thy-

self to me in pity Come to my help. Thou one, eternal, true Essence,
!

in whom there is no discord, no confusion, no change, no need, no

death, but the highest unity, the highest j^urity, the highest durabil-
ity, the highest fulness, the highest
life. Hear, hear, hear me, my
God, my my King, my Father, my Hope, my Desire, my Glory,
Lord,
my Habitation, my Home, my Salvation, my Light, my Life, hear,
hear, hear me, as Thou art wont to hear Thy Chosen.
" Already, I love Thee alone, follow Thee alone, seek Thee alone,
am prepared to serve Thee only, because Thou alone rulest in right-
eousness. O command and order what Thou wilt, but heal and open
mine ears, that I may hear Thj word deal and open mine eyes, that
;

1 may see Thy nod drive out my delusion, that I may recognize
;

Thee again. O gracious Father, take back again Thy wanderer.

Have I not been chastised enough ? Have I not long enough served
Thine enemies, whom Thou Thy feet — long enough been
hast under
the sport of deception ? me
Thy servant, for I fly from
Eeceive as
those who received me as a stranger, when I fled from Thee. In-
crease in me faith, hope, love, according to Thy wonderful and inim-
itable goodness.
" I desire to come to Tliee, and again implore Thee for that by
 SOJOURN" IIT rilE COUJiTTRY. 117

which I may come. For where Thou forsakest, there is destruction ;

but Thou dost not forsake, because Thou art the Highest Good,
which every one, who seeks aright, will surely find. But he seeks it
aright, to whom Thou hast given power to seek aright. Grant me
power, O Father, to seek Thee aright shield me from error
; Let me !

not, when I seek, find another in Thy stead. I desire none other
but Thee O let me yet find Thee, my Father But such a desire is
; !

vain, since Thou Thyself canst purify me and fit me to behold Thee.
*'
Whatever else the welfare of my mortal body may need, I com-
mit into Thy hands, most wise and gracious Father, as long as I do
not know what may be good for me, or those whom I love, and will,
therefore, pray just as Thou wilt make it known at the time. Only
this I beseech out of Th}' great mercy, that Thou wilt convert me
wholly unto Thyself, and when I obtain Thee, sufifer me to be noth-
ing else, and grant also, that, as long as I live and bear about this
body, I may be pure and magnanimous, just and wise, filled with
love and the knowledge of Thy wisdom, and worthy of an entrance
into Thy blessed kiogdom."

There are few traces of a specific churclily character in

these writings. They exhibit rather a Platonism full of
high thoughts, ideal views, and subtle dialectics, in-
formed and hallowed by the spirit of Christianity.
Many things were retracted by him at a later period
e.g,^ the Platonic opinion that the human soul had a pre-
existence before its present life, and that the learning of
a science is a restoration of it to memory, a disinterment,
so to speak, of knowledge already existing, but covered
over in the mind. lie had yet many steps to take before
reaching the depth and clearness of Christian knowledge
which distinguished his later writings, and before the
new life obtained full mastery within.

After his conversion, he did indeed abandon unlawful

sexual intercourse. But nov/ the pictures of his former
sensual indulgence not seldom troubled his fancy in
dreams. This he regarded as sin, and reproached him-
self bitterly. " Am
I," he cried out ''
am I not then
dreaming what I am, O Lord, my God ? Is not Thy
 118 SAINT AUGUSTI15I-.

mighty hand able to purge all the weakness of my soul,

and frighten away with more abundant grace the con-
cupiscence of my dreams ? Yea, Thou wilt grant unto
me more and more Thy gifts, that my soul may follow
Thee and be with Thee even in dreams full of purity ;

Thou, who art able to do more than we can ask or under-

stand."

CHAPTER XYIIL
augustin's baptism.

In the beginning of the year 387 he returned to Milan,

and along with his preparation for baptism kept up liis
literary activity. He wished to portray the different
steps of human knowledge by which he himself had
been gradually led to absolute knowledge, for the pur-
pose of leading others to the sanctuary, and wrote works
on grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, phi-
losophy, music, and on the immortality of tlie soul, of
which only the last two were completed and have come
down to vis/^'

Meanwhile the wished-for hour of baptism arrived.

On Easter Sabbath of this year he received, at the hands
of the venerable Ambrose, this holy sacrament, in com-
pany with his friend Alypius, who, as he says, always
differed from him for the better, and with his son Adeo-
datus, who was now fifteen years of age, and, preserved

* The book on grammar and the principles of logic and rhetoric in

the volume of the Benedictine edition of Augustin's works is
first

spurious, because it lacks the form of dialogue and the higher bear-
ing which he gave to his writings on these subjects.
 augustin's baptism. 119

from the evil courses of his father, had surrendered to

the Lord his youthful soul, with all its rare endowments.

This solemn act and the succeedino^ festivals of Easter

and Whitsuntide, in which tlie Church entered her spii'it-
ual spriiig, and hashed in the warm sunlight of a Saviour
risen from the dead and eternally present hy his Spirit,
made tlie deepest impression upon Augustin.
The solemnity of this festival was still further height-
—
ened hy two circumstances one connected with super-
stitioQ and relic- worship, the other with the effect of
hynms upon the heart.
The first was the miraculous discovery of the long-
concealed relics of the traditional protomartyrs of Milan,
Protasius and Gervasius — two otherwise unknown Roman
citizens —
and missionaries who were believed to have
been beheaded in the persecution of i^ero or Domitian.
These relics were conveyed into the Ambrosian Easilica,
and, according to the current belief of that credulous
age,wrought there an astonishing miracle in support of
Nicene orthodoxy against the Arian heresy.'^

* Cojifess. IX. 7 " Then didst Thou, by a vision, discover to Tby

:

forenamed bishop [Ambrose] where the bodies of Gervasius and

Protasius, the martyis, lay hid (whom Thou hadst in Thy secret treas-
ury stored uneorrupted so many jears), whence Tliou mightest sea-
sonably produce them to repress the fury of a woman, but an Em-
press [Justina]." Then Augustin relates the healing of demoniacs
and of a blind man by the touch of the relics. He again refers to
tliis noted miracle, in i)-; Civ. Dei xxii. 8, as having occurred in the

presence of an immense multitude. Ambrose explained it at length

in a sermon, wherein he said that the Arians admitted the fact of
healing, but denied the cause. Coaap. his letter to hi^i sister, Mar-
cellina, Ep. xxii. (al. Ll.V.). These are the two authorities for the
legend of the protomartyrs of Milan. The subject of post-apostolic
miracles is involved in inextricable dJjBiculties. Augustin himself is
not consistent in this matter, iice his opinions in Schaffi's Church
History, vol. iii., 459 sqq.
120 SAINT AUGUSTIN".

Just then, also, Ambrose had transplanted the Chnrch-

hymns of the East into his congregation, and had added
hymnody, productions of
to them, as the father of Latin
his own, conceived and executed in a noble, liturgical
style. *' I could not," says Augustin, " satiate rayselt'

in those days with the wonderful delight of meditatini^

on the depth of Thy divine counsel in the salvation of
the human race. How did I weep amid Thy hymns and
chants, powerfully moved by the sweetly-sounding voice
of Thy Church Those tones poured into my ear the
! ;

truth dropped into ray heart, and kindled there the fire
of devotion ; tears ran down my cheeks in the fulness
of my joy !" *
As is known, Ambrose gets credit as the author
well
of the magnificent anthem, Te Deuirh laudamus^ which
is worthy of a place among David's Psalms of thanks-

giving. A mediaeval tradition says that it was compose*!

by Ambrose and Augustin jointly, during the baptism of
the latter, as if by inspiration from above, each singiii^;
in response, verse after verse. But neither Ambrose nor
Augustin alludes to it anywhere. The Te Deum is oi;
much later date (the sixth century), though several lines
can be traced to an older Greek original.

CHAPTEE XIX.
monnica's last days and death.

Soon after his baptism, in the summer of the year

387, he entered on his homeward journey to Africa, in
company with his relatives and friends, in order to con-
* Govfess. IX. 6.
 MONNICA'S last DATS Ai^TD DEATH. 121

tiniie there the life of divine contempLation already

begun in Cassiciacum. Among them was Evodiiis of
Tagaste, a cultivated man, who was baptized a short time
before, and now forsook the service of the Emperor to
manner exclusively for the higher world.
live in like
Already had they reached Ostia at the mouth of the
Tiber, about a day's journey from Rome already had ;

they made the necessary preparations for embarking,

when the sudden death of Monnica frustrated the plan.
The faithful soul had now experienced the highest joy
for which she had wished to live —
she had seen the
Saviour in the heart of her son, and could, like Hannah
and Simeon of old, depart in peace to that true home
which is more beautiful and sweeter far than Africa.
One day Augustin sat with his mother at a garden-
window in Ostia, and conversed with her about the rest
of eternity and its holy pleasures, which no eye has seen
and no ear heard, but which God has prepared for them
that love. Him. Let us listen to his own narrative :

^^
Forgetting the past, and looking only toward the
future,we asked ourselves, in the presence of the Truth,
which Thou art, what the eternal life of the saints will
be. And we opened longingly the mouths of our hearts
to receive the celestial overflowings of Thy fountain, the
fountain of life, thatThee, that being bedewed
is v/ith

from it according to our capacity, we might meditate

carefully upon this solemn subject. When now our dis-
course had reached that point, that no pleasure of corpo-
real sense, regarded in what brilliant light soever, durst
for a moment be named with the glory of that life, much
less compared with it, we mounted upward in ardent
longing, and wandered step by step through all the mate-
rial universe —
the heavens, from which sun, moon, and
stars beam down upon the earth. And we rose yet
1'22 SAINT AUGUSTIN.

liii^her in inward thought, discourse, and admiration of

Thy wonderful works, and on the wings of the spirit wg
rose above these also, in order to reach yon sphere of
inexhaustible fulness, where Thou dost feed Israel to all

eternityupon the pastures of Truth, where life is, and

Truth by wliich all was made, that was there and will
be. But truth itself was not made it is as it was and ;

always will be ; for to have been and to he are not in it,

but hemg, because it is For to have heen and to

eternal.
he are not eternal. While we were thus talking and de-
siring, we touched it gently in full rapture of heart, and
left bound there the first-fruits of the Spirit, and turned

again to the sound of our lips, where the word begins

and ends. And what is like Thy Word, our Lord, who
remains unchanged in Himself, and renews all ? We
spake thus If the tumult of the flesh were silent, and
:

the images of earth, sea, and air were silent, and the
])oles were silent, and the soul itself were silent, trans-

cending its own thoughts if dreams and the revelations

;

of fancy, and every language, and every sign, and every-

thing represented by them were silent if all were silent, ;

for to him who hears, all these say, we have not made
ourselves, but He who made us dwells in eternity ; if,

at this call, they were now silent, with ear uplifted to

their Creator, and He should speak alone, not by them,
hut unmediated, so that we heard His own Word, not
through a tongue of flesh, not through the voice of an
angel, not through the roar of thunder, not through the
dark outlines of a similitude, but from Himself, whom
w^e love in them, and whom, without them, we heard as
we now mounted, and with the rapid flight of thought
touched the eternal truth that lies beyond them all if ;

this contemplation should continue, and no other foreign

visions mingle with it, and if this alone should take hold
 mon-nica's last days and death. 123

of, and absorb, and wrap up its beholder in more inward

joys, and such a hfe as that of which, now recoverint^
our breath, we have had a momentary taste, were to last
forever, would not then the saying, Enter into the joy ^

of your Lord,' be fulfilled ?"

In the presentiment that she would soon enter into the
joy of her Lord, Monnica, struck by the inspired words
of her son, said :
^*
Son, what has befallenme ? Noth-
ing has any more charms for me in this life. What I
am yet to do here, and why I am here, I do not know,
every hope of this world being now consumed. Once
there was a reason why I should wish to live longer, that 1
might see you a believing Christian * before I die. God
has now richly granted me this beyond measure, in per-
mitting me to see you in His service, having totally
abandoned the v/orld. What yet have I to do here ?"
Ary Scheffer, the French painter, of the romantic
school, has fixed on this sublime moment of elevation to
the beatific vision for his famous and beautiful, though
somewhat sentimental picture of Monnica and her son.
*' Togetlaer 'neath the Italian heaven
They sit, the mother and her son,
He late from her by errors riven,
Now both in Jesus one :

The dear consentin<4 hands arc knit.

And either face, as there they sit,

Is lifted as to something seen

Beyond the blue serene."

Five or six days after this conversation and foretaste

of the eternal Sabbath-rest of the saints, the pious
mother was attacked by a fever, which in a short time

* Or more strictly, after the original. Confess. IX. 10, Chrislianum.

cafholicum, " a Ca'holic (or ortkodox) Christian," in distinction not
merely from a Paganus, hut also and partienlarly from a Chrisiianus
hcerdicus and schismaiicus, which Augustin had formerly been.
124 SAINT AUGUSTIN.

exhausted her vital powers. Her two sons were contin-

nally at her bedside, xlugustin was now indeed more
than ever bowed down with grief that he had caused her
60 nianj tears and pains, and songhi, bj the last tender
offices of love, to make as much amends as possible.
Monnica read and assured liim with tender
his heart,
affection that he had never spoken an unkind word to
her. Before, it had always been her wish to die at
home and rest beside tlie grave of her husband. But
now this natural wish was merged into loftier resignation
to the will of God '^
Bury my body somewhere here,"
:

said she, ''

and do not concern yourselves on its account ;

only this I beg of you, that you will be mindful of me

at the altar of God, where you will be." '^ To the ques-
tion, whether it would not be terrible to her to be buried
so far from her fatherland, she replied ^'
[Nothing is far :

from God and there is no fear that He will not know

;

at the end of time where to raise me up.

Thus, in the lifty-sixth year of her age, on the ninth
day of her sickness, this noble-hearted woman expired in
the arms of her son, at the mouth of tlie Tiber, on the
shore of the Mediterranean Sea, which separated Italy
from the land of her birth. Yet, long after her death,
has she consoled and comforted thousands of anxious
mothers and encouraged them in patient waiting and
perseverance in praj^er. Her memory remains forever
dear and blessed to the Christian world.
* Confesft. IX. 11 :
*'
Tantum iUud vos rogo, ut ad Domini altare memi-
neriiis met, ubi fueritis.'" This thanksgiving and prayer for the dead
can be traced, in its innocent form, us far back as the second cen-
tury, and becairie the fruitful germ of the doctrine of purgat(iry.
Neither Moiinica nor Augnstin grasped the full meaning of St. Paul's
assurance tii?<t it is " very far better to be with Christ '" (Phil, i 23).
I In an epitaph of Bassus, ex-Consul, dating from the early part of
the tiftn century, Monnica is addressed as " Mother of Virtues," and
 monnica's last days and death. 125

Adeodatiis cried Angustin himself could

aloud.
scarcely restrain by force the gush of tears and quiet the
overpowering feelings of grief which were rushing into
his heart. He believed it was not becoming " to honor
such a corpse with the tearful wailings and groans which
are usually given to those who die a miserable yea, an —
eternal death." For his mother had not died miserably :

she had merely entered into the joy of her Lord. When
the weeping had subsided, his friend Evodius took up
the psalter ^'
I will sing of mercy and judgment
: unto ;

Thee, O Lord, will 1 sing" (Ps. ci. 1) and the whole ;

house joined in the response.

After the corpse had been buried, and the holy Sup-
per celebrated on the grave, according to the custom of
the age, in the consciousness of a communion of saints
uninterrupted by death, Augustin, hnding himself at
home alone with his God, gave his tears free vent, and
vv^ept sorely and long over her w^io had shed so many
tears of maternal love and solicitude on his account. But
he begs his readers to fulfil the last wish of his mother,
and remember her at the altar of the Lord with thanks-
giving and prayer. In this transitory life let them re-
''

member my parents with pious affection, and ray broth-

ers, who, under Thee, the Father, are children in the

mother, the Catholic Church, and my fellow-citizens in

the heavenly Jerusalem, after which Thy people sigh

Augustin as her yet " happier offspring." This shows the early rev-
erence paid to her memory. See the epitaph in Brieger's *' Zeit-
schrift fiir Kirchengesciiichte," vol. 1, p. 228. Monnica is a saint in
the Roman calendar, April 4 (SanrJa Mmn'ica vidaa). Her bones
were translated from Ostia to Rome in 1430 under Pope Martin V.,
and deposited in a chapel dedicated to Augustin. She often appears
in mediaeval pictures especiall 3' famous is Ary Scheffer's Si. Aufjust'm
;

et sa more Sfe. Mnnique (1845). It is in the same style as his Dante

an<"1 Bf^itrice.
120 SAIJST AUGUSTIN-.

from the beginning to the end of their pilgrimage, so

that what she isskdd of me in her hist moments may be
more abundantly fulfilled to her by the prayers and con-
fessions of many, than by my prayers alone."
*
These words are taken from the conclusion of the his-
torical part of the Confessions^ in which Augustin, with
the rarest candor and in a spirit of the severest self-criti-
cism and unfeigned humility, in presence of the whole
world, acknowledges to God his sins and errors, and
praises, with devout gratitude, the wonderful hand
which, even in his widest wanderings, guided him, took
hold of him, in the anxiety and prayers of his mother,
in the better inclinations of his heart, in his internal con-
flicts, his increasing discontent, and his pining after God,
and led him at last, after many storms, into the haven of
faith and peace. In this autobiography we behold the
great Church-doctor of all ages ^' lying in the dust of
humility in converse with God and basking in the sun-
light of Ilis iove, his readers only sweeping before him
like shadows." He takes all his glory, all his greatness,
all his culture, and lays them devoutly at the feet of free

grace.
—
His deepest feeling is " All that is good in me
is Thy ordering and Thy gift all that is evil is my guilt
;

and my judgment." Ko motive, drawn from anything

without, prompted him to this public confession. It
sprang from the innermost impulse of his soul. *'
I be-
lieve," says he, ^' and therefore I speak, as Thou, Lord,
knowest. Have I not confessed my guilt before Thee,
and hast Thou not forgiven the sins of my soul ? Never
will I excuse or justify myself before Thee, who art
Truth itself ; no, I will not justify myself before Thee ;

for if Thou art strict to mark iniquity, who can stand ?"

* Confess. IX. 13, conclusion.

 SECOND VISIT TO ROME, AND RETURN TO AFRICA. 127

Most toiicliing is his sad complaint that he was converted

to the Lord so late in life, since one single hour of com-
munion with Him is worth more than all the joys of the
world besides. " 1 have loved Thee late, whose beauty
i.sas old as eternity, and yet so new I have loved Thee;

late. And lo ! Thoa wert within, but I was without,

and sought Thee there. And amid Thy beautiful crea-
tion 1 covered myself with loathsomeness, for Thou wert
with me, and I not in Thee. The external world held me
far from Thee, though it were not, if I were not in Thee.
Thou didst call loud and louder, and break through my
deafness ; Thou didst beam down "bright and brighter,
and overcome my blindness Thou didst breathe, and I
;

recovered breath and life again, and breathed in Thee.

I would taste Thee, and hungered and thirsted. Thou
didst touch me, and, burniiig, I longed after Thy peace.
If ever 1 may live in Thee, with all that is in me, then
will pain and trouble leave me ; filled wholly with Thee,
all within me will be life."

CHAPTER XX.
SECOND VISIT TO ROME, AND RETDRN TO AFRICA.

In consequence of the death of his mother Augustin

clianged his plan of travel, and went, first of all, with

Iiis company to Ivume, where he renjained ten months.

During tliis time he publicly attacked his former
friends, the Manichseans. lie was better fitted than any
one of his contemporaries for confuting their errors.
u I could not," says he, in his Retractions^ ^' bear in
128 SAINT AUGUSTII^-.

silence that the Manichgeans should delude the ignorant,

through boasting, by their false, deceptive abstemious-
ness and moderation and elevate tliemselves even above
;

true Christians, with whom they are not worthy to be

compared and so 1 wrote two books, the one on the
;

Morals of the Catholic Church, the other on the Morals

of the Manich83ans.
Toward autumn of the year 388, he sailed to Africa,
and, after a transient Btdy in Carthage with his friend
Innocentius, a godly man, who had just then
been deliv-
ered by prayer from a dangerous sickness, he proceeded
to a country-seat near Tagaste, which, along with other
real estate, he had inherited from his father. In literal

obedience to the command of Christ to the rich young

man (Matt. xix. 21), and in imitation of the example of
many saints of previous ages, he sold his possessions and
gave the proceeds to the poor, retaining, as it appears,
his dwelling and the necessary means of subsistence.
Here he lived with his friends three years in a com-
plete coramiinicy of goods, retired from the world, in
prayer, study, and meditation. He was, however, fre-
quently interrupted by the inhabitants of the city asking
counsel about their spiritual and temporal affairs. Nu-
merous philosophical, polemical, and theological writings
are the fruits of this sojourn in the country.
In the year 391 Augustin was called by an imperial
commissioner to the Numidian seaport, Hippo Regius,
the Bona of our time. He is yet known among the
natives of that place as " The Great Christian" (Rumi
Kebir). Hippo was destroyed by the Vandals soon after
Augustin 's death. Since the French conquest of Al-
giers it was rebuilt, and is now one of the finest towns in
North Africa, numbering over ten thousand inhabitants
French, Moors, and Jews. A monument was erected
 AUGUSTUS PRIEST AND BISHOP OF HIPPO. 129

to Angnstiii, his bronze statue on a pedestal of white

marble. On the summit of the hill is a large Cathoh'c
where possibly may have been his
charitable institution,
garden, from which, looking out to the sea and up to
heaven, he mused on ^'the City of God."

CHAPTER XXI.

AUGUSTIN PKIEST AND BISHOP OF HIPPO.

Having arrived at Hippo, he was forced into public

office against his will. For, on one occasion, as he was
listening to asermon of the Bishop Yalerius, a native of
Greece, and the latter remarked that the congregation
needed a priest, the people cried out for Augustin.
He was amazed, and burst into tears, for he did not
wish to give up his peaceful, ascetic and literary retire-
ment, and did not consider himself qualified for the re-
sponsible station. He followed,
however, the guidance of
that Hand which drew him, as it does every true reform-
er, into the arena of public life against his own inclination.
He only begged for some months to prepare for the solemn
office, and assumed its duties on Easter of the year 392.
His relation to the bishop was very pleasant. Yalerius
acknowledged the decided intellectual superiority of
Augustin, and, without envy, gave it free play for the
public good. He allowed him to preach frequently,
contrary to the usual custom of the African bishops, who
granted this privilege to the priests only during their
absence. Soon after he made him an associate, with the
consent of the Bishop of Carthage. But when Augustin
130 SAINT AUGUSTUS.

learned the existence of a decree of the Council of Nicrea,

forbidding two bishops in one congregation, he had a
resolution passed by a Synod of Carthage that, in order
to prevent similar irregularities, the Church canons
should be read by every clergyman before ordination.
In the year 395, Yalerius died, and Augustin was now
sole Bishop of Hippo, and remained so till the day of his
death. He says in one of his Epistles ''So exceed- :

ingly did I dread the episcopate that, because my reputa-

tion had now begun to be of some account among the
servants of God, I would not go to any place where I
knew there was no bishop. I did what I could that in a
low place I might be saved, lest in a high one I should be
perilled. But the servant must not oppose his Master.
I came to this city to see a friend whom I thought 1
might gain to God, that he might live with us in the
monastery I came as being safe, the place having a
;

bishop already. I was laid hold of, made a presbyter,

and by this step came to the episcopate."
In this position he was now to unfold, during a period
of thirty-eight successive years, first as priest, and then
as bishop, the rich treasures of his genius for the benefit
of the congregation, and the whole Church in his age and
all coming centuries. He
was indispensable. Difficul-
ties of deep and universal importance were arising, with

which he alone was fitted to cope.

Erasmus complains that the powers of Augustin were
wasted upon Africa, and thinks that he might have pro-
duced still nobler fruits in Italy or Gaul. He was mis-
taken. Africa presented at the time a strange mixture
of native barbarism, imported civilization of the Ro-
mans, Christianity, and lingering heathenism, not unlike
the present aspect of French Algiers or British East
India. Aruspices still offered sacrifices. Riotous feasts
 augustin's domestic life. 131

of heathen idols were nominally changed into services in

honor of Christian martyrs. The Christian forces were
divided. The Donastist Schismatics were almost as nu-
merous as the Catholics, and the Manichaean heretics, not
to mention smaller sects, were spread over all the cities.
It was no rare thing to find even in a smaller town three
rival bishops —
Catholic, Donatist, and Manichgean. But
it was just in conflict with these antagonistic elements

that Augustin's genius developed its resources and in ;

contrast with the surrounding vices and signs of approach-

ing decay his virtue and piety shine with the greater
lustre. Such a man belongs to the world at large and
to all ages.

CHAPTER XXII.

augustin's domestic life.

"We will now first glance at Augustin's private life,

then consider him as bishop, and lastly exhibit his public

activity in the Church and the world of letters, and its

influence upon succeeding generations.

His mode of living was very simple, and bore that
ascetic character which accords rather with the genius of
Catholicism than of Protestantism but it was also free
;

from narrow bigotry and Pharisaical self-righteousness,

which connect themselves so readily with monastic piety.
He dwelt with his clergy in one house, and strove with
Ihem to copy after the first community of Christians
(Acts iv. 81). common no one had
All things were :

more than another even he himself was never pre-

;

ferred. God and His Church were enough for them.

]3'3 SAINT AUGUSTIX.

Whoever would not consent to this was not admitted into

his clerical body.
He was extremely sparing in his diet, and lived mostly
on herbs and pulse. After the custom of those coun-
tries, wine was placed before all, a certain measure to

each, yet of course further indulgence was severely re-

buked. While they sat at table a passage from some
good book was read aloud, or they conversed freely to-
gether, but were never allowed to attack the character
of any one who was absent. Augustin enforced the ob-
servance of this rule of brotherly love very strictly. His
clothing and house furniture were decent, without show
or luxury. He was particularly prudent in regard to the
female sex, for he permitted no woman, not even his
nearest relative; to live in the episcopal house. Nor
did he trust himself to enter into conversation with any,
except in the presence of an ecclesiastic. Personally he
preferred, like St. Paul and most of the Fathers, the un-
married estate (1 Cor. vii. 1, 7, 8). he must be
In this

judged by the ascetic standard of the early Church,

which, in opposition to heathen immorality, went to the
opposite extreme of an overestimate of virginity as a
higher form of virtue than chastity in married life.
He also established a kind of theological seminary,
where candidates could prepare themselves in a practical
as well as theoretical manner, for their important duties
as preachers of the Gospel. They certainly could find no
better instructor. Already as a priest he had attracted
to Hippo his old friends Alypius and Evodius, and sev-
eral new ones, among whom were Possidius and Severus,
for the prosecution of mutual studies, and these formed
the beginning of that theological nursery out of wdiich
ten bishops and many inferior clergy went forth from
time to time.
 ADMINISTRATIOi^" OF THE EPISCOPAL OFFICE. 133

CHAPTEK XXllI.

ADMINISTRATION OF THE EPISCOPAL OFFICE AND PUBLIC

ACTIVITY.

As a bishop, Augustin was pre-eminently faithful and

conscientious in the discharge of his manifold duties.
lie felt deeply the solemn responsibilities of the spiritual
calling. "There is nothing," says he, "in this life,
and especially in this age,more easy, more agreeable,
and more acceptable to men than the office of bishop or
presbyter or deacon, if its duties are performed at pleas-
ure and in a time-serving spirit but in the eyes of God
;

nothing more miserable, more sad, more damnable. Like-

wise, there is nothing in this life, and especially in this
age, more difficult, more laborious, more dangerous than
the office of bishop or presbyter or deacon, but also more
blessed before God, if a man conducts himself therein as
a true soldier under the banner of Christ." *
To the ministry of the Word he applied himself dili-
gently, preaching often five days in succession, and on
some days twice. Whenever he found time he prepared
himself for it. When, out of the fulness of inspiration
he spoke from the holy place, he felt that human lan-
guage was insufficient to express, in a fit and lively man-

* Ep. 21, torn. xi. ed. Bened. Words well worthy of being pon-
dered on by every candidate of Theology. " Nihil est in hac vita^ et
maxime hoc tempore, fdcilius et laetius et hominibus accepiabilius episcopi,
aui presbyteri, avi diaconi officio, si perfunctorie atque adulaiorie res
agatur / apud Deum miserius et tristius et damndbilius. Item
sed nihil
nihil est in hac vita, et maxime in hoc tempore, d>fficiUus, laboriosius, per-
iculosius episcopi, aui presbyteri, aut diaconi officio ; sed apud Deum nihil
]34 SAINT AUGUSTIN.

ner, the tlionglits and feelings wliicli streamed tlirongli

liis soul with the speed of lightning. He set before him
as the aim of spiritual oratory to preach himself and his
hearers into Christ, so that might live
all with him and
he with all in Christ. This was his passion, his honor,
his boast, his joy, his riches.
He frequently spent whole days in bringing about a
reconciliation between parties who were at variance. It
was irksome to a man of his contemplative disposition,
but a sense of duty rendered him superior to the dis-
agreeable nature of the occupation. He speaks of ''
the
perplexities of other people's differences in secular mat-
ters," which he was asked to decide or to adjust by
mediation and alkides to '^ innumerable other ecclesias-
;

tical toils, which no one perhaps believes who has not

tried." Like Ambrose, he often interceded with the

authorities in behalf of the unfortunate, and procured
for them either justice or mercy. He took the poor
under and looked upon each clergyman
his special care,
as their father. Once, when he observed that but little
was cast into the collection-boxes, he concluded his ser-
mon with the words ^' I am a beggar for beggars, and
:

take pleasure in being so, in may be num-

order that 3^ou
bered among the children of God."Like Ambrose, he
even melted up the vessels of the sanctuary, in extreme
cases, for the relief of the suffering and the redemption
of the prisoner. Unlike many bishops of his time, he
does not seem to have set his heart upon the enrichment
of the Church. He would accept no legacy where in-
justice would be done to the natural heirs, for '^ the
Church desires no unrighteous inheritance ;" and there-
fore he praised Bishop) Aurelius, of Carthage, in a ser-
mon, because he had restored, without solicitation, his
entire property to a man who had willed it to the Church,
 ADMINISTRATION OF THE EPISCOPAL OFFICE. 135

and whose wife had afterward unexpectedly borne him

children.
Along with his seminary for the clergy he also estab-
lished religious societies for women. Over one of these
his sister, a godly widow, presided. On one occasion he
assured his congregation that he could not easily find
better, but had also nowhere found worse people than in
these cloisters.
But the Augustin extended beyond the
activity of
limits of his own congregation, and reached the entire

—
African yea, the entire Western Church. Pie was the
leading genius of tlie African Synods, which were held
toward the close of the fourth and the beginning of the
iifth century, at Carthage, a.d. 397, 403, 411, 413, 419,
and in other places, particularly against the Donatists
and Pelagians. He took the liveliest interest in all the
questions which were then agitated, and was unwearied
in devoting his powers to the general good.
The Ca,tholic Church had at that time three great ene-
mies, who threatened to deface and tear her in pieces at
every point, and had even forced themselves into the
congregation of Hippo. These were Manichgeism, Don-
atism, and Pelagianism. Augustin was their great oppo-
nent and final conqueror. The whole spiritual power of
the Latin Church concentrated itself, so to speak, in
him for the overthrow of these antagonists. He left no
lawful means unemployed for the expulsion of the evil.
But he principally fought with the weapon of argument,
and wrote a large number of works which, although de-
signed specially for the necessities and circumstances of
the time, yet contain a store of profound truths for all
ages.
136 SAINT AUGUSTIN.

CHAPTER XXIY.
LAST YEAIIS AND DEATH.

In his latter years Angustin cast one more glance be-

hind upon his entire literary course, and in his Hetrac-
tions subjected it to a severe criticism. His writings
against the Semi-Pelagians, in wliicli a milder and more
gentle spirit reigns, belong to this period. Like Luther
and Melanchthon, he was inclined to melancholy with
the failure of his bodily strength. This was increased by
much bitter experience and the heavy misfortunes which
befell his fatherland.
The Yandal king, Genseric, with fifty thousand war-
riors, among whom were Goths and Alani, in May of the

year 428, crossed over from Spain to Africa, wliich was

now filled with confusion and desolation. These barba-
rians raged more fiercely than wild beasts of prey, re-
duced towns and villages to ashes, spared no age or sex,
were especially severe against the orthodox clergy, be-
cause they themselves were Arians, and changed that
beautiful country into a desert.
Augustin was of the opinion that the bishops at least
should stand by their congregations in the hour of need,
that the bonds which the love of Christ had knit should
not be rent asunder, and that they should endure quietly
whatever God might send. " Whoever flies," he wrote
to Bishop Quodvultdeus,
''
so that the Church is not de-
prived of the necessary ministrations, he does what God
commands or permits. But whoever so flies that the
flock of Christ is left without the nourishment by which
it spiritually lives, he is an hireling, who, seeing the wolf

come, flies because he has no car3 for th? S'leop."

 LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 13

Boniface, tlie commander-in-cliief of the imperial

forces in Africa, who was friendly to Augustin, thongh
the occasion of much trouble to him, was beaten bj the
Yandals, and threw himself with the remnant of his army
into the fortified city ofHippo, where Possidius and
several other bishops had taken refuge. Augustin was
sorely oppressed by the calamities of his country and the
destruction of divine worship, which could now be cele-
brated only in the strongholds of Carthage, Cirta, and
Hippo. At table he once expressed himself to his friends
in the following language " What I pray God for is
:

that He will deliver this city from the enemy, or if He

has determined otherwise, that He may strengthen His
servant for his sufferings, or, which I would rather, that
He will call me from this world to Himself."
The last wish was granted him. In the third month
of the siege he was attacked by a violent fever, and ten
days before his death he withdrew into retirement, after
having, up till that time, proclaimed the Word of God
to his congregation without interruption. He spent this
season in reading the j)enitential psalms, which were at-
tached to the wall by his bedside, in holy meditations,
tears, prayers, and intercessions. He once said that no
one, especially no priest, ought to depart this life with-
out earnest repentance, and wrote concerning himself :

*'
I will not cease to weep until He comes, and I appear
before Him, and these tears are to me pleasant nutri-
ment. The thirst which consumes me, and incessantly
—
draws me toward yon fountain of my life this thirst is
always more burning when I see my salvation delayed.
This inextinguishaDle desire carries me away to those
streams, as well amid the joys as amid the sorrows of this
world. Yea, if I stand well with the world I am
wretched in myself, until I nppear before God,"
 138 SAINT AUGUSTIN".

On the 28tli of August, 430, in the seventy-sixth year

of his age, the great man peacefully departed into a bliss-
ful eternity, in the full possession of his faculties, and in
the presence of his friends.
He no will, for, having embraced voluntary pov-
left
erty, he had nothing to dispose of, except his books and
manuscripts, which he bequeathed to the Church.*
Soon after Hippo was taken. Henceforth Africa was
lost to the Romans, and vanished from the arena of
Church History. The culminating point of the spiritual
greatness of the African Church was also that of her
ruin. But her ripest frait, the S]3irit and the theology of
Augustin, could not perish. It fell on the soil of Europe,
where it has produced new glorious flowers and fruits,
and to this day exerts a mighty influence in Catholic and
Protestant Christendom.

CHAPTER XXV.
augustin' S WRITINGS.

Augustin is the most fruitful author among the Latin

Church-Fathers. His writings are almost too numerous.
One of his biographers reckons them, including about
four hundred sermons and two hundred and seventy let-
ters, at ten hundred and thirty. Others reduce the whole

* His friend and biographer, Possidiu-s, says, Vit. Aug. c. 31 " Tes-:

tamentum nullum fecit, quia unde faceret, pauper Dei non habuit. Ec-
clesicK hibliothecam omnesque codices diligenter posteris custodiendos semper
jubebaV*
 augustin's writings. 1^9

number to two hundred and tliirty-two, and the larger

ones to ninety-three. They fill eleven folio volumes in
the Benedictine edition of Augustin's works. "^
They contain department of theol-
his views in every
ogy, the rare treasures of his heart, and a true mind and
expression of the deepest religious and churchly move-
ments of his age, and at the same time secured an im-
measurable influence upon all succeeding generations.
He wrote out of the abundance of his heart, not to ac-
quire literary fame, but moved by the love of God and
man.
In point of learning he stands far behind Origen, Euse-
bins, and Jerome but in originality, depth, and wealth
;

of thought he surpasses all the Greek and Latin Fathers.

He knew no Hebrew and very little Greek, as he mod-
estly confesses himself.f He neglected and disliked the
noble language of Hellas in his youth, because he had a
bad teacher, and was forced to it. Bat after his conver-
sion, during his second residence in Rome, he resumed
the study of it, and acquired a sufiicient elementary
knowledge to compare the Latin version of the Script-
ures with the Septuagint and the Greek Testament. :j:

* A considerable number of them have been translated into Eng.

the Confessions, and the Ciiy of God. See the Oxford
lish, especially
"Library of the Fathers," 1837 sqq. "Vv^uiks of Aurelius Augus-;

tine," ed. by Marcis Dods, D.D., Eainburgh, 1871-1876, 15 vols.

and Schaii's edition, New York, 1886-88, 8 vols.
*'
t Orcecce linguae perp<irum assecutus sum, et prope nihil.' ^ Conlra
Literas Petiliani II. 38. Comp. De Trinltate III. Prooem. ; Confess. I.
14 ; VII. 9.

X He gives the etymology of several Greek "words, as aluvcovj

avd&efia, kyKalvia^ etc.
/Idyof, he correctly distinguishes between
;

yevvav and tIktelv^ hracpid^eiv and ^cnrTEiv, e.vxv ^.nd irpoaevx^^ ttvoIj

and izvEvjjn. He amends

the llala in about thirty places from the
Septuagint, and in throe places from the Greek Testament (John
140 SAINT AUGUSTIN.

Gibbon, usually very accurate, underestimates him when

'
he says that the superficial learning of Augustin was
'

confined to the Latin language," and that *' his style,

though sometimes animated by the eloquence of passion,
is usually clouded by false and affected rhetoric.""^ The
judgment of Dr. Baur, who had as little sympathy with
Augustin's theology, but a far better knowledge of it, is
more just and correct '^ There is scarcely another theo- :

logical author so fertile and withal so able as Augustin.

His scholarship was certainly not equal to his genius ;

yet even that is sometimes set too low, when it is asserted

that he had no acquaintance at all with the Greek lan-
guage for this is incorrect, though he had attained no
;

great proficiency in Greek." f

viii. 25 ; xviii. 37 ; Kom. i. 3). He also corrects Julian, his Pelagian

antagonist, by going back to the Greek. He explains the Greek mon-
ogram Ix'^yc {De Civ. Dei xviii. 23). He mentions the opinion (De
Civ. Dei XX. 19) that in 2 Thess. ii. 4 we should render the Greek {elg

Tov vaov Tov &eov), not in templo Dei, but more correctly in teinplum Dei,
as if Antichrist and his followers were themselves the temple of God,
the Church. He probably read Plotinus and Porphyry in the original.
Comp. Loesche : De Augusiino Floiinizante in doctrina de Deo, Jena,
1880.
* Decline and Fall, Ch. XXXHI.Augustin pos. He adds that *
'

sessed a strong, capacious, argumentative he boldly sounded mind ;

the abyss of grace, predestination, free will, and original sin and ;

the rigid system of Christianity which he framed or restored has

been entertained with public applause and secret reluctance by the
Catholic Church." He says in a note " The Church of Eome has :

canonized Augustin and reprobated Calvin."

t Dogmengesch. I. 1, p. 61 comp the section on Augustin in the
;

second volume of Baur's Church History. Compare also the judgments

of Villemain, Tableau de V eloquence chretienne au IV^ siecle, Paris, 1849f
p. 373 of Ozanam, La civilization au cinquieme siecle (vol. I. 272, in
;

Glyn's translation); and the eloquent account of the veteran and

liberal histoiian, Knrl Hase, in the first volume of his Lectures on
Church History, Leipzig. 1885, vol. I, 514 sqq.
 augustin's writings. 141

His style may indeed be blamed for verbosity, negli-

gence, and frequent repetition, but lie says : "I would
rather be censured by the grammarians than not under-
stood by the people ;" and, upon the whole, he had the
language wholly at command, and knew how to wield
the majestic power, the dignity and music of the Latin in
a masterly manner. His writings are full of ingenious
puns, and rise not seldom to strains of true eloquence
and poetic beauty. Several of his pregnant sentences
have become permanently lodged in the memory of the
Christian world. Such words of genius and wisdom
engraven upon the rock are worth more than whole libra-
ries written upon the sand. The following are among
his most striking and suggestive thoughts :

C(yr nostrum inquietum est donee requiescat in Te.

Our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.
Novum Testamentum in Velere latet, Vetus in Novo patet.
The New Testament is concealed in the Old. the Old is revealed in
the New.
Ubi amor ibi trinilas.
Where love is there is trinity.
Distingue tempora, et concordabit Scriptura.
Distinguish the times, and the Scriptures will agree.
Da quod jubes, etjube quod vis.
Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt.
Fides prcecedit inieUectum.
Faith precedes knowledge.
Non vincit nisi verilas ; victoria veritatis est caritas.
Truth only is victorious ; the victory of truth is charity.
Nulla infelicitas frangit, quern felicif as nulla corrumpit.
No misfortune can break him whom no fortune corrupts,
Deo servire vera libertas est.

To serve God is true liberty.

To Augustin is but falsely ascribed the

also popularly
famous and beautiful device of Christian union :

In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas.

In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.
142 SAIKT AUGUSTIN.

This sentence cannot be found in his writings. It is

too liberal for a Catholic divine, and is probably of
Protestant origin. It has been traced to Rupert Mel-
denius and Richard Baxter, two irenical divines of the
seventeenth century, one a German Lutheran or Melanch-
thonian, the other an English Presbyterian, who ia the
midst of the fury of theological controversies grew sick
of strife and longed after union and peace.
Since his productive period as an author extends over
four decades of years, from his conversion to the even-
ing of his and since he unfolded himself before the
life,

eyes of the public, contradictions on many minor points

were unavoidable wherefore, in old age, he subjected
;

his literary career to a conscientious revision in his

jRetractions^ and, in a spirit of genuine Christian hu-
mility, recalled much
he had maintained before
that
from honest conviction. But not all his changes are im-
provements. He had more liberal views in his younger
years.
His philosophical writings, which were composed soon
after his conversion, and which are yet full of Platonisra,
we have already mentioned.
His theological works may be divided into five classes :*
1. ExEGETicAL Writings. Here we may name his
Expositions of the Sermon on the Mount (393), of the
Epistle to the Galatians (394), of the Psalms (415), of
John (416), his Harmony of the Gospels (400), and an
extensive commentary on the first three chapters of
Genesis (415).
His strength lies not in knowledge of the original lan-

* For a account see the author's Church History, vol. III.

fuller
(revised ed. 1884), p. 1005 sqq. For his philosophical works and
opinions the reader is referred to Kitter, Erdmann, Ueberweg, Nour-
rison, Gangauf and A. Dorner, mentioned there, p. 989 and 1039.
,
 AUGUSTIN'S WRITIlfGS. 143

guages, nor in and grammatical exegesis, in

liistorical

which he was excelled by Jerome among the Latins, and

Clirysostom, Theodoret, and Theophylact among the
Greeks, but in the development of theological and relig-
ions thought. He depended mostly on the imperfect
Itala, which was current before Jerome's Ynlgate.
Hence he often misses the natural sense. But he had an
uncommon familiarity and full inward sympathy with
the Holy Scriptures, and often penetrates their deepest
meaning by spiritual intuition. He is ingenious and
suggestive, even where he violates the grammar or loses
himself in allegorical fancies. He exercised also a con-
siderable influenceon the final settlement of the canon of
Holy Scripture, whose hmit was so firmly fixed at the
Synods of Hij)po in the year 393, and of Carthage in
397, that even now it is universally received in the Cath-
olic and Evangelical churches, with tlie exception of a
difference in regard to the value of the Old Testament
Apocrypha, which the Council of Trent included in the
Canon, while the Protestant Confessions exclude them
or assign them a subordinate position.
2. Apologetic Writings. To these belong pre-emi-
nently his twenty-two books on the " City of God " {De
Civitate Dei), begun in 413 and finished in 426, in the
seventy-second year of his life. It is his most learned
and influential work. It is a noble and genial defence
of Christianity and the Church, in the face of the ap-
proaching downfall of the old Roman Empire and classic
civilization, in the face of the irruption of the wild,
northern barbarians into Southern Europe and Africa,
and in the face of the innumerable misfortunes and
calamities by which the human race was scourged during
that transition -period, and which were attributed by the
heathen to the decay of the ancient faith in the £:ods.
14:4 SAINT AUGUSTIN.

and laid to the charge of Christianitj. Augustin shows

that all these events are the result of a process of internal
putrefaction long since begun, a judgment to the heathen,
and a powerful call on them to awake and repent, and at

the same time a healthful trial and the

to Christians,
l)irth-throes of a new spiritual creation. Then he turns
from the vievv of a perishing natural world and her rep-
resentative, the city of Rome, conquered and laid waste
by Alaric, the King of the Goths, in the year 410, to the
contemplation of a higher, supernatural world — to the
City of God, founded by Christ upon a rock ; this city
can never be destroyed, but out of all the changes and
revolutions of time must rise, phoenix-like, with new
power and energy and after the fulfilment of her
;

earthly mission shall be separated even from external

communion with the world, and enter into the Sabbath
of eternal rest and spiritual repose. '^
The City of God "
is the first attempt at a philosophy of history, viewed

under the aspect of two antagonistic kingdoms.

3. Dogmatic and Polemic Works. These are very
numerous and important. Augustin was particularly en-
dowed as a speculative divine, a powerful reasoner, and
an acute controversialist. There is scarcely a theolog-
ical question which he did not revolve in his mind over
and over again. He ascended the highest heights and
sounded the deepest de^^ths of religious speculation. His
opinions are always worth considering. He had very
strong convictions, but was free from passion, and never
indulged in personalities. He was forcible in matter
and sweet in spirit, and spoke " the truth in love."
Amonsr his dosrmatic works we mention the fifteen
books on the Holy Trinity (against the Arians) the ;

hand-book {Enchiridion) on Faith, Hope, and Love and ;

the four books on Christian doctrine {De Doctrina

 augustin's writings. 145

Christiana), a hermeneutic dogmatic compendium for

religious teachers,and instruction in the development of
Christian doctrine from the Holy Scripture.
His polemic treatises may again be divided into three
classes :

{a) Anti-Manichcean Writings " On the Morals of

:

the Manichaeans ;" on the *' Morals of the Catholic

Church;" on ''Free Will;" on the ''Two Souls;"
" Against Faustus," and others. They are the chief
source of our knowledge of the Manichsean errors, and
their refutation. They belong to his earliest works.
They defend the freedom of will against fatalism ; after-

wards he changed his opinion on that subject.

{h) Anti-Donatistio Writings " On Baptism against
:

the Donatists ;" " Against the Epistle of Parmenianus ;"

" Airainst Petilianus ;" " Extract from the Transactions
of the Religious Conference with the Donatists ;" and
others. They are the chief source of our knowledge of
the remarkable Donatistic schism in Africa, which began
long before Augustin's time, and was overcome prin-
cipally by his intellectual ability. They treat chiefly of
the essence and the attributes of the Church and her
relation to the world, of the evil of schism and separa-
tion. They complete the development of the Catholic
idea of the Church, her visible unity and universality,
which was begun already by Ignatius and Iren?eus, and
carried on by Cyprian. They were composed between
393 and 420.
Unfortunately he approved also of coercive measures
of state for the suppression of the separatistic movement,
and supported it by a false exegesis of the passage,
" Compel them to come in" (Luke xiv. 23). He thus
furnished the chief authority in the middle ages for those
cruel persecutions of heretics which blacken so many
146 SAIHT AUGUSTIiq".

pages of Chiircli History, and from which, if he could

have foreseen them, his own Christian feehngs would
have shrunk back in horror. Thus great and good men,
even without intending it, have, through mistaken zeal,
occasioned much mischief.
(c) Anti- Pelagian Writings, of the years 4:11-420, to
which are to be added the anti- Semi- Pelagian writings
of the last years of his life. We mention here the books
" On Nature and Grace ;" " On Merit and Forgive-
ness ;" '^ On Grace and Free- Will ;" '^ On the Spirit
and the Letter ;" " On Original Sin ;" " On the Pre-
destination of the Saints ;'' " On the Gift of Persever-
ance" {De Dono Persever ant ioB) '^
Against Pelagius
;

and Ccelestius ;" '^

Against Julian" (a bishop of Eclanum
in Apulia, infected with Pelagianism). In these treatises
Augustin develops his j)rofound doctrines of original sin,
the natural inability of man for good of the grace and
;

merit of Christ ;of eternal election of faith and per-

;

—
severance to the end in opposition to the shallow and
superficial errors of the contemporaneous monks, Pela-
gius and Ccelestius, who denied natural depravity, and
just so far overthrew the value of divine grace in Christ.
These books belong to his inost meritorious labors, and
are decidedly evangelical, though not free from exag-
gerations. They have exerted a greater influence on the
Reformers of the sixteenth century, especially on Lutlier,
Melanchthon, and Calvin, than any of his own or of all
other human productions besides.* His anti-Pelagian
views of sin and grace and divine foreordi nation are
technically called ^' the Augustinian sj^stem," and this

* I furnished a detailed representation of the Pelagian controversy

and Angnstia's views in connection with it for the " Bibliotheca
Sacra and Theological Eeview" of Andover for the year 1848, vol. v.,
p. 205-2-43, and in my Ghnrch IIi.<ifory, vol. III., 783-865.
 augustin's writings. 117

again is often, thougli erroneously, identified with the

Calvinistic system of theology. But he held along with
it other views which are essentially Catholic and un-
protestant, especially on the Church, on baptism, on jus-
tification, on asceticism.
4. Ascetic and Practical Writings. Among these
we may number the *'
Soliloquies ;" Meditations '^ ;"
^'On the Christian Conflict;" " On the Excellency of
Marriage," and a great mass of sermons and homilies,
part of which were written out by himself and part taken
down by his hearers. Of these there are about four
hundred, besides those which that indefatigable editor of
unpublished manuscripts. Cardinal Angelo Mai, has
discovered among the treasures of the Vatican Library,
and given to the press.
5. Autobiographical, or writings which concern his

own life and personal relations. Here belong the inval-

uable '^
Confessions," already known to us — his exhibi-
tion of himself to the time of his conversion ; the " Re-
tractions," his revision and self -correcting retrospect at
the close of his splendid career in the Cliurcli and the
fields of literature ; of tvvt> hundred
lastly, a collection
and seventy letters, in which he exhibits a true picture
of his external and internal life.
148 SAINT AUGUSTIN.

CHAPTER XXYI.
THE INFLUENCE OF AUGUSTIN ON HIS OWN AND SUCCEED-
ING GENEKATIONS.

From mass of writings it is easy to

this compreliensive
determine the significance and influence of Augustin.
In the sphere of theology, as well as in all other
spheres of literatm-e, it is not the quantity, but the ([ual-
ity of the intellectual product which renders it most
effective. The have written but little
apostles ; and
yet the Gospel of St. John, for example, or the Epistle
to the Romans exert more influence than whole libraries

—
of excellent books yea, than the literatures of whole
nations. Tertullian'sApology ;" Cyprian's short
'^

treatise on the Unity of the Church ;" Anselm's " Our

''

Deus homOj^^ and ^^ Monologmm Bernhard's tracts on

;''''

^'
Despising the World," and on " The Love of God ;"
the anonymous little book of '^
German Theology," and
similar productions, which may be contained in a couple
of sheets, have moved and blessed more minds than the
numerous abstruse folio volumes of many scholastics of
the Middle Ages and old Protestant divines. Augustin's
''
Confessions ;" the simple little book of the humble,
secluded monk, Tliomas a Kempis, on the '^ Imitation
of Christ ;" Bunyan's '' Pilgrim's Progress ;" Arndt's
''
True Christianity," have each converted, edified,
strengthened, and consoled more persons than whole
ship-loads of indifferent religious books and commen-
taries.

But Augustin was not only a voluminous writer, but also

a profound thinker and subtle reasoner. His books, with
all the faults and repetitions of isolated parts, are a spon-
 THE INFLUENCE OF AUGUSTIN. 149

taneons outflow from the marvellous treasures of Lis

Ijiglily-gifted mind aud liis truly pious heart. Although
he occupied one of the smaller bishoprics, he was jet, in
fact, the head and leading spirit of the African Church,
around whom Aurelius of Carthage, the primate of
Africa, Evodius of Uzala, Fortunatus of Cirta, Possidius
of Calama, Alypius of Tagaste, and many other bishops

—
willingly and gladly ranged themselves yea, in him
tlie whole Western Church of antiquity reached its high-

est spiritual vigor and bloom. His appearance in the

history of dogmas forms a distinct epoch, especially as it
regards anthropological and soteriological doctrines,
wliich he advanced considerably further, and brought to
a greater clearness and precision than they had ev^er had
before in the consciousness of the Church. For this was
needed such a rare union of the speculative talent of the
Greek, and of the practical spirit of the Latin Church
as he alone possessed. As in the doctrines of sin and
grace, of the fall of Adam and the redemption of Christ,
the two cardinal points of practical Christianity, he went
far beyond the theology of the Oriental Church, wdiich
devoted its chief energies to the development of the
dogmas of the Holy Trinity and the person of Christ, so
at the same time he opened up new paths for the prog-
ress of Western theology.
Not only over his own age, but over all succeeding
generations also, he has exercised an immeasurable influ
ence, and does still, as far as the Christian Church and
theological science reach > with the exception of the
Greek Church, which adheres to her own traditions and
the decisions of the seven CEcumenical Councils. It
may be doubted if ever any uninspired theologian has
had and still has so large a number of admirers and disci-
ples as the Bishop of Hippo. AVliile most of the great
150 SAINT AUGUSTUS.

men in the liistorj of the Church are claimed either by

the Catholic or bj the Protestant Confession, and. their
influence is therefore confined to one or the other, he
enjoys from both a respect equally profound and endur-
*
ing.
On the one hand, he is among the chief creators of the
Catholic theology. Through the whole of the Middle
Ages, from Gregory the Great down to the Fathers of
Trent, he was the highest theological authority. Thomas
Aquinas alone could in some measure contest rank this
with him. By his fondness for speculation and his
dialectic acumen he became the father of mediaeval
scholasticism / and at the same time, by his devotional
fervor and spirit glowing with love, the author of
mediseval mysticis'm. Hence the most distinguished
representatives of scholasticism —as Anselm, Peter Lom-
bard, Thomas Aquinas — and the representatives of mys-
ticism —as Bernhard of Clairvaux, Hugo of Victor, St.
and Tauler—have collectively appealed to his authority,
been nourished on his writings, and saturated with his
spirit. Even day the Catholic Church, notwith-
at this
standing her condemnation of many doctrines of Augus-
tin, under the names of Protestant, and Janscnist here-

sies, counts liim among her greatest saints and most illus-

trious doctors.
It must not be omitted that he is responsible also for
many grievous errors of the Roman Church. He advo-
cated the principle of persecutionhe taught the damna-
;

tion of nnbaptized infants he anticipated the dogma of

;

the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary and ;

his ominous word, Roma locuta est^ causa finita est^

might almost be quoted in favor of the Vatican decree
of papal infallibility. These errors lie like an incubus
on the Poman Church. Error is all the more tenacious
 THE INFLUENCE OF AUGUSTIN. 151

and dangerous the greater the truth it contains, and the

greater and wiser the man who advocates it.
But, on the other hand, this same Angustin has also
an evangelical- Protestant significance. Next to the
Apostle Paul, he was the chief teacher of the whole body
of the Reformers of the sixteenth century, and his ex-
egetical and anti-Pelagian writings were the main source
from which they derived their views on the depravity of
human nature and the excellence of the forgiving, regen-
erating, and sanctifying grace of God in Christ, and op-
posed the dead formalism, self-righteous Pelagianism,
and stiff mechanism of the scholastic theology and monk-
ish piety of that age. As is well known, they followed
him from the very beginning even to the dizzy abyss of
the doctrine of predestination, which Luther (in his work
De Servo Arhitrio) and Calvin reproduced in its most
rigorous form, in order to root out Pelagianism and
Semi -Pelagianism, and with them all human boasting.
Of Augustin they always s])eak with high esteem and
love, which is the more remarkaljle because they are
otherwise very free not only with the medisoval school-
men, but with the ancient Fathers, and sometimes even,
in the passionate heat of their opposition to slavish rever-
ence, treat them with neglect and contempt. ^^

* la this, aseverywhere, Luther is especially outspoken and char-

acteristic. Kis contempt for Scholasticism, which he derives from
" the accursed heathen Aristotle," is well known. Even the writings
of Thomas Aquinas, for whom the Lutheran theologians of the seven-
teenth century had great resjject, he once calls " the dregs of all
heresies, error, and destruction of the Gospel." Neither did he si^are
the ancient Fathers, being conscious of the difference between Prot-
estant and Patristic theology. **A11 the Fathers," he once says
without ceremony, " have erred in faith, and, if not converted before
death, are eternally damned." " St. Gregory is the useless fountain-
head and author of the fables of purgatory and masses for souls. He
152 SAII^T AUGUSTIN".

I will add the most recent estimates of Augustin by

Protestant historians in confirmation of the views ex-
pressed in this chapter.

was very acquainted with Christ and His Gospel he is entirely

ill ;

too superstitious the Devil has corrupted him." On Jerome, whose

;

Vulgaia was indispensable in his translation of the Bible into Ger-

man, he was particularly severe on account of his monastic tenden-
cies and legalism. He calls him a " heretic who has written much
profanity. He has deserved hell more than heaven. I know no one
of the Fathers to whom I am so hostile, as to him. He writes only
about fasting, virginity, and such things.'* For the same reason he
condemns St. Basil, one of the chief promoters of monachism :

" He is good for nothing is only a monk I would not give a straw
; ;

for him." Of Chrysostom, the greatest expounder of the Scriptures

and pulpit-orator of the Greek Church, but of whom certainly he had
only the most superficial knowledge, he says, *' He is worth nothing
to me he is a babbler, wrote many books, which make a great show,
;

l)ut are only huge, wild, tangled heaps and crowds and bags full of
words, for there is nothing in them, and little wool sticks." Now-
adays not a solitary Lutheran theologian of any learning will agrre
with him in this view. The Reformer was at times dissatisfied wiih
Augustin himself, because, amid all his congeniality of mind, ho
could not just find in him his "sola fide." *' Augustin has often
erred, he is not to be trusted. Although good and holy, he was yet
lacking in true faith as well as the other Fathers.'
' But over against
this casual expression stand a number of eulogies on Augustin.
Luther's words must not be weighed too nicely, else any and every-
thing can be proven by him, and the most irreconcilable contradic-
tions shown. We must always judge him according to the moment
and mood in which he spoke, and duly remember his bluntness and
his stormy, warlike nature. Thus, the above disparaging sentences
upon some of the greatest theologians are partly annulled by his
churchly and historical feeling, and by many expressions, like that
in a letter to Albert of Prussia (a.d. 1532), where he declares the im-
portance of tradition in matters of faith, as strongly as any Catholic.
In reference to the real presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, he
says :
" Moreover this article has been unanimously believed and
held from the beginning of the Christian Church to the present
hour, as may be shown from the books and writings of the dear
Fathers, both in the Greek and Latin languages, which testimony
 THE INPLUHNCE OF AUGUSTIN". 153

Dr. Bindemann, one of the best Protestant biographers

of Angustin, thus sums up his estimate of his character
and influence '^Augustin is one of the most extraordinary
:

lights in the Church. In importance he takes rank be-

hind no teacher who has labored in her since the days of
the apostles. It may well be said that the first place
among the Church Fathers is due to him, and at the time
of the Reformers only a Luther, by reason of the ful-
ness and depth of his spirit and his nobleness of charac-
ter, was worthy to stand at his side. He is the highest
point of the development of the Western Church before
the Middle Ages. From him the Mysticism, no less than
the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages, has drawn its life ;

he forms the mightiest pillar of Koman Catholicism ;

and the leaders of the Reformation derived from his

writings next to the study of the Holy Scriptures, espe-
cially the Paulinian Epistles, those principles which gave
birth to a new era." Dr. Kurtz (in the eleventh edition
of his Cliurclb Jlisiory, 1890) calls Augustin ^'
the
greatest, mightiest, and most influential of all the fathers,
from whom the entire doctrinal and ecclesiastical devel-
opment of the Occident proceeded, and to whom it re-
turns again and again in all its turning-points. " Dr. Carl

of the entire holy Christian Church ought to be sufficient for us, even
if we had nothing more. For it is dangerous and dreadful to hear or
believe anything against the unanimous testimony, faith, and doctrine of
the entire holy Christian Church, as it has been held unanimously in all the
loorld upyear 1500.
to this Whoever now doubts of this, he does just
as much though he believed in no Christian Church, and con-
as
demns not only the entire holy Christian Church as a damnable
heresy, but Christ Himself, and all the apostles and prophets, who
founded this article, when we say, I believe in a holy Christian
'

Church,' to which Christ bears powerful testimony in Matt, xxviii.

29 :Lo I am with you always to the end of the world,' and Paul
'

in 1 Tim, iii. 15 The Church is the pillar and ground of the

:
*

truth.'"
154 SAINT AUGUSTIN.

Bnrk (in liis Church History, 1885) says that in Ani^ustin

ancient and modern ideas are melted, and tliat to liis

authority the papal church has as much right to appeal

as the cliurches of the Reformation. Karl Hase em-
phasizes the liberal features of Augustin, and remarks
that "a right estimate *of his importance as an author
can only be made when we perceive how the scholastics
and mystics of the Middle Ages lived upon his riches,
and how even Luther and Calvin drew out of his depths."
Harnack judges that between Paul and Luther no divine
can be compared with Augustin for extent of influence.
The great genius of the African Church, from whom
the Middle Aires and the Reformation have received an
impulse alike powerful, though in different directions,
has not yet fulfilled the work marked out for it in the
counsels of DivineWisdom. He serves as a bond of
union between the two antagonistic sections of Western
Christendom, and encourages the hope that a time may
come when the and bitterness of strife will be
injustice
forgiven and forgotten, and the discords of the past be
drowned forever in the sweet harmonies of perfect
knowledge and perfect love.
This end may be afar off. It will come when the
''
City of God" is completed. "• Then and there" (to

use the closing words of his admirable work) ''we shall

rest and see, see and love, love and praise. This is
what shall be in the end without end. For what other
end do we propose to ourselves than to attain to the
Kingdom of which there shall be no end ?"
What Augustin has so beautifully said of men as indi-
viduals may, with great propriety, be applied also to the
ages of the Church ^'
Thou, O Lord, hast created us
:

for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in
Thee.''
 THE AUGUSTIlSriAlS^ SYSTEM. 155

CHAPTEE XXVII.
THE AUGUSTINIAN SYSTEM.

A FEW words more on tlie anti-Pelagian system of

Augustin, wliicli is so closely interwoven with the history
of Protestant theology. It is imbedded in the Confes-
sions of theReformation it ruled the scholastic theol-
;

ogy of the Lutheran and Reformed churches during the

seventeenth century it was gradually undermined first
;

by the Arminian movement in Holland, then by the

Wesleyan Methodism in England and America, and by
the rationalistic revolution of the last century, but is still

held by the schools of orthodoxy in the Lutheran

strict

and Calvinistic churches, with this difference, however,

that the Lutheran Formula of Concord teaches a %ini-
versal call in connection with a j[)articular election^ and
rejects the decree of reprobation.
The Roman Church accepted Augustinianism ouly in
part and in subordination to her sacramentarian and sac-
erdotal system. The Greek Church ignored it altogether,
althougli Pelagius was condemned with Nestorius by the
CEcumenical Council of Ephesus in 431, without a doc-
trinal statement of the controverted points.
Tlie Augustinian system assumes but one probation of
man and but one act of freedom, which was followed by
a universal slavery of sin and by a partial redemption ;

God choosing by an eternal decree of grace from the

mass of perdition a definite number of the elect for
salvation, and leaving the rest to their deserved ruin. It
suspends the eternal fate of Adam and his unborn pos-
terity, which he represented, upon a single act of dis-
obedience, which resulted in the damnation of untold
15G SAINT AUGUSTIN.

millions of immortal beings, including all nnbaptized in-

fants dying in infancy. That act, with its fearful con-
sequences, was, of course, eternally foreseen by the
omniscient God, and must in some sense also have been
decreed or foreordained, since nothing can happen with-
out His sovereign and almighty will. Augustin and the
Protestant Confessions stop within the infralajpsarian
scheme, which puts the fall only under a permissive
decree, and makes Adam
and the race responsible for sin.
Here is an inconsistency, which has its root in a strong
sense of God's holiness and man's guilt. The sujpra-
lapsarian scheme, which was developed by a school in
Calvinistic churches, but never obtained symbolical sanc-
tion, is logically more consistent, but practically more
revolting by including the fall itself in an efficient de-
cree of God, and making sin the necessary means for
the manifestation of divine mercy in the saved, and of
divine justice in the lost.

Melanchthon in and the Arminians

his later years,
after him, felt the speculative and moral difficulties of

Augustinianism, but were no more able to remove them

by their compromise theories than the Semi -Pelagians of
old. Yea, even Calvin, while accepting in faith the ab-
solute decree, called it a
''
deoretum horrihile, attamen
verumy
Long before Augustin, Origen had taught another
solution of the problem of sin, based on the Platonic
theory of pre- existence he went even beyond the be-
;

ginning of history where Augustin began, and assumed

a pre-historic fall of every individual soul (not of the
race, as Augustin held), but also a final salvation of all.
Schleiermacher combined the Augustinian or Calvin-
istic predestinarianism with the Origenistic restoration-

ism, and taught a universal election, which unfolds itself

 THE AUGUSTI.NTIAI^ SYSTEM. 157

by degrees, and, while involving temporary reprobation

a
of the impenitent, results in the final conversion and res-
toration of all men to holiness and happiness. Pantheism
goes still and makes sin a necessary transition
further,
2)oint in the process of moral evolution, but thereby cuts
the nerve of moral responsibility, and overthrows the
hoHness of God.
Thus the deepest and strongest minds, both philoso-
phers and theologians, have been wresth'ng again and
again with the dark, terrific problem of sin and death in
its relation to an all-wise, holy, and merciful God, and

yet have reached no satisfactory solution except that

God overrules evil for a greater good. The Augustinian
system contains a vast amount of profound truth, and
has trained some of the purest and strongest types of
Christian character among the Jansenists and Huguenots
of France, the Calvinists of Holland, the Puritans of
England, the Covenanters of Scotland, and the Pilgrim
Fathers of IN'ew England. Kevertheless, as a system it
is unsatisfactory, because it assumes an unconscious and

yet responsible pre-existence of the race in Adam, and

because it leaves out of sight the universal benevolence
and impartial justice of God to all His creatures, and
the freedom and individual responsibility of man, who
stands or falls with his own actual sins. But it will re-
quire another theological genius even deeper and broader
than Origen, Augustin, Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, and
Schleiermacher, to break the spell of that system by sub-
stituting a better one from the inexhaustible mines of
the Scripture, which contains all the elements and aspects
of the truth, without giving disproportion to one and
doing injustice to another.
The study of history liberalizes and expands the mind,
and teaches us to respect and love, without idolatry,
158 SAINT AUGUSTIN".

every great and good man notwithstanding his errors of

judgment and defects of cliaracter. There never was an
unerring and perfect being on earth but One who is
more than man, and who alone could say ''I am the :

Wjiy, and the Truth, and the Life."

LITERATUKE.
For the extensive bibliography on St. Augu.^tin the reader is re-

ferred to Schaff's History of the Gkrlstian Church, vol. III., 988-90 and
1038 sq. (last revision, 1889), and the Prolegomena to his Nicene
and Post-Nlcene Library, First Series (1886-90), vol. I., 1-3.
The best edition of St. Augustin's Works, in the original Latin, is
the Benedictine, Paris, 1679-1700, 11 torn, in 8 vols, fol., which has
been several times reprinted e.g., by Gaume, Paris, 1836-39, and

Migne, 1811-49 (in 12 vols.). The English translations have already

been mentioned in Chapter XXV.
The chief biographers of St. Augnstin are Possidius, his pupil and
friend ; Poujoulat, in French (Paris, 1813 and 1852, 2 vols.); C.
BiNDEMANN, in German (Berlin, 1811-69, 3 vols.).
On liis theology, see W. Cunningham : Si. Aus>in and his Place in
Chrisllan Thought, Cambridge, 1886 ; H. Eeutee : Augustinische
Studien, Gotha, 1887 ; and the able critique of the Augustinian sys-
tem by Adolf Harnack in the third volume of his Dogmengeschichte,
Freiburg i. B., 1890, pp. 3 sqq. ; 51 sqq. ; 81 sqq. ; 151 sqq.
The present biography is and enlargement of
a free reproduction
the author's Der heil. Augustbius. Snn L^ben und Wirlcen, published
by W. Hertz, in Berlin, 1851. An English frnnslation by his friend,
Prcfessor Thomas C. Porter, DD. was published by J. C. Eiker,
,

New York, 1851, and Samuel Bagster «& Sons, London, 1854.
 NATURE TEACHINGS,
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY REV.

HUGH MACMILLAN, LL.D., F.R.S.E.,

AUTHOR OF "bible TEACHINGS IN NATURE," ETC,

?vo, Cloth Extra. Price, $2.50. Just Out.

One of the most characteristic features of modern culture is the attention

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BEl YORK: THOMAS WHITTAKER. 2 ASD 3 BIBLE HOUSE.

 The Bishop Paddock LectiC7^es for iS8g.

lABOLOLOGY.
TliG Person anfl Kingdom of Satan.

By rev. EDWARD H. JEWETT, S.T.D.,

Prof, of Pastoral Theology in the General Theological Seminary
New York.

Octavo, cloth binding. Price, $1.50.

This work is, in so far as it goes, a thorough and schol

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error, and the firmer confirmation of faith in the important
doctrines of which they treat." Although written primaril}-
for the scholarly public, the style is simple, and the language
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Where quotations are given as foot notes in their original
languages, a translation is embodied within the text itself
and on the same pages. To such as deny with the Sadducees
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may possibly possess but little convincing power; but, to the
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