YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

THE

TEACHING AND INFLUENCE

SAINT AUGUSTINE
AN ESSAY
WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO RECENT MISAPPREHENSIONS

JAMES FIELD SPALDING

RECTOR OF CHRIST CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

NEW YORK
JAMES POTT AND COMPANY
1886

S^js*W of the

V

YALE DI'/HSITY SCHOOL

6H3 X

Copyright, 1886,
By JAMES FIELD SPALDING.

ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED
BY RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY,
BOSTON, MASS.

Below are given the principal works and editions referred
to in the following pages : —
Sancti Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi Opera omnia.
Opera et studiis monachorum ordinis Sancti Benedicti. (Parisiis,
1836.) Library of the Fathers. New issue. (Oxford and London,
1879-) The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. A new
translation. (Edinburgh, 1876.)
Select Anti-Pelagian Treatises of St. Augustine, with an Intro
duction by William Bright, D.D. (Oxford, 1880.)
A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination. By"'
J. B. Mozley, D.D. Third edition. (London, 1883.)
Histoire de Saint Augustin. Par M. Poujoulat. (Paris, 1846.)
Der heilige Augustinus, dargestellt von Carl Bindemann.
(Greifswald, 1869.)
Evenings with the Skeptics. By John Owen, Rector of East
Anstey, Devon. (London, 1881.)
The Continuity of Christian Thought. By Alexander V. G.
Allen, Professor in the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge,
Mass. (Boston, 1884.)

THE TEACHING AND INFLUENCE OF
SAINT AUGUSTINE

One result of the Catholic revival which has visited
the Church of England, and indeed the entire Anglican
Communion, during the present century, has been to
awaken and renew interest in the study of the Fathers.
The appeal so continually made to antiquity has been
taken up and carried on from one point to another in
our modern life ; and it can be no matter of surprise,
but should be cause for deep gratitude, that it has met
so full and hearty a response. Sincerity of spirit, ear
nestness of purpose, and patience in actual research
have led honest inquirers to satisfactory results. The
wisdom, learning, intellectual grasp, spiritual percep
tion, or clear insight into Holy Scripture ; the profound
reasoning, soaring imagination, or acute speculation of
these ancient writers has been marked and admired.
Although, from the very necessities of the case, they
have been judged far inferior in some ways to modern
writers, in others they have been found to be as far
superior to them. In thought and expression and
philosophical theory it has been seen again and again
5

6 SAINT AUGUSTINE
that they have anticipated the moderns, and readers
have been surprised to find that what they supposed
was original to the nineteenth century was in the writ
ings of the first or second. More than all else, the
practical consensus of antiquity upon cardinal matters
of doctrine, or discipline, or worship, has yielded testi
mony which has been invaluable; and the Church's
teachings, seen in this concentrated light of ancient
interpretation, have come to be more definitely dis
cerned, and her holy ways more devoutly loved. If a.
wholly different animus has appeared to actuate any
in their investigations, as may be noticed in certain
recent writings about the Fathers, even this has not
been without advantage. The extreme of inaccuracy
of statement or fancif ulness of conjecture, the farthest
reach of free-thinking in aversion to Catholic dogma or
sacramental grace or the authority of the Church, —
all this has been but a strong incentive to urge many
who never before inquired to look into the Fathers
for themselves, and see whether these things were so.
Not seldom the arguments of detractors have over
shot themselves and proved too much, and thinking
men have been content to say that it was very strange
that this or that great Doctor of the Church should
have been held in universal esteem for so many cen
turies, for the grandness and comprehensiveness of his
teaching, and that his real place of littleness and bigotry
should be the discovery of to-day !
Moreover, the differences and the agreements be
tween the earlier and the later Fathers, or between the

MOTIVES FOR STUDYING HIS WRITINGS 7
Greek and the Latin Fathers, have been put under
examination. While there have been found natural
variations, such as one would expect, from the distinc
tion between the Eastern and the Western type of
mind, habits of thought, surroundings, or climatic in
fluence ; or as between the first century and the fourth
or fifth, in the advancement of civilization, the growth
of the Church, or the power of the State, a thorough
investigation, as we believe, has not revealed those
radical differences which some have claimed between
the orthodox East and the orthodox West ; — as if
the Greek and the Latin theologies had nothing in
common upon the broad, underlying truths, e.g. of the
presence of God in the world or in the Church, the
Incarnation of our Lord, Divine grace, human sin and
human freedom.
Confessedly pre-eminent among the Latin Fathers,
— many would say among all the Fathers, — is S. Au
gustine. His natural gifts and acquired powers were
so remarkable, the extent and variety of his writings so
great ; his impress upon his own age was so weighty,
his authority throughout the' Western Church for the
next thousand years so unshaken ; and the range of his
subsequent influence has been so wide and deep, that
history has brought down to our day no name among
Illustrious Christian thinkers and teachers so familiar.
In this very fact, with what it implies, lies the secret
of our desire to say something anew upon his life and
work. The familiarity with the name of S. Augustine
is, of course, on the part of very many, even intelligent

8 SAINT AUGUSTINE
people, in this busy age, only that, — a familiarity with
the name ; they live, all unconsciously, under the power
of his master-spirit. Others, again, both in the Church
and in the dissenting bodies about us, have a more or
less mistaken conception of this great saint and Father :
— they almost take away his individuality, and identify
him in their minds with Luther, or Calvin, or Jansen ;
while they think of his teaching as chiefly some dread
ful notions of predestination and original sin and eter
nal punishment. Both these classes of people need to
gain a knowledge of S. Augustine. Others still, who
years ago may have been careful students of his writ
ings, may find benefit in observing, from the new per
spective, of present individual experience or of the ideas
of our time, the relative proportions of his opinions and
doctrines ; having learned, perhaps, with fuller knowl
edge and riper wisdom, to put a fairer estimate upon
his life and work ; to enter, with more sensitive appre
ciation, into his spirit ; more accurately to understand
his teaching; and thus, more truly than ever before,
to comprehend his greatness.
One other object we have in view; — to say a few
words upon the influence of S. Augustine. We do not
regard that influence in the distant past and up to
the present hour either as unmixed evil, or as more
evil than good. Accordingly, we should not think
with satisfaction of what has been called " the linger
ing hold of Augustine upon the modern mind." Nor
do we see any reason to suppose that his influence is
really waning. We believe that the centuries to come

HIS INFLUENCE 9
will fully uphold the just verdict of the present and
the past,  not of blind admiration, or servile follow
ing, or unquestioning assent ; but of glad recognition of
unwonted powers of mind and heart loyally and on the
whole wisely exercised, in defence of great doctrines
of Holy Scripture, and in maintenance of the ministry
and sacraments of the Church. That he committed no
error of doctrine, we do not say ; he never claimed in
fallibility for himself ; in his humility he was farthest
from any such pretence ; he is not our master, nor has
the Church ever accepted all his system of doctrine ;
as has been justly observed, " she is free from all bond
age to the letter of his writings ; she is not his, but he
is hers."
We do not propose to speak with any fulness of S.
Augustine's life ; yet, even at the risk of repeating
what may be known, we shall trace its main events ; for
the history of his life is wonderfully bound up with the
history of his opinions. He was born at Thagaste, in
Numidia, November 13, A.D. 354. His father, Patricius,
was then a heathen.1 His mother, Monica, was a de
vout Christian. His father's opposition may have pre
vented his being baptized in infancy. His mother did
all she could ; and made him a catechumen by the cere
monies then in use in the Church.2 When he was quite
1 He became a Christian late in life, won by the example and persua
sion of the holy Monica.
2 In Wall's Hist, of Inf. Baptism, Vol. I. p. 403, etc., a fair explana
tion is given why Augustine was not baptized in infancy, in answer to
the supposition that infant baptism was not then practised.

IO SAINT AUGUSTINE
a young child, he was near being baptized, at his own
request, in serious illness ; but on his recovery the
sacrament was again postponed, in part, now, from his
mother's wish, who foresaw the temptations of youth,
and dreaded the greater guilt of sin after baptism.
(Confess. 1. i. c. n.) In spite of her fond instructions,
his boyhood soon showed an extraordinary degree of
waywardness. He hated his studies, and had to be
whipped to his tasks. Latin he naturally acquired with
ease, and more from listening than from lessons (Conf.
i. 14) ; and he has left on record his exceeding love for
that language ; but all else was " a burden and a punish
ment," and emphatically the Greek tongue, for which
he seems to have continued to cherish a dislike, and in
which he never gained high proficiency ; although his
ignorance was not such as to justify the contemptuous
statements which have been made upon the subject.1
At the age of sixteen we find him, after having been
for a time at school in Madaura, a neighboring city,
spending a year at home, while his parents saved money
to send him to Carthage to complete his studies. That
year of "imposed idleness" must have been one of
great peril to him, just at that age, and with such a
nature and habits as he had. His Confessions tell of
the development of vice which then went on within
1 His own admissions of slight knowledge, — " prope nihil " he calls it
in one place, should be taken in connection with passages in his writings
which prove the extent of that knowledge. A great number of such have
been collected by Abp. Trench in his 51. Augustine as an Interpreter of
Scripture, pp. 20-22. For his own statements, cf. Conf. i. 13, 14; Con. lit.
Petit, ii. 38; De Trin. iii. 1 ; De Doctr. Christ, ii. 11-15.

EARLY AND STUDENT-LIFE 1 1
him. His father seems not to have been much con
cerned, and his mother's warnings and entreaties were
only despised (Conf. ii. 3), though both were but " too
anxious " that he should get learning, the one with
motive of worldly advancement, the other to bring him
nearer God. Soon after this his father died ; and the
subsequent expense of his education was partly met
by a wealthy fellow -townsman. His student-life of
three years in Carthage (from seventeen to nineteen)
was one of gay, wild, licentious dissipation, and yet of
high attainment in his studies. He shone especially in
rhetoric, (a department which included far more then
than now,) and found himself at the head of the school.
(Conf. iii. 3.) The reading of Cicero's Hortensius first
awakened in him the love of philosophy. Urged by
the spirit of that book, and doubtless recalling his early
Christian instructions, he began to look into the Holy
Scriptures ; but soon turned away, not thinking them
worthy to be compared with the dignity of Cicero.
(Conf. iii. 5.) His attention was next taken by Mani-
chaeism, whose claim of divine inspiration and promises
of knowledge and truth (Conf. iii. 6 ; vi. 5) proved a
ready snare ; and, once captured, he was held for nine
years. He embraced this heresy just at the close of
his student-life. Returning to his native town, to teach
rhetoric, his zeal was at once shown for the success of
his new opinions ; and he was increasingly elated with
pride that by his dialectic skill he could overcome any
opponents. Among others, he had won over to Mani-
chaeism a friend whom he had known from a child.

1 2 SAINT A UG US TINE
This friend fell sick ; he was baptized into the Christian
faith ; he rebuked the error of Augustine ; he died.
His death filled Augustine's soul with grief ; and the
'circumstances may have also created a longing for a
comfort in grief which perhaps the Christian faith
would supply. In his revulsion of feeling he left Tha-
gaste and went back to Carthage. Here he remained
several years, "for love of gain making sale of loquacity,"
as he afterwards describes it." His dissatisfaction with
Manichaeism was all this while increasing ; he saw,
more and more, that its doctrines of God and the world,
and especially of evil and its nature, were vain delu
sions. As a system, it had not kept its promises of
wisdom and truth ; and when at last he got no answer
to his difficulties in a long-desired conference with
Faustus, their most distinguished bishop, he became
disgusted with the sect, and determined to abandon it.
This was in his twenty-ninth year. (Conf. v. 3, 7.)
Very soon after (probably in A.D. 383), contrary to his
mother's wishes, and deceiving her at the time of his
going (Conf. v. 8), he removed to Rome, in response to
inducements of friends, who represented that in that
city he would gain higher honors and advantages, and
chiefly that he would have a more quiet set of students.
There, not unnaturally, from his connection with the
sect, he still associated with the Manichaeans. But his
defence of their opinions must have been only outward.
The fact is he was utterly unsettled, " hopeless of find-
1 At this time, in his twenty-seventh year, he wrote his first work De
apto et pulchro, which has been lost.

MANICHAEAN AND SCEPTIC 13
ing the truth" (Conf. v. 10), and, knowing not what to
think or believe about God or himself, he was already
half inclined to fall in with the supposed views of the
Academics, and doubt everything. Almost immediately
on his arrival he had been visited with a serious illness.
After his recovery, he soon found that the students here
were quite as undesirable as those at Carthage, though
in a different way ; and so he was very glad of an op
portunity which now offered of taking a public profes
sorship of rhetoric at Milan, and thither he came.
Here he was most kindly received by S. Ambrose,
the Bishop of that see, whose influence was to be so
powerful in bringing him to the Christian faith. At
first Ambrose's eloquence charmed him ; then his ex
planations of Scripture won him ; and he gradually
found, to his mingled shame and joy, that for so many
years he had been opposing an utter misrepresentation
pf Christianity, — " barking, not against the Catholic
faith, but against the parables of carnal imaginations."
(Conf. vi. 3.) But he was no little time in being brought
even thus far. Entirely renouncing Manichaeism (Conf.
v. 14; vi. 1), much inclined towards the Academics, who
"long detained him tossing in the waves" (De Beata
Vita, 4), and actually becoming again a catechumen,
this was only "until something certain should show
itself to him." (Conf. v. 14.) He continued long in
the darkness of universal scepticism, in utter despair
of ever finding the truth within or without the Church.
(Conf. v. 13; vi. 1.) Even when he was made to see
his past misapprehensions, through fear he kept holding

14 SAINT AUGUSTINE
back from assenting to anything ; and so his soul, "which
could not be healed but by believing, lest it should
believe falsehoods refused to be cured." (Conf. vi. 4.)
It must be owned that he was now largely convinced,
intellectually, by the extent of the authority of the Holy
Scriptures and of the Christian faith throughout the
world (Conf. vi. 5, 11); and this test of authority came
to have an increasing weight with him, and to be always
put before reason in the demand for faith.1 But the
moral nature of Augustine needed a thorough renova
tion. He admits he was followed more and more closely
by a Divine mercy which he knew not ; — "I became
more wretched, and Thou nearer" (Conf. vi. 16) ; while
the fear of death and the judgment which never left
him, alone recalled him "from a yet deeper abyss of
carnal pleasures." (Id.) It is a most sad picture to
contemplate ; and it must ever be a wonder that his
high gifts and powers, now so degraded and defiled,
were not utterly destroyed by his licentious indulgence.
His hot, passionate temperament even from youth
seems never to have been restrained from the fulfil
ment of sensual desires. For these many years he had
been " befouling the spring of friendship with the filth
of concupiscence." (Conf. iii. 1.) While a student at
Carthage, he had become a father ; and his son he had
piously (?) named Adeodatus. His mother had often
desired marriage for him ; now her plans seemed likely
to succeed ; he sent back to Africa the mother of his
child ; but, having become so base a slave to carnal lust,
1 Cf. Ep. cxviii. 32.

DRAWN TOWARDS THE TRUTH 15
he could not wait for the maiden whom he was to marry ;
and ended in only putting away one mistress to take
another. (Conf. vi. 12, 15.) And all this time, while
his ' " sins were being multiplied," his intellect was
soaring to loftiest heights of speculation upon religious
questions, of the nature of God and the soul, of incar
nation and redemption, of the origin of evil, of the
authority of Scripture, of the bounds of reason and
faith, etc. — all which were to him thus far only specu
lative questions. But God was leading him. The Pia'
tonic (or perhaps more strictly Neo-Platonic) doctrines
proved an efficient awakening influence. In this phi
losophy, which he ever after considered to be the best
of the old systems and to contain deep spiritual wisdom,
he now found a mighty incentive. It was so rich in
truth, — and yet it stopped just short of what he most
needed, — the great truth of the Incarnation, the humil
ity of the Lord Jesus, the Word made flesh ! So Pla-
tonism moved Augustine to turn again to the Holy
Scriptures, and especially to S. Paul's Epistles (Conf.
vii. 21); and this time it was to find in God's Word,
under the interpretation of the Church, the divine-
foundation of faith, the all powerful motive to a holy
life. We need not dwell upon the further incidents
previous to his conversion. He could no longer say he
had no clear perception of truth ; " now it was certain "
(Conf. viii. 5), he was convinced, he was persuaded.
The lower animal desires, and these alone, made him
continue to hesitate a little longer; and they had a
wonderful power over him to the very day of his con-

16 SAINT AUGUSTINE
version ; but at last, after many violent struggles, coming
to a firm purpose on this point, and willing resolutely
and thoroughly (Conf. viii. 8), through deep anguish
and many tears and prayers, the conflict was ended in
submission and peace. When we think of what Augus
tine's career had been thus far, it is not strange that,
in the mighty reaction which came upon him, he should
have adopted henceforth the celibate and the ascetic
life. "Thou didst so convert me unto Thyself," he
says, "that I sought neither a wife nor any other of
this world's hopes." (Conf. viii. 12.) Herein his case
is not to be made a law or guide for others ; any more
than his subsequent peculiar teachings upon marriage
need be accepted in their entireness.
Augustine's conversion took place in the summer of
A.D. 386. Resigning his professorship as soon as vaca
tion gave him opportunity, he spent some months in
retirement with certain of his friends at a villa a few
miles out of the city. Here he composed his treatises
Cotitra Academicos, De Ordine, De Beata Vita, and the
Soliloquiorum duo Libri. He was baptized by S. Am
brose, in his church in Milan, on Easter-eve, the 25th
of April, A.D. 387, and with him his son Adeodatus
and one of his most intimate friends Alypius. His
mother was the happy witness of his baptism, rejoicing
in the answer to her many prayers. They determined
to return to their native country ; but at the port of
Ostia, Monica, who felt that she had no more to live
for, now that her son had become a Catholic Christian,
fell ill and died. Changing his plans, Augustine re-

CONVERSION AND ORDINATION 17
mained in Rome until the next year, and wrote the De
quantitate animae, the greater part of the De moribus
Ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum, and
began the De Libero Arbitrio, which he finished some
years later, (a.d. 395.) In the summer of A.D. 388
he returned to Thagaste, where he founded a small
religious community, at whose head he continued for
three years ; during this period writing the De Genesi
contra Manichaeos, De Musica, De Magistro, and De
Vera Religione. The fame of his ability and devotion
soon spread. He was eagerly sought, for more active
labors ; and in a.d. 391, against his own wishes, ac
cording to a custom then prevalent, he was ordained
a priest by Valerius, Bishop of Hippo, for service in
the church of that city. Here his eloquence in preach
ing was equalled only by his loving zeal for the Church,
and his power in controversy against her mistaken oppo
nents. Besides discharging the duties of the priest
hood, he now found time to write several exegetical
works, as well as the important treatises against the
Manichaeans, De Utilitate Credendi, and De duabus
Animabus, and the Disputatio contra Fortunatum.1 In
a.d. 395, at the age of forty-one, he was consecrated
Bishop, as coadjutor to Valerius,2 who died after a few
months, leaving him Bishop of Hippo. From the time
1 This tract Milman thinks " gives the fairest view of the real contro
versy " with the Manichaeans. History of Christianity, Vol. II. p. 278.
2 From Ep. ccxiii., written in a.d. 426, we learn that both Valerius
and himself were ignorant of the inconsistency of the consecration of
coadjutor bishops with the injunction of the 8th Canon of the Council
of Nice.

1 8 SAINT AUGUSTINE
of his ordination to the priesthood, he had continued
the mode of living in religious community, which he
had established at Thagaste. Now, as Bishop, with
his clergy about him, he maintained great plainness of
food and dress, and even in his ministrations is said to
have refused to wear costly vestments.
We cannot dwell upon the long episcopate of S.
Augustine. It became more and more celebrated, until
his was the great name throughout the Western Church.
This wide reputation came principally from his zeal and
ability in defence of Christian doctrine. His philo
sophical spirit, logical acumen, and dialectical skill,
wonderfully helped by a glowing imagination and most
facile use of language, with a foundation of considerable
learning, and certainly of deep spiritual compiehension
of Scripture, proved powerful means of winning mul
titudes to Christian allegiance, and mighty weapons
against the opposition of heresy and schism. He had
himself gone through dreadful conflicts with sin and
doubt, in coming to the peace and stability of Chris
tianity. He had some definite idea of what the Christian
faith and the Christian Church, sin and salvation, Divine
grace and human frailty meant. Living in a time of
intense worldliness and of real decline of spirituality,
of dissension and open strife among those who called
themselves Christians, and of the lingering power of
paganism upon all classes of society, he deemed the
promotion of a right Christian belief and of a Christian
living which legitimately flowed therefrom, not a mere
matter of opinion, but one of divinely revealed obliga-

PRINCIPAL WRITINGS 19
tion, — one which he ought to urge with all the powers
which God had given him. Known eminently from that
day to this as a controversialist, his place of honor as a
theologian, and the wide and full range of his abilities
as a teacher in the Church cannot be questioned.
We naturally find his mature energies first directed
against the Manichaeans, from whose snares he had
recently escaped. In addition to the treatises which
he had already written, he now produced other and
more extensive works against them ; among which may
be mentioned the Contra Epistolam Manichaei quam
vocant fundamenti, the long work Contra Faustum, in
23 books, the De Natura Boni, and the Contra Secundi-
num, which last was his own preference among his
writings against Manichaeism. (Retract, ii. 10.)
In opposition to the Donatist schism, its unscriptural
doctrines and fanatical practices, he wrote a number of
works, mostly between the years 400 and 412; the
principal ones being the Contra Epistolam Parmeniani,
De Baptismo, Contra literas Petiliani, and the De Uni-
tate Ecclesiae.
Perhaps of more distinct significance than any of the
works hitherto named, — certainly of much more wide-
reaching influence in the history of Christian doctrine,
were his writings against Pelagianism. These were
some sixteen in number, called out, one after another,
by the exigency of the situation, from a.d. 412 on to
the close of his life in a.d. 430, — one being left un
finished. The very titles of most of these works show
the general nature of their contents, and the greatness

20 SAINT AUGUSTINE
of the subjects considered ; e.g. De Spiritu et litera, De
natura et gratia, De perfectione fustitiae hominis, De
gratia Christi, De peccato originali, De anima et ejus
origine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, De correptione et
gratia, De praedestinatione sanctorum, De dotio perseve-
rantiae. Along with these writings against Manichaeans and
Donatists, and the early part of those against the
Pelagians, S. Augustine was producing also many mis
cellaneous short treatises, upon various topics of faith
and morals, too numerous even for enumeration here,
but which are of much value, and have had a lasting
reputation : his extensive exegetical works, chiefly upon
the Psalms and upon the writings of S. John, formed
part of his labor; he was constantly preaching, and
some four hundred well authenticated sermons of his
have come down to us ; moreover, there have been pre
served more than two hundred of his Epistles, many of
which were elaborate monographs.
We do not forget, and we would make special refer
ence to three other great works of his, either one of
which would have enshrined his name in perpetual re
membrance. Surely S. Augustine's was not only an
industrious life, that, with all the cares of his Episco
pate, he could write so fully as we have already stated ;
but it was the life of a man of remarkable genius, won
derful richness of mind, and depth of spiritual insight,
which could produce the Confessiones, the De Trinitate,
and the De Civitate Dei. The Confessiones were written
about the year 400 (some say, 397). The De Trinitate,

OTHER GREAT WORKS 21
which many have thought to be the loftiest work of his
genius, occupied him at least sixteen years, from a.d.
400, and perhaps a longer time. He shrank from pub
lishing it to the last ; and probably would not have
done so when he did, and without further revision, had
not the unfinished work been stolen and made public.
The De Civitate Dei was begun in a.d. 413, and com
pleted in a.d. 426. This has been generally regarded
as his master-piece ; and it is so well known that it does
not need, any more than the Confessiones, any full analy
sis in this place. Presenting to his own age a bold and
convincing apology for Christianity, it became to all
ages the earliest philosophy of history ; and in both
aspects the work has high claim upon the grateful re
gard of mankind. Its range of thought is very wide ;
it comprises some of its author's most mature opinions
upon topics of philosophy and theology ; it anticipates
many of the speculations of modern times.
A few words upon the Retractationes may complete
our sketch of S. Augustine's literary labors. In this
work, written in a.d. 427 or 428, he carefully reviews
his previous writings, of course explaining former opin
ions by present ones, and, where possible, striving to
bring the earlier views into harmony with the later.
For him to have pursued any different course would not,
it would seem, have been thought strange by some who
have unduly criticised his criticism of himself.1 We
1 Neander's Hist, of the Christian Religion and Church, (Torrey's
transl.) Vol. II. p. 694; Mozley's Augustinian Doctrine, etc. p. 360;
Owen's Evenings with the Skeptics, Vol. II. p. 140.

22 SA INT A UG US TINE
leave to the bitterness of scepticism the rash implica
tion that this aged saint had now lost all his comprehen
siveness and Christian charity ; and that the opinions he
now rejected would make a better Christian creed than
those he accepted.1 He wrote of himself with a candor
generally admitted ; explaining, qualifying, and, where
he thought necessary, contradicting what he had pre
viously written and even admitting former opinions to
have been downright errors. Thus much it is well for
us to note just at this point ; for even aside from special
influences which we know had great weight in the latter
part of his career, it was only natural that any one who
had lived so long and written so much should have
uttered contradictions. It is often said that S. Augus
tine can be quoted in favor of diametrically opposed
doctrines. This is to a certain extent true, and for the
reason which we have given. He had a deep humility.
He thought a man to be " more a consummate fool than
perfectly wise " of whom it could be said that he had
never uttered a word which he did not wish to recall ;
that the highest standard was to have never uttered a
word which it would be his duty to recall ; and that he
who had not attained to this, should take the second
place through his humility, as he could not take the
first through his wisdom.* Accordingly his estimate of
himself (and let any prove that it was not the correct
one) was that consistency was not of so much worth as
to have made progress.1 He says at this time that he
' Owen, ut supra. 2 Ep. cxliii. 3. a.d. 412. 3 Id. 1. De don
persev. 55.

CLOSE OF HIS LIFE 23
is writing the Retractationes to demonstrate that even
he himself has not in all things followed himself ; admits
that he did not begin from perfection, and has not yet
in this age (74 years) reached perfection ; and affirms
that there is good hope of him whom the last day of
life shall find so progressing, that whatever is wanting
may be added, and that he may be adjudged rather to
need perfecting than punishment.1
In a.d. 429 the Vandals under Genseric invaded
Africa, at the invitation of Count Boniface, who had
been deceived into rebellion against the Empire, and
had summoned the barbarians to enable him to main
tain himself. Discovering the treachery which had
been practised against him, and returning to his alle
giance, it was too late to save the country from the
invaders. They readily made allies of the Donatists
throughout the provinces, and fiercely pressed on in
their career of conquest. Boniface retired to Hippo,
and the city was besieged. In the third month, on the
28th of August, a.d. 430, the aged Bishop, who had
been bitterly tried by the miseries of the times, and
thought that men ought to ascribe Africa's calamities
to their own sins, was mercifully taken away, after not
a long illness. With the words of the Penitential
Psalms written out and hung on the wall before his
eyes, he had bade his friends leave him to himself as
much as possible ; and so he spent the last few days in
solitude, and prayer, and tears. He died a penitent.
1 De don. persev. 55.

24 SAINT AUGUSTINE
In going on to a survey of the principal teaching of
S. Augustine, we shall first follow the line of the three
great controversies which have been referred to. He
has very important and characteristic points of teach
ing which do not directly concern either of those con
troversies, though they may be found in part in the
writings which they called out. Such doctrines we
shall subsequently consider to some extent. At the
outset we must say that we shall not aim at any treat
ment of S. Augustine's philosophy proper.
Maizichaeism, of the writings against which we are
first to speak, was a strange, eclectic system, founded
upon the ancient Chaldaism, combining therewith Per
sian and (in the West especially) Christian elements.
Its prominent mark was its absolute dualism. Teach
ing without compromise the two principles of good and
evil, light and darkness, both of them eternal, and both
eternally distinct, it practically taught two gods. From
this dualistic beginning it developed a most fantastic
mythology ; while, connected with its weird fancies
about creation and nature, it established an ethical
theory of bald materialism, whereby the work of life
was made to consist in the constant effort to separate
the elements of light from the darkness ; which meant,
in actual morality, a greater or less degree of ascetic
abstinence with no end beyond itself. The Manichae
ans spurned Judaism, and equally spurned Catholic
Christianity. Yet in the West they called themselves
Christians, and their organization in some points faintly
resembled that of the Christian Church. They rejected

PRINCIPLES OF MANICHAEISM 2$
the Old Testament, and basely perverted the New ; they
held spurious dogmas of a Trinity, an Incarnation, and
an Atonement ; professing to believe in Christ, who
was to them only a phantom, they took what they
pleased of the teachings of Jesus and His Apostles, and
with their own interpretation. The system proclaimed
loud promises of knowledge and wisdom to all who
were in search of truth, and professed to require noth
ing to be received which had not the proof of reason.
Such permitted rationalism in belief, such inducement
of "spiritual benefits on the basis of the religion of
nature," had made Manichaeism widely popular in the
West ; and it was in North Africa that it gained its
largest following.
Augustine, who had perhaps been won to the system
chiefly by its plausible theory of the origin of evil, was
delivered from it very much through its failure to sat
isfy his deeper questionings on this same subject. Now
he set himself to oppose its many errors, with earnest
ness and confidence in the truth, and at the same time
with a gentleness and meekness and desire to restore
rather than to discomfit his adversaries which are worthy
of note, as not only shown here, but as being the spirit
which he uniformly maintained in controversy. " Let
those treat you angrily," he says, "who know not the
labor necessary to find the truth, and the amount of
caution required to avoid error." . . . "Let those treat
you angrily, who know not with what sighs and groans
the least particle of the knowledge of God is obtained."
..." Let neither of us assert that he has found truth,"

26 SAINT AUGUSTINE
he exhorts ; " let us seek it as if it were unknown to us
both." «
The teachings of S. Augustine against Manichaeism
relate principally to the Being of God, the nature of
good, the nature and origin of evil, the freedom of the
will, the authority of Scripture, the limits of reason and
faith. Much of what he here says about God, and about
evil, is also given more fully and in more direct connec
tion with the hold which Manichaean error once had upon
him, in the Confessions. God is the one, almighty Creator,
infinite in goodness and power. He is spirit ; not the
material existence which Manichaeism fancied Him, with
properties of extension into space ; 2 yet a real Being,
not an empty phantasm.3 He is "the unchangeable
Light," yet not "the corporeal brightness " which he
once conceived Him to be, — "a bright and vast body,
and [himself] a piece of that body." 4 "God is His own
eternal happiness, . . . His own eternal light ; " 5 . . .
"the God we worship did not abide from eternity in
darkness, but is Himself light, and in Him is no dark
ness at all ; and in Himself dwells in light inaccessible ;
and the brightness of this light is His co-eternal wis
dom." 6 God is unchangeable and incorruptible. " It
cannot properly be said of the real substance of God
that it has the choice of sinning or not sinning, for
God's substance is absolutely unchangeable. God can
not sin, as He cannot destroy Himself." 1 God is the
1 Con. Epis. Man. ii. iii. 2 Conf. iii. 7; con. Epis. Man. xv. xix.
3 Conf. iv. 5, 7, &c. 4 Conf. iv. 2, 16; vii. 10. 5 Con. Faust, xxii. 9.
6 Id. xxii. 21. 7 Id. xxii. 22.

AGAINST DUALISM 27
chief good of all His creatures ; for He is the supreme,
the true existeitce.x " To reach God is happiness itself." *
He is " the author of all natures ; " 3 hence, all natures,
as such, are good ; and it is the nature of good, that it is
all from Him ; while it is the nature of evil (negatively),
that it is not from Him. Augustine goes farther than
this, and sets forth now the teaching to which he always
adhered, that evil has no real existence, — it is but the
negation of existence. "There is no nature contrary
to God. . . . You ask me, Whence is evil ? I ask you
in return, What is evil ? . . . Evil is that which is con
trary to nature ; . . . Evil is no nature, if it is contrary
to nature. " 4 Again, " The second kind of good is called
a creature, which is liable to hurt through falling away.
But of this falling away God is not the author, for He
is the author of existence and of being. Here we see
the proper use of the word evil ; for it is correctly ap
plied not to essence, but to negation or loss." 5 "When
the Catholic Church declares that God is the author of
all natures and substances, those who understand this
understand at the same time that God is not the author
of evil. For how can He Who is the cause of the being
of all things be at the same time the cause of their not
being, that is, of their falling off from essence and
tending to non-existence ? For this is what reason
plainly declares to be the definition of evil." 6
Yet this which has no true existence, and is thereby
* De Mor. Manich. i. 2 De Mor. Eccles. xi. 3 Con. Epis. Man.
xxxiii. * De Mor. Manich. i. ii. s De Mor. Manich. iv. 6 De
Mor. Manich. ii.

y

28 SAINT AUGUSTINE
proved to be not from God, Augustine owns fills the
heart with fear. (Conf. vii. 5.) " Whence is it ? " — he
once and again exclaims. Against the Manichaeans,
who argued that they sinned from natural necessity, —
it was not they, but the nature of darkness in them
(Conf. vii. 3), he put the origin of sin and of evil in the
freedom of the will. " There is no need " he says " of
the origin of evil in an imaginary evil nature " (referring
to the original dualism of this system), " since it is to be
found in free-will. . . . The origin of sin is in the will ;
therefore in the will is also the origin of evil. . . . You
take away the origin of evil from free-will, and place it
in a fabulous nature of evil." ' But what is that free
will, it may be asked, to which Augustine here refers ?
— that of man in his original state, or of man as fallen ?
Plainly the former : — and yet it is an open question
whether he did not use the term, during all this period,
both of the one condition and of the other. Because
he writes, e.g. in certain connections in the De Libero
Arbitrio, that he is speaking of that freedom in which
man was created,2 it has been perhaps too necessarily
inferred that he must be always so understood in that
treatise.3 That he meant to represent this cause of sin
as an original, self -determining power — whether before
or after the Fall — is abundantly manifest. Witness
such passages as these : — " Since the will is the cause
of sin, and you ask the cause of that will ; if I can dis
cover this, will you not also seek the cause of this cause ?
' Con. Faust, xxii. 22. 2 1. iii. c. 18. 3 Mozley's Aug'n Doctr. etc.
p. 206.

FREEDOM OF THE WILL 29
And what limit of seeking can there be, what end of
inquiry and discussion, — since you ought not to go be
yond the root ? " ' " But what can be the cause of will,
antecedent to will ? For either there exists the will
itself, and there is no going back of that root of will ; or
there is no will, and in that case no sin. Either, then,
the will itself is the first cause of sinning, or no sin is
that first cause." 2 Again, a true freedom, or power of
choice, seems to be ascribed to man in his present state
in the De Duabus Animabus. And what else but a true
freedom in man fallen is implied in this passage ? — He
has been speaking of the angels as so created that they
had the power of restraining their desires from the un
lawful ; and in not doing this, they sinned. " Great,
then," he continues, " is the creature man, for he is re
stored by this potentiality, by which, if he had so chosen,
he would not have fallen." 3 It is the same power which
restores him that originally kept him. Whether S.
Augustine afterwards came to deny free-will under the
pressure of the Pelagian controversy, must be considered
in its proper connection. But that he now maintained
it, in its self-determining power, and found therein the
only satisfactory cause of evil, as against the Manichaean
notion of necessity, may perhaps be admitted, with but J
little, if any, qualification.4
What he says upon Holy Scripture, forms a very im
portant part of S. Augustine's teaching at this period.
In one of these treatises occurs his well known declara-
1 De Lib. Arbit. iii. 48. 2 Id. iii. 49. 3 Con. Faust, xxii. 28.
4 Cf. Neander, ut sup. Vol. II. p. 626.

30 SAINT AUGUSTINE
tion, "I should not believe the gospel, except as moved
by the authority of the Church," l — wherein he openly
affirms the true ground for the authority of Scripture,
and takes a position from which there can be no alter
native but the individualism which he charges against
Faustus ; — " Your design clearly is to deprive Scripture
of all authority, and to make every man's mind the
judge what passage of Scripture he is to approve of,
and what to disapprove of." 2 These Manichaeans re
jected the Old Testament, but professed to receive part
of the New. S. Augustine defends the whole, as the
Word of God,3 handed down in the Church from the
Apostles,4 and exhibiting clear proofs of its claims in
the extent of its conquest of the world.5 He maintains
the oneness of Scripture, and shows that where there
are apparent contradictions, there is real harmony.
This principle he urges, as between different portions
of either the Old or the New Testament, and especially
as between the Old and the New. One will stand or
fall with the other. The Old Testament he considers
as chiefly typical, in both conduct and precept ; as fore
shadowing the New, and particularly telling of Christ.
1 Con. Epis. Man. v. It is amazing to find the objection actually
raised by a clergyman of the Church (Continuity of Christian Thought,
p. 150), that "the Church for which is claimed such supreme authority, is
not the consentient reason of those who are enlightened by a divine
teacher speaking within the soul"! — i.e. it is something different from
that " human consciousness " which this writer regards as " the ultimate
source of authority in religious truth " (pp. 17, 59, 60) ; but it is something
definite and visible, the institution of God in the world.
2 Con. Faust, xxxii. 19. 3 Id. xxii. 16. 4 Id. xi. 5. s Id. xxii. 60.

SCRIPTURE AND ITS INTERPRETATION 31
" No one doubts," he writes, " that promises of tempo
ral things are contained in the Old Testament, for which
reason it is called the Old Testament ; or that the king
dom of heaven and the promise of eternal life belong
to the New Testament. But that in these temporal
things were figures of future things which should be
fulfilled in us upon whom the ends of the world are
come, is not my fancy, but the judgment of the Apostle.
. . . We receive the Old Testament, therefore, not in
order to obtain the fulfilment of these promises, but to
see in them predictions of the New Testament ; for the
Old bears witness to the New. . . . Nor do we believe
that the holy and spiritual men of these times, the
patriarchs and prophets, were taken up with temporal
things. For they understood, by the revelation of the
Spirit of God, what was suitable for that time, and how
God appointed all these sayings and actions as types
and predictions of the future. Their great desire was
for the New Testament ; but they had a personal duty
to perform in these predictions, by which the new
things of the future were foretold. So the life as well
as the tongue of these men was prophetic." * This
matter of symbolism and allegory S. Augustine often
carried too far, as we know, in his interpretation of
Scripture, especially of minute events in the historical
books ; only regretting, as he says again and again, that
the length of his writing already will not permit him to
go farther in his fine-spun analogies.2 And yet, in his
supreme regard for the inner meaning of Scripture, it
1 Id. iv. 2; xxii. 24. 2 Id. xxii. 86.

32 SAINT AUGUSTINE
must be owned that he kept sight of the literal sense,
— according to a general rule of interpretation among
the Fathers ; ' here in his controversy against the Mani
chaeans, he examines the literal sense of each of these
narratives " before he touches the sacramental or mys
terious meaning;"2 — furthermore, in that important
writing De Genesi contra Manichaeos he takes a decided
position against the allegorists ; and then, several years
later, in the De Genesi ad literam, he goes over the same
ground speaking even more emphatically than before.
But it is a constant principle with him that Scripture is
to be interpreted according to the analogy of the faith ;
and so his final end in the investigation of lives and
words of patriarchs and prophets is plainly the figure,
— the type. " Every part of the narrative in the pro
phetical books " he says " should be viewed as having
a figurative meaning, except what serves merely as a
frame-work for the literal or figurative predictions." 3
He will not argue with those who will not take the
narratives in this way : — "to dispute about such a
difference of understanding would be as useless as to
dispute about a difference of taste." 4 Moreover, he
affirms that the typical or prophetical character of
actions is not affected by their own moral quality. " In
foretelling good, it is of no consequence whether the
typical actions are good or bad. If it is written in red
ink that the Ethiopians are black, or in black ink that
1 Vid. Keble's The Mysticism attributed to the Early Fathers, p. 42 ; cf.
Abp. Trench's S. Augustine as an Interpreter etc. p. 50 et sea.
2 Keble, ut sup. p. 105. 3 Con. Faust, xxii. 94. * Id. xxii. 95.

OLD TESTAMENT TYPICAL 33
the Gauls are white, this circumstance does not affect
the information which the writing conveys. No doubt
if it was a painting instead of a writing, the wrong
color would be a fault ; so, when human actions are
represented for example or warning, much depends
on whether they are good or bad ; but when actions
are related or recorded as types, the merit or demerit
of the agents is a matter of no importance, so long as
there is a true typical relation between the action and
the thing signified." ' This was one conclusive way
which he had of explaining the morality of the Old
Testament. The Manichaeans, either in reality or in
pretence, made a great deal of the moral difficulties of
all that part of the Bible, and sneered contemptuously at
the character of the Old Testament saints. And in reply
to them, besides this reference to actions and events as
types, S. Augustine pressed strongly the principle of
the Divine accommodation to the circumstances and
moral standard of earlier ages, as justifying commands
and permissions which in a later time would be wrong.
He affirms that the true and good God, and He alone,
could give such commands rightly ; 2 that the order
of time demanded such a dispensation ; 3 and asks,
" Do they not understand how precepts and counsels
and permissions may be changed without any incon
stancy in Him Who enjoins them, but by the wisdom of
Him Who dispenses them according to the difference of
the times ? " 4 This progressive character of revelation,
this gradual education of men into the knowledge of
1 Id. xxii. 83. 2 Id. xxii. 72. 3 Id. xxii. 76. * Id. xxii. 77.

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VA1C rw/it'irv crificn

34 SAINT A UGUSTINE
God, as pointed out by the great Latin Father, is a
topic which several writers have commented upon ; and
Canon Mozley has suggested that in this method of his
he has indicated the true answer to objections of our
own day against the morality of the Old Testament.1
It is not the only instance in which his teaching meets
the difficulties of modern thought.
The Manichaeans were rationalists ; their system was
one of rationalism ; and much of what S. Augustine
says against them upon the relations of reason and
faith, might be wholesome medicine for the rationalism
of our time. With him, having once accepted the
authority of Scripture, it is a settled conviction to
"believe because it is written."2 He would not put
understanding before faith, but faith before understand
ing. "Crede ut intelligas," was his bidding.3 Yet he
said truly that Catholic Christians "do not condemn
the use of reason ; " 4 only it must keep its proper rela
tions, and act in its own sphere. He appears to have
thought that in divine things it was not at first able to
behold. "It falls back from the light of truth," he
says ; and then, by appointment of Divine wisdom,
" we are met by the friendly shade of authority." * As
he developed this idea, later in life, as given in one of
his letters, it stood, — " The perfection of method in
training disciples is, that those who are weak be en
couraged to the utmost to enter the citadel of authority,
1 Ruling Ideas of Early Ages, p. 272 ; and cf. Abp. Trench, ut sup. p. 40.
2 Con. Faust, xxvi. 7. 3 Serm. xliii. 3. * Con. Faust, xviii. 7.
5 De Mor. Eccles. vii.

REASON AND AUTHORITY 35
in order that when they have been safely placed there,
the conflict necessary for their defence may be main
tained with the most strenuous use of reason. . . .
Thus, the whole supremacy of authority and light of
reason for regenerating and reforming the human race
has been made to reside in the one saving Name, and
in His one Church." ' His treatise Deutilitate credendi,
which was written to help a friend out of the snares of
Manichaeism, contains a clear and full presentation of
this whole matter of the precedence of faith to reason.
" If they say that we are not even to believe in Christ
unless undoubted reason shall be given us, they are not
Christians. For this is what certain pagans say against
us, foolishly indeed, yet not contrary to or inconsistent
with themselves. But who can endure that those pro
fess to belong to Christ, who contend that they are to
believe nothing unless they shall bring forward to fools
most open reason concerning God ? But we see that
He Himself . . . willed nothing before, or more strongly
than, that He should be believed in ; whereas they with
whom He had to do were not yet qualified to receive
the secret things of God."2 "It is authority alone,"
he says, "which moves fools to hasten unto wisdom.
So long as we cannot understand pure truth, it would
be indeed wretched to be deceived by authority, but
surely more wretched not to be moved;"3 — a passage
which has been much abused, and made to teach what
it does not teach. Surely all believers in the Church
of Christ find in that Divine institution the meaning of
1 Ep. cxviii. 32, 33. 2 De util. credend. 32. 3 Id. 34.

36 SAINT AUGUSTINE
those other words, " We must not give up all hope that
. . . God Himself hath appointed some authority,
whereon resting, as on a sure step, we may be lifted up
unto God." ' And because S. Augustine accepted au
thority, because he placed faith in order of time before
reason, there is no good ground for the charge of certain
recent writers, that he gave up his reason, and remained
ever more in blind and abject submission. We cannot
think that he regarded the authority which influenced
him to accept Christianity and the Church as " extrinsic
and separable from the truth of [that] Christianity."2
We find no proof that he considered " his volition
forced." 3 Nor need we admit the truth of such milder
language as that in " this earlier theology ... he suffi
ciently satisfied his reason while yet making the sacrifice
of reason," 4 with its implication, — which the one who
writes these words fully confirms, — that in his later
thinking he made the sacrifice complete. That he be
came more dogmatic, and even grew in some ways more
narrow and fettered in his thinking, cannot be denied ;
but, with all this, we find no ground for saying that he
more and more surrendered reason. On the other
hand, we believe that, in harmony with certain words of
his which we have quoted, he more and more used rea
son. He might hold, in such use, we claim, what ideas
he pleased, of free-will, or predestination ; for the ques
tion of submission, which his opponents make so much
of, has not to do with the almighty and inscrutable
1 Id. 2 Owen's Evenings with the Skeptics, Vol. II. p. 181. 3 Id.
p. 182. " Allen's Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 148.

DID HE CONTINUE A MANICHAEAN? 37
power of God, but with the authority of the Church,
and of forms of truth, called dogmas.
It has been quite popular in modern times, to assert
or to hint that S. Augustine was never free from the
influence of Manichaeism. One says, " In spite of his
war against the Manichaeans, he remained to the last
unconsciously, but virtually and essentially Manichaean
in his theory of human nature." ' Another writes, "The
real strength of Augustine was acquired, I conceive,
through his early baptism in the Styx of Manichaeism,
and his discovery that God must be the deliverer from
it. I do not say that he ever shook off the distemper ;
it came back again frequently in his battle with Pela
gius" etc.2 But, admitting the unconscious influence
which the apparent dualism of the universe may have
continued to present to his mind, we cannot see the
justice of any such charge. No one, we believe, who
understands his doctrine of original sin, can truly affirm
that by it human nature was annihilated, and made
"only a medium for the manifestation of God or the
devil." 3 Neander is more fair-minded. His statement
is, that " Augustine's anthropological views have been
very unjustly attributed to the influence of Manichae
ism : " 4 — and he goes on to distinguish plainly his doc
trine of human corruption, which " grew out of a simple
fact of the moral consciousness," from the dualism of
Mani's philosophy of nature. It was the Pelagians,
1 Hedge's Atheism in Philosophy and other Essays, p. 188. 2 Maurice :
— in his Life etc. Vol. II. p. 109. 3 Hedge, ut sup. p. 190. 4 Ch. Hist.
Vol. II. p. 625.

38 SAINT AUGUSTINE
chiefly, who used to taunt S. Augustine with being a
Manichaean ; and the reason was evident : perhaps the
same reason moves those who cast the taunt now.
S. Augustine has left writings of much importance
in connection with Donatism. This schism had been in
existence in Africa from the beginning of the fourth
century. Originating in false notions of the purity of
the Church, it carried these notions to the extreme
of bigotry and narrowness. Early calling out the oppo
sition of the Empire, by refusing to yield to decisions
given in answer to its own appeals, meeting henceforth
with but little of conciliation, provoked by continued
imperial repression, growing stronger by persecution,
going to great lengths of gloomy zeal and even cruel
fanaticism, the sect in Augustine's time had come to be
one of large proportions and corresponding influence.
The Donatists have been called the Puritans of Africa ;
and the history of the two presents many parallels, in
doctrine and practice. S. Augustine, and the African
Church quite generally, through his influence, made
many efforts to win them back to the Church ; and they
succeeded to a good degree in certain sections ; but the
schism was too deep-seated, perhaps, in the very inten
sity of the African nature : it was but one of the forms
of persistent dissension in that Church, which died only
with the extinction of the Church itself. By letters,
and treatises, and conferences, S. Augustine strove to
bring the Donatists to their allegiance. While firm in
his opposition to their error, he manifests a spirit of

THE DONATIST SCHISM 39
conciliation and courtesy and charity ; he entreats his
clergy and people to show "untiring gentleness."
"Love men, while you destroy errors," are his words :
— " take of the truth without pride ; strive for the
truth without cruelty ; pray for those whom you refute
and convince." I
His teaching in this connection relates to the validity
and efficacy of the sacraments, especially Baptism ; the
purity of the Church ; the unity of the Church ; the sin
of schism: — and what he writes upon these subjects
is of permanent value. Nor would we fail to consider,
in part for justification or explanation, in part for
censure, his oft-quoted opinions about compulsion and
persecution which were uttered at this time.
S. Augustine maintains the holiness and power of
the Church's sacraments in language not to be mis
understood. They are holy, because they are Christ's
sacraments ; " holy, through Him to Whom they be
long,"2 and to Whom they unite those who worthily
receive them. Their power is in Christ ; and this
power is for good or ill, according to the worthiness or
unworthiness of the receiver. Speaking now of Holy
Baptism, he writes, " He Himself consecrates His sac
rament, — that in the recipient, either before he is
baptized, or when he is baptized, or at some future time
when he turns in truth to God, that very sacrament
may be profitable to salvation, which, were he not to
be converted, would be powerful to his destruction." 3
"When we say that Christ baptizes, we do not mean
1 Con. lit. Petil. i. 31. 2 Con. lit. Petit, ii. 88. 3 De Baptismo, vi. 47.

40 SAINT AUGUSTINE
by a visible ministry, . . . but by a hidden power in
the Holy Spirit. . . . Nor has He now ceased to baptize;
but He still does it, not by any ministry of the body,
but by the invisible working of His majesty."' It is
always Christ Who is here the origin, root, and head.2
This holiness and power, moreover, are inherent, and
depend not upon the giver or the receiver. "When
baptism is given in the words of the gospel, however
great the perverseness of him through whom, or of him
to whom it is given, the sacrament is holy in itself, on
account of Him Whose sacrament it is. And if any one,
receiving it at the hands of a misguided man, yet does
not receive the perversity of the minister, but only
the holiness of the mystery, being closely bound to the
unity of the Church in good faith and hope and charity,
he receives remission of his sins, — not by the words,
. . . but by the sacraments of the gospel flowing from
a heavenly source. But if the recipient himself be mis
guided, on the one hand what is given is of no avail for
the salvation of the misguided man ; and yet, on the
other hand that which is received remains holy in the
recipient, and is not renewed to him if he be brought
to the right way."3 Farther still, this independent
power of the sacrament pertains to it even when ad
ministered outside of the unity of the Church. Holy
Baptism belongs to Christ, — belongs to His holy Church ;
and yet, S. Augustine teaches, it is found with those
who are in heresy or schism. That he does not mean
by this any bodies which have not valid orders, is plain
1 Con. lit. Petil. iii. 59. 2 Id. i. 6. 3 De Baptisma, iv. 18.

VALIDITY AND EFFICACY OF BAPTISM 41
from his own words at the very beginning of the De
Baptismo, and from what we know of the history of
these bodies, whose bishops possessed an actual conse
cration, however irregular and illegal, whereby "an
Episcopal succession went on conferring holy orders." x
His own words are, that "he who is ordained, if he
depart from the unity of the Church, does not lose the
sacrament of conferring baptism," 2 which he possesses
because he is ordained. Accordingly, those who have
received this baptism in separation, if they return to
the unity of the Church, are not to be re-baptized ; for,
he says, " we act rightly, who do not dare to repudiate
God's sacraments, even when administered in schism."3
This was meant to oppose the error of the Donatists,
who, falsely claiming that the Church had not possessed
pure orders since the time of their separation, would
not receive any who came to them from the Church,
without re-baptizing them. And so S. Augustine de
duces the general principle of the validity of the sacra
ment in distinction from its efficacy, — its character in
distinction from its grace. He says that the reason
why S. Cyprian and those of his time took the ground
they did in favor of re-baptizing, was "from their not
distinguishing the sacrament from the effect or use of
the sacrament ; " 4 and again, — " if you say that the
grace of baptism is identical with baptism, then it
exists among heretics ; but if baptism is the sacrament
or outward sign of grace, while the grace itself is the
1 Vid. Ch. Quart. Rev. Vol. XIX. p. 309. * De Baptismo, i. 2.
3 Id. * De Baptismo, vi. I.

42 SAINT AUGUSTINE
abolition of sins, then the grace of baptism does not
exist with heretics." ' This grace, this remission of
sins, constituting its true efficacy, he claims can be
received only in unity with the Church. " Men may
be baptized in communions severed from the Church,
in which Christ's baptism is given and received ; but it
will only then be of avail for the remission of sins,"
when they are "reconciled to the unity of the Church."2
Of the case of two, baptized without change of heart
or life, one without and the other within the Church,
" he is worse who is baptized without, — because he is
without ; for the evil of division is in itself far from
insignificant or trivial." 3
But let none imagine that S. Augustine did not go
farther than any outward dividing lines, even when
they bounded the divine organization. He taught the
deep, spiritual unity with Christ in His Church : and
he even went so far in this, that he is by many inter
preted as believing in the theory of an invisible Church
in this world.4 He says in one place, "Nor is it those
only that do not belong to it [the Church], who are
openly guilty of the manifest sacrilege of schism, but
also those, who, being outwardly joined to its unity, are
yet separated by a life of sin " : 5 and again, — " It does
not follow that whosoever has the baptism of Christ is
also certain of the remission of sins, if he has this only
in the outward sign, and is not converted with a true
1 Id. vii. 37. 2 Id. i. 18. 3 Id. iv. 23. « Vid. his explanation
of S. John iii. 5, in De Baptismo, vi. 19; of S. Matt. vii. 24 etc. in 44, 45;
and cf. Con. lit. Petil. ii. 178, 180, 247. s De Bapt. i. 14.

SACRAMENTS NOT MAGICAL 43
conversion of the heart." ' As "the man who is bap
tized in heresy in the Name of the Holy Trinity does
not become the temple of God unless he abandons his
heresy;" so "the covetous man who has been baptized
in the same Name, does not become the temple of God
unless he abandons his covetousness which is idola
try."2 Holiness of life he deems of cardinal impor
tance, and dwells upon the gradual progressiveness of
evil or of good in one's life. All this is quite enough
to show that he did not make of Baptism that magic
charm which some have taught he did. He goes even
farther. Where recourse to baptism may not be had
for want of time, he teaches that " faith and conversion
of heart " may supply what is wanting : 3 though he
does not say this to depreciate the sacrament, — as no
one can intentionally do, who honors God, — but affirms,
to the contrary, that no "perfection in the inner man"
should induce one to "despise a sacrament which is
applied to. the body by the hands of the minister, but
which is God's own means for working spiritually a
man's consecration to Himself!' 4 That this means may
accomplish its end, however, it must be used as God
would have it, not in separation but in unity. Though
all possess true baptism who have received it anywhere
in the Name of the Holy Trinity, without deceit, and
with some degree of faith,5 what they thus have, in
separation, is only the character of baptism, not its
grace. Augustine insists that it is the sacrament, and
1 Id. vi. 62. 2 Id. iv. 6. 3 Id. iv. 29. * Id. s Id. vii. 102 ;
Con. lit. Petil. ii. 61.

44 SAINT AUGUSTINE
therefore " should be acknowledged and revered ; " J but
that it is of no profit for remission and salvation outside
the Church. Accordingly, he is quite consistent in
bidding all who are without to return to unity. And
however strict his doctrine may seem in its relation to
all such ; of however little benefit, it would appear, he
must have regarded their baptism — stripped of grace ;
really their case was no worse in his mind than that of
those baptized in the Church in insincerity. Either
case was an abuse, a perversion of a divine gift ; an
unlawful use of a lawful privilege. God's grace was
held in abeyance, he taught; just as, in the case of
insincerity, is commonly taught to-day.
The unity for which he pleaded is thus shown to have-
been spiritual as well as external. It was external, or
ganic, — handed down in succession from the Apostles,
among whom he gave the primacy to S. Peter, while he
explicitly claimed that his was not the only Episcopal
chair ; there must be unity also with S. James, and S.
Cyprian ; — with Jerusalem and Carthage, as well as
with Rome ; 2 — this organic unity any who were striv
ing to sunder, were doing great wrong, and bringing
sorrow to every loyal heart. "We behold with grief
and lamentation peace broken, unity rent asunder, bap
tism administered a second time, and contempt poured
on the sacraments, which are holy even when ministered
and received by the wicked."3 This is the root of
the matter with S. Augustine, — that the sacraments,
1 De Baptismo, iii. 13. 2 Id. ii. 2. Con. lit. Petit, ii. 1 18. 3 Ep.
xliii. 24.

UNITY OF THE CHURCH 45
the unity, the authority, are Christ's. The unity of the
Church is with him the deepest possible spiritual unity ;
not only a oneness of believer with believer, but the
oneness of believers with Christ, and in Christ. Can
any question the scriptural and reasonable grounds for
this unity, as he here puts it ? — " No one attains to
salvation and eternal life who has not Christ for his
Head. But no one can have Christ for a Head, who
does not belong to His Body, which is the Church." *
And the following statement guards with equal care
both sides of the truth ; — " The entire Christ is the
Head and the Body ; the Head is the Only begotten
Son of God ; the Body is the Church. He who agrees
not with Scripture in the doctrine concerning the Head,
although he may stand in external communion with the
Church, notwithstanding belongs not to her. But he
who holds fast to all that Scripture teaches concerning
the Head, and yet cleaves not to the unity of the
Church, belongs not to her." 2
A few words more must be said at this point, about S.
Augustine's opinion of S. Cyprian. Although Cyprian
had taken the strong ground which has been referred
to upon re-baptizing, yet he had shown a holy spirit of
peace and charity, in not claiming that his opinions
and those of his local Church at Carthage should bind
others, and in not separating himself from their com
munion. S. Augustine nobly extols this peaceful spirit,
and deems it of higher worth than knowledge of the
mystery of the sacrament, without charity.1 He justly
1 De Unitate Ecclesiae, 49. 2 Id. 7. 3 De Baptismo, i. 28.

46 SAINT AUGUSTINE
affirms, also, that S. Cyprian's authority, which the
Donatists so loudly boasted of as on their side, was
really against them, and in favor of the Church, because
of his very tolerance and humility and determination to
keep unity ; while they were proud and intolerant, and
vaunted forth the very extreme of the schismatical
temper; although they had, besides, the decree of a
council ' against them, and so knew and transgressed
a law of the Church which did not exist in Cyprian's
day. It is worthy of note, — and the point has been
wrought out by an able writer,2 — how strongly anti-
papal is the conception of Church authority which S.
Augustine here presents. To a discerning mind he
hardly appears, in this respect, as the great fore-runner
of the domination of the papacy, as some seem to regard
him. He praises S. Cyprian, because, while holding
firmly his own opinions, and, in so doing, daring to
utterly reject the authority of the Bishop of Rome, he
would not make the point a condition of communion
with others, as there was no universal Church authority
in the matter. "No one of us," — says S. Cyprian com
mended by S. Augustine, — "sets himself up as a bishop
of bishops, or by tyrannical terror forces his colleagues
to a necessity of obeying." 3 How radically different
from all this have been the temper and action of the
Roman Church, is too manifest to call for comment.
This unity of the Church, so important for building
up Christ's kingdom in the world, S. Augustine main-
1 Eighth canon of Aries. 2 In the Church Quarterly Review, vol.
xvi. pp. 28-30. 3 De Baptismo, ii. 3.

PURITY OF THE CHURCH 47
tains may be kept without the sacrifice oi purity. This
is not saying that the Church is wholly pure in this
world. Nor is it denying that, in its ideal, the Church
is holy in Christ* — that great truth of the Creed; but
it is an admission of the actual condition of things, an
attempt to explain it, and to better it. The Church on
earth includes both good and bad ; even as the net in
the parable contains both good and bad fishes, or the
field both wheat and tares. This primary conception
of her condition has been represented as one which
S. Augustine ingeniously made up and urged, merely
as means of carrying his point against the Donatists, —
as a lawyer holding a brief for the Church.2 But such
criticism is very far-fetched, brought even all the way
from the one-sidedness of Donatist feeling, as may be
read in the records of that time.3 The application of
one of the parables, it is to be observed, they could
not deny ; that of the other 5. Augustine did not invent,
but rather S. Cyprian.* In the Church, then, as it is
on earth, S. Augustine teaches, to insist on finding
absolute purity, or even that there can be no commun
ion with the wicked, would be to destroy the Church.
But, as it has continued to exist, its life must have
been maintained, even in spite of its impurity. The good
in it are not to sever themselves, and thus commit the
sin of schism. " The good and faithful, certain of their
own salvation, may continue to dwell in unity among
1 This is Maurice's charge, — Life, etc. Vol. II. p. 167. 2 Continuity
of Christian Thought, p. 1 52. 3 Vid. Neander, ut sup. Vol. II. p. 242.
4 Vid. Abp. Trench on The Parables, p. 91, n. 1.

48 SAINT AUGUSTINE
the corrupt whom it is beyond their power to punish,
seeking to root out the sin which is in their own
heart." * We need not be partakers of other men's
sins, by being in communion with them. What S.
Paul forbids, he explains,2 is consenting to these sins.
Wicked men may be in the Church, partaking materi
ally of the sacraments, while they do not belong to the
Body of Christ : 3 yes, wicked men may administer
these sacraments, whose holiness cannot even thus be
polluted ; God gives the Holy Spirit in the ministry of
wicked men ; but though through them, not from them ;
for the grace itself is only from Himself, or through His
saints.* But this state of things is "not for eternity,
but only for time; nor is it spiritual, but corporal." . . .
" Let the separation in the body be waited for till the
end of time, faithfully, patiently, bravely."5 Let no
one, he urges, give way to individualism. " Let no one
say, ' I will follow such an one, — for he made me a
Christian, he baptized me ;' — let no one that preaches
the Name of Christ, or administers the sacrament of
Christ, be followed in opposition to the unity of Christ" 6
The Church's ideal purity will appear hereafter. " On
earth it includes both bad and good. On earth it loses
none but the bad ; into heaven it admits none but the
good." 7 Thus does he present the great truths of
the unity and the purity of the Church. With its
organic structure handed down from the Incarnate
1 Con. Epis. Parmeniani, iii. 12 et seq. 2 De Baptismo, vii. 9.
3 Con. lit. Petil. ii. 247. 4 De Bapt. v. 28, 29. 5 Con. lit. Petit, iii. 4.
6 Id. iii. 6. 7 Ep. xliii. 27.

APPROVAL OF COMPULSION 49
God, with its spiritual power its deepest, truest test,
with Christ alone sinless its one source of grace and life,
— may he not well say, " You are safe, who have God
for your Father, and His Church for your mother" ? '
S. Augustine has been much censured for his approval
of compulsion in bringing men into the Church. He
has been charged with favoring persecution; and has
been even made responsible for the cruelties of the
Inquisition. We reluctantly admit that there is some
truth in all this ; although we think his opponents have
carried the matter, in certain directions, much too far.
As regards the Donatists, it must be owned, in his
favor, that his treatment of them for a long period was
by methods of persuasion and argument ; that he neither
advocated nor permitted force ; that he urged upon his
clergy and people only peace and conciliation, — seeking
to win a real victory over their narrowness and bigotry,
and to gain them for the Church's unity rather than to
transform them into hypocritical Catholics.2 They, on
the other hand, became increasingly violent and cruel,
— their abominable conduct, as all history shows, far
exceeding any thing charged against the Church. They
went on, in their outrages, to the extent of most hein
ous crimes. It was the State that interfered, partly to
carry out its laws against crime, partly to compel them
to give up their property, to abandon their worship, and
come into the Church. And here, as in all such cases
since, there is a commingling of the temporal and the
1 Con. lit. Petil. iii. 10. Compare the mis-statement of this passage in
Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 152. 2 Ep. xciii. 17.

50 SAINT A UGUSTINE
spiritual, in interests, rights, and duties. The question
becomes, — how far S. Augustine called for, approved,
sanctioned this compulsory interference of the State ?
He positively did approve it, he did ask for it : and it
does not do away with this fact to know that, in the
kindness of his own nature, he counselled, even implored
lenity in the punishment of offenders.1 He might have
been justified in seeking for protection from the state
against cruelty, violence, murder. The mad rage of
fanaticism was aroused ; and he could see no other way
of checking it than this. But he went on to make the
great mistake of connecting questions of religious belief
and worship with those of moral conduct, and to think
compulsion right, yes, a good and wholesome thing, in
reference to one as well as the other. Interpreting
literally the language of the parable, " compel them to
come in," — using the example of S. Paul, compelled to
believe at his conversion, — "Why," he asked, "should
not the Church compel her lost sons to return ? " 2 At
first he would not call it persecution, which he advo
cated, but "punishment," or "merciful correction;" but
soon it was "truth persecuting falsehood," or "treach
ery chastised with the scourge of tribulation : " 3 later,
it became the " righteous persecution which the Church
of Christ inflicts upon the impious, in the spirit of love,
that she may correct, and recall from error."4 He
made much reference to the wholesome effect of this
persecution, — how that so many of the reformed Dona-
1 Ep. cxxxiii. ad Marcellinum. 2 Ep. clxxxv. 22, 23. 3 Con. lit.
Petil. ii. passim. 4 Ep. clxxxv. II.

DEFENCE OF PERSECUTION 5 1
tists were thankful that the imperial laws had been
brought to bear against them and they had been res
cued, even against their will.' He claims that kings
are to serve the Lord, as kings, "by preventing and
chastising with religious severity all acts done in oppo
sition to the commandments of the Lord.2 Sins against
God are as amenable to human law as sins against men :
— " Why," he openly asks, " when free-will is given by
God to man, should adulteries be punished by the laws,
and sacrilege allowed ? " 3 The whole drift of this lan
guage is in one direction. And even when we make
all fair allowance for sincerity of motive, and take into
account his own mildness and gentleness of spirit, we
can find little in his writings upon this subject which
is not worthy of condemnation ; and with sad surprise
we wonder if he ever imagined the extent to which his
opinions might be used and abused.
The Pelagian heresy called forth perhaps the most
distinctive of S. Augustine's doctrinal teaching. The
truths imperilled he considered were those of prime
importance, the errors subtle and dangerous. The
controversy was severe and long continued ; and the
fact that here, more than anywhere else in his writings,
Augustine appears as the Controversialist, largely ac
counts for both the strength and the weakness of his
statements. Pelagianism, with a great deal that was true, in its
origin and development, was mainly false in both. Its
1 Id. 7, 13. z Id. 19. 3 Id. 20.

52 SAINT AUGUSTINE
origin was in an exaggerated notion of human power and
freedom, the development of which would logically do
away with Christianity. It denied any inherited fault
of our nature, and made sin only actual. It proclaimed
the sufficiency of man for obeying God's command
ments, and denied the necessity of direct supernatural
grace. Gaining popular esteem by its appeal to the
innate consciousness of freedom and responsibility, and
by its successful use of that appeal in arousing indolent
souls to effort in the ordinary duties of life ; after all it
could not be truly practical, but, "going upon ideas
without considering facts," it made too little of actual
human frailty and the power of evil habit, and so had no
ability to meet those deeper needs which really existed,
and for which Christianity would provide a remedy.
S. Augustine, whose overpowering sense of the sin
fulness of man was but the echo of his own experience
to the affirmations of Scripture ; to whom, in idea,
God's power was infinite, man's strength nothing, and
so, God's grace indispensable to enable human weak
ness, — was alarmed from the first at the existence in
the Christian Church of doctrines which he considered
struck at the foundation of Christianity. If nature
since the Fall had no infection, if we were born as
pure and as free to obey God as was Adam before his
disobedience, if man could and did really make the first
beginning in turning to God, if the will were thus pow
erful, if there were no absolute need of internal Divine
assistance, if the life could thus begin and continue
acceptable, — where was Christianity f was it not

TRUTH AND ERROR OF PELAGIANISM 53
practically useless ? But conscience, experience, obser
vation contradicted this, and confirmed the testimony
of God's Word.
To enter upon any detailed history of the Pelagian
controversy would be beyond the scope of this essay.
It affected all Christendom : through its chief leaders,
Augustine on the one side, Pelagius, Celestius, and
Julian on the other, its doctrines, in their more or less
extended application, came before many Bishops and
Councils, and were approved or disapproved ; the con
clusion being that the Pelagian opinions were con
demned by the Church in both East and West.1 Of
the issues of the controversy, and the consequent value
of the Church's decision, we may form an opinion, if
we will but consider, as Canon Bright says, "what
effect e.g. the denial of real grace would have on the
principle of sacraments ; or what would be left of the
practical religion of our Prayer-Book, after it had been
revised in the interests of Pelagianism." 2
The teachings of S. Augustine in this connection
have been loudly praised and loudly blamed. We have
for them, as a whole, -neither praise nor blame unquali
fied. A distinction may be made among them. Some
of these doctrines were not the novelties which they
are mistakenly affirmed to have been ; others, truly,
were but the developments of his own thought from
doctrines which had the authority of tradition.3 More
over, as a guide, in our estimate of them all, we may
' Carthage, a.d. 418: Third General Council, at Ephesus, a.d. 431.
2 Anti-Pelagian Treatises, etc. Introd. p. xiv. 3 Id. p. Ii.

<3>

SAINT AUGUSTINE

readily observe that they tend to become increasingly
' intense, unconditioned, arbitrary, one-sided. And herein
they illustrate a principle ; for even, if we do not, as
many would not, find mental difficulty in the theory of
absolute predestination, or of irresistible grace, there is
still this to be said, that, in the orderings of Divine
providence, in the working of the will of God in the
hearts of men, there is another side of the truth. It is
this other side of the truth, which, in the intensity of
some of his doctrinal statements relating to Pelagian-
ism, he loses ; and whether it arise from the pressure
of controversy, or from continual meditation upon the
one aspect of truth which seems to him most necessary,
he thereby does present doctrine which is defective,
imperfect, individualized, rather than whole, catholic,
comprehensive. And it is just those portions of his
doctrine which have been taken up and elaborated,
pushed to farthest extremes, and perhaps given a
really forced interpretation, by founders of sects ;
while the body of his teaching is the heritage and the
blessing of the entire Church.
S. Augustine met the self-sufficiency of Pelagianism,
in part, by his teaching concerning original sin. This
doctrine the Pelagians denied ; they held that our only
connection with Adam's sin was in the imitation of it,
and called Augustine's doctrine a novelty. But, while
the precise expression may have originated with him,1
the doctrine itself, he rightly claims, he did not devise,
but it belonged to the Catholic faith from ancient
1 Ad Simplicianum, i. I.

ORIGINAL SIN 55
times ' and had been always guarded as part of that
faith ; 2 and in more than one of his treatises 3 he cites
many of the Fathers of East and West as maintainers
of it. The principal Scriptural authority to which he
appeals is that of Rom. v. 12; where, in spite of the
generally considered mistranslation of i<p <5, " in whom,"
— the thought of his doctrine, (" omnes ille unus homo
fuerunt " 4) is plainly contained in the mures ^aprov.
He had what he conceived to be an unanswerable prac
tical argument in the universal custom of Infant Bap
tism in the Church : 5 and it is an insinuation which
needs proof, that Only from Augustine's time and be
cause of his teaching in reference to original sin, Infant
Baptisni began to be the general practice.6 The bap
tism of infants, he says, cannot be for remission of
actual sins, — and yet, it is for remission of sin, —
therefore it can be only for that _of original sin. " In
asmuch as infants are not held bound by any sins of
their actual life, it is the guilt of original sin which is
healed in them by the grace of Him Who saves them
by the laver of regeneration." 7 This original sin, he
teaches, subjects all the unbaptized to condemnation;
and accordingly they who so die are not believed to be
saved. The most forbidding part of S. Augustine's
teaching is that concerning the eternal punishment of
the heathen, who had no opportunity, and of infants
dying unbaptized.
v ' De nupt. et concupisc. ii. 25. " 2 De peccat. meritis, iii. 14.
>3 Especially in the Con. Julianum. 4 De nupt. etc. ii. 15. s De
pecc. mer. etc. Ijq. Cf . De Bapt. parvul. i. 10. 6 Continuity of Chris
tian Thought, p. 160. 7 De pecc. mer.' etc. i. 24. '

56 SAINT AUGUSTINE
But what, more definitely, does he make this original
sin to be ? It is that taint, or defect, or flaw * which
' our nature inherits from Adam. " We are in such a
condition, because, by reason of his preceding sin, we
are born in sinful flesh." 2 He, the head of the race,
having disobeyed, and thereby incurred guilt, has, by
the very law of transmission, made his descendants
sharers in that guilt.3 And it is even more than a law
of transmission which is in exercise ; for Adam was the
divinely appointed head of the race, in whom the race
was on trial. As he says elsewhere, — " We all were
in that one man, for we all were that one man." 4 This
original sin need not mean a literal imputation of
Adam's sins to us, although some have so interpreted
Augustine's teaching ; but a condition which, by in
heritance, brings to us the consequences of his act
from whom we inherit. "Through the sin of the
first man, which issued from his free-will, our nature
became vitiated and ruined ; and nothing ever came
to its succor but God's grace alone, through Him Who
is the Mediator," etc.5 Again, " Having been born
after Adam in the flesh, they have contracted, from
1 De nupt. etc. ii. 49. 2 De pecc. merit, i. 68.
3 In considering this law of descent by natural generation, Augustine
enters upon the question of the origin of the soul, whether according to
traducianism transmitted from parents to children, or according to cre-
atianism by individual creation at each birth. He cannot decide in favor
of either, and thinks the question not important, but inclines towards the
• latter, — one of many instances showing his candor, as the other theory
would more manifestly agree with his doctrine.
^4 De Civ. Dei, xiii. 14. s De Grat. Chr. i. 55.

SOURCE AND EXTENT OF THE EVIL 57 -"
their very birth, the contagion of the primeval death." ''
These passages are specimens of very many which
exist in his works, and perhaps they show sufficiently
what he believed original sin to be.
Certain inquiries suggest themselves. As to the
source of this evil which we necessarily inherit, — is
God made the Author of it ? S. Augustine emphati
cally says, No. Human nature, as created in Adam,
was good. Our nature, as such, has no evil in it.
Adam possessed, in that nature, a perfect righteous
ness, the gift of supernatural grace, and this by
supernatural grace he might have retained.2 When
he sinned, it was by his own free-will, and accordingly
of this sin Gcd must not be made the author. Evil
'•thus arose out of good, it must be owned ; as originally
it did when a holy angel became the devil ; but God
was not its author. It sprang not from the supreme
good which is His nature, but from that good which
*He created out of nothing.3 Nor did Augustine there
by take refuge in Manichaeism ; for the devil was not-
an original principle of evil, but was at first a good
nature, made by the one good God. Another inquiry
arises, as to the extent of this evil of original sin. He
says our nature became "vitiated and ruined;" but,
strong as this language is, or any other that can be
quoted from him on this topic, we cannot' discover it to
be his teaching that thereby " the traces of the divine
image in human nature were destroyed ; " or that " hu-
1 Depecc. merit, iii., 10. 2 De corrept. et grat. 31. ^3 De nupt. etc.
ii. 48, 50.

58 SAINT AUGUSTINE
manity is absolutely separated from God." * Let us
read what he says: — ."God's image has not been so
completely erased in the soul of man by the stain of
earthly affections, as to have left remaining there no
merest lineaments of it." . . . "What was impressed
on their hearts when they were created in the image
of God, has iiot been wholly blotted out." z Again,
" the blessing " [of creation] — (creation then is a
blessing") — " has not been eliminated out of our ex
cellent nature by a fault which puts us under condem
nation. . . . Whatever sins men commit," (and cer
tainly actual sins are worse than original sin) — " these
defects of character do not ''eliminate his manhood from
man ; nay, God's good workmanship continues still,
however evil be the deeds of the impious."3 In the
De Trinitate, (and in one of the closing books, which
accordingly must have been written at the very time
when he was in the heat of the Pelagian controversy,)
he has very explicit words about the image of God
in man, claiming that "this image, however worn out
vand defaced, still remains;" moreover, this "weak and
erring mind, by this image of God within itself has
such power as to be able to cleave tq__Him Whose
image it is, to understand and behold God;"4 — words
by which he did not intend to deny the need of
God's grace, but which show how highly he re
garded human freedom under Divine grace, even in
the initiative act of turning to God. Furthermore, if
*' ' Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 157. ^ De Sp. et lit. 48.
3 De pecc. orig. ii. 46. 4 De Trin. xiv. 6, 11, 20.

GOD'S IMAGE NOT DESTROYED 59
in his teaching of original sin, " humanity is absolutely
separated from God," where could he have thought
there would be any point of contact or recovery for our
race, any more than for the fallen angels ? And so the
one who makes this statement can justify it only by the
further assertion that Augustine is so deeply interested
in establishing his position of the condemnation of the
race, that " the redemption of the world by Christ in
evitably assumes a subordinate place, and is practically
denied ; " * — that he is guilty of such " depreciation of
Christ, that deism is the tacit assumption of the Church
on which its institutions rest." 2 S. Augustine denying
the redemption of Christ ! S. Augustine a deist ! Such
an attack needs no defence but to ask all to read his
writings with unprejudiced mind.
In the depth of the ruin which he believed the sin
of Adam had brought upon the race, he never fails to
recognize the mercy of God, following after man with
every inducement of fear and of love, to bid him return
to Him and be saved. But man has no 'power of him
self to return. Not only has he no merit, whereby he
can please God in doing good works, but he cannot
begin to believe an! obey, of himself. He must have
this internal, supernatural power imparted, to inspire,
to urge, to aid. It must " prevent and follow " him ; it
must be constantly with him. And this power is
Grace, in the Augustinian teaching. Shall any one
presume to say, that there is here a "degradation of
Christian theology?" — that "Christ . . . gives way, in
1 Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 157. 2 Id. p. 171.

^(60 SAINT AUGUSTINE
the system of Augustine, to an impersonal thing or sub
stance which is known as grace ? " ' Where, then, we
ask, is the presence of Christ in the inspired teaching
of S. Paul? Is "grace" there only "an impersonal
thing or substance," whose idea is to displace Christ
in the heart ? Grace is, indeed, a theological term ;
but its meaning reaches much farther than to the dry
shell of dogma which sceptics and semi-sceptics talk
about. It has been well defined, as " a force in the
spiritual order, — not simply God's unmerited kindness
in the abstract, but such kindness in action, as a move-
' ment of His Spirit within the soul, resulting from the
Incarnation, and imparting to the will and the affections
a new capacity of obedience and love." 2 And this it
is in S. Augustine's teaching, herein carefully agreeing
with Scripture and tradition.
The Pelagians were willing to call by that term the
< powers of nature originally conferred on man, and which,
they taught, he had still in exercise ; or they might
\make it another expression for the moral law, or the
*gift of forgiveness, or the following of Christ's ex
ample. And so they had a great deal of use, more or
less specious, of the word grace. But they never came
to own it as that internal, Divine power, which was
necessary for holiness. Accordingly they and S. Augus
tine were not speaking of the same thing at all ; and
he is careful to say so repeatedly. He means by it that
merciful power of God acting to restore man's fallen
nature. Grace does not really disparage nature, he
1 Continuity etc. p. 162. 2 Canon Bright's Introduction, ut sup. p. x.

HIS DOCTRINE OF GRACE 6C
says: — it "liberates and controls nature;"' it is not
according to merit, or it would not be grace ; it is free,
or it would not be grace ; it is set in contrast to the law,
yet it enables to keep the law ; grace works with us as
well as in us ; with our will, — establishing free-will ;
all grace is in Christ, by Whom it is given in many ways, ¦'
emphatically in the Holy Sacraments ; grace gradually
accomplishes perfection in holiness, and brings us to
the fruition of everlasting life. Our grace, he teaches,
is an even greater gift than that bestowed upon Adam ;
for ours is efficacious, — yes, as he may be interpreted,
even irresistible and indefectible. And now, if we add
the relation of predestination and perseverance, in his
system of doctrine, to this grace, — that predestination^
prepares for grace ; and that this grace, by God's right
eous and secret counsels, is not given to all alike, in
fact is given to one and not given to another, for some
never begin, and some do not finish the Christian course,
— perhaps we shall have traced a tolerably clear out
line of the Augustinian teaching on this great subject.
Even in its outline it indicates bright lights and deep
shadows ; a mixture of Catholic truth and individual
error ; the error being in going so far with one side
of truth as not to make known the other side ; in being
driven on by logic ; in ignoring comprehensiveness, and
being bound to a system ; in forgetting authority, and
making an excessive use of human reason. A few quota
tions may best illustrate all this. — " This grace of Christ
... is not bestowed for any merits, but is given freely,
1 Retract, ii. 43.

62 SAINT A UG USI INE
on account of which it is also called grace." * "The law
was given in order that grace might be sought ; grace
was given in order that the law might be fulfilled." 2
"Does not the whole scope amount to this, that the
letter which forbids sin fails to give man life, but rather
killeth by increasing concupiscence and aggravating our
sinfulness by transgression, unless indeed grace liberates
us by the law of faith which is in Christ Jesus, when
His love is ' shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost which is given to us ' ? " 3 " It is grace which
helps any man to be a doer of the law ; and without this
grace, he who places himself under the law will be a
hearer of the law and nothing else." 4 "God is said to
be our Helper ; but nobody can be helped 'who does not
make some effort of his own accord. For God does not
work our salvation in us as if we were mere stones,
without sensibility, or creatures in whose nature He
had placed neither reason nor will. Why, however, He
helps one man, but not another, or why one man so
much, and another not to the same extent, or why one
man in one way, and another in another way, — are
.points which He reserves to Himself according to the
method of His own most secret judgment, and to the
excellency of His power."5 "No man is assisted [by
God], unless he also himself does something ; assisted,
however, he is, if he prays, if he believes, if he is
'called according to God's purpose.'" . . . "This God's
\ grace does, in cooperation with ourselves, through Jesus
1 De nat. et grat. 4. 2 De Sp. et lit. 34. 3 Id. 25. * De grat.
et lib. arbit. 24. 5 De pecc. merit, ii. 6.

GRACE WORKING WITH THE WILL 63
Christ our Lord, as well by commandments, sacraments,
examples, as by His Holy Spirit also, through Whom
there is latently shed abroad in our hearts that love which
maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot
be uttered, until health and salvation be perfected in us,
and God be manifested to us as He will be seen in His
eternal truth." r " He begins His influence by working
in us that we may have the will, and completes it by
working with us when we have the will " 2 (the lan
guage of our Tenth Article). " Every man's righteous
ness must be attributed to the operation of God, al-'
though not taking place without the cooperation of
man's will." 3 " Our merits have their crown of reward ;
but our merits are the gift of God ; " 4 — the same sen
timent as is found in the well known prayer of the Con
fessions, " Give what Thou commandest, and command
what Thou wilt " (x. 40), or in the acknowledgment,
" My good deeds are Thy institutions and Thy gifts "
(x. 5), or in the Epistle to Sextus, " When God crowns
our merits, He only crowns His own gifts." 5 "Do we
by grace make void man's freedom of willf God for
bid ! We rather establish that faculty. For as the law
is not weakened or cancelled by faith, neither is free
will by grace." 6 " If there is no grace of God, how
does He save the world ? and if there is no free-will,
how does He judge the world ? " 7 "By faith comes the
acquisition of grace to resist sin ; by grace the soul
1 De perfec.justit. 43. 2 De Grat. et lib. arbit. 33. 3 De Spir. et
lit. 7. * De gest. Pelag. 35. s Ep. cxciv. 19. 6 De Spir. et lit. 52.
7 Ep. ccxiv. 2.

(64 SAINT AUGUSTINE
procures healing from the disease of sin ; by the health
of the soul liberty is given to the will ; from this free
dom of the will arises the love of righteousness ; and
from the love of righteousness proceeds the accomplish
ment of the law. . . . How is it, then, that miserable
men dare to be proud, either of their free-will, before
they have liberty, or of their own strength, if they have
been liberated ? " ' This grace is all in Christ, and from
Him. This Mediator, "even previous to His coming in
the flesh, all along delivered the ancient members of His
Body by their faith in His incarnation ; " 2 and " with
out faith in His incarnation, and death, and resurrection,
the Christian verity unhesitatingly declares that the
ancient saints could not possibly have been cleansed
from sin, so as to have become holy, and justified by the
grace of God." 3 " If God willed not that man should
be without sin, He would not have sent His Son, with
out sin, to heal men of their sins."4 "There is no re
conciliation except by the remission of sins, through the
grace alone of the most merciful Saviour, — through the
only sacrifice of the most veritable Priest." 5 "In Him
Who is our Head [is] the very fountain of grace, whence,
according to the measure of every man, He diffuses
Himself through all His members. It is by that grace
that every man from the beginning of his faith becomes
a Christian, by which grace that one Man from His be
ginning became Christ ; the former also is born again
by the same Spirit of which the latter was born." 6
1 De Spir. et lit. 52. v 2 De pecc. orig. 37. 3 De pecc. orig. 28.
4 De perfec.juslit.y. s De pecc. merit, i. 56. 6 De praedest. sanct. 13.

GRACE IN THE SACRAMENTS 65
"The very sacraments of the holy Church show plainly
'¦ enough that infants . . . are delivered from the bondage
of the devil through the grace of Christ." ' "Through
the grace of that holy laver which we have put within
our reach, advances are even now made by us towards
the blessed consummation of perfection." 2 Although
absolute perfection (he believed) might be, in theory,
possible, — and "it must not by any means be said that
with God there is no possibility whereby the will of man
can be assisted to such a degree, that there can be ac
complished in every respect, even now, in a man, not
that righteousness only which is of faith, but that also
in accordance with which we shall by and by have to
live for ever in the very vision of God;" — yet, they
who ask why this is not actually so now, forget "the
fact that they are human."3 "There is now a training
carried on in growing [Christians], and there will be by
all means a completion made, after the conflict with
death is spent."4 " The same regeneration which now
sanctifies even our outer man,5 and renews our spirit, so
that all our past sins are remitted, will by and by also
operate, as might be expected, to the renewal to eternal
life of that very flesh." 5 " By this laver of regeneration
and word of sanctification all the evils of regenerate
men of whatever kind are cleansed and healed, — not
the sins only which are all now remitted in baptism, but
those also which after baptism are committed by human
'' l De pecc. orig. 45. 2 De pecc. orig. 44. 3 De Spir. et lit. 66.
4 De perfec. justit. 16. s De nupt. et concupis. i. 20. 6 De pecc.
orig. 44.

(66 '' SAINT AUGUSTINE
ignorance and frailty;"1 — i.e. (as he more fully de
clares) " not only all the sins, but all the ills of men of
whatever kind so ever, are in course of removal by the
sanctification of that Christian laver whereby Christ
cleanses His Church."2 And this grace of Baptism is
accompanied by that of the Eucharist ; and even to
infants is this further grace given ; for, although S.
Augustine seems to teach in some places that their in
corporation into Christ is enough to make them par
takers of His Body and Blood, the receiving of the
Eucharist also is made generally necessary, (and herein
he only follows the teaching of the Greek Church) in
such passages as this, — " Reconciliation through Christ
is in the laver of regeneration, and in the Flesh and
Blood of Christ, without which not' even infants can
have life in themselves."3  "Did not Adam," asks
S. Augustine, " have the grace of God ? Yes, truly, he
had it largely, but of a different kind. He was placed
in the midst of benefits which he had received from the
goodness of his Creator ; for he had not procured those
benefits by his own deservings ; in which benefits he
suffered absolutely no evil."4 "God did not will even
him to be without His grace, which He left in his free-
choice. . . . Such was the nature of the aid, that he
could forsake it when he would, and could continue in
it when he would : but not such that he could be made
' De nupt. etc. i. 38. 2 Id. 39.
^ 3 Con. duas literas etc. iv. 8. Cf . ii. 7, and iv. 4. The fuller reference to
S. Augustine's teaching concerning the grace of the Eucharist, as given
in other writings, is reserved for a distinct topic.
4 De correp. et grat. 29.

GRACE INVINCIBLE 6?'
to will his continuance. This first is the grace which
was given to the first Adam ; but more powerful than
this is that in the second Adam. For the first is that
whereby it is effected that a man may have righteous
ness if he will ; the second can do more than this, since
by it it is even effected that he will, and wills so much,
and loves with such ardor, that -by the will of the Spirit
he overcomes the will of the flesh." ' " To the first man
. . . was given the aid of perseverance ; not that by
it it might come to pass that he should persevere, but
because without it he could not of free-will persevere. •
But now, to the saints predestinated by God's grace,
... it is not only that without that gift they cannot per
severe, but . . . that by means of this gift they cannot-
help persevering.' '2 So he concludes "therefore aid was
brought to the infirmity of human will, so that it might
be unchangeably and invincibly influenced by Divine
grace ; and thus, although weak, it still might not fail,
• nor be overcome by any adversity." * — "God's predes--,
tination in good is the preparation of grace ; which
grace is actually the endowment itself, — the effect of (
that very predestination." 4 '"But why,' says one, 'is
not the grace of God given according to man's merits ? ' '
I answer, ' Because God is merciful.' 'Why, then,' it is
asked, ' is it not given to all ? ' And here I reply, ' Be- "
cause God is a Judge.' And thus grace is given by Him
freely ; and by His righteous judgment it is shown in
some, what grace confers on those to whom it is given." 5
1 Id. 31. 2 Id. 34. 3 Id. 38. 4 De praedest. sanct. 19. J
5 De don. persev. 16.

,68 SAINT AUGUSTINE
"If you ask, 'Why will He punish me rather than an
other, or deliver him rather than me ? ' I confess that
I can find no answer to make."1 "Is there unright
eousness with God? Away with the thought! But
His ways are past finding out. Therefore let us be
lieve in His mercy in the case of those who are de
livered, and in His truth in the case of those who are
punished, without any hesitation; and let us not en
deavor to look into that which is inscrutable, nor to
trace that which cannot be found out." 2 " From all
which it is shown with sufficient clearness that the
grace of God, which both begins a man's faith and
enables it to persevere, is not given in respect of our
merits, but according to His own most secret, and at
the same time most righteous, wise, and beneficent will.
. . . We therefore will, but God worketh in us to will
also. We therefore work, but God worketh in us to
work also for His good pleasure." 3
The question of free-will is strictly a philosophical
one ; yet, as it is presented in S. Augustine's teachings,
it has so important a relation to other questions, that,
while we do not profess to enter into it with any degree
of minuteness, we are not permitted to pass it by. Did
S. Augustine teach free-will f Yes ; absolutely, in refer
ence to man before the Fall. This teaching comes out
clearly in his earlier writings, wherein, as we have
already hinted, we think it quite probable that he also
meant to teach this absolute freedom in man fallen.
But in these later works, — emphatically in the Anti-
1 De don. persev. 18. 2 Id. 25. 3 Id. 33.

THREE-FOLD SENSE OF FREEDOM 69''
Pelagian writings, under the pressure of controversy,
he certainly propounds a different theory in reference
to the present condition of the race. Some have ven
tured to call this teaching that of a genuine freedom.
Poujoulat affirms that Augustine teaches the Catholic
doctrine to be "not at all the destruction of free-will,
but its profound modification ; " and says, " so far is
free-will from being destroyed in sinful man [according
to Augustine], it is this free-will which determines his
sinfulness" ' a statement which does not go very deep.
Many other Roman Catholic writers have strongly
maintained a similar position, and upon like grounds, —
notably, perhaps, a thoughtful critic of Canon Mozley's
Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, in the fortieth
volume of the Dublin Review. Julius Mulier, in his
Christian Doctrine of Sin, distinguishes a three-fold
sense of S. Augustine's use of the term freedom, —
(1) that of absolute power of choice between good and '>'
evil, as belonging originally to the first man ; (2) that
spontaneity essentially belonging to the human will, •
which marks man's present condition ; wherein, though
he be under the power of necessity, he is free from
constraint ; and (3) that highest freedom, which, begin
ning in the present condition, by the power of grace,
can be perfect only in the future life, when it will be
impossible to sin.1 Canon Mozley, in the work above
referred to, very fully treats of Free-Will as held by
S. Augustine to belong to fallen man ; and concludes,
1 Histoire de S. Augustin, III. p. 125. 2 Vol. II. p. 35. (Edinb.
translation.)

70 SAINT AUGUSTINE
by much reasoning, and from many references, that it
means only the possession of a will; that in part it does
not come up to the received doctrine of free-will, — the
will as a self-determining power, — and in part opposes
it.1 We have already given several passages in which S.
Augustine speaks of free-will in its relations to grace.
His teaching may further appear in what follows. His
theory, in few words, is this, — that through the Fall
xman lost his primal liberty and the grace which bestowed
it : he is accordingly free only in the direction of sin,
until the grace of Christ sets him free. And yet he
may have this grace always, in answer to prayer, and
in ordinances of the Church ; so human responsibility
is guarded, while his own consciousness of practical
freedom is answer enough to the insinuations of fatal
ism. That such a theory teaches the libertas indiffe-
rentiae can hardly be averred ; that it may be a higher
and truer theory cannot be denied. "Which of us
can say," he writes, "that by the sin of the first man
free-will perished from the human race ? Through sin
liberty indeed perished, but it was that liberty which
was in Paradise, — of having a full righteousness with
immortality, on account of which loss human nature is
without divine grace." . . . But "free-will did not so
far perish in the sinner but that by it all sin ; . . . they
will what pleases them. Whence also the Apostle says,
' When ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from
righteousness.' . . . They are not, then, free from right-
1 PP- I95_232> (third edition.)

HIS DOCTRINE OF FREE-WILL .71 "
eousness except by the choice of the will, but they do
not become free from sin save by the grace of the
Saviour." ' He puts very strongly the necessity which
"a penal viciousness produced out of the original lib
erty." " Vanquished by the sin into which it fell by
the bent of its will, nature has lost its liberty. . . .
Because the will turned to sinning, the hard necessity
of possessing sin pursued the sinner."2 So now "the
captive will cannot breathe into a wholesome liberty
save by God's grace." 3 Free-will "is of force for sin
ning in men subjected to the devil; while it is not of
avail for pious living, unless made free by God's grace." 4
Accordingly, " he who falls, falls by his own will, and '
he who stands, stands by God's will." 5 Grace "changes
the will from bad to good, and assists it when good."5
Yet "it is not to be for a moment supposed, because
S. Paul said ' it is God that worketh in you ' etc., that
he meant to do away with the liberty of the will. If
this had been his meaning, he would not have said just
before, 'Work out your own salvation'" etc.7 "What
need for further question?" he writes, "since we
call that power, where to the will is joined the ability
to do. That is in a man's power, which he does if he
wills, and if he does not will, does not do." 8 (Quod si
1 Con. duas literas, etc. i. 5.
2 De perfec. justit. 9. Cf. the strong language in the Enchiridion,
xxx. — " It was by the evil use of his free-will that man destroyed both
it and himself."
3 Con. duas literas, etc. iv. 3. 4 Id. ii. 9. 5 De don.
persev. 19. 6 De grat. et lib. arbit. 41. 7 Id. 21. 8 De Spir.
et lit. 53.

Y

72) ' SAINT AUGUSTINE
vult,facit, si non vult, non facit.) Again, — "what is
believing, but agreeing to the truth of what is asserted ?
But consent proves the possession of will, (volentis
est;) — faith, therefore, is in our own power."1 "To
yield our consent, or to withhold it, . . . is the function
of our own will."2 And this is true, he says, however
much God influence us, externally or internally. Prayer,
too, proves resistance to sin possible. " Whatever may
be the cause [of sin], it may be resisted. Plainly it
may. For on this account we pray for help, saying
' Lead us not into temptation.' This help we should
not ask, if we believed that resistance were quite im
possible." 3 So S. Augustine would bring his readers
i to the conclusion that the Pelagians " do not maintain
free-will by purifying it, but demolish it by exaggerating
it."4 The practical question is, "What the ability
of man's will can do, when assisted by the grace of
God." 5 And here, God does not command impossibili
ties. "Nor is any one," he says, "forced by God's
power unwillingly, either into evil or good ; but when
God forsakes a man, he deservedly goes to evil, and
when God assists, without deserving he is converted to
good. For a man is not good if he is unwilling, but
by the grace of God he is even assisted to the point of
being willing."1' "Who is drawn, if he was already
willing? And yet no man comes unless he is willing. /
Therefore he is drawn in wondrous ways to will, by
1 De Spir. et lit. 54. 2 Id. 60. 3 De. nat. et grat. 80. 4 Con.
duas literas etc. i. 8. s De nat. et grat. 49. 6 Con. duas literas
etc. i. 36.

PREDESTINA TION 73
Him Who knows how to work within the very hearts
of men." *
The last two complete treatises of S. Augustine, in
this great controversy, have to do with Predestination and
Perseverance. Election is of God's mercy, he teaches ;
and God's ways are unsearchable. Nor is it any con
tradiction, " that grace is exceedingly secret." 2 God
" has mercy, when He gives good things. He hardens,
when He recompenses what is deserved." 3 Predestina
tion is but a particularizing of God's foreknowledge.4'
"This is the predestination of the saints, — nothing
else ; viz. the foreknowledge and the preparation of God's
kindnesses, whereby they are most certainly delivered,
whoever they are that are delivered."5 Our Lord, in
His Incarnation, he regards as the grandest instance of
predestination. It was "that same predestination of
the saints which most especially shone forth in [Him]
the Saint of saints." 6 This predestination is abso
lute. God chooses men that they may be believers, not
because they are already so,7 nor because He foresees they
will be so :* nor is anyone to be judged according to
what he might have done, if he had lived longer.9 The
statement grows even more intense : " it did not do
[the Jews] any good that they were able to believe, be
cause they were not predestinated by Him Whose judg
ments are inscrutable, and His ways past finding out.
Neither would it have been a hindrance to them that
1 Con. duas literas etc. i. 37. 2 De praedest. sanct. 13. 3 Id. 14.
4 Id.19. De don. persev. 41. s De don. persev. 1 5, 35. b De praedest.
sanct. 31. ' Id. 34. 8 Id. 37. » Id. 24.

74 SAINT AUGUSTINE
they could not believe, if they had been so predestinated,
as that God should illumine their blind eyes " * etc.
And " if, on the hearing of this, some should be turned
to torpor and sloth, and from striving, should go head
long to lust after their own desires, is it therefore to be
accounted that what has been said about the foreknowl
edge of God is false ? " 2 It was at this period that he
could allow himself to interpret " Who will have all
men to be saved " (i Tim. ii. 4), as meaning only that
v"no man is saved unless God wills his salvation ; " 3 —
"all men" meaning "all classes of men," or "every
race of men."  We are to pray for perseverance, for
ourselves and others, — for it is God's gift. The Lord's
prayer, he explains, is pre-eminently the saints' prayer
for perseverance.4 Even they who do not persevere may
have been receivers of grace. Those, he says, " must
be called Christ's disciples and God's children, whom,
being regenerated, we see to live piously ; but they are
then truly what they are called, if they shall abide in
that on account of which they are so called." 5 Predes
tination " must be preached," for it bids men glory in
the Lord ; and it need not discourage, any more than
preaching God's gifts need discourage obedience.6 Yet,
it is to be proclaimed with great discretion, implying
need of action, and the reward promised, and making
general application of the truth, and speaking to all
present as if they might be receivers of grace.7 And,
1 De don. persev. 35. 2 Id. 38. 3 Enchirid. ciii. Cf. De correp. et
grat. 44. 4 De don. persev. 3. 3 De correp. et grat. 22. 6 De don.
persev. 50, 51. 7 Id. 57-61.

PERSEVERANCE 75
as no one can be certain of eternal life until death, he
again more strenuously urges the duty of prayer.1 
We may not pass over his allusion, in one of the closing
chapters of the treatise De dono perseverantiae, to the
pressure which the controversy has brought to bear
upon him, — how that necessity has compelled him to
"more carefully and laboriously defend the sacred
Scriptures, because of these special heresies." For
" the Pelagians say that God's grace is given according
to our merits ; and what else is this than an absolute
denial of grace ? " 2
In all these writings of S. Augustine perhaps the
greater part of his reasoning may be admitted, and
that too without calling it "the seductive glamour of
his dialectic," 3 which is going tO ensnare us and cap
tivate us : and if we own that great principle of the
other side of truth, most of his conclusions upon these
majestic themes need not surprise us, if we are think
ing people, who have ever met speculative difficulties.
To some there may be help towards the balancing of
the Divine and the human relations of these deep
mysteries in his own words in the De Civitate Dei, —
words more calm and quiet and spiritually devout, more
like himself. " It does not follow, that, though there is
for God a certain order of all causes, there must there
fore be nothing depending on the free exercise of our
own wills, for our wills themselves are included in that
order of causes which is certain to God, and is embraced
by His foreknowledge, — for human wills are also causes
• Id. 62, 63. 2 Id. 53. 3 Owen.

j6 SA INT A UG US TINE
of human actions ; and He Who foreknew all the
causes of things would certainly among those causes
not have been ignorant of our wills." . . . "Neither let
us be afraid, lest, after all, we do not do by will that
which we do by will, because He Whose foreknowledge
is infallible foreknew that we would do it." ' We need
not " have any dread of necessity taking away the free
dom of our will." . . . "We are by no means com
pelled, retaining the prescience of God, to take away
the freedom of the will, or retaining the freedom of the
will, to deny that He is prescient of future things,
which is impious. But we embrace both. We faith
fully and sincerely confess both. The former, that we
may believe well ; the latter, that we may live well.
For he lives ill who does not believe well concerning
God."2 These last words of his form a fitting transition to
what we wish to say concerning certain other important
teaching of S. Augustine, not directly connected with
either of the three great controversies in which he was
engaged. It would be leaving an essential part of our
subject untouched, did we not at least draw attention
to these other points of his teaching. And however ob
scure, or severe, or intensely dogmatic (in the popular
abuse of that word) we may have found a part of what
he says against the Pelagians, there is this to be taken
\into account, that those doctrines are not all that is to be
found in S. Augustine. Indeed, many good judges and
1 De Civ. Dei, v. 9. 2 Id. v. 10.

OTHER IMPORTANT DOCTRINE fj
eminent theologians of the Church consider that in
such a book as Canon Mozley's Augustinian Doctrine of
Predestination there is a grave exaggeration of the place
which predestination held in Augustine's great rich
mind, as compared with other doctrines, — e.g. with that
of sacramental grace. Certainly in him predestination
and its allied truths are not everything, much as they
have been made so by those who took the opportunity
which, we own, he gave them, and built up harder walls
and higher barriers than he ever did, to shut in their
select systems. Let S. Augustine be devoutly read
and studied and meditated upon, and his comprehen
siveness will be perceived ; and in his comprehensive
ness is one element of his greatness.
To "believe well concerning God" as he says in those
words just quoted, expresses what was to him the
foundation of religion. And his teaching concerning
God is full of grand conception of what He is in His
revelation of Himself to us, and of earnest counsel to
us in our relations to Him. Many, in the freedom of
thinking which is so rife to-day, refuse to accept any
proper notion of God's sovereignty, and shrink with
horror from what they conceive to be S. Augustine's
idea of God as derived from the Anti-Pelagian writings.
But even in those writings we maintain that his idea of
God is not — as the author of The Continuity of Chris
tian Thought says — that of "absolute and arbitrary
will in which consists the only giound of right ; " ' as
if He were "a bloodthirsty tyrant," "a horrible kind
1 P- 171-

78 SAINT AUGUSTINE
oi divine Nero," as another writer puts it, who compla
cently declares, that S. Augustine " either did not see,
or probably failed to appreciate the truth, that power,
unbounded by considerations of justice, mercy, and
goodness, is certainly arbitrary, and may be maleficent
in its operations." ' Neither of these, surely, are defini
tions of God which are justified by the writings against
the Pelagians ; and though the ideas of Almighty Power
and Will are there made prominent, we can see how
this naturally came to be from the conditions of the
controversy, and he tells us the same in his own words.
Moreover, if any are so troubled by his teaching on this
point as to be driven to pervert it, what would they do
with certain well known language of S. Paul's Epistles ?
Would they represent that this was all his teaching
about God ? Or would they throw out these so severe
words, and re-construct the Bible ? It might, perhaps,
be thus better adapted to the Church which is no more
than "the consentient reason of those who are enlight
ened by a divine teacher speaking within the soul!"2
S. Augustine, at all events, has other and fuller re
presentations of God. 3 Let us briefly point out his
teaching. The Confessiones is the work which will nat
urally be first suggested to most minds, as full of
1 Owen's Evenings with the Skeptics, Vol. II. p. 195. * Continuity
etc. p. 150. Cf. p. 30 of this Essay.
3 Even Mr. Owen, with all his bitterness against dogma and the
Church, as shown in his Essay on The Skepticism of S. Augustine,
admits the exceptional value of Augustine's teaching about God, and
admires its combined sublimity and versatility. Vid. Evenings with the
Skeptics, Vol. II. pp. 191, i94) 515,

DOCTRINE CONCERNING GOD 79
devout sentiment concerning God ; yet its statements
are equalled, if not excelled, by those of the De Civi-
tate Dei, and the De Trinitate. He feels that he cannot
speak of God, or worthily utter His praise, — for God
is "unspeakable ; " and even to call Him so, is "an oppo
sition of words which is rather to be avoided by silence
than explained away by speech."1 "The clearer the
sight of Him," even, " the less is the power of expres
sion." 2 Yet, it is a step towards knowing what He is,
to know what He is not.3 God is incomprehensible ; 4
yet we may know Him, — and the knowledge of Him is
the sublimity of attainment.5 He is in constant ac
tivity, in infinite space and time ; 6 — there is no growth
in His knowledge ; His knowledge of past, present,
future, is all one.7 God is incomprehensible, yet to
be ever sought,8 — although the imperfection of our
knowing Him be so great, compared with the perfection
of His knowing us.9 God is the Eternal Light, the
Truth, the One alone absolutely good; IO the " good of
all good." " All others are to be loved in God and for
God.12 God alone satisfies ; "3 He is Himself the great
Reward, " the perfection of happiness, the sum of the
happy life eternal." ,+ "What then?" he asks, "hath
1 De Doc. Christ, i. 6. Canon Freemantle calls this " S. Augustine's
confession of Agnosticism " I Bamp. Led. p. 436.
2 Con. Epis. Manich. 21. 3 De Trin. viii. 3. 4 De Trin. xv. 2.
s De. Civ. Dei, xi. 2. 6 Id. xi. 5. 7 De Civ. Dei, xi. 21 ; De Trin.
xv. 13, 22. 8 De Trin. xv. 2, 49. » Id. ix. I. I0 De perfec. justit.
32 ; De nupt. etc. ii. 48. " De Trin. viii. 4. I2 Con. Faust, xxii. 78 ;
Conf. iv. 18. " De Civ. Dei, *. 25 ; De Doc. Christ, i. 35, 37. " De
Sp. et lit. 37, 39; De Civ. Dei, xxii. 30.

80 SAINT A UG US TINE
God no reward ? None, save Himself. The reward of
God is God Himself." * And, as He is the chief good,
it is our chief good to be united to Him.2 We seek
Him in vain through nature alone : — " Why do we go
forth and run to the heights of the heavens and the low
est parts of the earth, seeking Him who is within us, if
we wish to be with Him ? " 3 — a remarkable utterance ;
for with all S. Augustine's teaching of the ethical tran
scendence of God, he taught His true immanence ; and
his writings are as much aglow with the thought of the
nearness of God,4 as they are with that of intense long
ing for Him. God must first be believed ; we must
believe, before we understand ; 5 and on this point he
has a wise caution; — "we must take care, lest the mind,
believing that which it does not see, feign to itself some
thing which is not, and hope for and love that which is
false;"6 — and then He is to be known and loved.
" Who loves what he does not know ? . . . And what
is it to know God, but to behold Him and steadfastly
perceive Him with the mind ? " 7 There is a striking
passage upon the love of God and one's brother; —
" Let no one say, I do not know what I love. Let
him love his brother, and he will love the same love.
For he knows the love with which he loves, more than
the brother whom he loves. So now he can know God
more than he knows his brother ; clearly known more,
because more present ; known more, because more within
1 In Ps. lxxii. 32. 2 De Civ. Dei, x. 3. 3 De Trin. viii. 11.
4 Conf. iv. 18, 19; v. 2 j vi. 4, 26; ix. 28. s De Trin. viii. 8. 6 Id.
viii. 6. 7 Id.

DOCTRINE CONCERNING THE TRINITY 8 1
him ; known more, because more certain. Embrace the
love of God, and by love embrace God." ' So believing,
knowing, and loving Him, we must " rise to Him by
spiritual conformity."2 Tenderly and powerfully does
Augustine urge our return to God, if we have strayed
from Him ; — "In ourselves beholding His image, let
us, like that younger son of the gospel, come to our
selves, and arise and return to Him from Whom by
our sin we had departed. There our being will have
no death, our knowledge no error, our love no mishap."3
Upon the great doctrine of the Trinity, S. Augustine
is very full and strong, as we might expect from his hav
ing written so profound a treatise upon it ; in which,
however, he rather traces types and resemblances in
ourselves to the Triune nature, than assumes to give a
purely argumentative proof, or to exhaust the full
meaning of the doctrine.4 In this work, as well as in
the De Doctrina Christiana, he has language which has
frequently been commented upon, as bearing striking
resemblance to that of the Athanasian Creed.5 The
Holy Spirit, he teaches, proceeds from the Father and
the Son:6 He is "the unutterable communion" of
Father and Son, yet substance, and of one substance
with Father and Son.7 He owns he cannot express
the mystery, nor at all fathom the depths of God's
nature.8 1 Id. viii. 12. 2 De Civ. Dei, ix. 18. 3 De Civ. Dei, xi. 28.
4 Vid. Haddan's Preface to the translation of the Edinburgh edition, p. vi.
s De Trin. v. 11; De Doc. Christ, i. 5. 6 De Trin. iv. 29; xv. 29.
7 De Trin. v. 12; vi. 7 ; vii. 6. 8 Id. xv. 45.

82 SAINT AUGUSTINE
Through the Incarnation of our Lord, he teaches, is
our approach to God. The Son of God became Son of
man, that sons of men might by grace become through
Him sons of God.1 Thus, we who have not the nature
of God, and are yet partakers of God by His image
which is in us, are brought nearer through the God-
man.2 This Incarnation is a true taking of humanity
into the Divine Person of the Word : — " That nativity
. . . conjoined, in the unity of the person, man to
God, flesh to the Word."3 "At the very moment
that He began to be Man, He was nothing else than
the Son of God ; ... so Christ in one person unites the
Word and man." 4 " So far as He is God, He and the
Father are one ; so far as He is man, the Father is
greater than He."5 This is "the Incarnation of the
unchangeable Son of God, whereby we are saved.'' '6 It
is the richest grace to us. "The grace of God could not
have been more graciously commended to us, than thus,
that the only Son of God, remaining unchangeable in
Himself, should assume humanity;"7 — and thus "He
leads us straight to that Trinity by participation in
which the angels themselves are blessed." 8 The In
carnation was to convince men of what seemed incredi
ble.9 It was to teach humility.10 It was to demonstrate
to man his place in God's creation ; " to show "at how
great a price God rated us, and how greatly He loved
1 De Civ. Dei, xxi. 15. 2 De Trin. xiv. II; cf. De Civ. Dei, xi. z.
3 De correp. et grat. 30. 4 Enchirid. xxxvi. 5 Id. xxxv. 6 De
Civ. Dei, a. 29. 7 De Civ. Dei, x. 29. 8 Id. ix. 15. 9 De Trin.
xiii. 12. IO Id. xiii. 22. " Id.

THE INCARNATION — THE ANGELS 83
us."1 Christ the Mediator 'is continually presented to
our thought, mediating on earth and in heaven ; " shed
ding His innocent blood for the remission of our sins," 2
and that by a voluntary sacrifice ; 3 — rising again, and
taking His glorious Body up into the heavenly places.4
This Father has extensive teaching in relation to
The Angels, — their creation, nature, relations to us
present and future, etc., upon which we cannot dwell,
but to which we will simply allude. A point of much
interest is his belief that the angels who did not fall
shall never fall, — have an eternal blessedness assured
to them, as the reward of their fidelity;5 and another,
that the redeemed and saved among men are to make
good the places, in bliss, of the angels who were lost.6
Our earthliness prevents our nearer fellowship now
with the holy angels ; 7 to be ranked with them here
after will be the height of our perfection.8
Of the teaching of S. Augustine upon The Sacra
ments and their grace we have already spoken to some
extent, and have given many passages bearing upon the
subject, especially in reference to Holy Baptism, as
that subject came before us in treating of the Donatist
controversy. But there is much more to be said ; and
the topic might worthily receive even much fuller con-
' Id. xiii. 13. 2 Id. xiii. 18. 3 Id. iv. 16. * De Civ. Dei, x. 29.
s Id. xi. 13; xxii. 1. 6 Enchirid. Ixi. 7 De Civ. Dei, viii. 25.
8 Con. Faust, xxii. 28. In this connection it may be observed that
S. Augustine has been severely criticised by some for departing from the
earlier tradition in teaching that The Angel of the Lord in the Old Testa
ment was not the Son of God. Vid. Medd's One Mediator; cf. Liddon's
Divinity of our Lord, p. 55.

84 SAINT AUGUSTINE
sideration than we now give it. Augustine often uses
the word sacrament in its extended sense, as is com
mon among the Fathers; — sometimes in a very loose
way, e.g. distinguishing "the sacrament of baptism"
from " the sacrament of conferring baptism." J He
tersely contrasts the sacraments of the new with those
of the old dispensation; the former, few, simple, majes
tic, sacred, "such, e.g. as the sacrament of baptism, and
the celebration of the Body and Blood of the Lord."2
Even as a visible symbol, for a bond of union, " their
importance cannot be overstated, and only scoffers will
treat them lightly." 3 In one passage he dwells upon
the resemblance of sacraments to the things of which
they are the sacraments, and says " if they had not
such resemblance, they would not be sacraments at
all ; " 4 and continues, — " in most cases, moreover, they
do, in virtue of this likeness, bear the names of the
realities which they resemble : " — so, he says, " in a
certain manner, the sacrament of Christ's Body is
Christ's Body, and the sacrament of Christ's Blood is
Christ's Blood ; " 4 where the connection shows that he
means to refer to the deep spiritual mystery of this
sacrament. It is not a literal, carnal death, i.e. which
takes place in the Eucharist ; the death is sacramen-
tally celebrated. "Was not Christ," he says, "once for
all offered up in His own Person as a sacrifice? and
yet, is He not likewise offered up in the sacrament as
a sacrifice ? " 4 In another place he well distinguishes
1 De Baptismo, i. 2. 2 De Doc. Christ, iii. 13 ; Con. Faust, xix. 13, 14.
3 Con. Faust, xix. 11. * Ep. xcviii. 9, ad Bonifacium.

DOCTRINE OF THE SACRAMENTS 85
between the outward and the inward ; — " The material
symbols are nothing else than visible speech, which,
though sacred, is changeable and transitory. While
God is eternal, the water of baptism and all that is
material in the sacrament is transitory ; the very word
'God,' which must be pronounced in the consecration,
is a sound which passes in a moment. The actions and
sounds pass away, but their efficacy remains the same,
and the spiritual gift thus communicated is eternal." ' —
In reference to the special grace of Baptism we venture
to give one more passage in addition to those previously
cited : — " This is the meaning of the great sacrament
of baptism which is solemnized among us, that all who
attain to this grace should die to sin, . . . and rising
from the font regenerate, . . . should begin a new life
in the Spirit, whatever may be the age of the body,'"1 —
words which are strikingly like those of our Baptismal
Offices.  Referring now a little more fully to S. Au
gustine's Eucharistic teaching, — it may be observed
that in his explanation of S. John vi. 53 ("except ye
eat the flesh " etc.) in the De Doctrina Christiana, he at
first appears to teach only the low and merely memorial
significance of the Sacrament. He is illustrating the
interpretation of figures and figurative expressions in
Scripture. These words, he says, are " a figure, — en
joining that we should have a share in the sufferings of
our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profit
able memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded
and crucified for us." 3 This is all true enough. But
' Con. Faust, xix. 16. 2 Enchirid. xiii. 3 De Doctr. Christ, iii. 24.

86 SAINT AUGUSTINE
we must examine what further teaching he may have
upon the Eucharist. He says in the De Trinitate
(iii. io) that "the fruits of the earth, consecrated by
mystic prayer, and received duly to our spiritual health,
are sanctified to become so great a sacrament only by
the Spirit of God working invisibly." Here is the ad
ditional idea of the Divine power accomplishing the con
secration, and making the Sacrament Divine food to us.
There is grace in the Sacrament. In a passage of the
De Civitate Dei (xvii. 20) there is a still fuller meaning.
He is explaining the words — " Wisdom hath builded
her an house" etc. "The Wisdom of God, the Word
coeternal with the Father, hath builded Him an House,
even a human body in the virgin womb, and hath sub
joined the Church to it as members to an head,
. . . hath furnished a table with wine and bread," etc.
... "To be made partakers of this table is itself to
begin to have life." . . . "This table ... the Mediator
of the New Testament Himself . . . furnishes with His
own Body and Blood." . . . "That sacrifice has suc
ceeded all the sacrifices of the Old Testament." . . .
" Instead of all these sacrifices and oblations His Body
is offered, and is served up to the partakers of it." Here
is the distinct statement, that what we receive in the
Sacrament, which was before taught to be spiritual
food, is the Body and Blood of the Lord. Again, in the
De Civitate Dei (xxi. 25) "What it is in reality, and not
sacramentally, to eat His Body and drink His Blood,"
he says Christ Himself shows ; — " this is to dwell in
Christ, that He also may dwell in us. It is as if He

THE REAL PRESENCE 87
said, — he that dwelleth not in Me and in whom I do
not dwell, let him not say or think that he eateth My
Body or drinketh My Blood ; " — words which justify the
reference to Augustine in our Art. XXIX., as teaching
that the wicked are in no wise partakers of Christ,
although they sacramentally receive His Body. The
passages cited are sufficient to show that the Real
Presence of Christ in His Sacrament was the belief
of S. Augustine. And as for such expressions, written
elsewhere, as "Why make ready the teeth and the
belly? Believe and thou hast eaten;" — "To believe
on Him, this is to eat the living Bread," — they are
in entire harmony with his other teaching ; and more
over, if pressed, might go to establish the reductio ad
absurdum that the Real Presence was not believed by
even Paschasius himself, who once wrote "Christum
vorari fas dentibus non est," — as of course every be
liever in the Real Presence would acknowledge." —
The sacrifice in the Eucharist he as plainly affirms ;
and presents as clearly as possible the great sacramen
tal truth of the Church's offering of herself in and with
the offering of the great High Priest. His definition
of a true sacrifice is most excellent, as being "every
work done that we may be united to God in holy fellow
ship, and which has reference to that supreme good
and end in which alone we can be truly blessed ; " 2 and
his teaching is, that "the whole redeemed city, i.e.
the congregation or community of the saints, is offered
to God as our sacrifice through the great High Priest,
1 Vid. Ch. Quart. Rev. Vol. IX. p. 209. 2 De Civ. Dei, x. 6.

88 SAINT AUGUSTINE
Who, that we might be members of this glorious Head,
offered Himself to God in His Passion for us, in the
form of a servant. . . . This is the sacrifice of Chris
tians ; we, being many, are one Body in Christ. And
this also is the sacrifice which the Church continually
celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, known to the
faithful, in which she teaches that she herself is offered
in the offering she makes to God." '
Prayer for the faithful departed had been the custom
of the Church long before S. Augustine's day. It is
not strange, then, that we find direct and indirect
teaching on this point in his works. When his holy
mother, Monica, was taken from him, her dying request
was this, " Lay my body anywhere, let not the care
for it trouble you at all. This only I ask, that you
will remember me at the Lord's altar wherever you
be." 2 And he begs all who read his Confessions to thus
remember her, — that so her last entreaty may be
more abundantly fulfilled to her through the prayers of
the many.3 We find him also elsewhere teaching the
benefit -to the departed of prayers, and alms, and the
Sacrament of the altar.4 He affirms, however, as if
guarding against the danger of a departure from primi
tive usage, that no prayer is of avail for those who die
impenitent ; — "no one need hope that after he is dead
he shall obtain merit with God which he has neglected
to secure here ; " 5 — though he does condone the making
of offerings for such, as a kind of comfort to the living.6
1 Id. 2 Confess, ix. 27. 3 Id. ix. 37. 4 Enchirid. ex. ; De Civ.
Dei, xxi. 24, 27. s Enchirid. ex. bId.; also vid. Serm. xxxii.

THE INTERMEDIATE STATE 89
Not only prayer and sacrament for the departed are
taught, but the prayers of the saints for us are invoked.
"May he help us by his prayers," — he writes of
S. Cyprian departed; and for this aid he says he
longs.1 The Intermediate State, he teaches, is one in which
"the soul dwells in a hidden retreat, where it enjoys
rest or suffers affliction just in proportion to the merit
it has earned by the life which it led on earth." 2 Con
nected with his teaching on this point is what he says
upon the need of cleansing to the soul in this Inter
mediate State, and how far it is of avail. He writes in
one place that souls "when purged from all contagion
of corruption are placed in peaceful abodes until they
take their bodies again." 3 Again he connects this
cleansing with the Judgment; — "it appears . . . that
some shall in the last Judgment suffer some kind of
purgatorial punishments ; " 4 though in another place
his teaching is that we are not to "fancy that there
are any purgatorial pains except before that final and
dreadful judgment." s Some " shall not even suffer
purgatorial torments after death." 6 He has a great
deal to say in his writings, of the need of the soul's
being cleansed, — purified, — that it may have power to
see God : in this life " men see Him just so far as they
die to this world ; and so far as they live to it they see
Him not ; " 7 and he but carries his idea on to the other
1 De Baptismo, v. 23; vii. 1. 2 Enchirid. cix. Stronger language is
used in De praedest. sanct. 24. 3 De Trin. xv. 44. 4 De Civ. Dei, xx. 25.
5 De Civ. Dei, xxi. 13, 16. 6 Id. xxi. 16. 7 De Doc. Christ, i. 10; ii. 11.

90 SAINT AUGUSTINE
world, in all that he says about purgatorial discipline ;
yet his doctrine is on the whole obscure. He more
than once gives lengthy explanation of the text —
"saved, yet so as by fire." He interprets the fire —
of affliction, and grief, and tribulation ; and then, after
referring to a fire between death and the judgment,
adds — " if it be said that [such] worldliness, being
venial, shall be consumed in the fire of tribulation,
either here only, or here and hereafter both, or here
that it may not be hereafter, — this I do not contradict,
because possibly it is true." I He is not sure here ; and
in another work he shows the same uncertainty, and
says "it is a matter that may be inquired into, and
either ascertained or left doubtful, whether some be
lievers shall pass through a kind of purgatorial fire
after this life."2
Future punishment he believes to be eternal ; and
severely rebukes Origen (whom he says " the Church
has condemned for this and other errors " ) for his wild
fancy of restoring even the devil and his angels to the
abodes of the blessed ! 3 He teaches " different degrees
of punishment among the lost, as of glory among the
saved." He inclines to the opinion that the fire of
punishment is " material ; " 4 but this is only opinion,
while the doctrine itself he holds to be of the faith ;
and he solemnly declares, that "to be lost out of the
kingdom of God, — to be an exile from the city of God,
— to be alienated from the life of God," — would be
1 De Civ. Dei, xxi. 26. 2 Enchirid. lxix. 3 De Civ. Dei, xxi. 17.
4 De Civ. Dei, xxi. 2.

THE FUTURE LIFE 9 1
incomparably greater punishment than any torments
one can conceive of.1
The resurrection he believes is to be of the body of
flesh, yet far different from the present mortal flesh ; 2
a spiritual body,3 of exceeding beauty and dignity ; 4 —
yet having the very same material as now, only differ
ently arranged.5
The eternal felicity in the future life of the blessed
he most eloquently describes ; — that life "where neces
sity shall have no place, but full, certain, secure, ever
lasting felicity," where "there shall be the enjoyment
of a beauty which appeals to reason," where "the body
shall be forthwith wherever the spirit wills, and the
spirit shall will nothing which is unbecoming either to
the spirit or to the body," where " true honor " and true
peace shall be, where there shall be " a higher freedom
than that of the first man, who had the ability not to
sin," even the highest freedom of will " not able to sin ; "
where "we shall rest and see, see and love, love and
praise;" where "God Himself, Who is the Author of
virtue, shall be its reward ; for as there is nothing
greater or better He has promised Himself;" where "we
shall have eternal leisure to see that He is God; for
we shall be full of Him, when He shall be all in all." 6
In reference to all these many and varied teachings
of the great Latin Father, we have thought it more
just to let him speak for himself ; and, though briefly
1 Enchirid. cxii. 2 De Civ. Dei, xxi. 3, 8. 3 Id. xxii. 21.
4 Id. xxii. 19, 24. s Enchirid. lxxxix. 6 De Civ. Dei, xxii. 30.

92

SAINT AUGUSTINE

stating our opinion of his doctrine from point to point,
to call careful attention rather to what he actually
taught. And we would hope that our exposition has
been fair to him, whose teaching we would have all
Christian people, and especially all the clergy, reverently
study. To thus study must be more and more to ad
mire, and, within the bounds of Catholic truth, to
gratefully accept. For, in spite of those hard theories
and rigid reasonings of his about certain relations of
God to man ; as Maurice says, " the root of the matter
was in him, an essential acknowledgment of God's
absolute good-will, and nearness to us," * and he wrought
out these great principles with wondrous intellectual
power, emotional fervor, and spiritual devotion.

What has been the influence of S. Augustine ? How
extensive has it been, — and has it been for good or ill ?
What is it likely to be? These are questions which
will be variously answered, according to the stand
point of knowledge or sympathy. While he lived, that
holy humble life, wherein worked a strong will, must
have been a mighty factor of influence. The charge of
hierarchical pretensions, which a few modern writers
have unkindly brought against him, has no good war
rant. Nor did his dogmatic earnestness in upholding
doctrine, as Milman justly allows, indicate so much
1 Life etc. Vol. II. p. 167. The reader may note how widely different
is this estimate from that of the author of The Continuity of Christian

HIS INFLUENCE IN THE PAST 93
any "ambition of dictating to Christianity on these
abstruse topics," as "the desire of peace to his own
anxious spirit." ' And the will has been well affirmed
to be no weak one, which wrought out his doctrines
into a system, and an historical force. His writings
went far and wide throughout Western and even into
Eastern Christendom ; and, as they spread, his opin
ions gained an increasing influence. At the close of
his career of nearly forty years as priest and Bishop in
Hippo, he had successfully met the errors of Manichae
ism and Donatism, and had broken the delusive spell
of Pelagianism ; and in his writings as a whole had so
established the claims of the Christian Church, and so
formulated Christian doctrine, as to have achieved the
position of leader of the thought of the Christian world.
Easily and admittedly the superior of all the Fathers of
the West, in any age, — Ambrose, Jerome, Gregory ; —
he need not be compared with his great predecessors
in the East, while he was then manifestly far above all
his contemporaries.2
Yet even that greatness was not a perfect ideal.
The discussions which had sprung up all about him
during the few last years of his life, the replies which
he had been obliged to make upon this or that point of
doctrine, to satisfy the questionings of those who desired
to go all lengths with him in his beliefs, or to meet the
bolder and bolder attacks of some open enemy, show
' History of Christianity, Vol. III. p. 177.
2 S. Athanasius can hardly be called a contemporary of S. Augustine.
He died in the year 373, when S. Augustine was not yet twenty years old.

94 SAINT AUGUSTINE
the vitality which still thrived in the error which he
had been so long opposing, and are also a pointed com
ment upon the imperfection of any human system.
Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism was not yet dead :
it had truth with its error. Augustine must reason,
and restrict, and define ; he must save his human
theories ; he must carry his philosophical speculations
up into the mysteries of God's Being. The inquiries
and the opposition had come chiefly from Southern
Gaul and from certain parts of Italy; and soon after
his death they took more and more definite shape of
hostility against Predestinarianism,1 as fatalistic, de
rogatory to the mercy of God, and destroying the
responsibility of man. To this period belongs the
supposed protest of Vincent of Lerins, the "semper,
itbique, et ab omnibus" very likely meant to meet Au
gustine on his own ground.2 The controversy which
had thus sprung up anew, and was bitterly carried on
for a century, was at length settled largely through the
influence of Caesarius, Archbishop of Aries, by a local
council which he held for his province, in Orange, in
a.d. 529. This council (of fourteen Bishops) formally
adopted a series of articles which Caesarius had re
ceived from Rome. These articles are strong in their
condemnation of Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism,
* Especially any predestination to evil, which some deduced from S.
Augustine's doctrine.
2 Vid. Neander, Ch. Hist. Vol. II. p. 696; and compare the passage in
the De Util. Cred. 31, — "This therefore I have believed, trusting to re
port strengthened by numbers (ab omnibus), agreement (ubiaue), antiq
uity" (semper).

MODIFIED BY THE LATIN CHURCH 95
and draw most of their authority directly from the
works of S. Augustine ; but they do not mention pre
destination to life, — and thus they show a " cautious
and discriminating adhesion ; " ' while they go on to
declare the capability of all the baptized, by Christ's
aid and cooperation, to fulfil the conditions of salvation,
and they anathematize all who hold that any are "pre
destinated to evil by divine power."2- Thus, as says
Canon Bright, "this little Gallican Council earned the
respect and gratitude of ages, for having brought a
great question to a comprehensive settlement, and
preserved the Christianity of Western Europe from a
one-sidedness baneful to its soul-attracting power."3
We are brought, then, to the fact of a serious modi
fication of Augustine's doctrine, as accepted by the
Latins ; — a modification which has ever since shaped
the authoritative attitude of the Roman Church towards
his teaching. Modified or unmodified, that doctrine
reigned supreme throughout the West for a thousand
years, down to the time of the Continental Reforma
tion. And it may be owned, that, under the darkness
and ignorance and superstition of the Middle Ages, it
was not, as a system, an unmixed good. With a sense
of sin overpowering and deepening, — something which
he had taught them, — men kept dwelling too much
upon one part of the Augustinian teaching about God
1 Canon Bright's Introduction etc. ut sup. p. lxv.
2 The Acts of the Second Council of Orange are given at the close of
Canon Bright's valuable edition of The Anti-Pelagian Treatises, pp. 384-
392- 3 Introduction etc. p. lxvi.

96 SAINT AUGUSTINE
and His government of the world. All classes of peo
ple, too, in blind submission to authority, were coming
too much under the sway of that one master-mind.
" Augustinum, quern contradicere fas non est," says
Paschasius : — his authority was put next to the Bible,1
perhaps equal or superior to it, by many : it was too
much influence for any one system ; it was making man
master of conscience and of life.
Gregory the Great was the first distinguished disciple
of S. Augustine ; and his writings breathe the devout
spirit of his master, and take almost his very thought
and language.2 Sometimes, in doctrine, he goes beyond
him ; noticeably, in the direction of mediaeval Roman
ism, in reference to purgatory.3 But it was in Scholas
ticism that the influence of S. Augustine was more
extensively known. Among the schoolmen, S. Bernard,
S. Anselm, and S. Thomas Aquinas are those who
chiefly maintained and developed his teaching; — pre
eminent among them all is S. Thomas. He is univer
sally acknowledged as the great theologian of the middle
ages ; and his complex system, so rich in thought, with
its doctrines of free-will, and necessity, and divine
power, and predestination, and creation, and grace, is
directly built up upon the Augustinian foundation, —
with added original features, and modifications to some
extent of Augustine's accredited severity, especially in
1 Vid. Poole's Illustrations of the History of Mediaeval Thought, p. 174.
2 C£. Moral, xx. 1 ; and vid. what Abp. Trench says of " the influence
of Gregory's great teacher." S. Augustine as an Interpreter etc. ut sup.
P- 13- 3 Vid. Hardwick's Middle Age, pp. 62-64, and notes.

PERVERTED BY THE REFORMERS 97
reference to predestination." All this might be devel
oped with great interest in a fuller consideration of the
subject than we have aimed to give in this monograph.
At the time of the Reformation in the sixteenth
century, the Roman Church is supposed to have lost
much of its active interest, to say the least, in the doc
trines of the great Latin Father, owing to the way in
which they were used or abused by the Reformers.
The decrees of the Council of Trent, in part, show
this. The shaping of those decrees was largely the
work of the Jesuits, whose theology was a direct re
action from Luther's opinions, which were presumed
to be based upon the teachings of S. Augustine. But,
on the other hand, it is to be said that Luther may
have misunderstood or perverted S. Augustine, as as
suredly Jansenius, in the next century, exaggerated
and perverted S. Augustine : and that certainly the
Roman Church so considered it, and in its condemna
tion of Jansenism did not thereby necessarily condemn
Augustinian doctrine. In fact, the Roman Church to
day would not venture to exclude that doctrine "from
the pale of tolerated opinion ; " 2 much as she might
like to do so because of some of his teachings, which
directly militate against her own claims.
Although the unquestioned dominion of S. Augustine
was broken in the convulsions of the sixteenth century,
1 For these modifications, vid. Mozley's Augustinian Doctrine etc.
p. 285, et seq.
2 Canon Mozley, we think, could scarcely make good his words on
p. 226, n. of the Augustinian Doctrine etc.

98 SAINT A UG US TINE
it is commonly said that his influence has lived since
then in the opinions of the great Reformers, — in those
of Luther, and still more in those of Calvin. And this
is true ; and yet, we should claim, not precisely in the
way in which the descendants and disciples of those
men would say. S. Augustine did influence, and influ
ence profoundly, both Luther and Calvin ; and we thank
God for all the good influence which his Catholic doc
trine had upon them ; but, unfortunately, it was, far
more, certain of his exaggerations of doctrine which
influenced them, which they then exaggerated to a
still greater degree ; so that the question becomes,
How far is Lutheranism or Calvinism a fair reproduc
tion of the teachings of S. Augustine ?
A full answer to this question cannot be given within
our present limits : but a few points may be noted.
Luther made S. Augustine his great teacher in the
ology.1 And in his writings he has not only reproduced
much of the thought of his teacher, but has handed
down to modern times — that which but for him they
might not have so fully known — a breathing forth, if
I may call it, of the Augustinian spirit. Yet all along
we have to distinguish that spirit from the spirit of his
own teachings, — and often in most important doc
trines. His doctrine of original sin, e.g. was very dif
ferent from that of Augustine. He taught that man
was so utterly ruined by the Fall, that the operation of
God's Spirit in him finds as little response as in a brute
1 To William of Occam he owed his theory of Consubstantiation in the
Eucharist.

COMPARED WITH LUTHER 99
or a devil. Here are some of his words : — " The intel
lectual faculties are not only corrupted, but they are
totally annihilated by sin in man exactly the same as in
devils ; so that in them there is nothing but a corrupt
spirit, a perverse will, hostile to God in everything." '
This is not, if we apprehend it, the Augustinian doc
trine, which makes so much of the Image of God still
remaining in man. Again, such a view of original sin
would bid Luther, as he did, deny all freedom of the
will. As he teaches, — " In spiritual and divine things,
man is as the pillar of salt into which Lot's wife was
turned ; yea, he is like a stick or a stone, which is life
less, etc." 2 " Free-will, after original sin, is a mere
name," 3 he says. But S. Augustine, as we think we
have fully shown, whatever may be made of his the
oretical distinctions, did not at all deny the practical
freedom of the will, and the responsibility which flowed
therefrom. Luther made justification only a judicial
act of God, delivering from the punishment of sin, but
not from sin itself. All righteousness is external to
us ; 4 is such a literal imputation of Christ's righteous
ness, as to make His righteousness and obedience ours ;
which subverts Christian morality. S. Augustine,
teaching that they are "justified in Christ who believe
in Him, by a secret communion and inspiration of
spiritual grace, which makes every one who cleaves to
the Lord ' one spirit ' with Him," 5 does not go
1 Ed. Wittenberg, i. 99. 2 In Genes, chap. xix. * In the Paradoxes ;
Vid. Hardwick's Reformation, p. 29. * Solid. Declar. iii. de Fid. Justif.
§ 11, § 48. 5 De peccat. merit, i. 11.

I OO SAINT A UG US TINE
anything like as far as Luther ; and appears to present
a very different doctrine. With him, it is rather the
Power of Christ dwelling in us, His Life working
in us, whereby we cleave to Him, and produce good
works.1 But the main distinction appears in reference
to Luther's all-controlling tenet of Justification by faith.
This was held in such a way as almost to exclude
repentance, to exclude good works, to make faith
amount to assurance. Justification by faith only, he
was never tired of proclaiming. " He is not justified
who does many works, but he who without any work
has much faith in Christ." 2 And what does his theory
of faith become ? A man has faith " when he believes
that he has been received by God into grace ; " 3
faith, then, is assurance ; when I believe I am saved, I
am saved, by this "self-confident assurance of indi
vidual interest in Christ's sacrifice," which Mr. Sadler
well describes as "foreclosing a man's probation the
moment he believes, or thinks he believes"!4 And
the dreadful carrying out of this doctrine of faith only
into its relation to sin cannot be disguised nor explained
away: — "Be a sinner," says Luther, "and sin stoutly"
(" esto peccator; et pecca fortiter") — "but the more
bravely trust and rejoice in Christ, Who is the con
queror of sin, death, and the world. Here we must sin,
as long as we live," ("peccandum est, quamdiu sic
1 For some most valuable teaching upon this aspect of justification,
vid. Sadler's Justification of Life, pp. 339, 347, etc.
2 Paradoxes. 3 Augsburg Confession, Art. iv. 4 Justification of
Life, pp. 74, 209.

COMPARED WITH LUTHER IOI
sumus.") . . . From Him sin shall not separate us,
though we commit whoredom or murder a thousand
thousand times in one day. Thinkest thou that the
price and redemption offered for our sins by this Divine
Lamb is so small that it cannot avail to cover your
sham sins f Pray boldly ; thou art a most bold sinner."
(" Ora fortiter ; es enim fortissimus peccator.") ' Need
we say that S. Augustine has nothing like all this ?
Faith alone, with him, means alone as against nature or
the law ; as where he says that " nothing but belief in
the Mediator saved the saints of the Old Testament ; " 2
or as against works done in our own strength alone ;
as in that decisive passage where he commends the one
of few works and great faith, and declares that " he
shall be delivered for this life, and depart to be received
into the company of those who shall reign with
Christ."3 And can any passage be found, where he is
so carried away by ideas of faith, or grace, as to utter
the shocking sentiments of Luther ? Faith in Christ,
he tells us, will give us true righteousness, — and by
this power we can gain victory over sin. By this " love
of God" working in us vices are to be overcome. "We
must declare war upon them, and wage this war keenly,
lest we be landed in damnable sins." Thus only can we
come to " the end of this war," and " the well-ordered
peace " for which we long.4
1 Given in the late Dr. Mill's Five Sermons on the Nature of Chris
tianity ; notes, p. 131-2.
2 Con. duas literas etc. i. 39. 3 Con. duas literas etc. iii. 14. 4 De
Civ. Dei, xxi. 15, 16.

1 02 SAINT A UG US TINE
As regards Calvin, very different observations need to
be made, although in some ways he and Luther were alike
in their reproduction and perversion of S. Augustine.
Calvin had a more just view than Luther of original
sin, and admitted some degree of human cooperation.1
Calvin's view of assurance was like Luther's. "Joined
to Christ, the believer has life in Him, and knows that
he is saved." Calvin, however, with his strong logical
mind, used the influence of S. Augustine, far more than
Luther ever did or could, in forming a system. That
system was built up upon absolute predestination. And
here he went far beyond even the strictest Augustinian
statements ; and propounded a theory which not only
has to do with both saved and lost, (and it is an open
question how far Augustine taught the predestination
of the lost) but also denies regenerating grace to the
baptized. Baptism is only " obsignatory " of grace
which one already had if he were a child of grace, one
of the elect.2 If not, he only partakes of the material
element. This is radically different from S. Augustine's
teaching, which is that all the worthily baptized are
truly regenerate, and thus partakers of grace ; though
we cannot say who of them are predestinated, and will
finally attain to perseverance. Moreover, Calvin affirms
that " God intentionally produces within those who are
not elect an apparent faith ; that He insinuates Him
self into the souls of the reprobate, in order to render
them less excusable " ! 3 We have yet to find a parallel
1 Instit. lib. ii. u. 3. 2 Hardwick's Reformation, pp. 130, 176.
3 Instit. 1. iii. c. 2, n. 11.

COMPARED WITH CALVIN 103
to anything like this in S. Augustine. With all his
rigidity, tenderness is manifest. God permits evil, in
justice; ' but only that He may bring out of it greater
good ; 2 and those who commit the greatest evil are not
estranged from His goodness.3 He cannot explain
God's decrees. They are inscrutable. But there he
stops : he leaves them a mystery ; bidding us not ques
tion nor complain ; and again and again taking up the
refrain, " O altitudo ! "
Thus we have endeavored to suggest that while both
Luther and Calvin deeply felt the influence of S. Au
gustine, and to a degree handed on that influence to
those who came after them, they did not always appre
ciate or follow it ,\and so they must not by any means
always be taken fairly to represent him. As Hardwick
writes, in reference to the influence of the Calvinists
in the Lambeth Articles, — they so " exaggerated, and
curtailed, and contradicted," that even with much
" similarity of language " they wrought " a profound if
not a fundamental change " in the teaching of Augus
tine.4 The modern world should never be suffered to
forget that what is Lutheran or Calvinistic is not neces
sarily Augustinian. How far S. Augustine is respon
sible for their mistakes, is a question too deep and
complex for man to answer. He gave them the oppor
tunity, as we have already admitted. Moreover, the
rejection of their errors is not always seen to have
the purest motive. In the re-action of our day from
1 Enchirid. xcvi.; De Trin. xiii. 16. 2 Enchirid. xxvii.; De Civ.
Dei, xxii. I. 3 De Trin. xiii. 16. 4 History of the Articles, p. 164.

104 SAINT AUGUSTINE
the "mischief" — so called — of Calvinism, we may
observe, with trained vision, both a recoil from a nar
rowing and base bondage, which God never appointed ;
and also a desire for a freedom which is lawlessness
and license. In the modern Reformers, and in the
ancient Saint and Father, let us take the Catholic truth,
and throw away the individual error.
A special study might be made of the influence of S.
Augustine upon our own Prayer-Book and Articles.
Much of the thought and even of the exact language
of the Articles, as we have hinted, is his. The Arti
cles, as we now possess them, have a history ; and that
history makes known many changes from severity to
moderation and cautiousness of statement ; and in
effecting these changes, their teaching has become not
so much that of Calvin as that of Luther, and not so
much that of Luther as that of S. Augustine.1 But
we are more interested in the teaching of the Ser
vices. Directly or indirectly, — in their statements con
cerning God and man, sin and grace, faith and good
works, the constitution and authority of the Church,
and the blessing of the Sacraments, — their teaching
is Augustinian. It is read in the Ordinal, in the
1 For the teaching and much of the very language of Articles IX., X.,
XI., XII., XVII., XXV., XXVI., XXVII., XXIX., the reader may con
sult De nupt. et concupis. i. 28, ii 45 ; De peccat. remiss, ii. 44, 45 ; De fid.
et oper. 14; De Baptismo, passim; Tract, xxvi. in S. John Ev. § 18; in
addition to the many passages already given which have a clear bearing
upon the composition of the Articles. Bp. Forbes, of Brechin, calls the
Seventeenth Article "=> concise summary of S. Augustine's teaching"
upon predestination.

INFLUENCE UPON THE PRAYER-BOOK 105
Liturgy, in the Baptismal Offices, in the Daily Offices,
and in the Collects. Very naturally much of this teach
ing has felt the moulding of the Continental Reforma
tion ; but even that portion did not conform itself to
sixteenth century models ; while much was taken
direct from ancient service-books, — as e.g. two-thirds
of the Collects which come from the Sacramentaries
of Gregory and Gelasius and Leo ; and it is worthy of
note how fully, in her reverting to primitive Catholicity,
the Anglican Church was satisfied to go back only to S.
Augustine. And this, we would believe, was not from
a blind subjection to him ; nor from failure to discover
some purer or more Catholic doctrine, of more remote
East, or nearer West ; nor only was it because S. Au
gustine had been the first to formulate dogmatic teach
ing, and his influence had permeated others, as a
Gregory, or a Leo ; but because the Augustinian
teaching was seen to mirror, so fully and faithfully, that
of the Word of God and primitive antiquity.
Thus much concerning the return to S. Augustine
may fit us to look forward a little, and say in few
words, what we think is likely to be his influence in
the future. His influence is fairly established in
the present ; — insecurely perhaps, in the outside world
of sect and dissent, because of the many Lutheran
and Calvinistic modifications ; though even there with
increasing stability, from the very law of God's truth
refining itself away from error ; but surely, firmly,
grandly, in the historic Church of Christ. And every
where this is so evident, that the author who so depre-

1 06 SAINT A UG US TINE
cates " the lingering hold of Augustine upon the modern
mind " deems it so " formidable an obstacle " that it
will need " an intellectual revolution " * to shake us
from this subjection and bring us back to freedom.
We have sufficiently shown why we think such a revo
lution is not likely soon to take place ; why we deem
the certainty of the present the best promise for the
future. Nor can we consider the rejection of his teach
ing anything less than perilous to the best interests of
Christianity in the world. God raised up this man for
a great work in the world ; and that work is not accom
plished. It has abiding elements, which belong to
humanity. S. Augustine is as much needed as ever ;
and he will continue to be needed, — both negatively,
against Manichaeans, and Donatists, and Pelagians,
and Semi-Pelagians ; and positively, for the great
teachings of grace in the One Name and the One
Church. He is not in reality in contradiction with
the more primitive East ; nor is he alien to the best
spirit of the modern world. He saves Christianity
from the dreamy speculations of the East ; while he
teaches us all better to know ourselves, and our destiny
in God. To Him he guides us ; and to Him, our God,
we would make his teaching lead us; — with his own
words on our lips and in our hearts, for faith and obedi
ence, for devotion and peace : — " Da quodjubes, etjube
quod vis." " Fecisti nos ad Te ; et inquietum est cor
nostrum, donee requiescat in Te."
1 Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 1 1.