and the cardinal virtues of love and humility, and found in them only beautiful ideals without power to conform him to them. His City of God, his book on heresies, and other writ ings, show an extensive knowledge of ancient philosophy, poetry, and history, sacred and secular. He refers to the most distinguished persons of Greece and Rome; he often alludes to Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Plotin, Porphyry, Cicero, Seneca, Horace, Virgil, to the earlier Greek and Latin fathers, to Eastern and Western heretics. But his knowledge of Greek literature was mostly derived from Latin translations. With the Greek language, as he himself frankly and modestly con fesses, he had, in comparison with Jerome, but a superficial acquaintance.' Hebrew he did not understand at all. Hence,

'It is sometimes asserted that he had no knowledge at all of the Greek. So Gibbon, for example, says (ch. xxxiii.): “The superficial learning of Augustine was confined to the Latin language." But this is as much a mistake as the other assertion of Gibbon, that "the orthodoxy of St. Augustine was derived from the Manichæan school." In his youth he had a great aversion to the glorious language of Hellas (Conf. i. 14), and read the writings of Plato in a Latin translation (vii. 9). But after his baptism, during his second residence in Rome, he took it up again with greater zest, for the sake of his biblical studies. In Hippo he had, while presbyter, good opportunity to advance in it, since his bishop, Aurelius, a native Greek, understood his mother tongue much better than the Latin. In his books he occasionally makes reference to the Greek. In his work Contra Jul. i. c. 6 § 21 (tom. 1. 510), he corrects the Pelagian Julian in a translation from Chrysostom, quoting the original. "Ego ipsa verba Græca quæ a Joanne dicta sunt ponam: dià TOûTO καὶ τὰ παιδία βαπτίζομεν, καίτοι ἁμαρτήματα οὐκ ἔχοντα, quod est Latine: Ideo et in fantes baptizamus, quamvis peccata non habentes." Julian had freely rendered this: cum non sint coinquinati peccato,” and had drawn the inference: “Sanctus Joannes Constantinopolitanus negat esse in parvulis originale peccatum." Augustine helps himself out of the pinch by arbitrarily supplying propria to åμaprŃμATA, 80 that the idea of sin inherited from another is not excluded. The Greek fathers, however, did not consider hereditary corruption to be proper sin or guilt at all, but only defect, weakness, or disease. In the City of God, lib. xix. c. 23, he quotes a passage from Porphyry's èk λoyiwv piλooopia. It is probable that he read Plotin, and the Panarion of Epiphanius or the summary of it, in Greek (while the Church History of Eusebius he knew only in the translation of Rufinus). But in his exegetical and other works he very rarely consults the Septuagint or Greek Testament, and was content with the very imperfect Itala or the improved version of Jerome. The Benedictine editors overestimate his knowledge of Greek. He himself frankly confesses that he knew very little of it, De Trinit. l. iii. Proœm. (“Græcæ linguæ non sit nobis tantus habitus, ut talium rerum libris legendis et intelligendis ullo modo reperiantur idonei"), and Contra literas Petiliani (written in 400), l. ii. c. 38 (“Et ego

with all his extraordinary familiarity with the Latın Bible he made many mistakes in exposition. He was rather s thinker than a scholar, and depended mainly on his own re sources, which were always abundant.'

quidem Græcæ linguæ perparum assecutus sum, et prope nihil"). On the philo sophical learning of Augustine may be compared NOURRISSON, 1. c. ii. p. 92 ff.

'The following are some of the most intelligent and appreciative estimates of Augustine. ERASMUS (Ep. dedicat. ad Alfons. archiep. Tolet. 1529) says, with an ingenious play upon the name Aurelius Augustinus: "Quid habet orbis christianus hoc scriptore magis aureum vel augustius? ut ipsa vocabula nequaquam fortuito, sed numinis providentia videantur indita viro. Auro sapientiæ nihil pretiosius: fulgore eloquentiæ cum sapientia conjunctæ nihil mirabilius. ... Non arbitror alium esse doctorem, in quem opulentus ille ac benignus Spiritus dotes suas omnes largius effuderit, quam in Augustinum." The great philosopher LEIBNITZ (Præfat. ad Theodic. § 34) calls him "virum sane magnum et ingenii stupendi," and "vastissimo ingenio præditum." Dr. BAUR, without sympathy with his views, speaks enthusiastically of the man and his genius. Among other things he says (Vorlesungen über Dogmengeschichte, i. i. p. 61): “There is scarcely another theological author so fertile and withal so able as Augustine. His scholarship was certainly not equal to his mind; yet even that is sometimes set too low, when it is asserted that he had no acquaintance at all with the Greek language; for this is incorrect, though he had attained no great proficiency in Greek." C. BINDEMANN (a Lutheran divine) begins his thorough monograph (vol. i. preface) with the well-deserved eulogium: "St. Augustine is one of the greatest personages in the church. He is second in importance to none of the teachers who have wrought most in the church since the apostolic time; and it can well be said that among the church fathers the first place is due to him, and in the time of the Reformation a Luther alone, for fulness and depth of thought and grandeur of character, may stand by his side. He is the summit of the development of the mediaval Western church; from him descended the mysticism, no less than the scholasticism, of the middle age; he was one of the strongest pillars of the Roman Catholicism, and from his works, next to the Holy Scriptures, especially the Epistles of Paul, the leaders of the Reformation drew most of that conviction by which a new age was introduced." STAUDENMAIER, a Roman Catholic theologian, counts Augustine among those minds in which an hundred others dwell (Scotus Erigena, i. p. 274). The Roman Catholic philosophers A. GÜNTHER and TH. GANGAUF, put him on an equality with the greatest philosophers, and discern in him a providential personage endowed by the Spirit of God for the instruction of all ages. A striking characterization is that of Dr. JOHANNES HUBER (in his instructive work: Die Philosophie der Kirchenväter, Munich, 1859, p. 312 8q.): Augustine is a unique phenomenon in Christian history. No one of the other fathers has left so luminous traces of his existence. Though we find among them many rich and powerful minds, yet we find in none the forces of personal char acter, mind, heart, and will, so largely developed and so harmoniously working. No one surpasses him in wealth of perceptions and dialectical sharpness of thoughts, in depth and fervor of religious sensibility, in greatness of aims and energy of action

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§ 179. The Works of Augustine.

The numerous writings of Augustine, the composition of which extended through four and forty years, are a mine of Christian knowledge and experience. They abound in lofty ideas, noble sentiments, devout effusions, clear statements of truth, strong arguments against error, and passages of fervid eloquence and undying beauty, but also in innumerable repetitions, fanciful opinions, and playful conjectures of his uncommonly fertile brain.' His style is full of life and vigor and He therefore also marks the culmination of the patristic age, and has been elevated by the acknowledgment of succeeding times as the first and the universal church father. His whole character reminds us in many respects of Paul, with whom he has also in common the experience of being called from manifold errors to the service of the gospel, and like whom he could boast that he had labored in it more abundantly than all the others. And as Paul among the Apostles pre-eminently determined the development of Christianity, and became, more than all others, the expression of the Christian mind, to which men ever afterwards return, as often as in the life of the church that mind becomes turbid, to draw from him, as the purest fountain, a fresh understanding of the gospel doctrine,-so has Augustine turned the Christian nations since his time for the most part into his paths, and become pre-eminently their trainer and teacher, in the study of whom they always gain a renewal and deepening of their Christian consciousness. Not the middle age alone, but the Reformation also, was ruled by him, and whatever to this day boasts of the Christian spirit, is connected at least in part with Augustine." NOURRISSON, the latest French writer on Augustine, whose work is clothed with the authority of the Institute of France, assigns to the bishop of Hippo the first rank among the masters of human thought, alongside of Plato and Leibnitz, Thomas Aquinas and Bossuet "Si une critique toujours respectueuse, mais d'une inviolable sincérité, est une des formes les plus hautes de l'admiration, j'estime, au contraire, n'avoir fait qu'exalter ce grand coeur, ce psychologue consolant et ému, ce métaphysicien subtil et sublime, en un mot, cet attachant et poétique génie, dont la place reste marquée, au premier rang, parmi le maîtres de la pensée humaine, à côté de Platon et de Descartes, d'Aristote et de saint Thomas, de Leibniz et de Bossuet." (La philosophie de saint Augustin, Par. 1866, tom. i. p. vii.) Among English and American writers, Dr. SHEDD, in the Introduction to his edition of an old translation of the Confessions (1860), has furnished a truthful and forcible description of the mind and heart of St. Augustine, as portrayed in this remarkable book.

ELLIES DUPIN (Bibliothèque ecclésiastique, tom. iii. partie, p. 818) and NOURRISSON (1. c tom. ii. p. 449) apply to Augustine the term magnus opinator, which Cicero used of himself. There is, however, this important difference that Augustine, along with his many opinions on speculative questions in philosophy and theology, had very positive convictions in all essential doctrines, while Cicero wa a mere ecclectic in philosophy.

ingenious plays on words, but deficient in purity and elegance, and by no means free from wearisome prolixity and from that vagabunda loquacitas, with which his adroit opponent, Julian of Eclanum, charged him. He would rather, as he said, be blamed by grammarians, than not understood by the people; and he bestowed little care upon his style, though he many a time rises in lofty poetic flight. He made no point of literary renown, but, impelled by love to God and to the church, he wrote from the fulness of his mind and heart. The writings before his conversion, a treatise on the Beautiful (De Pulchro et Apto), the orations and eulogies which he delivered as rhetorician at Carthage, Rome, and Milan, are lost. The professor of eloquence, the heathen philosopher, the Manichæan heretic, the sceptic and freethinker, are known to us only from his regrets and recantations in the Confessions and other works. His literary career for us commences in his pious retreat at Cassiciacum where he prepared himself for a public profession of his faith. He appears first, in the works composed at Cassiciacum, Rome, and near Tagaste, as a Christian philosopher, after his consecration to the priesthood as a theologian. Yet even in his theological works he everywhere manifests the metaphysical and speculative bent of his mind. He never abandoned or depreciated reason, he only subordi nated it to faith and made it subservient to the defence of revealed truth. Faith is the pioneer of reason, and discovers the territory which reason explores.

The following is a classified view of his most important works, the contents of the most of which we have already noticed in former sections.'

1 POSSIDIUS counts in all, including sermons and letters, one thousand and thirty writings of Augustine. On these see, above all, his Retractations, where he himselt reviews ninety-three of his works (embracing two hundred and thirty-two books, see ü. 67), in chronological order; in the first book those which he wrote while a layman and presbyter, in the second those which he wrote when a bishop. Also the extended chronological index in SCHÖNEMANN's Biblioth. historico-literaria Patrum Latinorum, vol. ii. (Lips. 1794), p. 340 spq. (reprinted in the supplemental volume, xii., of Migne's ed. of the Opera, p. 24 sqq.); and other systematic and alphabetical lists in the eleventh volume of the Bened. ed. (p. 494 sqq., ed. Venet.), and m Migne, tom. xi.

I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL Works. To these belong the Confes sions and the Retractations; the former acknowledging his sins, the latter his theoretical errors. In the one he subjects his life, in the other his writings, to close criticism; and these productions therefore furnish the best standard for judging of his entire labors.'

The Confessions are the most profitable, at least the most edifying, product of his pen; indeed, we may no doubt say, the most edifying book in all the patristic literature. They were accordingly the most read even during his lifetime,' and they have been the most frequently published since.' A more

1 For this reason the Benedictine editors have placed the Retractations and the Confessions at the head of his works.

" He himself says of them, Retract. 1. ii. c. 6: “Multis fratribus eos [Confessionum libros tredecim] multum placuisse et placere scio." Comp. De dono perseverantiæ, c. 20: "Quid autem meorum opusculorum frequentius et delectabilius innotescere potuit quam libri Confessionum mearum?" Comp. Ep. 231 Dario comiti.

SCHÖNEMANN (in the supplemental volume of Migne's ed. of Augustine, p. 134 sqq.) cites a multitude of separate editions of the Confessions in Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, and German, from A. D. 1475 to 1776. Since that time several new editions have been added. There are German translations by H. KAUTZ (R. C., Arnsberg, 1840), G. Rapp (Prot., 2d ed., Stuttg., 1847), and others. The best English edition is that of Dr. E. B. PUSEY: The Confessions of S. Augus tine, Oxford (first in 1838, as the first volume in the Oxf. Library of the Fathers, together with an edition of the Latin original). It is, however, as Dr. Pusey says, only a revision of the translation of Rev. W. WATTS, D. D., London, 1650, accompanied with a long preface (pp. i-xxxv) and elucidations from Augustine's works in notes and at the end (pp. 314-346). The edition of Dr. W. G. T. SHEDD, Andover, 1860, is, as he says, "a reprint of an old translation by an author unknown to the editor, which was republished in Boston in 1843." A cursory comparison shows, that this anonymous Boston reprint agrees almost word for word with Pusey's revision of Watts, omitting his introduction and all his notes. Dr. Shedd has, however, added an excellent original introduction, in which he clearly and vigorously characterizes the Confessions and draws a comparison between them and the Confessions of Rousseau. He calls the former (p. xxvii) not inaptly the best commentary yet written upon the seventh and eighth chapters of Romans. "That quickening of the human spirit, which puts it again into vital and sensitive relations to the holy and eternal; that illumination of the mind, whereby it is enabled to perceive with clear. ness the real nature of truth and righteousness; that empowering of the will, to the conflict of victory-the entire process of restoring the Divine image in the soul of man-is delineated in this book, with a vividness and reality never exceeded by the uninspired mind." ... "It is the life of God in the soul of a strong man, r ish ing and rippling with the freedom of the life of nature. He who watches can almost