The City of God, Volume I

[1]a.d. 410.

[2]Retractations, ii. 43.

[3]Letters 132-8.

[4] See some admirable remarks on this subject in the useful work of Beugnot, Histoire de la Destruction du Paganisme, ii. 83 et sqq.

[5] As Waterland (iv. 760) does call it, adding that it is "his most learned, most correct, and most elaborate work."

[6] For proof, see the Benedictine Preface.

[7] "Hitherto the Apologies had been framed to meet particular exigencies: they were either brief and pregnant statements of the Christian doctrines; refutations of prevalent calumnies; invectives against the follies and crimes of Paganism; or confutations of anti-Christian works like those of Celsus, Porphyry, or Julian, closely following their course of argument, and rarely expanding into general and comprehensive views of the great conflict."—Milman, History of Christianity, iii. c. 10. We are not acquainted with any more complete preface to the City of God than is contained in the two or three pages which Milman has devoted to this subject.

[8] See the interesting remarks of Lactantius, Instit. vii. 25.

[9] "Hæret vox et singultus intercipiunt verba dictantis. Capitur urbs quæ totum cepit orbem."—Jerome, iv. 783.

[10] See below, iv. 7.

[11] This is well brought out by Merivale, Conversion of the Roman Empire, p. 145, etc.

[12] Ozanam, History of Civilisation in the Fifth Century (Eng. trans.), ii. 160.

[13] Abstracts of the work at greater or less length are given by Dupin, Bindemann, Böhringer, Poujoulat, Ozanam, and others.

[14] His words are: "Plus on examine la Cité de Dieu, plus on reste convaincu que cet ouvrage dût exercea tres-peu d'influence sur l'esprit des païens" (ii. 122); and this though he thinks one cannot but be struck with the grandeur of the ideas it contains.

[15]History of Ecclesiastical Writers, i. 406.

[16]Huetiana, p. 24.

[17] Flottes, Etudes sur S. Augustin (Paris, 1861), pp. 154-6, one of the most accurate and interesting even of French monographs on theological writers.

[18] These editions will be found detailed in the second volume of Schoenemann's Bibliotheca Pat.

[19] His words (in Ep. vi.) are quite worth quoting: "Cura rogo te, ut excudantur aliquot centena exemplarium istius operis a reliquo Augustini corpore separata; nam multi erunt studiosi qui Augustinum totum emere vel nollent, vel non poterunt, quia non egebunt, seu quia tantum pecuniæ non habebunt. Scio enim fere a deditis studiis istis elegantioribus præter hoc Augustini opus nullum fere aliud legi ejusdem autoris."

[20] The fullest and fairest discussion of the very simple yet never settled question of Augustine's learning will be found in Nourrisson's Philosophie de S. Augustin, ii. 92-100.

[21] Erasmi Epistolæ xx. 2.

[22] A large part of it has been translated in Saisset's Pantheism (Clark, Edin.).

[23] By J. H., published in 1610, and again in 1620, with Vives' commentary.

[24] As the letters of Vives are not in every library, we give his comico-pathetic account of the result of his Augustinian labours on his health: "Ex quo Augustinum perfeci, nunquam valui ex sententia; proximâ vero hebdomade et hac, fracto corpore cuncto, et nervis lassitudine quadam et debilitate dejectis, in caput decem turres incumbere mihi videntur incidendo pondere, ac mole intolerabili; isti sunt fructus studiorum, et merces pulcherrimi laboris; quid labor et benefacta juvant?"

[25] See the Editor's Preface.

[26] Ps. xciv. 15, rendered otherwise in Eng. ver.

[27] Jas. iv. 6 and 1 Pet. v. 5.

[28] Virgil, Æneid, vi. 854.

[29] The Benedictines remind us that Alexander and Xenophon, at least on some occasions, did so.

[30] Virgil, Æneid, ii. 501-2. The renderings of Virgil are from Conington.

[31]Ibid. ii. 166.

[32]Ibid.

[33] Horace, Ep. I. ii. 69.

[34]Æneid, i. 71.

[35]Ibid. ii. 319.

[36]Ibid. 293.

[37] Non numina bona, sed omina mala.

[38] Virgil, Æneid, ii. 761.

[39] Though "levis" was the word usually employed to signify the inconstancy of the Greeks, it is evidently here used, in opposition to "immanis" of the following clause, to indicate that the Greeks were more civilised than the barbarians, and not relentless, but, as we say, easily moved.

[40]De Conj. Cat. c. 51.