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."
1
a. d. 410.
2
3
4
See some admirable remarks on this subject in the useful work of Beugnot,
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,
8
See the interesting remarks of Lactantius,
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,
12
Ozanam,
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
16
17
Flottes,
18
These editions will be found detailed in the second volume of Schoenemann's
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
21
Erasmi
22
A large part of it has been translated in Saisset's
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,
29
The Benedictines remind us that Alexander and Xenophon, at least on some occasions, did so.
30
Virgil,
31
32
33
Horace,
34
35
36
37
Non numina bona, sed omina mala.
38
Virgil,
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
41
Sallust,
42
Ps. lxxxix. 32.
43
Matt. v. 45.
44
Rom. ii. 4.
45
So Cyprian (
46
Ezek. xxxiii. 6.
47
Compare with this chapter the first homily of Chrysostom to the people of Antioch.
48
Rom. viii. 28.
49
1 Pet. iii. 4.
50
1 Tim. vi. 6-10.
51
Job i. 21.
52
1 Tim. vi. 17-19.
53
Matt. vi. 19-21.
54
Paulinus was a native of Bordeaux, and both by inheritance and marriage acquired great wealth, which, after his conversion in his thirty-sixth year, he distributed to the poor. He became bishop of Nola in a. d. 409, being then in his fifty-sixth year. Nola was taken by Alaric shortly after the sack of Rome.
55
Much of a kindred nature might be gathered from the Stoics. Antoninus says (ii. 14): "Though thou shouldest be going to live 3000 years, and as many times 10,000 years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and the shortest are thus brought to the same."
