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I

GENERAL SCOPE OF THE 'DE CIVITATE DEI'

'As Man amongst creatures and the Church amongst men and the Fathers in the Church, and S. Augustine amongst the Fathers, so amongst the many pretious volumes and in the rich storehouse of his workes, his bookes of the City of God have a speciall preheminence.'

So W. Crashawe began the dedication which he prefixed in 1620 to the second edition of J. Healey's translation of the text and of the Commentary thereon of J. L. Vives. Vives had dedicated his Commentary to Henry VIII, dating from Louvain on July 7, 1522.

This passage of Crashawe we might parallel from writers of almost every age; and from some of widely different outlook. Bishop Otto of Freising, the uncle and historian of Frederic Barbarossa, sings in unison with Niceron, the collector of literary anecdotes in the seventeenth century.

The greatness of the 'De Civitate Dei' is not in dispute. No student of the fifth century can afford to overlook it. No one can understand the Middle Ages without taking it into account. What is true of historians is true no less of ecclesiastical politicians and reformers--even down to a leader in the modern socialist movement like Sommerlad.[1] In his earlier days Count Hertling has written on the book, and he alluded to its principles in a recent speech. The book has been more widely read than any other of S. Augustine except the 'Confessions.' It has had commentators from Coquaeus down to Scholz. For these reasons it might seem hardly a fitting topic for 'Pringle-Stewart' lectures. One historian said to me on hearing of the Course: 'Is there anything new to say about that?' Yet another said, that the more he tried to comprehend the mind of the Middle Ages, the more was he convinced that it was necessary to understand S. Augustine.

That understanding is not easy. There are those who are for treating S. Augustine as the typical example of the medieval temperament with its heights and depths, its glories and splendours of imagination, its dialectical ingenuity and its irrational superstitions. Others see in S. Augustine essentially a man of the antique world. They do not deny to him real influence upon later times. Who can? But they are inclined to minimise this; at least in matters of social and political importance. The former is the view of Dorner, still more of Feuerlein.[2] It became a commonplace with scholars like Gierke and Ritschl, and in a less degree with Harnack. It is presented in an extreme form in a book, once well known, that came from America, the late Dr. A. V. G. Alien's ' Continuity of Christian Thought.' Hermann Reuter in his 'Augustinische Studien' began a reaction. That book is of incalculable value for those who wish to comprehend S. Augustine. This reaction reached its limit in a book published during the war, by Troeltsch, 'Die christliche Antike und die Mittelalter.' Signs of this view are to be found in Dr. Carlyle's valuable work on 'Political Theory in the West'--although it is more through what he does not say than what he does, that we gather the views of the writer. Professor Dunning in his 'History of Political Thought' is even more significant in his omissions.

Political thought and S. Augustine's influence thereon are to be the topic of these lectures. That involves the whole subject of Church and State. So we are carried some way into theology. The ' De Civitate Dei' is not a treatise on politics. It is a lime de circonstance concerned with apologetic. Most of S. Augustine's doctrine alike in theology and philosophy is embedded in it. We may regard it as an expansion of the 'Confessions.' The relation of true philosophy to scepticism, the idea of creation, the problem of time, the contribution of Platonism, more especially Neo-Platonism, the meaning of miracle and nature, the Incarnation as expressing the humility of God, the whole scheme of redemption, salvation by grace, long divagations into comparative mythology, all these might be made the subject of lectures on the 'De Civitate Dei,' and that without leaving the terrain occupied by the author. Another lecturer better equipped might give not six but twelve lectures concerning the philosophic and theological problems suggested by the 'De Civitate Dei,' and not even mention those points which I hope to discuss. If that had been what was expected, you would not have done me the high honour of choosing me to lecture on this work. To begin with, a great Augustinian scholar, Canon T. A. Lacey, in the first course of 'Pringle-Stewart' lectures discussed some of the more important of these matters, although without special reference to this book. You would not wish them discussed again by one who has neither Mr. Lacey's intimate knowledge of S. Augustine nor his alertness of critical judgment. So I shall limit myself to the political aspects of the book.

The points which it offers to the student of political thought are not few, nor are they unimportant. The book has been treated as a philosophy of history finer than that of Hegel; and again as the herald of all that is significant in the 'Scienza Nuova' of Vico. Can such views be sustained? Or is it the case that S. Augustine had no notion of a philosophy of history, that his views are self-contradictory, and that only a few passages throw more than a faint light on it. That question will form the topic of the second lecture. Did S. Augustine teach, that the State is the organisation of sin, or did he believe in its God given character, and desire its developments? Did he teach the political supremacy of the hierarchy, and, by implication, that of the Pope and the Inquisition? Or was it of the Church as the Communio sanctorum that he was thinking? Does his doctrine of individual election reduce to ruins all ecclesiastical theory? These topics will occupy the third and fourth lectures. What was S. Augustine's influence on mediæval life? Was there something almost like a 'reception' of Augustinianism, followed by a repudiation at the Renaissance? Or was it that only slightly he affected political ideals in the Middle Ages? Some see the whole controversy between Popes and Emperors implicit in the 'De Civitate Dei.' Others would trace it to causes quite different. What real change came about at the Reformation? Did S. Augustine's social doctrine (apart from the theology of grace) lose all influence? Or did men retain unimpaired the idea of the civitas Dei, as it had been developed? These questions will occupy the last two lectures.

To-day let me try to determine certain preliminary points. Let us get clear what is the nature and aim of the book. Much needs to be said which will seem trite to students. I would crave your pardon. These matters are needful for evidence of what will later be said. Besides, it is a less error to take too little for granted than too much.

Like nearly all of S. Augustine's writings, the 'De Civitate Dei' is controversial. It is a pamphlet of large scale. Like S. Paul and unlike S. Thomas, Augustine wrote only under the pressure of immediate necessity. All his writings have an apologetic character. Most of them are coloured by his intensely rich personality. Trained in rhetoric, Augustine is never abstract or impersonal. Sometimes we regret this and the longueurs to which his skill in dialectic leads him. Theories abound in S. Augustine's works, but the last thing he is is a theorist, pure and simple. Augustine became a theologian, as he had become a philosopher, driven by practical needs. Adversaries might even argue that all his emphasis on the external, on the given quality of grace, was due to his own experiences--just as Luther universalised his own inner life into the doctrine of justification by faith. We must see the place which these controversies, implied in the 'De Civitate,' occupied in S. Augustine's life. After his conversion, he spent the first years in assailing the doctrines of which he had been an adherent. We have the books 'Contra Academicos,' the 'Soliloquy' and other writings against the Manichæans. In these he is concerned with problems mainly speculative, the nature and origin of evil, the nature of belief, the possibility of certitude, the significance of error, which at least is evidence of the personality of the man in error, and so forth.

To these controversies succeeded his great conflict with the Donatists. When he was converted, Augustine did not become a merely intellectual adherent of Christianity. He became a member of a visible, active and world-wide Church; and that in a day of storms. When Augustine came home to Africa, after his mother's death, he found the Church rent by schism, with the Catholics appearing as the weaker party, and the Donatists claiming almost a national position. Augustine was forced into the position of a champion of the Catholic Church. Consequently, more in regard to schism than to heresy, he developed the idea of the unity and universality of the Church. He thus marked a difference between himself and Greek theologians like Origen.

Then came the sack of Rome by Alaric. Only in our own time can the shock of that world-catastrophe be paralleled in its effect on the imagination and thoughts of men. The eternity of Rome had been a presupposition of the common consciousness. But now the world seemed in ruins--i.e. the world of imagination and mental comfort. Augustine saw that the taking of Rome had no 'great military significance.' In one sermon he bids his hearers be calm and recollect that Rome really means Romans--and that the Roman name was not extinguished. The calamity gave its last chance to dying paganism. Rome had been a stronghold of the ancient worship, and was still largely pagan in feeling. Obvious then was its line of counterattack. 'This horror would not have been, had we stood by the ancient ways. The mad policy of the Emperors in prohibiting sacrifices to the gods has produced its inevitable nemesis. The sack of Rome is the judgment of Jove.'

This was the position in which Augustine was placed, one somewhat resembling that of a modern Christian faced with the charge that Christianity is bankrupt because it did not prevent the war. To meet the charge Augustine wrote the 'De Civitate Dei.' He did not write it all at once. In the 'Retractations' he admits that he was interrupted by the Pelagian controversy. That too leaves its traces upon this encyclopedia of his mind. Much of the book is but an expansion of Augustine's doctrine of grace applied on the scale of world history. That is another reason why the book is so hard. Augustine had a discursive mind, and his training in rhetoric increased this tendency. He had no great powers of construction. The architectonics even of the 'Confessions' leave much to be desired--a fact which is less patent than it should be to many because they do not read the latter books. In his controversial writings he does not know when to stop; nor does he trouble much about relevance. We can never understand S. Augustine if we think of him as a system-maker. Systems may have come out of him, but before all else he is a personality. He is the meeting-place of two worlds. All that the training of that day in the West could give-- he knew little or no Greek--he had. His mind was a mould into which the culture of the world was poured. This he had either to assimilate to Christianity, or to eliminate from himself. Sometimes he is inclined to do the latter. Hence his inconsistencies; and in consequence many different people could justify themselves out of his writings. Augustine is not, as some think, a pure ascetic without interest in human life, careless of the goods of learning--but sometimes he seems to be that. He is a rich, hot-blooded, highly complex and introspective personality, passionately Christian, but exquisitely and delicately human, sensitive and courageous, looking with reverence on Rome, possessed, with Virgil and Cicero, of a Roman love of authority and law, and an African touch of earth, yet ever withal having the nostalgia of the infinite. Within Augustine there struggle two personalities, a mystic, who could forgo all forms, not only of outward but of inward mechanism, and fly straight--'the alone to the Alone' --with a champion of ecclesiastical order, resolute to secure the rights of the Church, and a statesman looking before and after.

One constant temptation besets the historian of thought in every sphere. He is apt to suppose that his subjects are more consistent than they are; to make logical wholes of scattered and often contradictory hints; and sometimes even to rule out, as unauthentic, writings which have no other evidence against them than that of being hard to reconcile with others of the same author. In no case could this be a worse error than in that of S. Augustine; in no part of S. Augustine could it be worse than in the 'De Civitate Dei.' One student has said: 'It is not a book, it is journalism; whenever S. Augustine had nothing else to do he sat down and wrote a bit of it.' That may be fancy. But it is a fanciful way of conveying a truth. Let us then take the work right through, and give an account of it, not troubling about its logical consistency or the relevance of parts to the main idea.

In the 'Retractations' Augustine gave his own analysis of it, though a very brief one. The first five books are a reply to those who say that the pagan gods are to be worshipped for the sake of earthly security and peace. The next five are a reply to the contention of the philosophic apologists that the worship of old Roman gods leads to the real good, eternal life. The pagans having been routed, Augustine turned to construction. This is divided into three parts. In Books XI-XIV we have the origin of the two cities, the Civitas Dei and the Civitas terrena; in the next four he traces their course in time, and in the last four their consummation in eternity.

Let us go through the work in further detail. In Book I, Augustine states that his object in writing is to rebut the charge that Christianity has ruined Rome. He shows that temporal felicity had not been the unvarying condition for the city of Rome. Besides, the same gods had failed to protect Troy, or else Æneas would never have reached Italy. Even at the time of writing, Christianity, he claims, is having its effect, in getting better treatment for the vanquished. Pagans-- the very men who attack the Church--go running to the churches to take sanctuary. There they are safe. Augustine does not claim that a complete acceptance of Christianity would guarantee the life of a nation.

The laments over a toppling order, he will not meet by saying that a Christian commonwealth now or at any future date will be stable. What marks this book is the final repudiation of the old views, as much Jewish as pagan, that temporal felicity follows the service of the true God--alike for the individual and the nation.

The wicked, either man or nation, may flourish like a green bay tree, says S. Augustine, and often will. That will not advantage the wicked in the end, which is outside this life. But it will teach the good man humility and a due dependence on the eternal values. The world may be saved. But it will be saved on other-worldly lines. Hermann Reuter is right in saying that the whole world turns on the contrast between worldly and other-worldly motives.[3]

Augustine replies to the charge against the Christians by a doctrine concerning the nature of religion which makes the topic of temporal felicity irrelevant. This method was a revolution. Like most of S. Augustine's thought--and some of Christian teaching--it was neither entirely novel nor exclusively Christian. It rests on the philosophic conception of God as the summum bonum. 'What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.' This may be a summary of the Christian ideal, but it includes within it the Neo-Platonist also and many others. Augustine was aware of this, and in the second part he will meet and refute the argument that eternal goods are to be won by the worship of the pagan deities. Meanwhile he is occupied with those who complain of the evil wrought by Christianity. Against them he points out the luxury and corruption of Rome, all the ills predicted by Scipio if Carthage should be destroyed and Jeshurun wax fat with that lust of sovereignty which among all other sins of the world was most appropriate unto the Romans. He depicts the tragedies produced by the lust of power describes the hideous sexualities current in the theatre and in certain worships not yet discarded, despite all the Gothic peril. He concludes by sketching his plan to point out (1) the evils that befel Rome in early days; (2) the uselessness, so proved, of the old gods even for temporal ends; (3) their even greater uselessness for eternal bliss.

The second book is mainly concerned with the profound moral gulf between paganism and Christianity. Therein Augustine makes lavish use of the 'De Republica' of Cicero. He describes in detail the decay of Roman manners during the last days of the Republic, glancing at the moral and political passions which preceded and provoked the Imperial regime. This book is designed to establish the now familiar thesis of the moral and political corruption produced by paganism, and concludes with an exhortation to the Romans to renounce it.

Book III describes the miseries that ushered in and accompanied the triumphs of Rome. With these are contrasted the golden times of peace under King Numa and the wickedness of the attack on Alba Longa. Emphasis is thus laid on the miseries inherent in the pagan state as an expression of pagan ethics and religion.

In Book IV Augustine lays down that justice is to be set before power, and that alike by by nations and individuals. We come to the maxim on which so much more must be said: Remota justitia, quid regna nisi magna latrocinia. The Roman Empire he seems on the whole to have viewed as a just reward earned partly as the due of Roman virtue and partly in compensation for unjust attacks; but he is not always consistent. He speaks of the lust of power of Ninus and the Assyrian Empire. Here we come in Chapters 3 and 15 to strongly anti-imperialist passages. Thence Augustine proceeds (C. 11) to consider the more refined forms of paganism-- those which take the individual deities as names for the attributes of the one supreme God who was often interpreted pantheistically. He decides that Jove was at least no final organiser of victory for his children, and in that noteworthy passage (IV, 15) he argues in favour of a society of small States, 'little in quantity and peaceful in neighbourly agreement,' as against the aggregations of empire. Once more he makes easy game of the puerilities of polytheism, and denounces its obscene festivals. Thence he passes to the more serious doctrine of Varro, for whom Augustine entertained the greatest respect. Acute and learned, with a prodigious memory, Varro is Augustine's main authority for mythology-- just as later on Vico, who knew Varro mainly through the 'De Civitate Dei,' is driven at every turn to appeal to him. Varro was a Theist or Pantheist of a kind, and like Augustine worshipped a Providence, the bestower of kingdoms, who grants his boons to bad no less than good, like a parent giving toys. The book concludes with the assertion that God is the giver of all kingdoms and the determiner of their end, and with illustrations drawn from the Jewish State.

Book V enters into the problem of freedom and necessity. Despite his strong predestinarian doctrine Augustine was no believer in a blind fate--any more than was Calvin. Empire he holds, has been given to the Romans as the reward of certain terrestrial virtues. Great qualities of courage and self-sacrifice belong or did belong to Roman patriots. No pagan could be more eloquent than he is on their grandeur. He will even set them as an example for the citizens of the heavenly city. 'The argonauts of the ideal' are bidden to emulate the zeal and sacrifice which Romans had shown for a cause so far inferior. The well-known passage from the sixth Æneid, excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, is used to illustrate Roman imperialism (V, 12). Augustine argues that ambition may be a vice, but that it acts in restraint.

of worse vices, cowardice and indolence. Even here the Christian martyr is superior. He despised earthly honours and endured worse torments. The Romans had not the true end of doing God's will. Hence they could have no eternal hope. Their relative goodness would have gone unrewarded, and God's justice therefore would for ever be assailable, had not an earthly sovereignty been their meed. That species of power is other in kind than the eternal joy of the children of God. Yet once more must Augustine assert that it is the true God who gave Rome her Empire and who presides over the origin and issue of all wars. There he anticipates the argument of Dante. Rhadagaisus, the Gothic king, whom they all know, forms a shining example of this divine supervision in his sudden and incalculable downfall.

Following this passage is the famous Fürsten-spiegel, the picture of a godly prince (V, 24). Somewhat to our surprise, Augustine chooses as an instance Constantine the Great. Maybe he knew less ill of him than we do. At least this choice shows how entirely Roman was Augustine. Theodosius the Great is then made the topic of a panegyric, for he grudged not to assist the labouring Church by all the wholesome laws which he promulgated against heretics.

Augustine's first part concludes with Book V. He is now to be occupied in showing that paganism is wrong even as a method of approach to the True God.

Vulgar paganism is now demolished. We pass in Book VI to the philosophic creeds. An interesting appreciation of Varro precedes an account of his book on 'Human and Divine Antiquities' which indeed we know largely through the use Augustine makes of it. Varro divides religion into three stages, somewhat after the manner of Comte. There is (a) the mythical, followed by (b) the natural and (c) the civic. He prefers the second. Augustine tries to show the connexion between the two, and denies that paganism can be detached from its darker side. It is vain to worship pagan deities in the hope of eternal bliss. Book VII carries the matter a little further, and argues the inconsistency of Varro.

Book VIII treats of the Platonic doctrine of God. This in the main Augustine accepts; but he treats as futile the attempt to accommodate it with the worship of the pagan pantheon. Apuleius, the African representative of paganism, is discussed. We have vigorous words in abuse of magic. The heathen practice of apotheosis is contrasted with the honours given to the Christian martyr. This, he says, is high reverence, but in no sense do we treat the martyrs as gods. Book IX is concerned with a further condemnation of the doctrine of mediating spirits and demons. Thence Augustine passes to the doctrine of the One Mediator, and argues the possibility of the Incarnation. The Book shows that the debate between the Christian apologist and his assailants is at bottom a conflict between two forms of mediation.

Book X contains a further analysis of Plotinus, whose doctrine Augustine parallels with the Logos doctrine of S. John i. He contrasts the one sacrifice, once offered, with the offerings to idols; and the Christian with the pagan miracles. In Chapter 25 he argues that all good men in every age are saved, but saved through faith in Christ, e.g. the saints of the Old Testament. Then we have more argument for the Incarnation. Augustine sees the fundamental difficulty in Incarnation, a self-limitation of God which is all but intolerable. It is this doctrine of the humility of God at which imagination boggles. 'These proud fellows scorn to have God for their Master, because the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us.'

The last words of Book X sum up the first part of the whole:

'In these ten books I have spoken by the good assistance of God sufficient in sound judgments (though some expected more) against the impious contradictors that prefer their gods before the founder of the holy city, whereof we are to dispute. The first five of the ten opposed them that adored their gods for temporal respects; the five later against those that adored them for the life to come. It remains now, according as we promised in the first book, to proceed in our discourse of the two cities that are confused together in this world, and distinct in the other; of whose original, progress, and consummation I now enter to dispute, evermore invoking the assistance of the Almighty.'

Now at last in Book XI we get to the two cities. Augustine begins by proving that the universe and time began together. The City of God begins with the creation of light, i.e. with the angels; and the other with the sin of Satan. The doctrine of the Trinity is expounded, and Augustine emphasises his view that evil is a defect of will, not of nature, once more attacking the Manichæan dualism. 'Let there be light' signifies the creation of the angelic hierarchy.

Book XII once more discusses the relations of the good and evil angels. Augustine meets and denies the doctrine of the longevity of the world, of the Antipodes, of an eternal recurrence. He goes on to the creation of man. Book XIII describes the fall, and its consequence in death. He combats the view that death was inevitable, not penal. In Book XIV we proceed to the ordinary doctrine of the irruption of grace. After dilating on the evils of sin, he describes the two cities more at large in Chapter 28.

'Two loves therefore have given original to these two cities--self-love in contempt of God unto the earthly; love of God in contempt of one's self to the heavenly. The first seeks the glory of men and the latter desires God only as the testimony of conscience, the greatest glory. That glories in itself, and this in God. That exalts itself in self-glory; this says to God, "My glory, the lifter of my head." That boasts of the ambitious conquerors, led by the lust of sovereignty: in this everyone serves the other in charity, both the rulers in counselling and the subjects in obeying. That loves worldly virtue in the potentates; this says unto God, "I will love thee, O Lord, my strength." And the wise men of that follow either the good things of the body or mind or both, living according to the flesh, and such as might know God honoured him not as God, nor were thankful, but all were vain in their own imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; for professing themselves to be wise-- that is, extolling themselves proudly in their own wisdom-- they became fools, changing the glory of the incorruptible God to the likeness of the image of a corruptible man and of birds and fourfooted beasts and serpents: for they were the people's guides or followers into all those idolatries, and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. But in this other the heavenly city, there is no wisdom of man, but only the piety that serves the true God, and expects a reward in the society of the holy angels and men, that God may be all in all.'

Book XV begins with the contrary course of the two cities in history. Cain built the first city; not Abel, who was always a pilgrim.

'It is recorded of Cain that he built the city, but Abel was a pilgrim and built none. For the city of the saints is above, though it have citizens here upon earth, wherein it lives as a pilgrim until the time of the kingdom come, and then it gathers all the citizens together in the resurrection of the body and gives them a kingdom to reign in with their king for ever and ever.'

Chapter 4 describes the earthly city. Peace is the aim of its life. This it can win only by war. Cain's effort is compared with the building of Rome by Romulus, who also slew his brother. Once more he compares them in regard to Seth and Enos.

In XV, 21 he sums it up:

'Thus the two cities are described to be seated, the one in worldly possession, the other in heavenly hopes, both coming out at the common gate of mortality, which was opened in Adam; out of whose condemned race, as out of a putrefied lump, God elected some vessels of mercy and some of wrath; giving due pains unto the one, and undue grace unto the other, that the citizens of God upon earth may take this lesson from the vessels of wrath, never to rely on their own election, but hope to call upon the name of the Lord: because the natural will which God made (but yet here the Unchangeable made it not changeless) may both decline from Him that is good and from all good to do evil, and that by freedom of will: and from evil also to do good, but that not without God's assistance.'

Book XVI goes on with the history. Augustine condemns in parentheses the idea of inhabitants at the Antipodes. The supreme type of the earthly city is the Tower of Babel. The course continues until the second period, that of Abraham, and the third, that of the Mosaic Law. From now onwards the city of God becomes represented for practical purposes by the Hebrew nation. Therefore it takes on some of the qualities of an earthly State. This gives occasion to S. Augustine to argue that all the promises of permanence in the Old Testament could not refer to the Jewish State but must have their fulfilment in that city eternal in the heavens. This is true in especial of all the promises to David (XVII, 16). He is led to argue that peace is no enduring condition on earth, but belongs of right only to the life beyond.

In Book XVIII we get to the course of the civitas terrena, i.e. the whole topic of Vico. That is represented in the Assyrian monarchy; but certain criticisms of Grecian myths and Egypt occur. We may cite here the vivid words of Vives on the following chapters:

'In this eighteenth book we were to pass many dark ways and oftentimes to feel for our passage, daring not fix one foot until we first groped where to place it, as one must do in dark and dangerous places. Here we cannot tarry all day at Rome, but must abroad into the world's farthest corner, into lineages long since lost, and countries worn quite out of memory; pedigrees long ago laid in the depth of oblivion must we fetch out into the light like Cerberus, and spread them openly. We must into Assyria, that old monarchy scarcely once named by the Greeks; and Sycionia, which the very princes thereof sought to suppress from memory themselves, debarring their very fathers from having their names set on their tombs, as Pausanias relateth; and thence to Argos, which being held the most antique state of Greece is all enfolded in fables; then Athens, whose nimble wits aiming all at their country's honour, have left truth sick at the heart, they have so cloyed it with eloquence and wrapped it up in cloudes. Nor is Augustine content with this, but here and there casteth in hard walnuts and almonds for us to crack, which puts us to shrewd trouble ere we can get out the kernel of truth, their shells are so thick. And then cometh the Latin gests, all hacked in pieces by the discord of authors. And thence to the Romans; nor are the Greek wise men omitted. It is fruitless to complain lest some should think I do it causeless. And here and there the Hebrew, runneth like veins in the body, to show the full course of the Two Cities, the Heavenly and the Earthly. If any one travelling through those countries and learning his way of the cunningest should for all that miss his way sometimes, is not he pardonable? If any pass through, will anyone think him less diligent in his travel? None, I think. What then if chance or ignorance lead me astray out of the sight of divers mean villages that I should have gone by, my way lying through deserts and untracked woods and seldom, or never, finding any to ask the right way of. Am I not to be borne with? I hope yes. Varro's Antiquities are all lost; and the life of Rome. None but Eusebius helped me in Assyria, but that Diodorus Siculus and some others set me in once or twice.

I had a book by me called Berosus by the booksellers, and somewhat I had of Joannes Annius, goodly matters truly, able to fright away the reader at first sight. But I let them lie still; I love not to suck the dregs or fetch fables out of frivolous pamphlets, the very rackets wherewith Greece bandieth ignorant heads about. Had this work been a child of Berosus I had used it willingly; but it looketh like a bastard of a Greek sire. . . . If any man like such stuff, much good may it do him. I will be none of his rival. . . . Concerning Athens, Rome, Argos, Latium, and the other fabulous subjects, the reader hath heard whatsoever my diversity of reading affordeth, and much from the most curious students therein that I could be acquainted withall. He that liketh not this thing, may find another, by and by, that will please his palate better, unless he be so proudly testy that he would have these my pains for the public good, of power to satisfy him only. The rest, the Commentaries themselves will tell you' (On De Civitate, XVIII, i.)

Prophecy comes in and the conflicts of philosophers. The rise and early progress of Christianity are now described. The Civitas Dei is beginning to be identified with the Church; but Augustine emphasises the uncertainty of its true membership owing to the scarcity of the elect. The book thus concludes the history on earth:

'Now it is time to set an end to this book, wherein, as far as need was, we have run along with the courses of the two cities in their confused progress, the one of which, the Babylon of the earth, has made her false gods of mortal men, serving them and sacrificing to them as she thought good; but the other, the heavenly Jerusalem, she has stuck to the only and true God, and is his true and pure sacrifice herself. But both of these do feel one touch of good and evil fortune, but not with one faith, nor one hope, nor one law: and at length at the last judgment they shall be severed for ever, and either shall receive the endless reward of their works. Of these two ends we are now to discourse.'

Book XIX proceeds to the discussion with which we began, the thought of the summum bonum. Augustine says that this can be found only in the world beyond. After admitting that society is integral to human life, he points to some of its inevitable miseries on earth--war, insecurity--and becomes eloquenton the value of peace.

(C 11.) 'We may therefore say that peace is our final good, as we said of life eternal. Because the Psalm says unto that city, whereof we write this laborious work: "Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem, praise thy Lord, O Sion; for He hath made fast the bars of thy gates and blessed thy children within thee; He giveth peace in thy borders." When the bars of the gates are fast, as none can come in, so none can go out. And therefore this peace which we call final is the borders and bounds of this city; for the mystical name hereof, Jerusalem, signifies a vision of peace. But because the name of peace is ordinary in this world where eternity is not resident, therefore we choose rather to call the bound, wherein the chief good of this city lies, "life eternal." . . . The good of peace is generally the greatest wish of the world, and the most welcome when it comes. Whereof I think one may take leave of our reader, to have a word or two more, both because of the city's end, whereof we now speak, and of the sweetness of peace, which all men do love.'

(C. 12.) ' Who will not confess this with me, who marks man's affairs and the general form of nature? For joy and peace are desired alike of all men. The warrior would but conquer; war's aim is nothing but glorious peace. What is victory but a suppression of resistants; which being done, peace follows? So that peace is war's purpose, the scope of all military discipline and the limit at which all just contentions level. All men seek peace by war, but none seek war by peace. For they that perturb the peace they live in, do it not for hate of it, but to show their power in alteration of it. They would not disannul it, but they would have it as they like; and though they break into seditions from the rest, yet must they hold a peaceful force with their fellows that are engaged with them, or else they shall never effect what they intend. Even the thieves themselves, that molest all the world besides them, are at peace amongst themselves. . . .

'What tiger is there that does not purr over her young ones and fawn upon them in her tenderness? What kite is there, though he fly solitarily about for his prey, but will seek his female, build his nest, sit his eggs, feed his young, and assist his mate in her motherly duty, all that in him lies? Far stronger are the bands that bind man unto society, and peace with all that are peaceable; the worst men of all do fight for their fellows' quietness and would (if it lay in their power) reduce all into a distinct form of state drawn by themselves, whereof they would be the heads, which could never be, but by a coherence either through fear or love. For herein is perverse pride an imitator of the goodness of God having equality of others with itself under Him, and laying a yoke of obedience upon its fellows, under itself instead of Him; thus hates it the just peace of God, and builds an unjust one for itself. Yet can it not but love peace, for no vice however unnatural can pull nature up by the roots. . . .'

(C. 13.) ' The body's peace therefore is an orderly disposal of the parts thereof; the unreasonable soul's, a good temperature of the appetites thereof; the reasonable soul's, a true harmony between the knowledge and the performance. That of body and soul alike, a temperate and undiseased habit of nature in the whole creature. The peace of mortal man with immortal God is an orderly obedience unto his eternal law, performed in faith. Peace of man and man is a mutual concord; peace of a family, an orderly rule and subjection amongst the parts thereof; peace of a city, an orderly command and obedience amongst the citizens; peace of God's City, a most orderly coherence in God and fruition of God; peace of all things is a well disposed order. . . .'

(C. 14.) 'All temporal things are referred unto the benefit of the peace which is resident in the terrestrial city, by the members thereof; and unto the use of the eternal peace by the citizens of the heavenly society. . . .'

'Now God, our good Master, teaching us in the two great commandments the love of Him, and the love of our neighbour, to love three things, God, our neighbours and ourselves, and seeing he that loves God offends not in loving himself--it follows that he ought to counsel his neighbours to love God and to provide for him in the love of God, sure he is commanded to love him as his own self. So must he do for his wife, children, family and all men besides, and wish likewise that his neighbour would do as much for him, in his need; thus shall he be settled in peace and orderly concord with all the world. The order whereof is, first, to do no man hurt, and, secondly, to help all that he can. So that his own have the first place in his care and those his place and order in human society affords him more conveniency to benefit. Whereupon S. Paul says: "He that provideth not for his own and, namely, for them that be of his household, denieth the faith and is worse than an infidel." For this is the foundation of domestic peace, which is an orderly rule and subjection in the parts of the family, wherein the provisors are the commanders, as the husband over his wife, parents over their children, and masters over their servants; and they that are provided for obey, as the wives do their husbands, children their parents, and servants their masters. But in the family of the faithful man, the heavenly pilgrim, there the commanders are indeed the servants of those they seem to command; ruling not in ambition, but being bound by careful duty; not in proud sovereignty but in nourishing pity.'

(C. 15.) ' Thus has nature's order prevailed and man by God was thus created.' But sin ruled all. 'Sin is the mother of servitude and the first cause of man's subjection to man.' Dominion in the strict sense existed only between man and dumb animals. Yet for all that obedience is our duty; and the family is ever a part of the city.

In Chapter 17 we find the two ends described; one is earthly peace alone, the other has its other-worldly reference. Yet this heavenly city has members in all earthly cities, gives them true peace and the heavenly hope. Augustine goes on discussing (Chapter 21) Cicero's definition of a republic in which justice is an integral element. On that hypothesis Rome never was a commonwealth, since justice cannot be where the true God is not worshipped. But in Chapter 24 he gives another definition under which any stable state can be grouped. No true virtue exists apart from God, yet earthly peace is needed and must be used by the citizens of the heavenly state.

Book XX is concerned with the Last Judgment. In Chapter 6 Augustine argues that the first resurrection has already taken place in the conversion of sinners to Christ. The millennial kingdom is not, as the Chiliasts say, a future reign of Christ in the world, but is the present kingdom of the Church. This is the binding of the devil. It began with the spread of the Church outside of Judaism. The 'thrones and they that sat upon them' are the rulers of the Churches. The souls that reign with Christ a thousand years are the martyrs. The beast is the society of wicked man, opposed to the company of God's servants and fighting against His holy city. This society consists not only of open enemies but also of tares among the wheat. More apologetic discussion concludes the book.

Book XXI is concerned with the pains of the lost. We have an interesting passage on the miseries of life.

The last Book XXII gives an account of the felicity of the saved and the eternal bliss of the kingdom of God. Here apologetic follows concerning the Incarnation and the miraculous, in order to refute contemporary errors. After a description of the ills of life comes an eloquent passage on the goods of human life. Those passages form an interesting contrast:

(C. 22.) 'Concerning man's first origin our present life (if such a miserable estate can be called a life) does sufficiently prove that all his children were condemned in him. What else does that horrid gulf of ignorance confirm, whence all error has birth, and wherein all the sons of Adam are so deeply drenched, that none can be freed without toil, fear and sorrow? What else does our love of vanities affirm, whence there arises such a tempest of cares, sorrows, repinings, fears, mad exultations, discords, altercations, wars, treasons, furies, hates, deceits, flatteries, thefts, rapines, perjuries, pride, ambition, envy, murder, parricide, cruelty, villainy, luxury, impudence, unchastity, fornications, adulteries, incests, several sorts of sins against nature (filthy even to be named), sacrilege, . . . false witnesses, false judgments, violence, robberies, and suchlike, out of my remembrance to reckon, but not excluded from the life of man? All these evils are belonging to man and arise out of the root of that error and perverse affection which every son of Adam brings into the world with him.'

Augustine points out that the discipline of children has no other meaning. 'What is the end of all these but to abolish ignorance and to bridle corruption both which we come wrapped into the world withal.' He goes on:

'To omit the pains that enforce children to learn the (scarcely useful) books that please their parents, how huge a band of pains attend the firmer state of man and be not peculiarly inflicted on the wicked, but generally impendent over us all, through our common estate in misery! Who can recount them, who can conceive them? What fears, what calamities does the loss of children, of goods or of credit, the false dealing of others, false suspicion, open violence and all other mischiefs inflicted by others, heap upon the heart of man? Being generally accompanied with poverty, imprisonment, bands, punishments, tortures, loss of limbs or senses, prostitution to beastly lust, and other such horrid events? So are we afflicted on the other side with chances ab externo, with cold, heat, storms, showers, deluges, lightnings, thunder, earthquakes, falls of houses, fury of beasts, poisons of airs, waters, plants and beasts of a thousand sorts, stinging of serpents, biting of mad dogs, a strange accident wherein a beast most sociable and familiar with man shall sometimes become more to be feared than a lion or a dragon, infecting him whom he bites with such a furious madness, that he is to be feared by his family worse than any wild beast. What misery do navigators now and then endure? Or travellers by land? What man can walk anywhere free from sudden accidents? One coming home from the court (being sound enough on his feet) fell down, broke his leg and died of it; who would have thought this that had seen him sitting in the court? Eli, the priest, fell from his chair where he sat, and broke his neck. What fears are husbandmen, yea all men, subject unto, that the fruits should be hurt by the heavens or earth or caterpillars or locusts or such pernicious things! Yet when they have gathered them and laid them up they are secured. Notwithstanding I have known granaries full of corn borne quite away with an inundation.'

And so forth.

Augustine's tone may seem gloomy. But it must be borne in mind that the times were not bright. The reason of this book was the breaking up of the long centuries of Roman prosperity. As it neared its end, the storm burst even in Africa. Augustine's life was passed in a series of changes like those which divide the jubilees of Queen Victoria from the silver wedding of her grandson. It may indeed be argued that the habitual assumptions of Western civilisation both in Europe and America have been too optimistic ; that they assume peace and progress as natural and inevitable, and that the advance of physical science led to an altogether too favourable view of the reduction of pain in human life in a state of things rarely realised in history. It may be thought that the temper of Augustine, of the Middle Ages, and of the present, is more truly universal than that of the protected Roman Empire, of China, or of the Victorians. Anyhow we can parallel S. Augustine from writers in many ages, not only the Book of Job, but Richard Baxter, the author of a book curiously suggestive of the 'De Civitate Dei'--'The Saints' Everlasting Rest.' In that incomparable style of the seventeenth century he declares:

(VII, 12.) 'Oh, the hourly dangers that we poor sinners here below walk in! Every sense is a snare, every member a snare, every creature a snare, every mercy a snare, and every duty a snare to us. We can scarce open our eyes but we are in danger; if we behold those above us, we are in danger of envy; if those below us, we are in danger of contempt; if we see sumptuous buildings, pleasant habitations, honour and riches, we are in danger to be drawn away with covetous desires; if the rags and beggary of others, we are in danger of self-applauding thoughts and unmercifulness. If we see beauty it is a bait to lust; if deformity, to loathing and disdain.'

(VII, 15.) 'The Church on earth is a mere hospital; which way ever we go we hear complaining; and into what corner soever we cast our eyes we behold objects of pity and grief; some groaning under a dark understanding, some under a senseless heart, some languishing under unfruitful weakness, and some bleeding for miscarriages and wilfulness, and some in such a lethargy that they are past complaining; some crying out of their pining poverty; some groaning under pains and infirmities; and some bewailing a whole catalogue of calamities, especially in days of common sufferings when nothing appears to our sight but ruin; families ruined; congregations ruined; sumptuous structures ruined; cities ruined; country ruined; court ruined; kingdom ruined; who weeps not, when all these bleed?'

(VII, 16.) 'Oh, the dying life that we now live; as full of suffering as of days and hours! We are the carcasses that all calamities prey upon; as various as they are, each one will have a snatch at us, and be sure to devour a morsel of our comfort. . . . As all our senses are the inlets of sin, so they are become the inlets of our sorrow. Grief creeps in at our eyes, at our ears, and almost everywhere; it seizes upon our heads, our hearts, our flesh, our spirits, and what part doth escape it? Fears do devour us and darken our delights, as the frosts do nip the tender buds: cares do consume us and feed upon our spirits, as the scorching sun doth wither the delicate flowers. Or, if any saint or stoic have fortified his inwards against these, yet is he naked still without; and if he be wiser than to create his own sorrows, yet shall he be sure to feel his share, he shall produce them as the meritorious, if not as the efficient, cause. What tender pieces are these dusty bodies! What brittle glasses do we bear about us; and how many thousand dangers are they hurried through; and how hardly cured, if once cracked! Oh, the multitudes of slender veins, of tender membranes, nerves, fibres, muscles, arteries, and all subject to obstruc-tions, exesions, tensions, contractions, resolutions, every one a fit subject for pain and fit to communicate that pain to the whole; what noble part is there that suffereth its pain or ruin alone?'

But Augustine does not stop at this. The Puritan ideal with its extreme of otherworldliness could see little good in the natural and relative. Not so Augustine. In Chapter 24 he almost outdoes his previously cited passage in his anxiety to show the reality of earthly goods--goods distinct from the life of grace.

'Besides the disciplines of good behaviour and the ways to eternal happiness (which are called virtues), and besides the grace of God which is in Jesus Christ, imparted only to the sons of the promise, man's invention has brought forth so many and such rare sciences and arts (partly necessary and partly voluntary), that the excellency of his capacity makes the rare goodness of his creation apparent, even then when he goes about things that are either superfluous or pernicious, and shows from what an excellent gift he has those his inventions and practices. What variety has man found out in buildings, attires, husbandry, navigations, sculpture, and imagery! What perfection has he shown in the shows of theatres, in taming, killing and catching wild beasts! What millions of inventions has he against others and for himself in poisons, arms, engines, stratagems and suchlike! What thousands of medicines for the health, of meats for the throat, of means and figures to persuade, of eloquent phrases to delight, of verses for pleasure, of musical inventions and instruments! How excellent inventions are geography, arithmetic, astrology and the rest! How large is the capacity of man, if we should stand upon particulars! Lastly, how cunningly and with what exquisite wit have the philosophers and the heretics defended their very errors, it is strange to imagine. For here we speak of the nature of man's soul in general, as man is mortal, without any reference to the way of truth whereby he comes to the life eternal.'

After dilating on the marvels of the human body, he goes on to natural beauty.

'And then for the beauty and use of other creatures, which God has set before the eyes of man (though as yet miserable and amongst miseries), what man is liable to recount them? The universal gracefulness of the heavens, the earth and the sea, the brightness of the light in the sun, moon and stars, the shades of the woods, the colours and smells of flowers, the numbers of birds and their varied hues and songs, the many forms of beasts and fishes whereof the least are the rarest (for the fabric of the bee or the ant is more to be wondered at than the whales), and the strange alterations in the colour of the sea (as being in several garments), now one green, then another, now blue, then purple? How pleasing a sight sometimes it is to see it rough, and how more pleasing when it is calm! And O what a hand is that, that gives so many meats to assuage hunger! So many tastes to those meats (without help of cook), and so many medicinal powers to those tastes! How delightful is the interchange of day and night! the temperateness of air and the works of nature in the barks of trees and skins of beasts! Oh, who can draw the particulars? How tedious should I be in every peculiar of these few that I have here as it were heaped together, if I should stay upon them one by one! Yet are all these but solaces of men's miseries, no way pertinent to his glories.

'What then are they that his bliss shall give him, if that his misery has such blessings as these? What will God give them whom He has predestinated unto life, having given such great things even to them whom He has predestinated unto death? What will He give them in His kingdom, for whom He sent His only Son to suffer all injuries even unto death upon earth? Whereupon S. Paul says unto them: "He who spared not His own Son, but gave Him for us all unto death, how shall He not with Him give us all things also?" When this promise is fulfilled, O what shall we be then? How glorious shall the soul of man be without all stain and sin, that can either subdue or oppose it, or against which it need to contend: perfect in all virtue and enthroned in all perfection of peace!

How great, how delightful, how true shall our knowledge of all things be there, without all error, without all labour, where we shall drink at the spring-head of God's aspience, without all difficulty and in all felicity! How perfect shall our bodies be, being wholly subject unto their spirits, and thereby sufficiently quickened and nourished without any other sustenance, for they shall now be no more natural, but spiritual; they shall have the substance of flesh quite exempt from all fleshly corruption.'

In Chapter 25 he points out that 'as touching the good things of the mind which the blessed shall enjoy after this life, the philosophers and we are both of one mind. Our difference is concerning the resurrection,' which he proceeds to argue. Of Porphyry, who has on the whole his deepest reverence, of Plato and Varro, Augustine speaks here, as always, in terms of honour, almost love. In the last chapter he enlarges on the visio pads and the eternal felicity of the city of God. It is interesting as well as eloquent, for it brings out the human and non-abstract quality of Augustine's theology:

(C. 35.) 'How great shall that felicity be, where there shall be no evil thing, where no good thing shall lie hidden; there we shall have leisure to utter forth the praises of God, which shall be all things in all! For what other thing is done, where we shall not rest with any slothfulness, nor labour for any want, I know not. . . . What the motions of those bodies shall be there I dare not rashly define, when I am not able to dive into the depth of that mystery. Nevertheless both the motion and the state, as the form of them, shall be comely and decent, whatsoever it shall be, where there shall be nothing which shall not be comely. Truly, where the spirit will, there forthwith shall the body be; neither will the spirit will anything, which may not beseem the body nor the spirit. There shall be true glory, where no man shall be praised for error or flattery. . . . There is true peace, where no man suffers anything which may molest him, either from himself or from any other. He himself shall be the reward of virtue, which has given virtue, and has promised Himself unto him, than whom nothing can be better and greater. For what other thing is that which He has said by the Prophet: "I will be their God and they shall be My people": but I will be whereby they shall be satisfied. I will be whatsoever is lawfully desired of men, life, health, food, abundance, glory, honour, peace and all good things? For so also is that rightly understood which the Apostle says: "That God may be all in all." He shall be the end of our desires, who shall be seen without end, who shall be loved without any satiety and praised without any tediousness. . . . There we shall rest and see, we shall see and love, we shall love, and we shall praise. Behold what shall be in the end without end? For what other thing is our end but to come to that kingdom of which there is no end?

'I think I have discharged the debt of this great work by the help of God. Let them which think I have done too little and them which think I have done too much, grant me a favourable pardon. But let them not think I have performed enough, accepting it with a kind congratulation; give no thanks unto me but "unto the Lord with me." Amen.'

This brief outline makes this much clear. The 'De Civitate Dei' is apologetic and theological. It is not a treatise on polity, whether ecclesiastical or civil. All S. Augustine's philosophical reading has left traces-- and every kind of dialectic is displayed. As apologetic it is more effective against paganism than against the Platonists. Too much is assumed in regard to Jewish and Christian history. The book might reassure those within the Church whose faith was shaken. It would hardly arrest those without. It has the interest and also the coruscating irrelevance that comes from a great variety of topics. The thread is there, but sometimes it is hard to disentangle. Compare this book with such a work of apology as that of Origen against Celsus. We note how much larger the Church looms in the view of S. Augustine. It is no set of propositions which he is defending in a dialectic debate with other philosophers; although he can do this and does it in detail. But it is a social life which he sets up against another form of social life. The treatment is less individualist than that of Origen--though the latter had to follow the course taken by Celsus. First we may observe that what impressed Augustine was the witness of the vastness of the Church and its triumph. As he says in a sermon:

'What do we see which they saw not? The Church throughout all nations. What do we not see which they saw? Christ present in the flesh. As they saw Him and believed concerning the Body, so do we see the Body; let us believe concerning the Head. Let what we have respectively seen help us. The sight of Christ helped them to believe the future Church; the sight of the Church helps us to believe that Christ has risen. Their faith was made complete, and ours is made complete also. Their faith was made complete by the sight of the Head, ours is made complete from the sight of the Body.' (Sermon lxvi. (cxi.) § 6.)

Probably those are right who say that in this respect also--if in nothing else--Augustine is epoch-making, that all his apologetic rests on the idea of Church. This characteristic would be developed in the Donatist controversy. It must be admitted, however, that such a view of him is not universally held, and some would put the distinctive basis of S. Augustine in the idea not of the Church, but of grace.[4]

Secondly we note the aggressive tone of the book. Despite his references to Plato and his real debt to Plotinus and Porphyry, Augustine is far more intransigent than Clement of Alexandria, who would treat Christianity as but the coping-stone of Greek thought. It is not as a superior gnosis, but it is as a scheme of Redemption, that Augustine commends Christianity, and values it for himself. The cause of this lies partly in that doctrine of original sin which was so strongly held by Augustine, and even was in some degree being developed while this book was in process. It is the point of the whole book.

Another note is the stress laid on the ethical difference between Christianity and its competitors--though that is not a novel feature. Augustine knows that it is not speculative truth but conduct that shows the greatest difference. Also he is aware that he is dealing with a dying interest. Paganism was uttering its death-cry (for the time). Clear is his note of triumph in the conquering and universal power of the Church.

History including miracle plays a great part. The destruction of Jerusalem following the rejection of Jesus by the Jews is an emphatic evidence of the Gospel. The argument from miracles he states as many would state it now. A miracle is not contrary to nature but to what we know of nature. The argument depends on our conception of God. Augustine had no notion of the distinction between the natural--i.e. the physical --and the supernatural. Nature means the whole world of God's order--all that happens. The problem is whether God's Will be paramount. All this has been treated by Mr. Lacey in his earliest Pringle-Stewart Lectures, 'Nature, Miracle and Sin.'

Above all we must bear in mind that the whole course of created existence is seen by S. Augustine as a conflict between two societies. However little some may make use of the figure of Civitas Dei, they have no right to deny its implications as against a doctrine purely individualist. Sin in Adam has become the property of the race, it is needful to show redemption in the order of historical development. The apologetic rests on a philosophy of history.

Finally it is of and in the antique world that Augustine wrote. The notion of him as medieval in temperament may have some evidence, yet it must be understood with care. The atmosphere of the book is of the old world. It is before Gelasius with his doctrine of the two powers, before Justinian. Only a little over a century had passed since Diocletian's effort at exterminating the Church. Less than that divided S. Augustine from the reaction under Julian.

Notes to Lecture I

[1] Weinand, H., Die Gottesidee der Grundzug der Weltanschauung des hi. Augustins, 1910, in Ehrhard und Kirsch, Forschungen, X. ii. p. i. 'Wie die Geisteswerte der heidnischen Kulturwelt in ihm zusammenfliessen, so hat vom fünften Jahrhundert ab die christliche Kulturwelt in ihm Wurzeln und Fasern. . . .

'Man hat darauf hinangewiesen, wie jede Neuerung bis herab auf den Socialismus unserer Tage, ihn zu dem Ihrigen zu machen sich bemüht.'

[2] E. Feuerlein, Ueber die Stellung Augustins in der Kirchen- und Culturgeschichte in Sybel's Historische Zeitschrift. Bd. 22, 1869, p. 300.

'Dieser Eine Mann mit dem brennenden und zur Ruhe gekommenen Herzen ist der Typus der mittelalterlichen Christenheit. Sein zügelloses und doch zuletzt gezügeltes Temperament repräsentirt jenen wilden Volksgeist, der mit der Völkerwanderung sich erhebt und seiner Zähmung durch die Kirche harrt, die ganze Hitze und Heftigkeit des Volksthums, das sich gleich ihm in der Versenkung ins Eine, Göttliche, in der religiösen Andacht abkühlen soll. Er der Sohn eines gebildeten Naturvolks, topographisch ausserhalb des Gebiets der neueuropäischen Menschheit gestellt, sollte den zu erwartenden Naturvölkern Weg und Steg ihrer ersten Cultur weisen dürfen.'

[3] H. Reuter, Augustinische Studien, p. 121 n. 'Das ganze Werk De Civitate bewegt sich auf dem scharf gefassten Gegensatz des Diesseits und Jenseits, der Gegenwart und der Zukunft als auf seiner Basis.'

[4] Reuter, Augustinische Studien, p. 45. ' Nicht indem er "Die Heilsbedeutung" der Kirche verteidigte ist er ein Neuerer geworden, sondern durch die Art, wie er diese nach Massgabe seines Begriffs der gratia erörtert.

'Nicht in dem Kirchenbegriffe ist die prinzipale Diff erenz zwischen dem System Augustin's und dem der Pelagianer zuhöchst zu suchen, sondern in dem Begriffe der Gnade.'


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