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A. D. 392. had been left untouched. Notwithstanding, external remedies only were now resorted to, till an eminent physician of Alexandria declared a repetition of the operation absolutely

['See below,ch.41.]

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Possid. c. 3. to 10. ad fin. p. 259.]

necessary.

The sick man dreaded it, and felt sure of sinking under it; his whole family was thrown into the utmost affliction. He was visited daily by holy persons, Saturninus, Bishop of Uzala, Gelosus a Priest, and the Deacons of the Church of Carthage, and among the rest, by Aurelius, who became afterwards its Bishop'. The evening before he was to submit to the operation he implored them to come the next day, to be present at his death. They consoled him, and exhorted him to trust in GOD and be resigned to His will. They then falling, as was usual, on their knees, and bending to the ground, began to pray. Innocentius violently threw himself prostrate, and prayed with such tears and sobs, with such extraordinary efforts, that he seemed ready to expire. They then rose, and having received the Bishop's blessing, departed. The next day they returned. The physicians came, placed the sick man on his bed, took off the bandages and laid open the diseased part. With his instruments in his hands the surgeon looked for the place to make the incision. He examined with his eyes, and his hands; he found the wound healed and the evil perfectly cured. St. Augustine himself was present, and relates this as one of the most remarkable miracles of his time, to prove that they had not entirely ceased in the Church.

On St. Augustine's return to Africa, he retired with certain of his friends, who served God like himself, to his own house in the country'. There he continued three years, weaned from all secular cares, living to GOD, in fastings, prayers, and good works, meditating in His Law day and night, and instructing others in those things which God revealed to him in meditation or in prayer3. In order to confute the Manichees more openly and in a way more easily understood than he had hitherto done, he wrote at this time his Retract.1. two books On Genesis, against them. In them, he begins to refute their calumnies against the Old Testament by answering their objections against the opening of Genesis. He finishes with the expulsion of Adam from the

Ibid.

c. 10.

c. 12.

c. 6.

earthly paradise. At the same time he wrote his book on A. D. 392. The Master', which is a dialogue with his son Adeodatus, in ['tom. 1. which he examines minutely into the use of speech, and p. 541.] proves that we have no other Master to teach us but eternal Truth, which is, CHRIST'. St. Augustine calls God to witness Retract. 1. in his Confessions, that he has ascribed to his son no thoughts but such as really occurred to him, though he was only sixteen years old, and he says that he has seen still more extraordinary proofs of his genius, such as even terrified him. Soon after his son died3. The last work which he composed Confess.9. during his retreat was his book On True Religion, where, after proving that it is found neither in Paganism nor among sects, apart from the Catholic Church, he explains the history of God's dealings for the salvation of mankind, and refutes the Manichæan doctrine of two eternal principles. He speaks of the two ways by which God leads men, Authority and Reason; of the three main vices, which must be avoided in order to rise to GOD, the love of pleasure, pride, and curiosity; and concludes that true Religion consists in adoring One only GOD, FATHER, SON, and HOLY GHOST. This work, both for thoughts and style, is among the most excellent of St. Augustine.

St. Augus

and ed Priest.

4 Serm.355.

He $ 2. [tom. 5.
P. 1380.]

Whilst he was thus occupied in his retreat, near Thagaste, XXXVIII. there was an Imperial agent at Hippo, a sea-coast town in tine ordainthe neighbourhood, who was already among his friends was desirous of hearing the word of God from his mouth. was already a Christian, but St. Augustine wished to win him Possid.c.3. wholly to God, that he might live with him in his monastery. The desire of this man's salvation then brought him to Hippo, but he did not at that time succeed in persuading him to a life of seclusion. Valerius was now Bishop of Hippo. One day he was speaking to the people of the necessity of ordaining a Priest for his Church. St. Augustine was present, and, to

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A. D. 392. his surprise was by some who knew his virtue and learning suddenly seized and presented to the Bishop for Ordination. His fear of being forcibly raised to the Episcopate had led him studiously to avoid any Churches which stood in need of a Bishop. All were now unanimous in their earnest acclamations, and besought Valerius to ordain him Priest. When [Ep. 21. St. Augustine burst into tears, some of the bystanders' supal. 148. §2.] posed that he felt disappointed that he was to be made Priest only, and said to console him, that he was indeed worthy of a higher office, but still that the dignity of the Priesthood was not far inferior to that of the Episcopate. He, however, was contemplating the perils which awaited him in the government of the Church, in which the Priests then had a considerable share. At last the people were satisfied, and St. Augustine was ordained priest about the beginning of

c. 5. Serm. 355. ubi supr.

A.D. 391.

His love of seclusion continued and he wished to lead the same monastic life at Hippo as he had hitherto done at Possid. Thagaste'. Valerius, knowing his design, gave him a garden belonging to the Church, where he began to collect around him some of GoD's servants, poor like himself. He had sold his inheritance and distributed to the poor; he brought nothing with him to Hippo, but the garments in which he was clad. They all lived, apparently, of the work of their own 3 Acts 4.32. hands, and practised the Apostolic rule3, having all things common, none calling any thing his own, but each receiving according to his need. Valerius thanked GOD that He had heard the prayers he had offered for a man, who, by edifying the Church by his instructions, might compensate for his own inability; for being a Greek by birth, he had not sufficient acquaintance with Latin either for speaking or reading. Contrary then to the custom of the African Church, in which Bishops alone used to preach, he authorized St. Augustine to explain the Gospel in his presence. Some Bishops objected to this, but Valerius, who knew that he was only following the example of the Eastern Churches and consulting for the good of his own, did not attend to them.

Ep. 21. al. 148.

tom. 2.

St. Augustine did not at once yield to the wishes of his Bishop. He petitioned for more time to study in a letter*, in which he writes as follows; "Before all things I would

"beg you to consider, that there is nothing, especially at this A. D. 392. "time, more easy or more comfortable than the office of a

"Bishop, Priest, or Deacon, if it be discharged merely pro

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1

2

fessionally and in compliance with people's humours; no- ' perfunctorie.] "thing in the sight of GoD more wretched, more miserable, "more worthy of His condemnation. On the other hand, "nothing is more difficult, more painful, more dangerous, "than these offices, nothing more blessed in the sight of GOD, if they be discharged as He would have them. My "youth was spent in ignorance of these things; as soon as "I was beginning to learn them, lo! I am by constraint "placed, even in the second place. I think that God has '§ 1. "willed to punish me for daring to reprove the faults of "others; I have since felt my rashness. If I have learned "my failing only to be barred from supplying it, do you bid "me perish, O my father? Where is your love for me and "for the Church?" He ends with petitioning for time, as till Easter, for preparation by study and prayer, not that he needed instruction in points necessary to salvation, for of these he allowed he was not ignorant, but in the manner of teaching them, so as not to seek his own profit, but the profit of many, that they might be saved. When afterwards he [1 Cor. Io. 33.] began to preach, his success was so great, that other Bishops followed the example of Valerius in allowing Priests to preach'.

'Possid.c.5.

1. 14.

St. Augustine continued to write against the Manichees, and soon after his Ordination, he composed his book, On the Profitableness of Faith. It was addressed to a friend, named Retract. Honoratus, whom he had himself formerly misled into this heresy, and whose chief attraction to it was the magnificent promises of the Manichees that they would teach nothing which was not evidently drawn from reason, while they ridiculed the Church Catholic, which required Faith. [ tom. 8. p. 45.] St. Augustine shews the profitableness of Faith in preparing those for the Mysteries who are yet unable to understand them, and in particular he defends the Old Testament against the calumnies of the Manichees. He defines a heretic to be "a man, who for the sake of some tem- ad init.

66

poral good, more particularly of fame or precedence, either

"introduces or follows false and novel opinions." He shews

&c.

A. D. 392. the difference between Faith and blind credulity'; the ne['eredere, cessity of human faith in the greater part of the affairs of opinari.] life; and the solid reasons there are for following the authoc. 11, 12, rity of CHRIST and of the Church Catholic. After this St. Augustine wrote a book On the Two Souls, one good, the other bad, which, according to the Manichees, existed in every Retract. 1. man3. The good, they said, was a part of God, the bad was of the kingdom of darkness. God did not make the latter, which was co-eternal with Himself; it was proper to flesh, and the cause of all the evils of man, as the good soul was of everything good.

15.

XXXIX. Conference

There was at Hippo a large number of Manichees, at the with Fortu- head of whom was a Priest of the sect, named Fortunatus. day. He had been long there and had grown attached to the place 'Possid.c.6. from his success there in seducing many of the people'. The

natus. First

natives of Hippo and the foreigners residing there, as well Catholics as Donatists, entreated St. Augustine to enter into a conference with him. St. Augustine did not refuse, provided Fortunatus' consent could be obtained. He had been acquainted with St. Augustine at Carthage, while still a Manichee, and feared to enter on the conference. However, through the solicitations by which he was pressed, especially by those of his sect, he was made ashamed of his backwardness. The day and place were fixed; a large concourse of persons, who were curious about the event, and a crowd of other people were assembled; the disputation was taken down in short hand, and the acts have come down to us. They are dated the fifth of the calends of September or the twenty-seventh of August, under the consulate of Arcadius and Ruffinus, A. D. 392, in the baths of Sossius, a place chosen as a proSap.S. Aug. tection from the heat'. St. Augustine opened the disputation tom. 8. [p. as follows: "I now hold that to be error, which I before held "as truth. I would know of you, Fortunatus, who are here present, whether I judge rightly. Among other errors, "I hold it to be a very great one to believe, that Almighty "GOD, in whom is all our hope, can in any one of His parts "be violated, defiled, or corrupted. This, I know, your heresy maintains, though not in these terms, for you too "will say that God is inviolable and incorruptible. But you say that a certain nation of darkness revolted against the

93.]

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