(b) Augustine, Confessiones, X, 27, 29, 43. (MSL, 32:795, 796, 808.)
The following passages from the Confessions are intended to illustrate Augustine's type of piety.
Ch. 29. My whole hope is only in Thy exceeding great mercy. Give what Thou commandest and command what Thou wilt.[167] Thou imposest continency upon us. “And when I perceived,” saith one, “that no one could be continent except God gave it; and this was a point of wisdom also to know whose this gift was” [Wis. 8:21]. For by continency are we bound up and brought into one, whence we were scattered abroad into many. For he loves Thee too little, who besides Thee loves aught which he loves not for Thee. O love, who ever burnest and art never quenched! O charity, my God, kindle me! Thou commandest continency; give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt.
Ch. 27. Too late have I loved Thee, O fairness, so ancient, yet so new! Too late have I loved Thee. For behold Thou wast within and I was without, and I was seeking Thee there; I, without love, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty Thou madest. Thou wast with me, but I was not with Thee. Those things kept me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and Thou broke through my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine and chase away my blindness. Thou didst exhale fragrance and I drew in my breath and I panted for Thee. I tasted, and [pg 438] did hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for Thy peace.
Ch. 43. O how Thou hast loved us, O good Father, who sparedst not thine only Son, but didst deliver Him up for us wicked ones! [Rom. 8:32.] O how Thou hast loved us, for whom He, who thought it not robbery to be equal with Thee, “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” [Phil. 2:8]. He alone, “free among the dead” [Psalm 88:5], that had power to lay down His life, and power to take it again [John 10:18]; for us was He unto Thee both victor and the victim, and the victor became the victim; for He was unto Thee both priest and sacrifice, and priest because sacrifice; making us from being slaves to become Thy sons, by being born of Thee, and by serving us. Rightly, then, is my strong hope in Him, because Thou didst cure all my diseases by Him who sitteth at Thy right hand and maketh intercession for us [Rom. 8:34]; else should I utterly despair. For numerous and great are my infirmities, yea numerous and great are they; but Thy medicine is greater. We might think that Thy word was removed from union with man and despair of ourselves had not He been “made flesh and dwelt among us” [John 1:14].
(c) Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XIII, 3, 14. (MSL, 41:378; 86.)
The Fall of Man and Original Sin.
The City of God is Augustine's great theodicy, apology, and philosophy of universal history. It was begun shortly after the capture of Rome, and the author was engaged upon it from 413 to 426. It was the source whence the mediæval ecclesiastics drew their theoretical justification for the curialistic principles of the relation of State and Church, and at the same time the one work of St. Augustine that Gibbon the historian regarded highly. For an analysis see Presensée, art. “Augustine” in DCB.
Compare the position of Augustine with the following passage from St. Ambrose, On the Death of Satyrus, II, 6, “Death is alike to all, without difference for the poor, without exception for the rich. And so although through the sin of one alone, yet it passed upon all; … In Adam I fell, in Adam I was cast out of paradise. In Adam I died; [pg 439] how shall the Lord call me back, except He find me in Adam; guilty as I was in him, so now justified in Christ.” [MSL, 16:1374.]
The first men would not have suffered death if they had not sinned.… But having become sinners they were so punished with death, that whatsoever sprang from their stock should also be punished with the same death. For nothing else could be born of them than what they themselves had been. The condemnation changed their nature for the worse in proportion to the greatness of their sin, so that what was before as punishment in the man who had first sinned, followed as of nature in others who were born.… In the first man, therefore, the whole human nature was to be transmitted by the woman to posterity when that conjugal union received the divine sentence of its own condemnation; and what man was made, not when he was created but when he sinned, and was punished, this he propagated, so far as the origin of sin and death are concerned.