Henceforth Augustine’s life is filled up with his ecclesiastical labours, and is more marked by the series of his numerous writings and the great controversies in which they engaged him than by anything else. His life was spent in a perpetual strife. During the first half this had been against himself; but even when others stepped into his place, it always seems as though a part of Augustine himself were incarnate in them. Augustine had early distinguished himself as an author. He had written several philosophical treatises, and, as teacher of rhetoric at Carthage, he had composed a work De pulchro et apto, which is no longer extant. Whenat Cassisiacum he had combated the scepticism of the New Academy (Contra Academicos), had treated of the “blessed life” (De Vita beata), of the significance of evil in the order of the world (De ordine), of the means for the elucidation of spiritual truths (Soliloquia). Shortly before the time of his baptism, he was occupied with the question of the immortality of the soul (De immortalitate animae), and in Rome and at Tagaste he was still engaged with philosophical problems, as is evidenced by the writings De quantitate animae and De magistro. In all these treatises is apparent the influence of the Neo-Platonic method of thought, which for him, as for so many others, had become the bridge to the Christian. While still in Rome, he began to come to a reckoning with the Manichaeans, and wrote two books on the morals of the Catholic Church and of the Manichaeans (De moribus ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum libri duo). For many years he pursued this controversy in a long series of writings, of which the most conspicuous is the elaborate reply to his old associate and disputant, Faustus of Mileve (Contra Faustum Manichaeum, A.D. 400). It was natural that the Manichaean heresy, which had so long enslaved his own mind, should have first exercised Augustine’s great powers as a theological thinker and controversialist. He was able from his own experience to give force to his arguments for the unity of creation and of the spiritual life, and to strengthen the mind of the Christian Church in its last struggle with that dualistic spirit which had animated and moulded in succession so many forms of thought at variance with Christianity.
But the time was one of almost universal ecclesiastical and intellectual excitement; and so powerful a mental activity as his was naturally drawn forth in all directions. Following his writings against the Manichaeans came those against the Donatists. The controversy was one which strongly interested him, involving as it did the whole question of the constitution of the Church and the idea of catholic order, to which the circumstances of the age gave special prominence. The Donatist controversy sprang out of the Diocletian persecution in the beginning of the century. A party in the Church of Carthage, fired with fanatic zeal on behalf of those who had courted martyrdom by resistance to the imperial mandates, resented deeply the appointment of a bishop of moderate opinions, whose consecration had been performed, they alleged, by a traditor, viz. a bishop who had “delivered” the holy scriptures to the magistrates. They set up, in consequence, a bishop of their own, of the name of Majorinus, succeeded in 315 by Donatus. The party made great pretensions to purity of discipline, and rapidly rose in popular favour, notwithstanding a decision given against them both by the bishop of Rome and by the emperor Cons tan tine. Augustine was strongly moved by the lawlessness of the party and launched forth a series of writings against them, the most important of which survive. Amongst these are “Seven Books on Baptism” (De baptismo contra Donatistas, c. A.D. 400) and a lengthy answer, in three books, to Petilian, bishop of Cirta, who was the most eminent theologian amongst the Donatist divines. At a later period, about 417, Augustine wrote a treatise concerning the correction of the Donatists (De correctione Donatistarum) “for the sake of those,” he says in his Retractations, “who were not willing that the Donatists should be subjected to the correction of the imperial laws.” In these writings, while vigorously maintaining the validity of the Church as it then stood in the Roman world, and the necessity for moderation in the exercise of church discipline, Augustine yet gave currency, in his zeal against the Donatists, to certain maxims as to the duty of the civil power to control schism, which were of evil omen, and have been productive of much disaster in the history of Christianity.
The third controversy in which Augustine engaged was the most important, and the most intimately associated with his distinctive greatness as a theologian. As may be supposed, owing to the conflicts through which he had passed, the bishop of Hippo was intensely interested in what may be called the anthropological aspect of the great Christian idea of redemption. He had himself been brought out of darkness into “marvellous light,” only by entering into the depths of his own soul, and finding, after many struggles, that there was no power but divine grace, as revealed in the life and death of the Son of God, which could bring rest to human weariness, or pardon and peace for human guilt. He had found human nature in his own case too weak and sinful to find any good for itself. In God alone he had found good. This deep sense of human sinfulness coloured all his theology, and gave to it at once its depth—its profound and sympathetic adaptation to all who feel the reality of sin—and that tinge of darkness and exaggeration which has as surely repelled others. When the expression “Augustinism” is used, it points especially to those opinions of the great teacher which were evoked in the Pelagian controversy, to which he devoted the most mature and powerful period of his life. His opponents in this controversy were Pelagius, from whom it derives its name, and Coelestius and Julianus, pupils of the former. Nothing is certainly known as to the home of Pelagius. Augustine calls him Brito, and so do Marius Mercator and Orosius. Jerome points to his Scottish descent, in such terms, however, as to leave it uncertain whether he was a native of Scotland or of Ireland. He was a man of blameless character, devoted to the reformation of society, full of that confidence in the natural impulses of humanity which often accompanies philanthropic enthusiasm. About the year 400 he came, no longer a young man, to Rome, where he lived for more than a decade, and soon made himself conspicuous by his activity and by his opinions. His pupil Coelestius, a lawyer of unknown origin, developed the views of his master with a more outspoken logic, and, while travelling with Pelagius in Africa, in the year 411, was at length arraigned before the bishop of Carthage for the following, amongst other heretical opinions:—(1) that Adam’s sin was purely personal, and affected none but himself; (2) that each man, consequently, is born with powers as incorrupt as those of Adam, and only falls into sin under the force of temptation and evil example; (3) that children who die in infancy, being untainted by sin, are saved without baptism. Views such as these were obviously in conflict with the whole course of Augustine’s experience, as well as with his interpretation of the catholic doctrine of the Church. And when his attention was drawn to them by the trial and excommunication of Coelestius, he undertook their refutation, first of all in three books on the punishment and forgiveness of sins and the baptism of infants (De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum), addressed to his friend Marcellinus, in which he vindicated the necessity of baptism of infants because of original sin and the grace of God by which we are justified (Retract. ii. 23). This was in 412. In the same year he addressed a further treatise to the same Marcellinus on The Spirit and the Letter (De spiritu et littera). Three years later he composed the treatises on Nature and Grace (De natura et gratia) and the relation of the human to the divine righteousness (De perfectione iustitiae hominis). The controversy was continued during many years in no fewer than fifteen treatises. Upon no subject did Augustine bestow more of his intellectual strength, and in relation to no other have his views so deeply and permanently affected the course of Christian thought. Even those who most usually agree with his theological standpoint will hardly deny that, while he did much in these writings to vindicate divine truth and to expound the true relations of the divine and human, he also, here as elsewhere, was hurried into extreme expressions as to the absoluteness of divine grace and the extent of human corruption. Like his great disciple in a later age—Luther—Augustine was prone to emphasize the side of truth which he had most realized in his own experience, and, in contradistinction to the Pelagian exaltation of human nature, to depreciate its capabilities beyond measure.
In addition to these controversial writings, which mark the great epochs of Augustine’s life and ecclesiastical activity after his settlement as a bishop at Hippo, he was the author of other works, some of them better known and even more important. His great work, the most elaborate, and in some respects the most significant, that came from his pen, is The City of God (De civitate Dei). It is designed as a great apologetic treatise in vindication of Christianity and the Christian Church,—the latter conceived as rising in the form of a new civic order on the crumbling ruins of the Roman empire,—but it is also, perhaps, the earliest contribution to the philosophy of history, as it is a repertory throughout of his cherished theological opinions. This work and his Confessions are, probably, those by which he is best known, the one as the highest expression of his thought, and the other as the best monument of his living piety and Christian experience. The City of God was begun in 413, and continued to be issued in its several portions for a period of thirteen years, or till 426. The Confessions were written shortly after he became a bishop, about 397, and give a vivid sketch of his early career. To the devout utterances and aspirations of a great soul they add the charm of personal disclosure, and have never ceased to excite admiration in all spirits of kindred piety. Something of this charm also belongs to the Retractations, that remarkable work in which Augustine, in 427, towards the end of his life, held as it were a review of his literary activity, in order to improve what was erroneous and to make clear what was doubtful in it. His systematic treatise on The Trinity (De Trinitate) which extends to fifteen books and occupied him for nearly thirty years, must not be passed over. This important work, unlike most of his dogmatic writings, was not provoked by any special controversial emergency, but grew up silently during this long period in the author’s mind. This has given it something more of completeness and organic arrangement than is usual with Augustine, if it has also led him into the prolonged discussion of various analogies, more curious than apt in their bearing on the doctrine which he expounds. Brief and concise is the presentation of the Catholic doctrine in the compendium, which, about 421, he wrote at the request of a Roman layman named Laurentius (Encheiridion, sive de fide spe et caritate). In spite of its title, the compendious work on Christian doctrine (De doctrina Christiana), begun as early as 393, but only finished in 426, does not belong to the dogmatic writings. It is a sort of Biblical hermeneutic, in which homiletic questions are also dealt with. His catechetical principles Augustine developed in the charming writing De catechizandis rudibus (c. 400). A large number of tractates are devoted to moral and theological problems (Contra mendacium, c. 420; De bono conjugali, 401, &c.). A widespread influence was exercised by the treatise De opere monachorum (c. 400), in which, on the ground of Holy Scripture, manual work was demanded of monks. Of less importance than the remaining works are the numerous exegetical writings, among which the commentary on the Gospel of St John deserves a special mention. These have a value owing to Augustine’s appreciation of the deeper spiritual meaning of scripture, but hardly for their exegetical qualities. His Letters are full of interest owing to the light they throw on many questions in the ecclesiastical history of the time, and owing to his relations with such contemporary theologians as Jerome. They have, however, neither the liveliness nor the varied interest of the letters of Jerome himself. As a preacher Augustine was of great importance. We still possess almost four hundred sermons which may be ascribed to him with certainty. Many others only pass under his celebrated name.
The closing years of the great bishop were full of sorrow. The Vandals, who had been gradually enclosing the Roman empire, appeared before the gates of Hippo, and laid siege to it. Augustine was ill with his last illness, and could only pray for his fellow-citizens. He passed away during the siege, on the 28th of August 430, at the age of seventy-five, and thus was spared the indignity of seeing the city in the hands of the enemy.
The character of Augustine, both as a man and as a theologian, has been briefly indicated in the course of our sketch. None can deny the greatness of Augustine’s soul—his enthusiasm, his unceasing search after truth, his affectionate disposition, his ardour, his self-devotion. And even those who may doubt the soundness of his dogmatic conclusions, cannot but acknowledge the depth of his spiritual convictions, and the logical force and penetration with which he handled the most difficult questions, thus weaving all the elements of his experience and of his profound scriptural knowledge into a great system of Christian thought. Of the four great Fathers of the Church he was admittedly the greatest—more profound than Ambrose, his spiritual father, more original and systematic than Jerome, his correspondent, and intellectually far more distinguished than Gregory the Great, his pupil on the papal throne. The theological position and influence of Augustine may be said to be unrivalled. No single name has ever exercised such power over the Christian Church, and no one mind ever made so deep an impression upon Christian thought. In him scholastics and mystics, popes and the opponents of the papal supremacy, have seen their champion. He was the fulcrum on which Luther rested the thoughts by which he sought to lift the past of the Church out of the rut; yet the judgment of Catholics still proclaims the ideas of Augustine as the only sound basis of philosophy.
The best complete edition of Augustine’s works is that of the Maurines, in 11 vols. fol. published at Paris, 1679-1700, and reprinted in Migne’s Patrologie (Paris, 1841-1842). Of the new critical edition in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, issued by the Vienna Academy, thirteen volumes had been published in 1908, including the Confessions, the Retractations, De civitate Dei, and a number of exegetical and of dogmatic polemical works, together with a portion of the Letters. An English translation of nearly the whole of Augustine’s writings will be found in the Select Library of the Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (series 1, Buffalo, 1886, &c.). Tillemont, in his Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique des VI premiers siècles, has devoted a quarto volume (vol. xiii.) to Augustine’s life and writings. The most complete monographs are those on the Catholic side by Kloth (Aix-la-Chapelle, 1839-1840, 3 vols.) and J.J.F. Poujoulat (7th ed., Paris, 1886, 2 vols.), and on the Protestant side by Bindemann (Berlin, Leipzig, Greifswald, 1844-1869, 3 vols,). There are interesting sketches, from quite different points of view, by von Hertling, Augustinus (2nd ed., Mainz, 1904), and Joseph McCabe, St Augustine and His Age (London, 1902). See also Nourrisson, La Philosophie de St Augustin (2nd ed., Paris, 1866, 2 vols.); H.A. Naville, St Augustin, étude sur la développement de sa pensée jusqu’à l’époque de son ordination (Geneva, 1872); Dorner, Augustinus (Berlin, 1873); Reuter, Augustinische Studien (Gotha, 1886); F. Scheel, Die Anschauung Augustins über Christi Person und Werk (Tübingen, 1901); A. Hatzfeld, Saint Augustin (6th ed., Paris, 1902); G. von Hertling, Augustin (Mainz, 1902); A. Egger, Der heilige Augustinus (Kempten, 1904); J.N. Espenberger, Die Elemente der Erbsunde nach Augustin und der Fruhscholastik (Mainz, 1905); S. Angus, The Sources of the First Ten Books of Augustine’s De Civitate Dei (Princeton, 1906); and the more modern text-books of the history of dogma, especially Harnack.
(G. K.)
[1] The reference is to the vision described above.