ON THE LORD'S PRAYER[1]
Born in 354, died in 430; settled in Rome in 383 and in Milan in 384; made Bishop of Hippo in 395; his "Confessions," published in 397, his "De Civitate Dei" in 426.
The Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, hath taught us a prayer; and tho He be the Lord Himself, as ye have heard and repeated in the creed, the only Son of God, yet He would not be alone. He is the only Son, and yet would not be alone; He hath vouchsafed to have brethren. For to whom doth He say: "Our Father which art in Heaven?" Whom did He wish us to call our Father save His own Father? Did He grudge us this? Parents sometimes, when they have gotten one, or two, or three children, fear to give birth to any more lest they reduce the rest to beggary. But because the inheritance which He promised us is such as many may possess and no one be straitened, therefore hath He called into His brotherhood the peoples of the nations; and the only Son hath numberless brethren who say, "Our Father which art in Heaven." So said they who have been before
- ↑ Translated for the Oxford "Library of the Fathers." Abridged. The best edition of St. Augustine's complete works in the original is that published by the Benedictines in eleven volumes (folio, Paris, 679–1800); reissued in 1836–38 as twenty-two volumes.
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