Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/427

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 407 moment of his conversion to that of his death the manners of the bishop of Hippo were pure and austere ; and the most con spicuous of his virtues was an ardent zeal against heretics of every denomination : the Manichseans^ the Donatists, and the Pelagians^ against whom he waged a perpetual controversy. When the city, some months after his death, was burnt by the Vandals, the library was fortunately saved, which contained his voluminous writings : two hundred and thirty-two separate books, or treatises, on theological subjects, besides a complete exposition of the psalter and the gospel, and a copious magazine of epistles and homilies. ^^ According to the judgment of the most impartial critics, the superficial learning of Augustin was confined to the Latin language ; ^^ and his style, though some- times animated by the eloquence of passion, is usually clouded by false and affected rhetoric. But he possessed a strong, capa- cious, argumentative mind ; he boldly sounded the dark abyss of grace, predestination, free-will, and original sin; and the rigid system of Christianity, which he framed or restored, ^^ has been entertained, with public applause and secret reluctance, by the Latin church. ^^ By the skill of Boniface, and perhaps by the ignorance of the Defeat and Vandals, the siege of Hippo was protracted above fourteen Bo^f^e. months ; the sea was continually open, and, when the adjacent 30 Such at least is the account of Victor Vitensis (de Persecut. Vandal. 1. i. c. 3) ; though Gennadius seems to doubt whether any person had read, or even collected, fl// the works of St. Augustin (see Hieronym. Opera, torn. i. p. 319, in Catalog. Scriptor. Eccles. ). They have been repeatedly printed ; and Dupin (Biblioth^que Eccl^s. torn. iii. p. 158-257) has given a large and satisfactory abstract of them, as they stand in the last edition of the Benedictines. My personal acquaintance with the bishop of Hippo does not extend beyond the Confessions and the City of God. •'1 In his early youth (Confess, i. 14) St. Augustin disliked and neglected the study of Greek, and he frankly owns that he read the Platonists in a Latin version (Confess, vii. 9). Some modern critics have thought that his ignorance of Greek disqualified him from expounding the Scriptures, and Cicero or Quintilian would have required the knowledge of that language in a professor of rhetoric. 32 These questions were seldom agitated from the time of St. Paul to that of St. Augustin. lam informed that the Greek fathers maintain the natural sentiments of the Semi-Pelagians ; and that the orthodoxy of St. Augustin was derived from the Manichasan school. 33 The church of Rome has canonized Augustin, and reprobated Calvin. Yet, as the real difference between them is invisible even to a theological microscope, the Molinists are oppressed by the authority of the saint, and the Jansenists are dis- graced by their resemblance to the heretic. In the meanwhile the Protestant Arminians stand aloof, and deride the mutual perplexity of the disputants (see a curious Review of the Controversy, by Le Clerc, Bibliothfeque Universelle, torn, xiv. p. 144-398). Perhaps a reasoner still more independent may smile in his ttyn, when he peruses an Arminian Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.