Admiration

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  We made a date. As I opened the door into the malty dusk of the Page Three, it was still early, and Muriel was the only person standing at the bar. She looked like no one I had ever seen living in Stamford while I was there. Her mid-brown eyes were large and almond-shaped, with thick lashes that outlined each eye with darkness. They peered from a high and flat-cheeked face whose paleness was intensified by the almost straight dark hair that framed her head like a monk’s cut, or an inverted bowl. Thick black eyebrows drew together like a scowl. As usual, I was a little bit late, and she was waiting. Muriel always seemed shorter to me because of the way she stood, shoulders hunched and all folded in upon herself. She held a bottle of beer and a cigarette in her left hand, the pinky of which sported a wide silver band, and was perched archly upon its neighbor. I came to think of this typical stance of hers as Muriel’s fetal-finger pose. Her black turtleneck sweater fell low over her slightly rounded tummy, clad in a pair of well-creased woolen slacks, black with a fine white pinstripe. A soft black beret was pulled slightly to one side of her head, and just beneath her straight thick hair, tiny gold dots sparkled from the lobes of her barely visible ears. On the bar beside her lay a worn suede jacket, and on top of that a pair of black leather fur-lined gloves. There was something romantically archaic about her sharp contrasts, and the neat polish on her black-laced oxford shoes made her seem vulnerable and schoolgirlish. I thought she looked quite odd. Then, recalling the days that Gennie and I had wandered the streets together in our adventurous scenarios, I suddenly realized that Muriel had dressed for being a gambler. What looked like a malocclusion was only a gap between her front teeth. It became visible as Muriel slowly smiled, charging her face with a great sweetness. The tight scowl disappeared. Her hand was dry and warm as I shook it, and I saw how very beautiful her eyes were when they came alive. I bought a beer and we moved to the front and sat at a table. “Those look like gambling pants,” I said. She smiled shyly, pleased. “Yeah, that’s right. How’d you know? Not many people notice things like that.” I smiled back. “Well, I had a friend once and we used to get dressed up a lot, all the time.” I surprised myself; usually I never talked about Gennie. She told me a little bit about herself and her life; how she had come to New York City two years ago shortly after her friend, Naomi, had died; how she had fallen in love here, gotten “sick,” and gone home again. She was twenty-three years old.

• From The City of God

  [315] Virgil, AEn. 4. 492, 493. [316] Virgil, Ec. 8. 99. [317] Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxviii. 2) and others quote the law as running:Qui fruges incantasit, qui malum carmen incantasit. . . neu alienam segetem pelexeris. [318] Before Claudius, the prefect of Africa, a heathen. Chapter 20. --Whether We are to Believe that the Good Gods are More Willing to Have Intercourse with Demons Than with Men. But does any urgent and most pressing cause compel the demons to mediate between the gods and men, that they may offer the prayers of men, and bring back the answers from the gods? and if so, what, pray, is that cause, what is that so great necessity? Because, say they, no god has intercourse with man. Most admirable holiness of God, which has no intercourse with a supplicating man, and yet has intercourse with an arrogant demon! which has no intercourse with a penitent man, and yet has intercourse with a deceiving demon! which has no intercourse with a man fleeing for refuge to the divine nature, and yet has intercourse with a demon feigning divinity! which has no intercourse with a man seeking pardon, and yet has intercourse with a demon persuading to wickedness! which has no intercourse with a man expelling the poets by means of philosophical writings from a well-regulated state, and yet has intercourse with a demon requesting from the princes and priests of a state the theatri cal performance of the mockeries of the poets! which has no intercourse with the man who prohibits the ascribing of crime to the gods, and yet has intercourse with a demon who takes delight in the fictitious representation of their crimes! which has no intercourse with a man punishing the crimes of the magicians by just laws, and yet has intercourse with a demon teaching and practising magical arts! which has no intercourse with a man shunning the imitation of a demon, and yet has intercourse with a demon lying in wait for the deception of a man!

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  I saw my mother fix her blue-grey-brown eyes upon a man scrambling for a seat on the Lenox Avenue bus, only to have him falter midway, grin abashedly, and, as if in the same movement, offer it to the old woman standing on the other side of him. I became aware, early on, that sometimes people would change their actions because of some opinion my mother never uttered, or even particularly cared about. My mother was a very private woman, and actually quite shy, but with a very imposing, no-nonsense exterior. Full-bosomed, proud, and of no mean size, she would launch herself down the street like a ship under full sail, usually pulling me stumbling behind her. Not too many hardy souls dared cross her prow too closely. Total strangers would turn to her in the meat market and ask what she thought about a cut of meat as to its freshness and appeal and suitability for such and such, and the butcher, impatient, would nonetheless wait for her to deliver her opinion, obviously quite a little put out but still deferential. Strangers counted upon my mother and I never knew why, but as a child it made me think she had a great deal more power than in fact she really had. My mother was invested in this image of herself also, and took pains, I realize now, to hide from us as children the many instances of her powerlessness. Being Black and foreign and female in New York City in the twenties and thirties was not simple, particularly when she was quite light enough to pass for white, but her children weren’t. In 1936–1938, 125th Street between Lenox and Eighth Avenues, later to become the shopping mecca of Black Harlem, was still a racially mixed area, with control and patronage largely in the hands of white shopkeepers. There were stores into which Black people were not welcomed, and no Black salespersons worked in the shops at all. Where our money was taken, it was taken with reluctance; and often too much was asked. (It was these conditions which young Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., addressed in his boycott and picketing of Blumstein’s and Weissbecker’s market in 1939 in an attempt, successful, to bring Black employment to 125th Street.) Tensions on the street were high, as they always are in racially mixed zones of transition. As a very little girl, I remember shrinking from a particular sound, a hoarsely sharp, guttural rasp, because it often meant a nasty glob of grey spittle upon my coat or shoe an instant later. My mother wiped it off with the little pieces of newspaper she always carried in her purse. Sometimes she fussed about low-class people who had no better sense nor manners than to spit into the wind no matter where they went, impressing upon me that this humiliation was totally random.

• From The City of God

  522 Books That Matter: The City of God Once at a conference, I met an eminent French scholar of Augustine, one of the greatest of the 20 th century—a man named Claude Lepelley. I told him, nervously, that I was but an amateur when it came to the study of Augustine. As I remember him, he was a tall man with a deep and rich voice, and I believe I saw sympathy and fellow-feeling in his eyes as he looked down on me from his heights of altitude and erudition and replied: "But of course, when it comes to Augustine, we are all amatores." He was making a joke and a deep one. For our word “amateur” does indeed come from “amatore,” from “lover.” An amateur is not a skilled executor of a craft—a professional—but has instead the blessing of enthusiasm. That scholar was saying we are nothing but amateurs in trying to keep up with Augustine. And so Augustine seems to us, the more we understand him, impossibly, inhumanly great. The breadth, and depth, and range of his thought, its color, its vibrancy, make it easier for us to imagine him as not continuous with us at all—as not properly part of the human race, but some other kind of a genius. We need an antidote to that image and all the other fixed images akin to it. For Augustine was, in the end, a living human being; and he wanted us to know that. And his thought cannot be understood unless you understand that it was put together, in its genius and its errors, its blindnesses and its insights, its tedium and its ecstasy, by a human just like you. When you realize this, the limits you have settled for in your life will seem flimsy, and perhaps rightly so; and your failures to understand Augustine, to keep up with him in his arguments in his readings, will seem all the more inexcusable. And then, when you turn back to his book, it will come alive for you, talk back to you, in new and usefully annoying ways. So, as a first stab at such an antidote, and as a final envoi for these lectures, I want to give you an image of a real place and a sketch of an imaginary scene—both of which are meant to give you this book in a different way than we have heretofore tried to receive it.

• From The City of God

  The Enchiridion, or handbook, on Faith, Hope, and Love, composed, in 421, at the request of a pious Roman, Laurentius, is an admirable synthesis of Augustine's theology, reduced to the three theological virtues. Father Faure has given us a learned commentary of it, and Harnack a detailed analysis (Hist. of dogmas, III, 205, 221). Several volumes of miscellaneous questions, among which "Ad Simplicianum" (397) has been especially noted. Numberless writings of his have a practical aim: two on "Lying" (374 and 420), five on "Continence," "Marriage," and "Holy Widowhood," one on "Patience," another on "Prayer for the Dead" (421). Pastorals and preachingThe theory of preaching and religious instruction of the people is given in the "De Catechizandis Rudibus" (400) and in the fourth book "De Doctrinâ. Christianâ." The oratorical work alone is of vast extent. Besides the Scriptural homilies, the Benedictines have collected 363 sermons which are certainly authentic; the brevity of these suggests that they are stenographic, often revised by Augustine himself. If the Doctor in him predominates over the orator, if he possesses less of colour, of opulence, of actuality, and of Oriental charm than St. John Chrysostom, we find, on the other hand, a more nervous logic, bolder comparisons, greater elevation and greater profundity of thought, and sometimes, in his bursts of emotion and his daring lapses into dialogue-form, he attains the irresistible power of the Greek orator. Editions of St. Augustine's worksThe best edition of his complete works is that of the Benedictines, eleven tomes in eight folio volumes (Paris, 1679-1700). It has been often reprinted, e.g. by Gaume (Paris, 1836-39), in eleven octavo volumes, and by Migne, PL 32-47. The last volume of the Migne reprint contains a number of important earlier studies on St. Augustine — Vivés, Noris, Merlin, particularly the literary history of the editions of Augustine from Schönemann's "Bibl. hist. lit. patrum Lat." (Leipzig, 1794). * Portalié, Eugène. "Works of St. Augustine of Hippo." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. Editor's PrefaceThe "City of God" is the masterpiece of the greatest genius among the Latin Fathers, and the best known and most read of his works, except the "Confessions. "It embodies the results of thirteen years of intellectual labor and study (from A. D. 413-426). It is a vindication of Christianity against the attacks of the heathen in view of the sacking of the city of Rome by the barbarians, at a time when the old Graeco-Roman civilization was approaching its downfall, and a new Christian civilization was beginning to rise on its ruins. It is the first attempt at a philosophy of history, under the aspect of two rival cities or communities,--the eternal city of God and the perishing city of the world.

• From The City of God

  502 Books That Matter: The City of God 502 „Unlike the thought of Thomas Aquinas, who spawned a continuous and still-living tradition of commentators, Augustine’s work has no such descendants, so his thought is continually rediscovered, but the organic assumptions behind his work died with him. „Each age has to reinvent the Augustine it will use. And perhaps Augustine would have enjoyed that irony about himself: that the contingencies of history and the vicissitudes of human society have rendered his work simultaneously foundational and oblique; treated with admiration and skepticism, with honor and suspicion, reverence and scrutiny. „Historians who insist that the fall of Rome is too melodramatic and ideologically self-congratulatory a description for late antiquity have a point. Civilization went on. But something momentous changed: The barbarians stopped becoming Roman. Furthermore, the barbarians were convertible to Christianity as a civilizing step up for them. „With the barbarians’ ascendancy came a change in Christianity’s cultural status. Legally it had been long allowed, then endorsed, then prescribed; now it gained cultural status as tradition, and insofar as the barbarians wanted access to Rome’s political and existential legitimacy, conversion to Christianity was the clear way to do that. „In accepting conversion, the barbarians did not need to leave behind their political or tribal identities. Christianity became a supra-political unifying force across multiple barbarian kingdoms, and something like Christendom was born: a world of multiple political communities, yet unified by a common religious culture. „That condition prevailed, more or less, from then until very close to now, for it is only in living memory that, at least superficially, Christianity ceased to provide the glue of a common culture holding Europe and its progeny together. 503 Lecture 24—The City of God’s Journey through History Augustine’s Influence on Western Thought „Again and again, the history of Augustinianism is the repeated history of the rediscovery of Augustine, not because he was ever truly forgotten, but because successive generations found ways to find their world pertinently addressed in the endless plenitude of wisdom and insight that flowed ceaselessly from his works. „These rediscoveries were necessary not only because a new age asked new questions; ironically, they were necessary because the church Augustine served attempts ceaselessly to forget the lessons that he tried to teach it. His beliefs were too inconvenient, too unsettling, too antiauthoritarian, and too demanding for those who want a well-ordered church and a stable and clear marker of the city of God. „Medieval thought is hugely informed by Augustine, but so is the Reformation, which might not have happened had it not been for that errant Augustinian monk Luther’s brooding over Augustine, Figure of a barbarian

• From The City of God

  515 life that we have been granted in the world as we find it today. So he knew that the message he was teaching would always have to swim upstream against the currents of human prejudice, sloth, and even what passes for common sense. And so it has proved. Much of the history of Western thought has been a series of remarkable readings, and some of us would say misreadings, of Augustine’s thought. Indeed, I would say that all later Western thought is largely a series of footnotes to Augustine. I said earlier in these lectures that Western civilization has often identified Augustine with the whole heritage of the past, and so sought authorization for some view by finding it authorized, however tenuously, in the lines of one of his works. Examples of this abound. For instance, in the Decretum—the major work of medieval canon law—the 12 th -century jurist Gratian quotes Augustine over 500 times, which seems to be the most number of citations outside of citations of scripture. Now, the Decretum was hugely important to all later legal thinking in the West; and through it, Augustine’s thinking has a subtle, silent impact on every parking ticket you have ever received. And it was not only legal thought that was influenced by Augustine; his impress is felt across our world. Medieval thought, obviously, is hugely informed by Augustine, of course; but so is the Reformation, which might never have happened had it not been for that errant Augustinian monk—he was a member of the Order of Saint Augustine—Luther, and his brooding over Augustine’s texts. And then Calvin reflecting on Augustine’s political thought and his theory of divine providence. Modernity bears itself a great debt to him, or rather to a series of misreaders of him. The voluntarism of thinkers like William of Ockham and Duns Scotus, thinkers whose picture of action and freedom has deeply shaped our own, begins in readings— and I would say misreadings—of Augustine on the will and sin. A version of Cartesian rationalism’s key phrase cogito ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am”—actually, literally appears in The City of God Lecture 24 Transcript—The City of God’s Journey through History

• From The City of God

  But the hermeneutics of Augustine merit great praise, especially for their insistence upon the stern law of extreme prudence in determining the meaning of Scripture: We must be on our guard against giving interpretations which are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers (De Genesi ad litteram, I, 19, 21, especially n. 39). An admirable application of this well-ordered liberty appears in his thesis on the simultaneous creation of the universe, and the gradual development of the world under the action of the natural forces which were placed in it. Certainly the instantaneous act of the Creator did not produce an organized universe as we see it now. But, in the beginning, God created all the elements of the world in a confused and nebulous mass (the word is Augustine's Nebulosa species apparet; "De Genesi ad litt., " I, n. 27), and in this mass were the mysterious germs (rationes seminales) of the future beings which were to develop themselves, when favourable circumstances should permit. Is Augustine, therefore, an Evolutionist? If we mean that he had a deeper and wider mental grasp than other thinkers had of the forces of nature and the plasticity of beings, it is an incontestable fact; and from this point of view Father Zahm (Bible, Science, and Faith, pp. 58-66, French tr.) properly felicitates him on having been the precursor of modern thought. But if we mean that he admitted in matter a power of differentiation and of gradual transformation, passing from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, the most formal texts force us to recognize that Augustine proclaimed the fixity of species, and did not admit that "from one identical primitive principle or from one germ, different realities can issue." This judgment of the Abbé Martin in his very searching study on this subject (S. Augustin, p. 314) must correct the conclusion of Father Zahm. "The elements of this corporeal world have also their well defined force, and their proper quality, from which depends what each one of them can or cannot do, and what reality ought or ought not to issue from each one of them. Hence it is that from a grain of wheat a bean cannot issue, nor wheat from a bean, nor a, man from a beast, nor a beast from a man" (De Genesi ad litt., IX, n. 32). Dogmatic and moral expositionThe fifteen books De Trinitate, on which he worked for fifteen years, from 400 to 416, are the most elaborate and profound work of St. Augustine. The last books on the analogies which the mystery of the Trinity have with our soul are much discussed. The saintly author himself declares that they are only analogous and are far-fetched and very obscure.

• From The City of God

  As for those miracles which history ascribes to the gods of the heathen,--I do not refer to those prodigies which at intervals happen from some unknown physical causes, and which are arranged and appointed by Divine Providence, such as monstrous births, and unusual meteorological phenomena, whether startling only, or also injurious, and which are said to be brought about and removed by communication with demons, and by their most deceitful craft,--but I refer to these prodigies which manifestly enough are wrought by their power and force, as, that the household gods which AEneas carried from Troy in his flight moved from place to place; that Tarquin cut a whetstone with a razor; that the Epidaurian serpent attached himself as a companion to AEsculapius on his voyage to Rome; that the ship in which the image of the Phrygian mother stood, and which could not be moved by a host of men and oxen, was moved by one weak woman, who attached her girdle to the vessel and drew it, as proof of her chastity; that a vestal, whose virginity was questioned, removed the suspicion by carrying from the Tiber a sieve full of water without any of it dropping:these, then, and the like, are by no means to be compared for greatness and virtue to those which, we read, were wrought among God's people. How much less can we compare those marvels, which even the laws of heathen nations prohibit and punish,--I mean the magical and theurgic marvels, of which the great part are merely illusions practised upon the senses, as the drawing down of the moon, "that," as Lucan says, "it may shed a stronger influence on the plants? " [412]And if some of these do seem to equal those which are wrought by the godly, the end for which they are wrought distinguishes the two, and shows that ours are incomparably the more excellent. For those miracles commend the worship of a plurality of gods, who deserve worship the less the more they demand it; but these of ours commend the worship of the one God, who, both by the testimony of His own Scriptures, and by the eventual abolition of sacrifices, proves that He needs no such offerings. If, therefore, any angels demand sacrifice for themselves, we must prefer those who demand it, not for themselves, but for God, the Creator of all, whom they serve. For thus they prove how sincerely they love us, since they wish by sacrifice to subject us, not to themselves, but to Him by the contemplation of whom they themselves are blessed, and to bring us to Him from whom they themselves have never strayed. If, on the other hand, any angels wish us to sacrifice, not to one, but to many, not, indeed, to themselves, but to the gods whose angels they are, we must in this case also prefer those who are the angels of the one God of gods, and who so bid us to worship Him as to preclude our worshipping any other. But, further, if it be the case, as their pride and deceitfulness rather indicate, that they are neither good angels nor the angels of good gods, but wicked demons, who wish sacrifice to be paid, not to the one only and supreme God, but to themselves, what better protection against them can we choose than that of the one God whom the good angels serve, the angels who bid us sacrifice, not to themselves, but to Him whose sacrifice we ourselves ought to be?

• From The City of God

  Chapter 21 . --Of the Power Delegated to Demons for the Trial and Glorification of the Saints, Who Conquer Not by Propitiating the Spirits of the Air, But by Abiding in God. The power delegated to the demons at certain appointed and well-adjusted seasons, that they may give expression to their hostility to the city of God by stirring up against it the men who are under their influence, and may not only receive sacrifice from those who willingly offer it, but may also extort it from the unwilling by violent persecution;--this power is found to be not merely harmless, but even useful to the Church, completing as it does the number of martyrs, whom the city of God esteems as all the more illustrious and honored citizens, because they have striven even to blood against the sin of impiety. If the ordinary language of the Church allowed it, we might more elegantly call these men our heroes. For this name is said to be derived from Juno, who in Greek is called Here, and hence, according to the Greek myths, one of her sons was called Heros. And these fables mystically signified that Juno was mistress of the air, which they suppose to be inhabited by the demons and the heroes, understanding by heroes the souls of the well-deserving dead. But for a quite opposite reason would we call our martyrs heroes,--supposing, as I said, that the usage of ecclesiastical language would admit of it,--not because they lived along with the demons in the air, but because they conquered these demons or powers of the air, and among them Juno herself, be she what she may, not unsuitably represented, as she commonly is by the poets, as hostile to virtue, and jealous of men of mark aspiring to the heavens. Virgil, however, unhappily gives way, and yields to her; for, though he represents her as saying, "I am conquered by AEneas," [414] Helenus gives AEneas himself this religious advice: "Pay vows to Juno:overbear Her queenly soul with gift and prayer. " [415]

• From The City of God

  Works of St. Augustine of Hippo*St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was one of the most prolific geniuses that humanity has ever known, and is admired not only for the number of his works, but also for the variety of subjects, which traverse the whole realm of thought. The form in which he casts his work exercises a very powerful attraction on the reader. Bardenhewer praises his extraordinary suppleness of expression and his marvellous gift of describing interior things, of painting the various states of the soul and the facts of the spiritual world. His latinity bears the stamp of his age. In general, his style is noble and chaste; but, says the same author, "in his sermons and other popular writings he purposely drops to the language of the people." A detailed analysis is impossible here. We shall merely indicate his principal writings and the date (often approximate) of their composition. Autobiography and correspondenceThe Confessions are the history of his heart; the Retractations, of his mind; while the Letters show his activity in the Church. The Confessions (towards A.D. 400) are, in the Biblical sense of the word confiteri, not an avowal or an account, but the praise of a soul that admires the action of God within itself. Of all the works of the holy Doctor none has been more universally read and admired, none has caused more salutary tears to flow. Neither in respect of penetrating analysis of the most complex impressions of the soul, nor communicative feeling, nor elevation of sentiment, nor depth of philosophic views, is there any book like it in all literature. The Retractations (towards the end of his life, 426-428) are a revision of the works of the saint in chronological order, explaining the occasion and dominant idea of each. They are a guide of inestimable price for seizing the progress of Augustine's thought. The Letters, amounting in the Benedictine collection to 270 (53 of them from Augustine's correspondents), are a treasure of the greatest value, for the knowledge of his life, influence and even his doctrine. PhilosophyThese writings, for the most part composed in the villa of Cassisiacum, from his conversion to his baptism (388-387), continue the autobiography of the saint by initiating us into the researches and Platonic hesitations of his mind. There is less freedom in them than in the Confessions. They are literary essays, writings whose simplicity is the acme of art and elegance. Nowhere is the style of Augustine so chastened, nowhere is his language so pure. Their dialogue form shows that they were inspired by Plate and Cicero. The chief ones are: •Contra Academicos (the most important of all); •De Beatâ Vitâ; •De Ordine; •the two books of Soliloquies, which must be distinguished from the "Soliloquies" and "Meditations" which are certainly not authentic; •De Immortalitate animæ; •De Magistro (a dialogue between Augustine and his son Adeodatus); and •six curious books (the sixth especially) on Music.

• From The City of God

  Such is the account given by Augustin himself [5] of the occasion and plan of this his greatest work. But in addition to this explicit information, we learn from the correspondence [6] of Augustin, that it was due to the importunity of his friend Marcellinus that this defence of Christianity extended beyond the limits of a few letters. Shortly before the fall of Rome, Marcellinus had been sent to Africa by the Emperor Honorius to arrange a settlement of the differences between the Donatists and the Catholics. This brought him into contact not only with Augustin, but with Volusian, the proconsul of Africa, and a man of rare intelligence and candor. Finding that Volusian, though as yet a pagan, took an interest in the Christian religion, Marcellinus set his heart on converting him to the true faith. The details of the subsequent significant intercourse between the learned and courtly bishop and the two imperial statesmen, are unfortunately almost entirely lost to us; but the impression conveyed by the extant correspondence is, that Marcellinus was the means of bringing his two friends into communication with one another. The first overture was on Augustin's part, in the shape of a simple and manly request that Volusian would carefully peruse the Scriptures, accompanied by a frank offer to do his best to solve any difficulties that might arise from such a course of inquiry. Volusian accordingly enters into correspondence with Augustin; and in order to illustrate the kind of difficulties experienced by men in his position, he gives some graphic notes of a conversation in which he had recently taken part at a gathering of some of his friends. The difficulty to which most weight is attached in this letter, is the apparent impossibility of believing in the Incarnation. But a letter which Marcellinus immediately despatched to Augustin, urging him to reply to Volusian at large, brought the intelligence that the difficulties and objections to Christianity were thus limited merely out of a courteous regard to the preciousness of the bishop's time, and the vast number of his engagements. This letter, in short, brought out the important fact, that a removal of speculative doubts would not suffice for the conversion of such men as Volusian, whose life was one with the life of the empire. Their difficulties were rather political, historical, and social. They could not see how the reception of the Christian rule of life was compat ible with the interests of Rome as the mistress of the world. [7]And thus Augustin was led to take a more distinct and wider view of the whole relation which Christianity bore to the old state of things,--moral, political, philosophical, and religious,--and was gradually drawn on to undertake the elaborate work now presented to the English reader, and which may more appropriately than any other of his writings be called his masterpiece [8] or life-work. It was begun the very year of Marcellinus' death, a. d. 413, and was issued in detached portions from time to time, until its completion in the year 426. It thus occupied the maturest years of Augustin's life--from his fifty-ninth to his seventy-second year. [9]

• From The City of God

  Chapter 9. --Concerning that Philosophy Which Has Come Nearest to the Christian Faith. Whatever philosophers, therefore, thought concerning the supreme God, that He is both the maker of all created things, the light by which things are known, and the good in reference to which things are to be done; that we have in Him the first principle of nature, the truth of doctrine, and the happiness of life,--whether these philosophers may be more suitably called Platonists, or whether they may give some other name to their sect; whether, we say, that only the chief men of the Ionic school, such as Plato himself, and they who have well understood him, have thought thus; or whether we also include the Italic school, on account of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, and all who may have held like opinions; and, lastly, whether also we include all who have been held wise men and philosophers among all nations who are discovered to have seen and taught this, be they Atlantics, Libyans, Egyptians, Indians, Persians, Chaldeans, Scythians, Gauls, Spaniards, or of other nations,--we prefer these to all other philosophers, and confess that they approach nearest to us.

• From The City of God

  If it were asked to what this popularity is due, we should be disposed to attribute it mainly to the great variety of ideas, opinions, and facts that are here brought before the reader's mind. Its importance as a contribution to the history of opinion cannot be overrated. We find in it not only indications or explicit enouncement of the author's own views upon almost every important topic which occupied his thoughts, but also a compendious exhibition of the ideas which most powerfully influenced the life at that age. It thus becomes, as Poujoulat says, "comme l'encyclopedie du cinquieme siecle. "All that is valuable, together with much indeed that is not so, in the religion and philosophy of the classical nations of antiquity, is reviewed. And on some branches of these subjects it has, in the judgment of one well qualified to judge, "preserved more than the whole surviving Latin literature. "It is true we are sometimes wearied by the too elaborate refutation of opinions which to a modern mind seem self-evident absurdities; but if these opinions were actually prevalent in the fifth century, the historical inquirer will not quarrel with the form in which his information is conveyed, nor will commit the absurdity of attributing to Augustin the foolishness of these opinions, but rather the credit of exploding them. That Augustin is a well-informed and impartial critic, is evinced by the courteousness and candor which he uniformly displays to his opponents, by the respect he won from the heathen themselves, and by his own early life. The most rigorous criticism has found him at fault regarding matters of fact only in some very rare instances, which can be easily accounted for. His learning would not indeed stand comparison with what is accounted such in our day:his life was too busy, and too devoted to the poor and to the spiritually necessitous, to admit of any extraordinary acquisition. He had access to no literature but the Latin; or at least he had only sufficient Greek to enable him to refer to Greek authors on points of importance, and not enough to enable him to read their writings with ease and pleasure. [23]But he had a profound knowledge of his own time, and a familiar acquaintance not only with the Latin poets, but with many other authors, some of whose writings are now lost to us, save the fragments preserved through his quotations.

• From The City of God

  This was the only philosophy of history known throughout Europe during the middle ages; it was adopted and reproduced in its essential features by Bossuet, Ozanam, Frederick Schlegel, and other Catholic writers, and has recently been officially endorsed, as it were, by the scholarly Pope Leo XIII. in his encyclical letter on the Christian Constitution of States (Immortale Dei, Nov. 1, 1885); for the Pope says that Augustin in his De Civitate Dei, "set forth so clearly the efficacy of Christian wisdom and the way in which it is bound up with the well-being of States, that he seems not only to have pleaded the cause of the Christians of his own time, but to have triumphantly refuted the false charges [against Christianity] for ever. " [1] "The City of God" is also highly appreciated by Protestant writers as Waterland, Milman, Neander, Bindemann, Pressense, Flint (The Philosophy of History, 1874, pp. 17 sqq. ) and Fairbairn, (The City of God, London, 2nd ed. , 1886, pp. 348 sqq. ). Even the skeptical Gibbon, who had no sympathy whatever with the religion and theology of Augustin, concedes to this work at least "the merit of a magnificent design, vigorously, and not unskillfully executed. "(Decline and Fall, Ch. xxviii. note, in Harper's ed. , vol. III. , 271. )

• From The City of God

  With all its defects the candid reader will be much instructed and edified by "the City of God," and find more to admire than to censure in this immortal work of sanctified genius and learning. The present translation, the first accurate and readable one in the English language, was prepared by the accomplished editor of the Works of Aurelius Augustin, published by T. and T. Clark of Edinburgh. [2] I urged Dr. Dods by letter and in person to re-edit it for this Patristic Series with such changes and additions as he might wish to make, but he declined, partly from want of leisure, and partly for a reason which I must state in his own language. "I thought," he writes in a letter to me of Nov. 23, 1886, that "the book could not fail to be improved by passing under your own supervision. In editing it for Clark's Series, I translated the greater part of it with my own hand and carefully revised the parts translated by others. I was very much gratified to hear that you meant to adopt it into your Series; and the best reward of my labor on it is that now with your additional notes and improvements, it is likely to find a wider circulation than it could otherwise have had. " But in this expectation the reader will be disappointed. The translation is far better than I could have made it, and it would have been presumption on my part to attempt to improve it. The notes, too, are all to the point and leave little to be desired. I have only added a few. Besides the Latin original, I have compared also the German translation of Ulrich Uhl (Des heiligen Kirchenvaters Augustinus zwei und zwanzig Buecher ueber den Gottesstaat) in the Catholic "Bibliothek der Kirchenvaeter," edited by Dr. Thalhofer, but I found nothing in the occasional foot-notes which is better than those of Dr. Dods. The present edition, therefore, is little more than a careful reproduction of that of my esteemed Scotch friend, who deserves the undivided credit of making this famous work of the Bishop of Hippo accessible to the English reader. I have included in this volume the four books of St. Augustin On Christian Doctrine. [3]It is the first and best patristic work on biblical Hermeneutics, and continued for a thousand years, together with the Prefaces of Jerome, to be the chief exegetical guide. Although it is superseded as a scientific work by modern Hermeneutics and Critical Introductions to the Old and New Testaments, it is not surpassed for originality, depth and spiritual insight. The translation was prepared by the Rev. Professor J. F. Shaw, of Londonderry, and is likewise all that can be desired. I have enlarged the introductory note and added a table of contents. Philip Schaff. New York, December 10, 1886.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 16. --Of the Things Pertaining to Christ and the Church, Said Either Openly or Tropically in the 45th Psalm. For whatever direct and manifest prophetic utterances there may be about anything, it is necessary that those which are tropical should be mingled with them; which, chiefly on account of those of slower understanding, thrust upon the more learned the laborious task of clearing up and expounding them. Some of them, indeed, on the very first blush, as soon as they are spoken, exhibit Christ and the Church, although some things in them that are less intelligible remain to be expounded at leisure. We have an example of this in that same Book of Psalms:"My heart bubbled up a good matter:I utter my words to the king. My tongue is the pen of a scribe, writing swiftly. Thy form is beautiful beyond the sons of men; grace is poured out in Thy lips: therefore God hath blessed Thee for evermore. Gird Thy sword about Thy thigh, O Most Mighty. With Thy goodliness and Thy beauty go forward, proceed prosperously, and reign, because of Thy truth, and meekness, and righteousness; and Thy right hand shall lead Thee forth wonderfully. Thy sharp arrows are most powerful:in the heart of the king's enemies. The people shall fall under Thee. Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever:a rod of direction is the rod of Thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hast hated iniquity:therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of exultation above Thy fellows. Myrrh and drops, and cassia from Thy vestments, from the houses of ivory:out of which the daughters of kings have delighted Thee in Thine honor. " [1083]Who is there, no matter how slow, but must here recognize Christ whom we preach, and in whom we believe, if he hears that He is God, whose throne is for ever and ever, and that He is anointed by God, as God indeed anoints, not with a visible, but with a spiritual and intelligible chrism? For who is so untaught in this religion, or so deaf to its far and wide spread fame, as not to know that Christ is named from this chrism, that is, from this anointing? But when it is acknowledged that this King is Christ, let each one who is already subject to Him who reigns because of truth, meekness, and righteousness, inquire at his leisure into these other things that are here said tropically:how His form is beautiful beyond the sons of men, with a certain beauty that is the more to be loved and admired the less it is corporeal; and what His sword, arrows, and other things of that kind may be, which are set down, not properly, but tropically.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The conversion of Paul was a great intellectual and moral revolution, yet without destroying his identity. His noble gifts and attainments remained, but were purged of Selfish motives, inspired by a new principle, and consecrated to a divine end. The love of Christ who saved him, was now his all-absorbing passion, and no sacrifice was too great to manifest his gratitude to Him. The architect of ruin became an architect of the temple of God. The same vigor, depth and acuteness of mind, but illuminated by the Holy Spirit; the same strong temper and burning zeal, but cleansed, subdued and controlled by wisdom and moderation; the same energy and boldness, but coupled with gentleness and meekness; and, added to all this, as crowning gifts of grace, a love and humility, a tenderness and delicacy of feeling such as are rarely, if ever, found in a character so proud, manly and heroic. The little Epistle to Philemon reveals a perfect Christian gentleman, a nobleman of nature, doubly ennobled by grace. The thirteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians could only be conceived by a mind that had ascended on the mystic ladder of faith to the throbbing heart of the God of love; yet without inspiration even Paul could not have penned that seraphic description of the virtue which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things, which never faileth, but will last for ever the greatest in the triad of celestial graces: faith, hope, love.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 15. --Of Regulus, in Whom We Have an Example of the Voluntary Endurance of Captivity for the Sake of Religion; Which Yet Did Not Profit Him, Though He Was a Worshipper of the Gods. But among their own famous men they have a very noble example of the voluntary endurance of captivity in obedience to a religious scruple. Marcus Attilius Regulus, a Roman general, was a prisoner in the hands of the Carthaginians. But they, being more anxious to exchange their prisoners with the Romans than to keep them, sent Regulus as a special envoy with their own embassadors to negotiate this exchange, but bound him first with an oath, that if he failed to accomplish their wish, he would return to Carthage. He went and persuaded the senate to the opposite course, because he believed it was not for the advantage of the Roman republic to make an exchange of prisoners. After he had thus exerted his influence, the Romans did not compel him to return to the enemy; but what he had sworn he voluntarily performed. But the Carthaginians put him to death with refined, elaborate, and horrible tortures. They shut him up in a narrow box, in which he was compelled to stand, and in which finely sharpened nails were fixed all round about him, so that he could not lean upon any part of it without intense pain; and so they killed him by depriving him of sleep. [76] With justice, indeed, do they applaud the virtue which rose superior to so frightful a fate. However, the gods he swore by were those who are now supposed to avenge the prohibition of their worship, by inflicting these present calamities on the human race. But if these gods, who were worshipped specially in this behalf, that they might confer happiness in this life, either willed or permitted these punishments to be inflicted on one who kept his oath to them, what more cruel punishment could they in their anger have inflicted on a perjured person? But why may I not draw from my reasoning a double inference? Regulus certainly had such reverence for the gods, that for his oath's sake he would neither remain in his own land nor go elsewhere, but without hesitation returned to his bitterest enemies. If he thought that this course would be advantageous with respect to this present life, he was certainly much deceived, for it brought his life to a frightful termination. By his own example, in fact, he taught that the gods do not secure the temporal happiness of their worshippers; since he himself, who was devoted to their worship, as both conquered in battle and taken prisoner, and then, because he refused to act in violation of the oath he had sworn by them, was tortured and put to death by a new, and hitherto unheard of, and all too horrible kind of punishment. And on the supposition that the worshippers of the gods are rewarded by felicity in the life to come, why, then, do they calumniate the influence of Christianity? why do they assert that this disaster has overtaken the city because it has ceased to worship its gods, since, worship them as assiduously as it may, it may yet be as unfortunate as Regulus was? Or will some one carry so wonderful a blindness to the extent of wildly attempting, in the face of the evident truth, to contend that though one man might be unfortunate, though a worshipper of the gods, yet a whole city could not be so? That is to say, the power of their gods is better adapted to preserve multitudes than individuals,--as if a multitude were not composed of individuals.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Their church was called the Temple of the Fire Baptized. It was not the biggest church in Harlem, nor yet the smallest, but John had been brought up to believe it was the holiest and best. His father was head deacon in this church—there were only two, the other a round, black man named Deacon Braithwaite—and he took up the collection, and sometimes he preached. The pastor, Father James, was a genial, well-fed man with a face like a darker moon. It was he who preached on Pentecost Sundays, and led revivals in the summer-time, and anointed and healed the sick. On Sunday mornings and Sunday nights the church was always full; on special Sundays it was full all day. The Grimes family arrived in a body, always a little late, usually in the middle of Sunday school, which began at nine o’clock. This lateness was always their mother’s fault—at least in the eyes of their father; she could not seem to get herself and the children ready on time, ever, and sometimes she actually remained behind, not to appear until the morning service. When they all arrived together, they separated upon entering the doors, father and mother going to sit in the Adult Class, which was taught by Sister McCandless, Sarah going to the Infants’ Class, John and Roy sitting in the Intermediate, which was taught by Brother Elisha. When he was young, John had paid no attention in Sunday school, and always forgot the golden text, which earned him the wrath of his father. Around the time of his fourteenth birthday, with all the pressures of church and home uniting to drive him to the altar, he strove to appear more serious and therefore less conspicuous. But he was distracted by his new teacher, Elisha, who was the pastor’s nephew and who had but lately arrived from Georgia. He was not much older than John, only seventeen, and he was already saved and was a preacher. John stared at Elisha all during the lesson, admiring the timbre of Elisha’s voice, much deeper and manlier than his own, admiring the leanness, and grace, and strength, and darkness of Elisha in his Sunday suit, wondering if he would ever be holy as Elisha was holy. But he did not follow the lesson, and when, sometimes, Elisha paused to ask John a question, John was ashamed and confused, feeling the palms of his hands become wet and his heart pound like a hammer. Elisha would smile and reprimand him gently, and the lesson would go on.