PREFACE TO AMERICAN EDITION. THIS translation of St. Augustine's Confessions is made up of two; one, very old one, from a copy whose title-page is lost, and many of its leaves wanting, and which has omitted much of the three last books; the other, Pusey's translation, lately published in England, making the first volume of the Library of the Fathers. The old translation, as far as it went, seemed to the publisher richer in style, and betrayed less of the Latin idiom. It does better justice to the gushing heart of St. Augustine, his ardentia verba. It would be superfluous to dwell upon the reasons for publishing this work in America. The English edition is very costly, and this is a book that should be within the reach of every Christian. The humility is absolute, yet without a shadow of cant, It is that of a man, not unaware that he was on the summit of human nature, intellectually, and, at last, morally, and who made e use of his position, not to look back and compare himself with the shorter comings of others, but to look out of the finite creature and its ideal, into that Law which may be call. 1 in contradistinction, the Ideal of God; and which reproves the best life of man. Many will feel, in reading this book in a wise spirit of self-examination, that they have been, all their days, "without God in the world,” although they have cherished that holy Name, clustered roundabout with a thousand sweet and even sublime associations; that they have never, like St. Augustine, renounced their own wisdom and virtue, to make room for the Wisdom and Righteousness of God, although they have wished to be modest and faithful, and, in a multitude of their relations, have been so. Here they will find the depth of the meaning of the text, "He that loseth his own life shall find it." |