BOOK XII Aug. proceeds to comment on Gen. i. 1. and explains the BOOK XIII Continuation of the exposition of Gen. i.; it contains the PAGE 278 308 PREFACE THE "Confessions of St. Augustine" have ever been a favourite Christian study. St. Augustine says of them himself, "The thirteen books of my Confessions praise God, Holy and Good, on occasion of that which has in me been good or evil, and raise up man's understanding and affections to Him: for myself, they did so while they were being written, and now do, when read. Let others think of them, as to them seems right; yet that they have and do much please many brethren, I know." And again, "what of my smaller works could be more widely known or give greater pleasure than my Confessions?" He further states their object, Ep. ad Darium, Ep. 231. Accept the books of my Confessions, which you wished for. There see me, and praise me not more than I deserve; there believe, not others about me, but myself; there mark me, and see what I was in myself, by myself; and if aught in me please thee, there praise with me, Whom, and not myself, I wished to be praised for me. For He 'made us, and not we ourselves;' but we had destroyed ourselves; and Who made, re-made us. But when you have then learnt what I am, pray for me, that I fall not away, but be perfected." In modern times, they have been translated again and again into almost every European language, and in all loved. One may quote two sayings, prefixed to a French edition, and which bear evident marks of sincerity: "O how I wish the Confessions were familiar Retract. 1. ii. c. 6. * De dono Perseverantiæ, c. 20. to all who hear me, that they would read and re-read them unceasingly. For there is no book in the world more capable to take away the human heart from the vain, passing, perishable things, which the world presents, and to cure self-love. I have known it but too late, and cease not to grieve thereat." Another says, "The Confessions of St. Augustine are, of all his works, that which is most filled with the fire of the love of God, and most calculated to kindle it in the heart; the most full of unction, and most capable to impart it; and where one best sees how faithfully and carefully this holy man recorded all the blessings which he had received from the mercy of God." The Confessions seemed also well calculated to appear in this "Library," as bringing to our acquaintance, through his own reflections on his natural character and former self, one of the most remarkable men, whom God has raised up as a teacher in His Church. And, whatever we might beforehand expect, or whatever some may have imagined to themselves of early "corruptions of Christianity," the Fathers of this period, have more which is akin to the turn of mind of these later ages, than those of the earlier, St. Cyprian, perhaps, alone excepted. As, on the one hand, the remains of this period are larger, so also has the character of subsequent ages been far more influenced and more directly formed by them. Augustine, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Basil, Athanasius, Jerome, have left a much deeper impress, and moulded succeeding periods in their own character, far more than the Apostolic Fathers, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, or Tertullian. These acted upon, and the peculiarities of some were modified in, those who are to us intervening links, as Tertullian in St. Cyprian, Origen in St. Ambrose. And the later Fathers have in these cases preserved more especially what is Catholic in their predecessors, free from that which belonged to their individual character. The influence of St. Augustine, especially, is very visible in Prosper of Aquitaine, Gregory the Great, and in conjunction with the latter and Jerome in the Schoolmen, and so has, through the Reformers, descended to us and our Church. It is plain, for instance, that our Articles, in some cases, express Catholic truth through the medium of the language of St. Augustine. And it is remarkable, that a favourite work of modern times has borne the title of "Meditations of St. Augustine," and people have mistaken a compilation of an Abbot of Fescam in France at the end of the twelfth century, for that of a great Father of the African Church in the fourth. So long has his light shone, and so many, in after ages, has it kindled. But this being the case, it seemed most natural to begin with those, by whom ourselves had been-if, in these last days, imperceptibly, yet—most directly formed, and through them to ascend to the former ages and the writers, who had guided them in the understanding of the common source of all knowledge, the Holy Scriptures. The subject of the Confessions would naturally give them a deep interest, presenting, as they do, an account of the way in which God led, perhaps the most powerful mind of Christian antiquity, out of darkness to light, and changed one, who was a chosen vessel unto Himself, from a heretic and a seducer of the brethren, into one of the most energetic defenders of Catholic Truth, both against the strange sect to which he had belonged, and against the Arians, Pelagians, and semi-Pelagians, Donatists, Priscillianists. Such, not an autobiography, is the object of the Confessions; a praise and confession of God's unmerited goodness, but of himself only so much, as might illustrate out of what depth God's mercy had raised him. His proposed subject apparently was God's protection and guidance through all his infirmities and errors, to Baptism, wherein all his trangressions were blotted out; that so others who were in the same state in which he had been, might "not sleep in despair, and say, 'I cannot; '"'* and, accordingly, his Confessions would close, according to his own view, at the end of the ninth book; the only events, which he relates, subsequent to his conversion and baptism, being those connected with his mother's death, to whose prayers he had been given. It is evidently not without reluctance, that in the tenth book, in compliance with the importunity of some of the brethren, he enters at all into the subject," what he then was at the interval of ten years; nor does he enter upon it, without much previous questioning, and lingers upon an enquiry into the nature of memory, which is only in part connected with his immediate question, "By what faculty he came to know God,” and not at all with the subject proposed to him. He seems to have glided into it, on occasion of his praise of God, and then to have dwelt upon it, partly through that habit of exactness of mind, which leads him to examine every question thoroughly, partly, it should seem, as keeping him from a subject upon which he had no inclination to enter. When moreover he does come to it, he confines himself to such temptations as are common to all, and so would lead to remarks which would be Conf. b. x. sec. 4. |