5 As Waterland (iv. 760) does call it, adding that it is "his most learned, most correct, and most elaborate work."
6 For proof, see the Benedictine Preface.
7 "Hitherto the Apologies had been framed to meet particular exigencies: they were either brief and pregnant statements of the Christian doctrines; refutations of prevalent calumnies; invectives against the follies and crimes of Paganism; or confutations of anti-Christian works like those of Celsus, Porphyry, or Julian, closely following their course of argument, and rarely expanding into general and comprehensive views of the great conflict."-Milman, History of Christianity, iii. c. 10. We are not acquainted with any more complete preface to the City of God than is contained in the two or three pages which Milman has devoted to this subject.
8 See the interesting remarks of Lactantius, Instit. vii. 25.
9 "Haeet vox et singulyus intercipiunt verba dictantis. Capitur urbs quae totum cepit orbem."-Jerome, iv. 783..
11 This is well brought out by Merivale, Conversion of the Roman Empire, p. 145, etc.
12 Ozanam, History of Civilisation in the Fifth Century (Eng. trans.), ii. 160.
13 Abstracts of the work at greater or less length are given by Dupin, Bindemann, Böhringer, Poujoulat, Ozanam, and others.
14 His words are: "Plus on examine la Cité de Dieu, plus on reste convaincu que cet ouvrage dût exercea tres-peu d' in ifluence sur l'esprit des paiens" (ii. 122.); and this though he thinks one cannot but be struck with the grandeur of the ideas it contains.
15 History of Ecclesiastical Writers, i. 406.
17 Flottes, Etudes sur S. Augustin (Paris, 1861), pp. 154-6, one of the most accurate and interesting even of French monographs on theological writers.
18 These editions will be found detailed in the second volume of Schoenemann's Bibliotheca Pat.
19 His words (in Ep. vi.) are quite worth quoting: "Cura rogo te, ut excudantur aliquot centena exemplarium istius operis a reliquo Agustini corpore separata; nam multi erunt studiosi oui Augustinum totum emere vel nollient, vel non poterunt, quia non egebunt, seu quia tantum pecuniae non habebunt. Scio enim fere a deditis studis istis elegantioribus praeter hoc Augustini opus nullum fere aliud legi ejusdem autoris."
20 The fullest and fairest discussion of the very simple yet never settled question of Augustin's learning will be found in Nourrisson's Philosophie de S. Augustin, ii. 92-100. [Comp. the first vol. of this Nicene Library, p. 9.-P. S.]
22 A large part of it has been translated in Saisset's Pantheism (Clark, Edinburgh).
23 By J. H., published in 1610, and again in 1620, with Vives' commentary.
24 As the letters of Vives are not in every library, we give his comico-pathetic account of the result of his Augustinian labors on his health: "Ex quo Augustinum perfeci, nunquam valui ex sententia; proximâ vero hebdomade et hac, fracto corpore cuncto, et nervis lassitudine quadam et debilitate dejectis, in caput decem turres incumbere mihi videntur incidendo pondere, ac mole intolerabili; isti sunt fructus studiorum, et merces pulcherrimi laboris; quid labor et benefacta juvant?"
1 [Augustin uses the term civitas Dei (po/lij u=eou=) of the church universal as a commonwealth and community founded and governed by God. It is applied in the Bible to Jerusalem or the church of the Old Covenant (Ps. xl. 6, 4; xlviii. 1, 8; lxxxvii. 3), and to the heavenly Jerusalem or the church perfect (Heb. xi. 10, 16; xii. 22; Rev. iii. 12; xxi. 2; xxii, 14, 19). Augustin comprehends under the term the whole Kingdom of God under the Jewish and Christian dispensation both in its militant and triumphant state, and contrasts it with the perishing kingdoms of this world. His work treats of both, but he calls it, a meliore, The City of God.-P. S.]
2 [Marcellinus was a friend of Augustin, and urged him to write this work. He was commissioned by the Emperior Honorius to convene a conference of Catholic and schismatic Donatist bishops in the summer of 411, and conceded the victory to the Catholics; but on account of his rigor in executing the laws against the Donatists, he fell a victim to their revenge, and was honored by a place among the martyrs. See the Letters of Augustin, 133, 136, 138, 139, 143, 151, the notes in this ed., vol. I., 470 and 505, and the Translator's Preface -P. S.]
3 Ps. xciv. 15, rendered otherwise in Eng. ver. [In the Revised Vers.: "Judgment shall return unto righteousness." In Old Testament quotations, Augustin, being ignorant of Hebrew, had to rely on the imperfect Latin version of his day, and was at first even opposed to the revision of Jerome.-P. S.]
5 Virgil, Aeneid, vi. 854. [Parcere subjectis et debellare superbes.-P. S.]
6 [Aug. refers to the sacking of the city of Rome by the West-Gothic King Alaric, 410. He was the most humane of the barbaric invaders and conquerors of Rome, and had embraced Arian Christianity (probably from the teaching of Ulphilas, the Arian bishop and translator of the Bible). He spared the Catholic Christians.-For particulars see Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and Millman's Latin Christianity.-P. S.]
7 The Benedictines remind us that Alexander and Xenophon, at least on some occasions, did so.
8 Virgil, Aeneid, ii. 501-2. The renderings of Virgil are from Conington.