21 Dicebat, aut dicit. These two latter words are not superfluous, as some have thought; they intimate that Pelagius still clave to his error.
23 See above ch. 1, and On the Grace of Christ, ch. 35.
24 See especially Book iii. chs. 2, 5, 6 [iii.].
27 This is far from a clear translation of the terse original: Non criminaliter, sed quasi civiliter errasse videantur.
, occurs in the phrase, "to come out from the thigh of any one," in the sense of being begotten by any one, or descended from him, in several passages: see Gen. xlvi. 26; Ex. i. 5; Judg. viii. 30. In the last of these passages, the A. V. phrase, "of his body begotten," is z@bd )cw
, the offspring of his thigh. Abraham was the first to use this form of adjuration; after him his grandson Jacob, Gen. xlvii. 29. The comment of Augustin in the text, which he repeats elsewhere (see his Sermon 75), occurs also in other Fathers, e.g. Jerome, Theodoret, Ambrose (De Abrahamo, i. cap. ult.), Prosper (Praedicat. i. 7), and Gregory the Great, who says: "He orders him to put his hand under his thigh, since through that member would descend the flesh of Him who was Abraham's son according to the flesh, and his Lord owing to His divinity."