§ 178. AUGUSTINE. 999
Uc is evangelical or Pauline in his doctrine of sin and grace, but catliolic (that is, old-catholic, not Roman* Catholic) in hia Joctrine of the church. The Pauline element comes forwara mainly in the Pelagian controversy, the catholic-churchly m the Donatist ; but each is modified by the other.
Dr. Baur incorrectly' makes freedom the fundamental idta of the Augustinian system (it much better suits the Pelagian), and founds on this view an ingenious, but only half true, comparison between Augustine and Origen. " There is no church teacher of the ancient period," says he,' " who, in intellect and in grandeur and consistency of view, can more justly be placed by the side of Origen than Augustine ; none who, with all the difference in individuality and in mode of thought, so closely resembles him. How far both towered above their times, is most clearly manifest in the very fact that they alone, of all the theologians of the lirst six centuries, became the creators of distinct systems, each proceeding from its definite idea, and each completely carried out ; and this fact proves also how much the one system has that is analogous to the other. The one system, like the other, is founded upon the idea oi freer dom ', in both there is a specific act, by which the entire development of human life is determined ; and in both this is ar
erence to theological purport and the Pelagian controversies. We recall some of the best, which he has omitted :
"Novum Testanientum in Vetere latet, Vetus in Novo patet."
" Distingue tempera, et concordabit Scriptura."
" Cor nostrum iuquietum est, donee requiescat in Te."
" Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis."
" Non vincit nisi Veritas, victoria veritatis est caritas."
" Ubi amor, ibi trinitas."
" Fides praecedit intellectum."
" Deo servire vera Ubertas est."
" Nulla infelicitas frangit, quem felicitas nulla corrumpit."
The famous maxim of ecclesiastical harmony : " In necessariis unitas, in dubiij (or non necessariis) libertas, in omnibus (in utrisque) caritas," — which is often ascribed to Augustine, dates in this form not from him, but from a much later period. Dr. LDcke (in a special treatise on the antiquity of the author, the original form, etc., of this sentence, Gottingen, 1850) traces the authorship to Rfpkei Meldenius, an irenical German theologian of the seventeenth century.
^ Ji c. p. 30 sq.
1000 THIKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
act which lies far outside of the temporal consciousness of tlie individual; with this difFerenco alone, that in one system the act belongs to each separate individual himself, and only fallii outside of his temporal life and consciousness ; in the other, it lies within the sphere of the tem])oral history of man, but is onl}-- the act of one individual. If in the system of Origen nothing gives greater oifence than the idea of the pre-existence and fall of souls, which seems to adopt heathen ideas into the Christian faith, there is in the system of Augustine the same overleaping of individual life and consciousness, in order to explain from an act in the past the present sinful condition of man ; but the pagan Platonic point of view is exchanged for one taken from the Old Testament. . . . What therefore essentially distinguishes the system of Augustine from that of Origen, is only this : the fall of Adam is substituted for the pre-temporal fall of souls, and what in Origen still wears a heathen garb, puts on in Augustine a purely Old Testament form."
The learning of x\ugustine was not equal to his genius, nor as extensive as that of Origen and Eusebius, but still considerable for his time, and superior to that of any of the Latin fathers, with the single exception of Jerome. He had received in the schools of Madaura and Carthage a good theoretical and rhetorical preparation for the forum, which stood him in good stead also in theology. He was familiar with Latin literature, and was by no means blind to the excellencies of the classics, though he placed them far below the higher beauty of the Holy Scriptures. The Hortensius of Cicero (a lost work) inspired him during his university course with enthusiasm for philosophy and for the knowledge of truth for its own sake ; the study of Platonic and Neo-Platonic works (in tlic Latin version of the rhetorician Victorin us) kindled in him an incredible tire;' though in both he missed the holy name of Jesus
* Adv. Academicos, 1. ii. c. 2, g 5 : " Etiam mihi ipsi de me incrcdibile inccn. Hum I'onc'itarunt." And in several passagos of the Civitas Dei (viii. 3-12; xxii. 27' he speaks very favorably of Plato, and also of Aristotle, and thus broke the way for the high authority of the Aristotelian philosophy with the scliolastics of the mi( die