§ 178. AUGUSTINE. 100?
and tlie cardinal virtues of love and humility, and found in them only beautiful ideals without power to conform him to them. His City of God, his book on heresies, and other writ* ings, show an extensive knowledge of ancient philosophy, poetry, and history, sacred and secular. He refers to the most distinguished persons of Greece and Rome; he often alludes to Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Plotin, Porphyry, Cicero, Seneca, Horace, Yirgil, to the earlier Greek and Latin fathers, to Eastern and Western heretics. But his knowledge of Greek literature was mostly derived from Latin translations. With the Greek language, as he himself frankly and modestly confesses, he had, in comparison with Jerome, but a superficial acquaintance.' Hebrew he did not understand at all. Hence,
' It is sometimes asserted that he had no knowledge at all of the Greek. So Gibbon, for example, says (eh. xxxiii.): "The superficial learning of Augustine waa confined to the Latin language." But this is as much a mistake as the other assertion of Gibbon, that " the orthodoxy of St. Augustine was derived from the Manichaean schooL" In his youth he had a great aversion to the glorious language of Hellas (Conf. i. 14), and read the writings of Plato in a Lathi translation (vii. 9) But after his baptism, during his second residence in Rome, he took it up again with greater zest, for the sake of his biblical studies. In Hippo he had, while presbyter, good opportunity to advance in it, since his bishop, Aurelius, a native Greek, understood his mother tongue much better than the Latin. In his books he occasionally makes reference to the Greek. In his work Contra Jul. i. c. 6 § 21 (torn. X. 510), he corrects the Pelagian Julian in a translation from Chrysostom, quoting the original. "Ego ipsa verba Graeca quae a Joanne dicta sunt ponam: Sia tovto Kal TO. TratSia Pairri^ofiev, KairoL aiJ.apT-{]iiiaTa oi'K exoyra, quod est Latine : Ideo el '.Tv fantes bapiizamus, quamvis peccata non habentes.'''' Juhan had freely rendered this: " cum non sint coinquinati peccato,'" and had drawn the inference : " Sanctus Joannes Constantinopolitanus negat esse in parvulis originale peccatum." Augustine helps himself out of the pinch by arbitrarily supplying propria to a/iLapT-n/xara, so that *he Idea of sin inherited from another is not excluded. The Greek fathers, however, did not consider hereditary corruption to be proper sin or guilt at all, but only defect, weakness, or disease. In the City of God, lib. xix. c. 23, he quotes a passage from Porphyry's e« Koyioov <pi\oaocpia. It is probable that he read Plotin, and the Panarion of Epiphanius or the summary of it, in Greek (while the Church History of Eusebius he knew only in the translation of Rufinus). But in his exegetical and other works he very rarely consults the Septuagint or Greek Testament, and was content with the very imperfect Itala or the improved version of Jeroma The Benedictine editors overestimate his knowledge of Greek. He himself frankly confesses that he knew \ery little of it, De Trinit. 1. iii. Prooem. (" Graeca; linguae non sit nobis tantus habitus, ut talium rerum libris legendis et intelligendls ullo modo reperiamur idonei "), and Contra literas Petiliani (written in 400), I. ii. c. 38 (" Et ego
1002 TIIIKD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
Avitli :ill liis extraordinary familiarity with the Latin Bible, hu made many mistakes in exposition. He was rather a thinker than a scholar, and depended mainly on his own re sources, which were always abundant.'
quidem GrsDcai linguae perparum assecutus sum, et prope nihil "). On the philo sophical learning of Augustine may be compared Noukrisson, 1. c. ii. p. 92 ff.
' The tbllowing are some of the most intelligent and appreciative estimates of Augustine. Ekasmus (Ep. dedicat. ad Alfons. archiep. Tolet. 1529) says, with an ingenious play upon the name Aurehus Augustinus : " Quid habet orbis christianua hoc scriptore magis aureum vel augvslius ? ut ipsa vocabula nequaquam fortuito, sed numinis providentia videautur indita viro. Auro sapientiae nihil pretiosius: fulgore eloquentias cum sapientia conjunctse nihil mirabilius. . . . Non arbitror ahum esse doctorom, in quem opulentus iilc ac beniguus Spiritus dotes suas omnea largius effuderit, quam in Augustinum." The great philosopher Leibnitz (Praefat. ad Theodic. ^ '-'A) calls him "virum sane magnum et ingenii stupendi," and "vastissimo ingenio prieditum." Dr. Badr, without sympathy with his views, speaka enthusiasticaUy of the man and his genius. Among other things he says (Vorlesungen iiber Dogmengcschichte, i. i. p. 61): "There is scarcely another theological author so fertile and withal so able as Augustine. His scholarship was certainly not equal to his mind ; yet even that is sometimes set too low, whn it is asserted that he had no aciiuaiutance at all with the Greek language ; for this is incorrect, tiiough he had attained no great proficiency in Greek." C. Bindemann (a Lutheran divine) begins his thorough monograph (voL i. preface) with the well-deserved eulogium : " St. Augustine is one of the greatest personages in the church. He is second in importance to none of the teachers who have wrought most in the church since the apostolic time ; and it can well be said that among the church fathers the first place is due to him, and in the time of the Reformation a Luther alone, for fulnesa and depth of thought and grandeur of character, may stand by his side. He is the summit of the development of the mediaeval Western church ; from him descended the mysticism, no less than the scholasticism, ot the middle age ; he was one of the strongest pillars of the Roman Catholicism, and from his works, next to the Holy Scriptures, especially the Epistles of Paul, the leaders of the Reformation drew moat of that conviction by which a new age was introduced." Staudenmaier, a Roman Catholic theologian, counts Augustine among those minds iu which an hundred others dwell (Hcotus Erigena, i. p. 274). The Roman Catholic philosophers A. Glnther and Tn. Gangauk, put him on an e<iuality with the greatest philosophers, and discern in him a providential personage endowcil by the Spirit of God for tba instruction of all ages. A striking characterization is that of Dr. Joiianxks Hcbek (in his instructive work : Die Pliilosophie der Kiichenvater, Munich, 1859, p. 313 eq.): "Augustine is a unique phenomenon in Clnistian history. No one of th« other fathers has left so luminous traces of his existence. Though we find among them many rich and powerful minds, yet we find in none the forces of personal ciiar acter, mind, heart, and will, so largely developed and so harmoniously working. No one surpasses him in wealth of perceptions and dialectical sharpness of thoughts, ia depth and fervor of religious sensibihty, in greatness of aims and energy of action