Resultados25 letters/passages
augustine_hippo · c. 413 · score 0.02
I have asked and I ask our God, who called us into his kingdom and glory, that what I write to you, holy brother Jerome, consulting you about things I do not know, may by his will be fruitful for us. Although you are much older than I, I too am now an old man who consults you; yet for learning what is needed, no age se …
augustine_hippo · c. 393 · score 0.02
The case was examined, judged, and completed. Peace was offered, but pride refused it. Now regarding the violence that the Donatists inflicted through the Circumcellions — those roving bands who, under the pretense of religion, committed every sort of outrage — they attacked Catholic churches, they beat our clergy, the …
augustine_hippo · c. 413 · score 0.02
This is what I ask you to resolve, if you can. For the Pelagians, who deny original sin, find comfort in our inability to explain how the soul becomes sinful. If we cannot demonstrate this, they say, then perhaps the soul is not sinful at birth, and infants do not need the redemption of Christ. We cannot allow this con …
augustine_hippo · c. 403 · score 0.02
We sought that the violence would stop and that those who did such things would recognize their error. For what profit is there in a dead body to the Church? What we desire is living souls, repentant and reformed. Let not the name of one's homeland, or the memory of civil honors, or the bonds of old friendship prevent …
augustine_hippo · c. 395 · score 0.02
1 Corinthians 13:4, 8 Knowledge, if applied as a means to charity, is most useful; but apart from this high end, it has been proved not only superfluous, but even pernicious. I know, however, how holy meditation keeps you safe under the shadow of the wings of our God. These things I have stated, though briefly, because …
augustine_hippo · c. 401 · score 0.02
I respect your honesty. But I must tell you that the gods you serve — or the customs you follow, if "gods" is too strong a word — are dying. Not because Christians are killing them, but because they have nothing to offer. They could not protect your city from its own worst impulses. They could not teach your citizens t …
augustine_hippo · c. 402 · score 0.01
Some object: if the infant has no sin of its own, why does it need baptism? Because the infant, though personally innocent, is born into a fallen race. Original sin is not a personal crime but a condition — like being born into a besieged city. The infant did nothing to start the siege, but the siege is real, and rescu …
augustine_hippo · c. 389 · score 0.01
If you have a taste for ridicule, you have ample material among your own gods: Stercutius the dung god, Cloacina the sewer goddess, the Bald Venus, the gods Fear and Pallor, the goddess Fever, and countless others of the same caliber, to whom the ancient Roman idolaters built temples and offered worship. If you neglect …
augustine_hippo · c. 413 · score 0.01
I mean also those who said these things not in verse or oratory but in philosophy. I mean also many whose writings we do not have but whose praiseworthy lives we have learned of through others' writings — men who, apart from the worship of God in which they erred by worshiping vain things publicly established for worsh …
augustine_hippo · c. 403 · score 0.01
QUESTION THREE: ON THE DISTINCTION OF SACRIFICES They ask why God rejected the sacrifices of the Jews, since he himself had commanded them, and why he distinguished between the sacrifices of Christians and those of the Jews. We respond that God never desired those sacrifices for their own sake, but as signs of the thin …
augustine_hippo · c. 403 · score 0.01
Then, showing how great an evil this is, you add — unless your opinion deceives you — that you believe being stripped of possessions to be worse than being killed. And to make clearer what possessions you meant, you go on to say that I know from literature that death brings an end to the sense of all evils, while a lif …
augustine_hippo · c. 386 · score 0.01
Letter 1 (386 AD) To Hermogenianus — Augustine sends greetings. 1. I would never presume, even in a playful debate, to go after the philosophers of the Academy [the "New Academy" — skeptical philosophers who argued that certain knowledge was impossible]. The authority of such brilliant thinkers would always carry weigh …
augustine_hippo · c. 413 · score 0.01
And so the ark was made three hundred cubits long, fifty broad, and thirty high. And the door it received in its side was surely the wound made when the side of the Crucified was pierced by the lance; for by this door those who come to him enter, because from that opening flowed the sacraments by which believers are in …
augustine_hippo · c. 389 · score 0.01
In that spectacle, if you truly are possessed by a god, you surely see what kind of deity he must be — one who robs people of their reason. If, on the other hand, the frenzy is only pretended, then what is the point of all this secrecy in a worship you boast of as public? And what good purpose does so degrading a decep …
augustine_hippo · c. 422 · score 0.01
The glory of riches, then — which you did not yet possess but wished to have — you have most wisely despised. Beware lest it creep upon you to trust in your own strength, for you are a human being, and cursed is everyone who places his hope in a human being. But trust wholeheartedly in your God, and he himself will be …
augustine_hippo · c. 401 · score 0.01
Why then should not the Church compel her lost sons to return, since the lost sons themselves compel others to perish? But I insist that the terror of temporal power is useful only as a preparation for instruction. The rod alone does not heal; neither does teaching alone always reach the hardened. But when the fear of …
augustine_hippo · c. 397 · score 0.01
Alypius and Augustine to Castorius, our son deservedly beloved, worthy of honor, and to be received with respect — greetings in the Lord. A praiseworthy abdication for the peace of the Church. 1. The enemy [the devil] has certainly attempted what was in his power; but the Almighty has overcome him, to whom we sing: "Yo …
augustine_hippo · c. 413 · score 0.01
The question you proposed to me from the Epistle of the Apostle Peter — as I think you are aware — has always troubled us greatly: how those words are to be understood as spoken concerning the underworld. I therefore lay the same question back before you, so that either you yourself, or someone you may find who is able …
augustine_hippo · c. 399 · score 0.01
You are evading without cause, since what sort of person you are is plain for all to see. The brothers have told me what they discussed with you. Good — you do not fear death. But you ought to fear the death you bring upon yourself by blaspheming God in this way. And as for your understanding that this visible death, w …
augustine_hippo · c. 395 · score 0.01
And those who have done this most ably have found that the waxing and waning of the moon are due to the turning of its globe, and not to any such actual addition to or diminution of its substance as is supposed by the foolish Manichæans, who say that as a ship is filled, so the moon is filled with a fugitive portion of …
augustine_hippo · c. 417 · score 0.01
This is why I write: there is a most destructive error concerning grace. Certain people think that whatever justice, self-control, piety, or chastity we have in us comes from ourselves, because God created our nature so — that beyond revealing knowledge to us, he gives us no further help to do by loving what we have le …
augustine_hippo · c. 401 · score 0.01
How many of these now rejoice with us, accusing the former burden of their destructive habit, and confess that it was right for us to trouble them, lest they should perish in the sickness of ancient custom as in a deadly sleep! But some say these measures do not help. Should medicine be neglected because some cases are …
augustine_hippo · c. 392 · score 0.01
Would that he pursued this question in such a way that he did not so openly blaspheme the Church spread throughout the whole world, except for the Romans and still a few others in the West. For who can endure that, concerning all the Eastern peoples and many Western Christian peoples as well, concerning so many servant …
augustine_hippo · c. 389 · score 0.01
Augustine to Maximus of Madaura. 1. Are we having a serious discussion, or do you simply want us to amuse each other? From the tone of your letter, I honestly cannot tell whether it is the weakness of your position or the charm of your personality that has led you to be more witty than weighty in your arguments. First, …
augustine_hippo · c. 401 · score 0.01
Those who believed in Christ exalted above the heavens, even without seeing him, were nevertheless denying his glory over all the earth, even while seeing it — though the Prophet embraced both truths in one sentence. Those formerly savage enemies of ours, who heavily harassed our peace and quiet with various forms of v …