Resultados25 letters/passages
augustine_hippo · c. 404 · score 0.02
Your letter filled our heart with great sorrow, in which you asked that I reply at some length; yet for such evils, more lengthy groaning and weeping are owed than lengthy books. For the whole world is afflicted by such calamities that almost no part of the earth exists where such things as you described are not commit …
augustine_hippo · c. 404 · score 0.02
It was in the hidden judgment and mercy of God to provide for the salvation of those kings in that way. Against King Antiochus, who killed the Maccabees with cruel torments, God chose not to provide in the same way but punished the hard king's heart with more severe judgment through their most glorious suffering. What …
augustine_hippo · c. 423 · score 0.02
Augustine to Bishop Honoratus, greetings. You have asked me the most difficult practical question a bishop can face: when the barbarians approach, should the bishop flee? I have thought about this for a long time — longer than you might expect, because the question is not hypothetical for us in Africa. The barbarians a …
augustine_hippo · c. 404 · score 0.02
We should not be so contrary to ourselves as to believe when we read and then complain when they are fulfilled. Rather, even those who were unbelieving when they read or heard these things written in the holy Books should now at least believe when they see them being fulfilled — so that from these great pressures, as i …
augustine_hippo · c. 423 · score 0.02
Their advance is relentless. The cities that stand in their path will face siege, destruction, and massacre. The bishops in those cities will face the question you have asked me. My answer, for myself, is this: I will not flee. I cannot. My people cannot flee, and I will not leave them. If the Lord takes me, he takes m …
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. 404 · score 0.01
For you are just in all that you have done to us, and all your works are true, and your ways are right, and all your judgments are truth. You have executed true judgments in all that you have brought upon us and upon the holy city of our fathers, Jerusalem; for in truth and justice you have brought all these things upo …
augustine_hippo · c. 423 · score 0.01
Augustine to Darius, greetings. I received your letter and your gift — a book — and I thank you for both. The letter warmed my heart. The book fed my mind. A man who sends both is a friend indeed. You say you admire my writings. I am embarrassed by praise, but I will not pretend I do not hear it. What I will say is thi …
augustine_hippo · c. 402 · score 0.01
To the distinguished lord, most deservedly excellent, and greatly honored son in the love of Christ, Olympius: Augustine sends greetings in the Lord. Although as soon as we heard you had been deservedly elevated — when the very report was not yet certain to us — we believed nothing else about your disposition toward th …
augustine_hippo · c. 394 · score 0.01
The most notorious crime of your savagery, and your unheard-of cruelty, shakes the earth and strikes heaven, so that in your streets and shrines blood gleams and murder resounds. Among you the Roman laws lie buried, the dread of righteous courts is trampled underfoot. Among you there is certainly no reverence or fear f …
augustine_hippo · c. 402 · score 0.01
What I urge upon your Excellency by petition and suggestion, I have no doubt is the wish of all my colleagues throughout Africa. I judge that at the first opportunity it can and should easily be expedited, so that, as I said, these vain people — whose salvation we seek even as they oppose us — may know that the laws se …
augustine_hippo · c. 422 · score 0.01
Farewell, dear friend. I pray for you daily. [Context: Count Boniface was the Roman military governor of Africa and one of the most powerful men in the Western Empire. Augustine had known him for years and had once hoped he would enter the religious life. Instead, Boniface became entangled in the deadly politics of the …
augustine_hippo · c. 393 · score 0.01
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. 409 · score 0.01
Concerning the dissension itself that arose among men (who, whatever they were, surely do not prejudice the promises of God, who said to Abraham: In your seed shall all nations be blessed—which was believed when heard as a prophecy and is denied when seen fulfilled), let them consider for now only this briefest and, un …
augustine_hippo · c. 419 · score 0.01
The Emperors Honorius and Theodosius, Augusti, to Bishop Aurelius — greetings. An imperial decree against the Pelagians. 1. Pelagius and Caelestius [the two chief proponents of the heresy denying original sin and the necessity of divine grace], authors of a wicked and execrable doctrine, have been condemned by the judg …
augustine_hippo · c. 393 · score 0.01
Publicola to my beloved and venerable Father Augustine, greetings. I write to you, Father, burdened with questions that may seem trivial to a man of your learning but that weigh on me because I do not know the answers and cannot find peace until I do. Here is my first question. When our people travel through regions wh …
augustine_hippo · c. 397 · score 0.01
And you might even be warned, by the very property you have acquired, how impious are the things you have said against him. If you believe that human law secures your title to what you have bought with money, how much more securely does divine law secure Christ's title to what he has bought with his own blood? He of wh …
augustine_hippo · c. 413 · score 0.01
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. 405 · score 0.01
1. The praise and renown of your administration and your splendid reputation have always given me the greatest delight — both on account of the affection we owe to your personal merits and your goodwill toward us — and yet never until now has my intercession burdened your Excellency with a request for any favor, my mos …
augustine_hippo · c. 396 · score 0.01
For my part, brother Severus, I leave my case to your judgment. I am certain that Christ dwells in your heart, and through Him I implore you to consult Him who presides over your mind submitted to Him — whether a man who had already begun to read in the church entrusted to my care, and who had read not once but a secon …
augustine_hippo · c. 408 · score 0.01
Augustine to Marcellinus, greetings. You have forwarded to me the questions raised by Volusian and his circle of educated friends. Some of these questions are sharp, and I welcome them. Iron sharpens iron, and the Christian faith has nothing to fear from honest inquiry. Their chief objection, as I understand it, is thi …
augustine_hippo · c. 397 · score 0.01
Letter 65 — To the Aged Xantippus: The Case of Abundantius (A.D. 402) To the aged Xantippus, my most blessed lord, worthy of all veneration, my father and colleague in the priestly office — Augustine sends greetings in the Lord. With the respect your worth demands, and earnestly asking for a place in your prayers, I br …
augustine_hippo · c. 423 · score 0.01
Augustine to Alypius, my dearest friend, greetings. I write to you about a matter that weighs on my old heart: the future of the Church in Africa. We are not young anymore, Alypius. The years we have spent together — from the schools of Carthage to the garden in Milan, from that moment of conversion to these long decad …
augustine_hippo · c. 403 · score 0.01
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. 411 · score 0.01
For after that impious and cruel treachery — against which we earnestly but vainly struggled, through the anxiety you shared with us, that the perpetrator might not strike our hearts with such pain and butcher his own conscience with so great a crime — I immediately left Carthage, concealing my departure, lest all thos …