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. 423 · score 0.02
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. 422 · score 0.02
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. 388 · score 0.02
These people met the ignominious end their character deserved, and capped their criminal careers by pretending to die nobly for a good cause — though they knew full well what infamous deeds had condemned them. The tombs of these individuals (it is a folly almost beneath our notice) are thronged by crowds of simpletons …
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. 397 · score 0.02
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 …
augustine_hippo · c. 396 · score 0.01
Letter 59 — To Victorinus: A Badly-Organized Council Summons (A.D. 401) To my most blessed lord and venerable father Victorinus, my brother in the priesthood — Augustine sends greetings in the Lord. Your summons to the Council reached me late on the evening of the fifth day before the Ides of November, and I was unwell …
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. 406 · score 0.01
And if the pleasures of this world, brief and sordid as they are, are so loved, how much more ardently should the pure and infinite joys of the world to come be sought! Thinking on these things, do not be sluggish in good works, so that in due season you may come to the harvest of what you have sown. 2. For it has been …
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. 398 · score 0.01
I received three letters at once — or rather three short treatises — from your Dignity through the deacon Cyprian, containing what you call various questions but what I perceive to be criticisms of my works. If I wished to respond to everything, a book-length volume would be needed. Still, I shall try not to exceed the …
augustine_hippo · c. 390 · score 0.01
Go, learn with what richness of mind he offers to God the sacrifice of praise, returning to Him all the good he has received from Him -- knowing that if he failed to store everything in the One from whom he received it, he would lose it all. 6. Why are you so agitated? Why so wavering? Why do you turn your ear away fro …
augustine_hippo · c. 397 · score 0.01
When he begged me to give him a letter explaining his case to the presbyter of Armema in the district of Bulla, the area he had come from, so as to prevent any exaggerated suspicion following him there and to give him the chance to live more uprightly — since he would have no priestly duties — I was moved by compassion …
augustine_hippo · c. 387 · score 0.01
From this we can reasonably suppose that even when thought is quietly at work, and no physical effect is detectable by us, there may be effects detectable by beings of an airy or ethereal nature [angels or spirits in late antique cosmology], whose perceptive powers are so acute that compared to theirs, ours barely dese …
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. 387 · score 0.01
Letter 10 (389 AD) To Nebridius — Augustine sends greetings. 1. No question of yours has ever troubled me as much as the remark in your last letter where you scold me for not trying harder to arrange things so we can live together. That is a serious charge, and if it were true, it would be devastating. But since there …
augustine_hippo · c. 387 · score 0.01
Letter 9 (389 AD) To Nebridius — Augustine sends greetings. 1. You know my mind well, but you may not realize how much I long for your company. God will grant me this great blessing someday. I read your letter — so genuine in what it expressed — where you complain about being alone, seemingly abandoned by the friends w …
augustine_hippo · c. 397 · score 0.01
Far be it from me to presume to attack anything your Grace has written. It is quite enough for me to defend my own views without finding fault with others. But it is well known to a man of your wisdom that every person is content with his own opinion, and that it is the puerile vanity of the young to seek glory by assa …
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. 388 · score 0.01
Maximus of Madaura to Augustine. 1. I keep hoping to receive frequent communications from you, and to be stimulated by that reasoning of yours which recently challenged me in the most pleasant way — without any breach of good manners. So I have not held back from replying in the same spirit, lest you take my silence fo …