[Sidenote: Augustine] St. Augustine (Aurelius Augustinus) was born in 354 A. D. at Tagaste, in Africa. His father was a pagan, his mother a Christian, and in his early years Augustine himself accepted the doctrine of Manicheeism, a sort of mystical materialism, which denied all authority, and claimed to rest entirely upon reason. He was a successful teacher of rhetoric in Africa, at Rome, and at Milan, where he came under the influence of St. Ambrose and was converted. In 388 A. D. he returned to Africa, became presbyter at Hippo in 392, and bishop in 395 A. D. His death took place in 430 A. D. His nature was many sided, and composed of apparently contradictory elements. He was a mystic speculator, a sharp reasoner, at one time harsh and uncompromising, at another full of tenderness, an original thinker yet a believer in authority, dreamer, poet, philosopher, rhetorician, and quibbler in one. His writings are in part speculations on theology, in part ponderings on the soul, its nature and its relations to God, and in part controversial treatises, sermons, commentaries, and letters. The best known among them are the _Confessions_, in which Augustine gives many details of his life, and records the doubts that perplexed him, and the _City of God_ (_De Civitate Dei_), a work of his old age, in which he contrasts the city (or better, the state) of this world with the ideal city of God. This work was written in reply to the pagans, who claimed that the sack of Rome by Alaric was due to the neglect of the ancient worship. It consists of twenty-two books, in the first ten of which the “vain opinions adverse to the Christian religion” are refuted, while the twelve remaining are devoted to a presentation of Christian truth, though each division contains many digressions, and in each the part of the subject properly belonging to the other is treated as occasion demands. In many parts of this great work reference is made to Cicero’s _De Re Publica_ and other philosophical writings, and Augustine’s dialogue _Contra Academicos_ is an evident imitation of Cicero’s _Academics_. Yet it can not be said that Augustine’s style is modelled upon that of Cicero. It is rather a style which had gradually developed among Christian writers, in which the periodic structure of the Ciceronian age is abandoned for the most part, many words unknown to strictly classical Latin have been introduced, partly from the popular speech and partly by new formation to express abstract ideas, not a few Biblical phrases are employed, and some slight changes in syntax are noticeable. This is the Latin of the church, which has remained nearly as St. Augustine left it, except in so far as the strictly classical element grew less in the centuries preceding the Renaissance. For St. Augustine the “state” of this world still means the Roman empire, though the eternal city had been sacked by the Goths, but the time seems to him not far distant when the state