virginibus_ xxii F. No one of the three can effectively be constant xxii, xxiii G. Constancy is rather in the aim, which is always persuasion xxiv-xxvi 1. The speaker’s life is the greater means of persuasion in the third style xxvii-xxviii (Appended Note) The recital of borrowed sermons is permissible xxix Conclusion, with reminder of prayer, in thanksgiving xxx, xxxi The fourth book of the _De doctrina Christiana_ is specifically linked by its proem to the preceding three as setting forth presentation (_modus proferendi_). Books I-III have dealt with study of the subject matter (_inventio_); Book IV is to deal with expression. Augustine thus makes the traditional fivefold division twofold. _Inventio_, which under sophistic had lapsed, he restores to its rightful place and gives it a new application to the exegesis of Scripture. Of the remaining four left to his second heading he discusses only style (_elocutio_). Delivery and memory are mentioned incidentally; plan is omitted. The omission is not negligent. The first chapter warns us not to expect a manual of rhetoric. Nevertheless a modern student cannot help wishing that so suggestive a treatise had both applied to preaching the ancient counsels as to plan and exhibited the New Testament in this aspect. Thus to analyze for imitation not only the style of the Pauline epistles, but their cogency of order, would doubtless have made the work unduly extensive. One hopes that seminarians of the fifth century were stimulated, and that seminarians of the twentieth century will be stimulated, by the example of the treatise itself to study _Romans_ not only for appeal, but for cogency. Meantime Augustine’s fourth book remains one of the most fruitful of all discussions of style in preaching. Who dare say that the defenders of truth should be unarmed against falsehood? While the proponents of error know the art of winning an audience to good will, attention, and open mind,[9] shall the proponents of truth remain ignorant? While the [sophist] states facts concisely, clearly, plausibly,[10] shall the preacher state them so that they are tedious to hear, hard to understand, hard to believe? While the one attacks truth and insinuates falsehood by fallacious argument, shall the other have too little skill either to defend the true or to refute the false? Shall the one, stirring his hearers to error, urging them by the force of oratory, move them by terror, by pity, by joy, by encouragement, and the other slowly and coldly drowse for truth? ii. But to learn such skill from rules, he goes on, is the way rather for boys than for men who have immediately before them the urgent tasks of preaching.