Already Christian eloquence had reached conspicuous achievement in panegyric and more widely in the field of occasional oratory. The pagan sophist must look to his laurels. But these very triumphs had brought the danger of lapsing into too familiar conventions. What in pagan oratory might be no worse than pretty or merely exciting, in Christian oratory would be meretricious. To hold his difficult course, the preacher, as Augustine reminds him again and again, must at every moment steer for his message. He must never deviate. Though sophistic lost its dominance centuries ago, it has never been quite dead, and it always besets preaching. Therefore a constant concern of homiletic is to exorcise it by a valid rhetoric; and no book has ever revealed this more succinctly, more practically, or more suggestively than the _De doctrina christiana_. FOOTNOTES: [1] Reprinted by courteous permission from vol. XXII (April, 1925) of Proceedings of the (British) Classical Association, to which it was presented under the title _St Augustine and the rhetoric of Cicero_. [2] In _Patrologia latina_ and in the Vienna _Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum_; reprinted, Missouri Lutheran Synod, St. Louis, 1882; translated (1) by Dods (M.), Edinburgh, 1872-1875 (reprinted in Schaff’s Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers), (2) by Baker (W. J. V.) and Bickersteth (C.) in _Preaching and teaching according to St. Augustine_ (Book IV only, with _De catechizandis rudibus_), London, 1907, (3) by Sister Therèse, S.N.D. (IV, with text and commentary), Washington, 1928. To the references and abbreviations at the head of Chapter I add: Barry (Sister Inviolata), _St. Augustine the orator_, Washington, 1924 (in the Catholic University of America Patristic Studies, VI); and Christopher (J. P.), _S. Aureli Augustini ... de catechizandis rudibus_ translated with an introduction and commentary, Washington, 1926 (in the same series, VIII). [3] For detailed analysis, see Barry. [4] Even though the application of the text from _Ecclus._ xxxvii. 20 be questioned, the rebuke of sophistic display, whether in dialectic or in style, is none the less clear. [5] Other allusions may be found in the passages quoted below from vi, from xiv, and from xxv. [6] βαδιζόντων εἰς τὰς τῶν Γαλιλαίων ἐκκλησίας ἐξηγησόμενοι Ματθαῖον καὶ Λουκᾶν. Julian, _Epist._ 42, cited in Gibbon’s twenty-third chapter. [7] ARP 51, 56. The reminiscences of Cicero are so numerous as to show a pervasive preoccupation. See J. B. Eskredge, _The influence of Cicero upon Augustine_, etc. (Chicago dissertation), 1912. [8] E.g., _De oratore_, II. xxi. 88. [9] The traditional maxim for the _exordium_, _reddere auditores benevolos, attentos, dociles_, as again in iv. [10] The traditional maxim for the _narratio_. [11] Exercitatione sive scribendi, sive dictandi, postremo etiam dicendi. Cf. the close of xxi.