appear in his pages, although in no great number, and chiefly in his familiar epistles, or discourses addressed to the multitude; and then very often they are wilfully introduced that his hearers may understand him the better. His classical culture preserves him for the most from phrases and idioms of a needless offence, and in a great degree from the harsh Africanisms of Tertullian and Arnobius. Nor are there any tokens of that reluctancy in the language to yield itself freely to all the uses whereto he would put it, of which we are so often painfully conscious in reading the former of those writers. On the contrary, his diction appears ever as the willing servant of his thought;* full and free, it is a garment in

* One great test of mastery over a language is familiarity with its synonyms, and power of distinguishing accurately between them. In this Augustine excels, having an evident pleasure in tracing such finer distinctions, which he does often with no common subtlety and skill. Thus he distinguishes between flagitium and facinus: Quod agit indomita cupiditas ad corrumpendum animum et corpus suum, flagitium vocatur; quod autem agit ut alteri noceat, facinus dicitur; (De Doctr. Christ. 1. 3. c. 10; cf. DÖDERLEIN's Synon. v. 2, p. 145 ;) again, between delictum and peccatum, (Qu. in Lev. qu. 20,) keeping clear of the common error, which makes one the sin of omission, the other of commission; (see DÖDERLEIN's Synon. v. 2, p. 139 ;) rather the delictum is the desertio boni; peccatum, perpetratio mali. So too, between æmulatio and invidia; (λog and p0óvos, Expos. ad Gal. v. 20;) æmulatio est dolor animi, cum alius pervenit ad rem, quam duo pluresve appetebant, et nisi ab uno haberi non potest: Invidia vero dolor animi est, cum indignus videtur aliquis assequi étiam quod tu non appetebas. So also he discriminates between arrha and pignus; (Serm. 23. c. 8, 9, and Serm. 378;) curiosus and studiosus; (De Util. Cred. c. 9;) lætitia and gaudium, cautio and

the flowing and graceful folds of which his thoughts are amply yet not redundantly arrayed. He knows what the language can do, and oftentimes tests its powers to the uttermost; his works, indeed, are full of passages of an almost unequalled eloquence.* Now and then, it is true,

metus, volo and cupio; (De Civ. Dei, 1. 14. c. 8;) astutus, prudens, and sapiens; (De Gen. ad Lit. 1. 9. c. 2;) precor, imprecor, deprecor. (Ep. 149. c. 2.) His etymologies too are almost always correct; as prodigia, quod porro dicant; (De Civ. Dei, 1. 28. c. 8;) adulterium, quasi ad alterum; (Serm. 51, c. 13;) or if they are such as some would call in question, such as his derivation of religio from religare, rather than relegere, (Retract. 1. 1. c. 13,) yet here, if he has many against him, yet also some with him, and he was aware of, and had once inclined to, the preferable etymology. (De Civ. Dei, l. 10. c. 3.) His derivation of abominor as though it was abhominor, so to hate one as not to esteem him a man, (Serm. 9. c. 9,) might seem indeed in more ways than one to militate against his Latin scholarship; but elsewhere he rightly derives it from omen; (Retract. 1. 1. c. 13;) and I have no doubt that the other, like so many of the ancient etymologies, which are quite misunderstood when they are taken in any other spirit, was intended for a calembourg and no more. In like manner when he says, Est enim severitas, quasi sæva veritas, Dei, (Serm. 171. c. 5,) he doubtless offers this as a moral rather than philological etymology, though indeed Döderlein puts the word in connexion with verus, (Synon. v. 1, p. 77,) and other etymologists with sævus.

* As for instance this passage, upon the Church and her teaching (De Mor. Eccles. c. 30): Tu pueriliter pueros, fortiter juvenes, quiete senes, prout cujusque non corporis tantum sed et animi ætas est, exerces et doces. Tu feminas veris suis non ad explendam libidinem, sed ad propagandam prolem, et ad rei familiaris societatem, castâ et fideli obedientiâ subjicis. Tu viros conjugibus, non ad illudendum imbecilliorem sensum sed sinceri amoris legibus subjicis. Tu parentibus filios liberâ quâdam servitute subjungis, parentes filiis piâ dominatione præponis. Tu fratribus fratres religionis vinculo fir

in the antithetic pointedness of his sentences, though the antithesis never perils, but is made alway to subserve, the sense, or again in the sustained balance of some longdrawn periods, we are just reminded that he had once taught rhetoric in the capitals of Africa and of Italy.

miore atque artiore quam sanguinis nectis. Tu omnis generis propinquitatem et affinitatis necessitudinem, servatis naturæ voluntatisque nexibus, mutuâ caritate constringis. Tu dominis servos non tam conditionis necessitate, quam officii delectatione doces adhærere. Tu dominos servis, summi Dei communis Domini consideratione placabiles, et ad consulendum quam coërcendum propensiores facis. Tu cives civibus, gentes gentibus, et prorsus homines primorum parentum recordatione, non societate tantum sed quâdam etiam fraternitate conjungis. Doces reges prospicere populis, mones populos se subdere regibus. Quibus honor debeatur, quibus affectus, quibus reverentia, quibus timor, quibus consolatio, quibus admonitio, quibus cohortatio, quibus disciplina, quibus objurgatio, quibus supplicium, sedulo doces, ostendens quemadmodum et non omnibus omnia, et omnibus caritas, et nulli debeatur injuria.

IN

CHAPTER III

N the first chapter of this essay I considered and sought to illustrate by quotations from Augustine's own writings the tone and temper of gratitude and affection, of humility and reverence, with which he approached, and would fain lead others to approach, the word of God. I brought this into earliest consideration, as being indeed the source out of which all his excellencies in the unfolding of its deeper and spiritual meaning had their rise; as that for the absence of which all treasures of knowledge and learning, had he possessed them, would have been an insufficient compensation: and then in the next chapter I sought to estimate, as also important, though in a far inferior degree, in what measure he was himself outwardly furnished and accomplished for the work which he undertook. I shall now proceed to gather from his writings some of those principles and canons of interpretation, which either adopting from others, or generalizing from his own experience, he has laid down, as needful to be observed, if Scripture interpretation is not to be abandoned to merest hazard and caprice; which I shall do without implying thereby that he was himself always faithful to these rules; and I shall at the same time endeavour to

trace such external circumstances of his own position, as may be supposed most effectually to have wrought in the forming and further unfolding of his system of interpretation.

We may first observe that Augustine very often presses excellently well the duty of interpreting Scripture according to the analogy of faith; in other words, that no single sayings there shall receive such an explanation as shall put them in contradiction with the whole body and complex of doctrinal truth drawn from other Scriptures; that the explanation which does place any single passage in this opposition must, however plausible it may seem, at once be rejected; since all interpretation must be, so to speak, panharmonic. Thus he is refuting those who were fain to find in 1 Cor. iii. 15, a declaration that evil livers should yet, if only they were members of the Catholic Church, after passing through certain purgatorial fires, attain to final salvation; and who said that the apostle had these in his eye, when he spoke of some who should be saved "yet so as by fire." This cannot be his meaning, Augustine answers, because the entire testimony of Scripture in à multitude of distinctest passages avouches the contrary to this; which passages it would be absurd to override and overrule by that which would be a doubtful interpretation of an obscure passage at the best, even if these were not there to prove that it is a false one.* And he well lays

* De Octo Dulcit. Quæst. qu. 1; De Fide et Oper. c. 15; De Fide, Spe, et Carit. c. 57: Quidam ita intelligendum putant, ut qui, quum