Title: The confessions of St Augustine /
Authors: Thomas, 1380-1471; Pusey, E. B. 1800-1882; Benham, William, 1831-1910
Publisher: P.F. Collier,
Year: 1909
Subjects: Augustine,; Christian saints Algeria Hippo (Extinct city) Biography; Meditations; Christian life; Spiritual life
Abstract: The Imitation of Christ: Book I Admonitions Profitable for the Spiritual Life; Book II Admonitions Concerning the Inner Life; Book III. On inward Consolation; Book IV. Of the Sacrament of the Altar.
Contents: The first book: Confessions of the greatness and unsearchableness of God, of God's mercies in infancy and boyhood, and human wilfulness; of his own sins of idleness, abuse of his studies, and of God's gifts up to his fifteenth year -- The second book: Object of these confessions. Further ills of idleness developed in his sixteenth year. Evils of ill society, which betrayed him into theft -- The third book: His residence at Carthage from his seventeenth to his nineteenth year. Source of his disorders. Love of show. Advance in studies, and love of wisdom. Distaste for scripture. Led astray to the Manichæans. Refutation of some of their tenents. Grief of his mother Monnica at his heresy, and prayers for his conversion. Her vision from God, and answer through a bishop -- The fourth book: Augustine's life from nineteen to eight-and-twenty; himself a Manichæan, and seducing others to the same heresy; partial obedience amidst vanity and sin; consulting astrologers, only partially shaken herein; loss of an early friend, who is converted by being baptised when in a swoon; reflections on grief, on real and unreal friendship, and love of fame; writes on "the fair and fit," yet cannot rightly, through God had given him great talents, since he entertained wrong notions of God; and so even his knowledge he applied ill -- The fifth book: St. Augustine's twenty-ninth year. Faustus, a snare of Satan to many, made an instrument of deliverance to St. Augustine, by showing the ignorance of the Manichees on those things wherein they professed to have divine knowledge. Augustine gives up all thought of going further among the Manichees: is guided to Rome and Milan, where he hears St. Ambrose, leaves the Manichees, and becomes again a Catechumen in the Church Catholic