rustics, who had been standing in a safe spot. Then truly a shout was raised to heaven; the heathen were amazed by the miracle; the monks wept for joy; and the name of Christ was extolled by all in common. The well-known result was that on that day salvation came to that region. For there was hardly one of that immense multitude of heathen who did not desire the imposition of hands, and, abandoning his impious errors, believe in the Lord Jesus. Certainly, before the times of Martin, very few, nay, almost none, in those regions had received the name of Christ; but through his virtues and example it has prevailed to such an extent that now there is no place there which is not filled with either very crowded churches or monasteries. For wherever he destroyed heathen temples, there he was accustomed to build, immediately, either churches or monasteries.

CHAPTER II. THE CHURCH OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE IN THE FIFTH CENTURY

The period between the closing years of the fourth century, in which the struggle was still going on between heathenism and Christianity (§ 81), and the end of the Roman Empire of the West is of fundamental importance in the study of the history of the Christian Church of the West. In this period were laid the foundations for its characteristic theology and its ecclesiastical organization. The former was the work of St. Augustine, the most powerful religious personality of the Western Church. In this he built partly upon the traditions of the West, but also, largely, upon his own religious experience (§ 82). These elements were developed and modified by the two great controversies in which, by discussion, he formulated more completely than ever had been done before the idea of the Church and its sacraments in opposition to the Donatists (83), and the doctrines of sin and grace in opposition to a moralistic Christianity, represented by Pelagius (§ 84). The leading ideas of Augustine, however, could be appropriated only as they were modified and brought into conformity with

the dominant ecclesiastical and sacramental system of the Church, in the semi-Pelagian controversy, which found a tardy termination in the sixth century (§ 85). In the meanwhile the inroads of the barbarians with all the horrors of the invasions, the confusion in the political, social, and ecclesiastical organization, threatened the overthrow of all established institutions. In the midst of this anarchy, the Roman See, in the work of Innocent I, and still more clearly in the work of Leo the Great, enunciated its ideals and became the centre, not merely of ecclesiastical unity, in which it had often to contest its claims with the divided Church organizations of the West, but still more as the ideal centre of unity for all those that held to the old order of the Empire with its culture and social life (§ 86).

§ 81. The Western Church toward the End of the Fourth Century.

§ 82. Augustine's Life and Place in Western Thought. $83. Augustine and the Donatist Schism.

$84. The Pelagian Controversy.

$85. The semi-Pelagian Controversy.

§ 86. The Roman Church as the Centre of the Catholic Roman Element of the West.

$81. THE WESTERN CHURCH TOWARD THE END OF THE FOURTH CENTURY

Heathenism lingered as a force in society longer in the West than in the East, not merely among the peasantry, but among the higher classes. This was partly due to the conservatism of the aristocratic classes and the superior form in which the religious philosophy of Neo-Platonism had been presented to the West. This presentation was due, in no small part, to the work of such philosophers as Victorinus, who translated the earlier works of the Neo-Platonists so that it escaped the tendencies, represented by Jamblichus, toward theurgy and magic, and an alliance with polytheism and popular superstition. Victorinus himself became a Christian, passing by an easy

transition from Neo-Platonism to Christianity; a course in which he was followed by Augustine, and, no doubt, by others as well.

Augustine, Confessiones, VIII, 2. (MSL, 32: 79.)

The conversion of Victorinus.

To Simplicianus then I went-the father of Ambrose,1 in receiving Thy grace,2 and whom he truly loved as a father. To him I narrated the windings of my error. But when I mentioned to him that I had read certain books of the Platonists, which Victorinus, formerly professor of rhetoric at Rome (who died a Christian, as I had heard), had translated into Latin, he congratulated me that I had not fallen upon the writings of other philosophers, which were full of fallacies and deceit, "after the rudiments of this world" [Col. 2: 8], whereas they, in many respects, led to the belief in God and His word. Then to exhort me to the humility of Christ, hidden from the wise and revealed to babes, he spoke of Victorinus himself, whom, while he was in Rome, he had known intimately; and of him he related that about which I will not be silent. For it contained great praise of Thy grace, which ought to be confessed unto Thee, how that most learned old man, highly skilled in all the liberal sciences, who had read, criticised, and explained so many works of the philosophers; the teacher of so many noble senators, who, also, as a mark of his excellent discharge of his duties, had both merited and obtained a statue in the Roman Forum (something men of this world esteem a great honor), he, who had been, even to that age, a worshipper of idols and a participator in the sacrilegious rites to which almost all the nobility of Rome were addicted, and had inspired the people with the love of "monster gods of every sort, and the barking Anubis, who hold their weapons against Neptune and Venus and Minerva" [Vergil, Æneid, VIII, 736 f.], and those whom Rome once conquered, she now worshipped, all of which Victorinus, now 1 At the time a bishop.

2I. e., Simplicianus had baptized Ambrose.

old, had defended so many years with vain language,1 he now blushed not to be a child of Thy Christ, and an infant at Thy fountain, submitting his neck to the yoke of humility, and subduing his forehead to the reproach of the cross.

O Lord, Lord, who hast bowed the heavens and come down, touched the mountains and they smoked [Psalm 144: 5], by what means didst Thou convey Thyself into that bosom? He used to read, Simplicianus said, the Holy Scriptures and most studiously sought after and searched out all the Christian writings, and he said to Simplicianus, not openly, but secretly and as a friend: "Knowest thou that I am now a Christian?" To which he replied: "I will not believe it, nor will I rank you among the Christians unless I see you in the Church of Christ." Whereupon he replied derisively: "Do walls then make Christians?" And this he often said, that already he was a Christian; and Simplicianus used as often to make the same answer, and as often the conceit of the walls was repeated. For he was fearful of offending his friends, proud demon worshippers, from the height of whose Babylonian pride, as from the cedars of Lebanon, which the Lord had not yet broken [Psalm 29 5], he seriously thought a storm of enmity would descend upon him. But after that he had derived strength from reading and inquiry, and feared lest he should be denied by Christ before the holy angels if he was now afraid to confess Him before men [Matt. 10: 33], and appeared to himself to be guilty of a great fault in being ashamed of the sacraments of the humility of Thy word, and not being ashamed of the sacrilegious rites of those proud demons, which as a proud imitator he had accepted, he became bold-faced against vanity and shamefaced toward the truth, and suddenly and unexpectedly said to Simplicianus, as he himself informed me: "Let us go to the Church; I wish to be made a Christian.” And he, unable to contain himself for joy, went with him. When he had been admitted to the first sacrament of instruction [i. e., the Catechumenate], he, not long after, gave in his 'This is hardly fair to Victorinus and his pre-Christian religious views.

name that he might be regenerated by baptism. Meanwhile Rome marvelled and the Church rejoiced; the proud saw and were enraged; they gnashed with their teeth and melted away [Psalm 92: 9]. But the Lord God was the hope of Thy servant, and He regarded not vanities and lying madness [Psalm 40 : 4].

Finally the hour arrived when he should make profession of his faith, which, at Rome, they, who are about to approach Thy grace, are accustomed to deliver from an elevated place, in view of the faithful people, in a set form of words learnt by heart. But the presbyters, he said, offered Victorinus the privilege of making his profession more privately, as was the custom to do to those who were likely, on account of bashfulness, to be afraid; but he chose, rather, to profess his salvation in the presence of the holy assembly. For it was not salvation that he had taught in rhetoric and yet he had publicly professed that. How much less, therefore, ought he, when pronouncing Thy word, to dread Thy meek flock, who, in the delivery of his own words, had not feared the mad multitudes! So then, when he ascended to make his profession, and all recognized him, they whispered his name one to the other, with a tone of congratulation. And who was there among them that did not know him? And there ran through the mouths of all the rejoicing multitude a low murmur: "Victorinus! Victorinus!" Sudden was the burst of exultation at the sight of him, and as sudden the hush of attention that they might hear him. He pronounced the true faith with an excellent confidence, and all desired to take him to their hearts, and by their love and joy they did take him to them; such were the hands with which they took him.

§ 82. AUGUSTINE'S LIFE AND PLACE IN THE WESTERN CHURCH

Aurelius Augustinus, the greatest of the Latin fathers, was born 354, at Tagaste, in Numidia. He was educated to be a teacher of rhetoric, and practised his profession at Carthage,