St. Augustine
locus, exi, inquit, in vias et saepes et compelle intrare. Quapropter, si ambularetis quieti extra hoc convivium sanctae unitatis ecclesiae, tamquam in viis vos inveniremus; nunc vero, quia per multa mala et saeva quae in nostros committitis, tamquam spinis et asperitate pleni estis, vos tamquam in saepibus invenimus et intrare compellimus. Qui compellitur, quo non vult cogitur, sed, cum intraverit, iam volens pascitur. Cohibe itaque iam iniquum et inpacatum animum, ut in vera ecclesia Christi invenias salutare convivium.
De trinitate, quae deus summus et verus est, libros iuvenis inchoavi, senex edidi. Omiseram quippe hoc opus, posteaquam comperi praereptos mihi esse sive subreptos, antequam eos absolverem et retractatos, ut mea dispositio fuerat, expolirem. Non enim singillatim, sed omnes simul edere ea ratione decreveram, quoniam praecedentibus consequentes inquisitione proficiente nectuntur. Cum ergo per
Letters of St. Augustine
lord said, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.’ ” Wherefore, if you were walking quietly outside this feast of the Church’s holy unity, we should find you, so to speak, in the “highways”; but as it is, you are, so to say, full of thorns and sharpness, by reason of the many cruel sufferings you inflict on our people, so we find you, as it were, in the “hedges” and compel you to come in. He who is compelled is forced to go where he has no wish to go, but when he has come in, he partakes of the feast right willingly. So curb your hostile and rebellious spirit, that you may find the feast of salvation within the true Church of Christ.
I was young when I began my work on the Trinity,b the supreme, true God; I am old now when it is published. I had indeed abandoned the task, after learning that someone had stolen it from me or at least stolen a march on me before I could finish and revise it and give it the final touch I had intended. For I had decided not to publish the books separately but all together, for the reason that the later books are linked up with the earlier in a progressive inquiry.
- aThe title papa was applied to all bishops indiscriminately from the third century until the ninth, and only then was reserved to the bishop of Rome (see P. de Labriolle in the Bulletin Du Cange, t. iv. pp. 65–75). For Aurelius see note on p. 40.
- bThe De Trinitate was begun about 400, but the first twelve books having been published without his authority, it was not until 416, in response to several urgent requests, that he completed and published the whole fifteen books (Retract, ii. 15, Epp. cxx. 13, cxliii. 4, clxiv. 2, clxix. 1).