Chapter 37 Chapter Three The Three Magi of the Church

St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Augustine and Pope Gregory the Great are known as the Doctors of the Western Church.The first three of them belong to the same era; the last belongs to a later era.In this chapter I begin with an overview of the lives of the first three and their times; and then in the next I describe the doctrine of St. Augustine, for he is the most important of the three to us. Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine were very active during a brief period of Catholic victory in the Roman Empire and barbarian invasions.All three were young during the reign of Julian the Apostate; Jerome lived ten years after Rome was sacked by the Goths under King Alaric; Augustine lived until the Vandals invaded Africa, And died when the Vandals besieged his diocese, Hippin.Soon after their time, the rulers of Italy, Spain, and Africa were not only barbarians; they were also heretics of the order of Arians.Civilization continued to decline for centuries, and it took nearly a thousand years before Christendom produced their three academic and cultural rivals.Their authority was revered throughout the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages; they fashioned the model which shaped the Church as no one else could.Broadly speaking, St. Ambrose established the ecclesiastical view of the relationship between church and state; St. Jerome provided the Western Church with the Latin translation of the Bible and most of the impetus for the realization of monasticism.At the same time, St. Augustine fixed the theology of the church up to the Reformation, and most of the teachings of Luther and Calvin later.Few men have surpassed these three in their influence on the course of history.St. Ambrose's successful assertion that the Church should be independent of the secular state was a new revolutionary doctrine which survived until the Reformation.In the seventeenth century Hobbes fought against this doctrine, and the chief object of his refutation was St. Ambrose.St. Augustine was at the forefront of theological debates in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, supported by Protestants and Jansenists; but opposed by Orthodox Catholics.

At the end of the fourth century AD, the bishop of Milan, the capital of the Western Roman Empire, was Ambrose.His position gave him frequent opportunities to contact the emperor.When he talked with the emperor, he used to regard himself as an equal, or sometimes as a superior.His dealings with the court illustrate the general contrast of contemporary features: the state is impotent, ruled by unprincipled self-interested men who have no policy to speak of but expediency.The Church, however, was in the ascendant, led by a group of people who were ready to sacrifice all personal interests for the benefit of the Church.They had a long-term policy and thus brought victories for a thousand years to posterity.Fanaticism and superstition, though these feats are indeed offset to some extent, without which no reform movement would have succeeded.

St. Ambrose had various opportunities to become famous in the service of the country. His father, also named Ambrose, was a high-ranking government official-the governor of the Gauls.St. Ambrose was probably born in Tollef, a frontier town.In order to prevent the Germanic invasion, the Roman army was stationed here.St. Ambrose was taken to Rome at the age of thirteen, where he received a good education - including a thorough grounding in Greek.As an adult he specialized in law and achieved great success in it; at the age of thirty he was appointed governor of Leguria and Emeria.Nevertheless, four years later he broke away from secular politics, defeated an Arian candidate, and was made bishop of Milan to the cheers of the crowd.He gave all his property to the poor.At the risk of personal attacks from time to time, he dedicated the rest of his life to the cause of the church.It is true that this choice was not motivated by worldly motives, but even so it was a wise choice.Even if he becomes emperor in the country, it is impossible for him to give full play to his administrative ability as he handles religious affairs as a bishop.

During the first nine years of St. Ambrose's presidency, the emperor of the Western Roman Empire was Gracean, a good and careless Catholic.He neglected political affairs because of his addiction to hunting, and was finally assassinated.His successor was the usurper Maximus, who owned most of the Western Roman Empire, but it was Greshan's underage brother Valentinian II who succeeded him on the Italian throne.At first, his mother, Justina, the queen of the previous emperor Valentinian I, was regent.But she was an Arius, so a dispute between her and St. Ambrose was inevitable. All three saints described in this chapter wrote numerous letters, many of which have survived to this day.We thus know them in greater detail than any pagan philosopher of the Middle Ages, or all the monks of the Middle Ages, with few exceptions.St. Augustine's letters to all kinds of people are mainly about the doctrine and the precepts of the church; St. Jerome's letters are mostly written to women, advising them how to keep their virginity; but the most important and most interesting of St. Ambrose Letters, however, were addressed to the emperors, pointing out where they had neglected their duties as emperors; or sometimes congratulating them for fulfilling their duties as emperors.

The first public problem that St. Ambrose had to solve was that of the altar and statue of Victory in Rome.Paganism persisted longer than anywhere else in the capital's senatorial families, and official religion was held in the hands of an aristocratic clergyman class, combined with the imperial pride of world conquerors.The statue of Victory in the Senate was removed by Constantine's son, Constantius; but it was restored by the apostate Julian.Emperor Gracean removed it again; so the representatives of the Senate, headed by Simacus, the mayor of Rome, renewed their request for restoration.

Symachus, who also played a part in Augustine's career, was a prominent figure in a distinguished family.He was a wealthy, aristocratic and cultured pagan.In 382 A.D., he was expelled from Rome by Emperor Gracean in opposition to the removal of the statue of the goddess of victory, but he was appointed mayor of Rome in 384.He was the grandfather of the eponymous Symachus, the eminent official under Theodoric.And this eponymous Symachus was Boiseus' father-in-law. The Christian senators rose against it, and their wishes were granted the emperor's approval by the support of St. Ambrose and Pope Damasus.After the death of the Emperor Gracean, Simmachus and the pagan senators asked the new emperor Valentinian II to do the same in AD 384.In order to prevent their attempt, Ambrose pointed out in his report to the emperor that just as all Romans were obliged to perform military service to the emperor, he (the emperor) was also obliged to serve the Almighty God.He wrote, "Let no one take advantage of your majesty's youth; if he who makes such a request is a heathen, he is trying to bind your majesty's spirit with his own superstitions, which is very unjust; but he should use his How zealous your Majesty is to be zealous for the true faith, who with all the passion of truth has defended false things.” He also said that it is persecution to compel Christians to swear oaths on the altars of idols. "If it is a civil case, the right of reply may be left to the opposition; however, this is a religious case, so the bishop requests... If your majesty really has other rulings, we bishops must not endure this for long, or turn a deaf ear to it; your majesty certainly can Come into the church, but His Majesty will not find a priest at that time, and if he finds one, it must be someone who opposes His Majesty."

In a second letter, he pointed out that the funds of the church had been used for purposes never paid for by other pagan temples. "The property of the church is used to keep the poor alive. Let them count how many captives the temple has redeemed, what food they have provided for the poor, and what exiles they have provided for living expenses." This is a convincing argument. , which is at the same time an argument amply substantiated by Christian practice. St. Ambrose's argument prevailed.But Eugenius, the later usurper who favored the pagans, restored the altar and its statues.It was not until the victory of Theodosius over Eugenius in AD 394 that the question was finally resolved, according to Christian wishes.

Bishop Ambrose was initially friendly with the royal family.He was a member of the diplomatic mission sent to the usurper Maximus at a time when people feared Maximus' invasion of Italy.But soon the following serious dispute arose.The Arian empress Justina demanded that a church in Milan be surrendered to the Arians, but Ambrose refused.The crowd supported Ambros, and the Basirica was packed with crowds.A contingent of Arian Goths was sent to forcefully occupy the place, but they were as close as brothers to the crowd.In an impassioned letter to his sister Ambrose said: "Counts and tribunes have come, and they have compelled me to hand over Basirica hastily, and claim that it is the execution of the Emperor's power, since everything is It is within the power of the emperor. I replied that if the emperor wants something that belongs to me, such as my land, money, or similar private property, although everything I have has long belonged to the poor, I will not refuse, However, everything that belongs to God is not under the imperial power. "If you need my hereditary property, please confiscate it; if you want my body, I will go immediately. Are you going to throw me in jail or put me to death?" What? I shall take it gladly. I neither want to protect myself by the crowd, nor cling to the altar and beg for my life; I was really horrified when the people defended Basilica, and there was a massacre that would do harm to the whole city. I prayed that God would not let me live to see such a great city, or the whole Italy, devastated."

This horror is not exaggerated, because the Gothic army is very likely to act brutally.Just as they did twenty years later when they sacked Rome.Ambrose's toughness depends on the support of the masses.He was reproached for stirring up the crowd, but he replied, "It is within my power not to stir them up, but it is in God's hands to calm them down." , so no one in the Arius sect dared to stand up.Authorities formally ordered him to hand over Basilica, and the army was ordered to use force if necessary.They finally refused to use force, however, and the emperor was forced to make concessions.A great victory was won in the struggle for the independence of the church; Ambrose proved that the state must be subordinate to the church in certain matters, and by this established a new principle which is still of importance to this day.

Then he had a conflict with the emperor Theodosius.A synagogue was burned, and the earl of Eastern Rome reported that it was at the instigation of the local bishop.The emperor decreed to punish the active arsonist; at the same time, the bishop was ordered to rebuild the synagogue.St. Ambrose neither admitted nor denied the bishop's complicity; but expressed his indignation that the emperor had favored the Jews against the Christians.If the bishop disobeyed the order and persisted, he would become a martyr.If he yields, he will become an apostate.If the count decided to use Christian money to rebuild the synagogue, in which case the emperor would have an apostate count and Christian money would be used to support heresy. "Should the Church's property be plundered to build a synagogue for the unbelief of the Jews? Should the funds of the Church, brought to Christians by the gift of Christ, be turned over to the coffers of the unbelievers?" he continued: "Oh, Your Majesty, probably this is what prompted you to do this in order to maintain law and order. But which one is more important between showing law and order or the righteous name of religion? Judgment requires obedience to religion. Oh, Your Majesty the Emperor. Have you not heard that when the Temple of Jerusalem was rebuilt by Emperor Julian's decree, were those who cleaned up the ruins consumed by fire?"

Apparently, in the opinion of St. Ambrose, the burning of a synagogue deserved no punishment.This is an example of how the Church, immediately after gaining power, began to instigate anti-Semitism. Between the emperor and St. Ambrose, the next conflict brought greater prestige to the latter.In AD 390, while the emperor Theodosius was in Milan, mobs in Thessalonica killed the commander of the local garrison.Theodosius was so enraged by the news that he ordered a monstrous vengeance.When the crowd was gathered in the arena, the army swooped in on them, massacring no less than seven thousand people indiscriminately.St. Ambrose had tried beforehand to dissuade the emperor from doing so, but to no avail.So he wrote a righteous letter to the emperor.Here is a letter dealing with purely moral questions, without any reference to theology or ecclesiastical power: "An unprecedented thing happened in the city of the Thessalonians, which I failed to prevent in advance. I have warned you many times before, and I have said at the time that this thing is really extremely cruel." David once Repeated crimes, and repeated confessions.Will Theodosius do likewise?Ambrose made the following decision: "If your Majesty is here, I dare not sacrifice. Since it is impossible to sacrifice after bleeding an innocent person, can it be sacrificed after bleeding everyone? I think This is absolutely impossible.” The emperor repented, took off his purple robe in the Milan church, and held a confession ceremony in public.From that period until the death of Theodosius in 395 A.D. there was no further friction between him and Ambrose. Ambrose was a brilliant statesman, but in other respects he was only a typical figure of his time.Like other ecclesiastical writers, he wrote treatises in praise of virginity; he also wrote treatises against widows remarrying.When he was confirming the foundation of a new church, two skeletons (supposed to have been consecrated in a vision) were found there, and it was found that these two skeletons could perform miracles, so Ambrose declared that the These are the bones of two martyrs.In his letters he recounts other miracles with the credulity characteristic of his time.As a scholar, he was not as good as Jerome; as a philosopher, he was not as good as Augustine; but as a statesman with both wisdom and courage, who consolidated the power of the church, he was indeed a first-rate man. Jerome was primarily a noted translator of the Latin translation of the Bible, which remains the accepted Bible in the Catholic Church to this day.Prior to him the Western Church relied primarily on material translated from the Septuagint regarding the Old Testament.This differs from the original Hebrew in some important places.As we have seen, Christians have readily asserted that since the rise of Christianity, the Jews have falsified passages in the original Hebrew texts that seem to have predicted the Messiah.This view has been proved untenable by sound academic minds; it is also emphatically denied by Jerome.He accepted the surreptitious help of the rabbis, kept from public fame out of fear of other Jews.In response to Christian criticism, Jerome defended himself by saying: "Whoever wants to find fault with this translation let him ask the Jews." Since he recognized the original Hebrew text that the Jews considered correct, his translation was initially hated by many.However, due in part to St. Augustine's general support, the translation was finally accepted by the world.This is a great achievement, which contains a considerable amount of canonical criticism. Jerome was born five years later than Ambrose, in 345 AD in Stradon, a small city not far from Aquileia, which was destroyed by the Goths in 377 AD.Although his family is not rich, it is also well off.In 366 AD he went to Rome, where he studied rhetoric and sinned morally.After traveling through Gaul, he settled in Aquileia and became an ascetic.He then lived in seclusion in the Syrian wilderness for five years. "While he lived in the desert he lived a strict penitential life; interwoven with tears, moans, and trance states; and haunted by occasional memories of life in Roman times. He lived in a hut or a cave; earned his daily bread, and covered himself with sackcloth." After this period he traveled to Constantinople and lived in Rome for three years.In Rome he became the friend and advisor of Pope Damasus; at the pope's encouragement he undertook the translation of the Bible. Saint Jerome was a man of many arguments.He had disputes with St. Augustine concerning some of the questionable manners of St. Peter which St. Paul deals with in Galatians 2; against Pelagius so that his monastery was attacked by mobs of this faction.After the death of Pope Damasus, he seems to have had a quarrel with the new pope; while he lived in Rome he had the acquaintance of some devout wives, some of whom he persuaded into a life of asceticism.The new Pope hated it, as did many other Romans.Because of this and others, Jerome left Rome and moved to the city of Bethlehem, where he lived from AD 386 until his death in AD 420. Among the women he persuaded, two deserve special attention: the widow Paula and her daughter Eustace.These two women made it a point to accompany him on the long journey to Bethlehem.They belonged to the highest aristocratic class, and the saint treated them with a touch of snobbery.When Paula died and was buried in Bethlehem, Jerome wrote an epitaph on her grave: In this tomb rests the child of Seppio, a descendant of Gracchus of the illustrious Agamemnon family, daughter of the famous Paolo family: here rests Paula, loved by her parents and daughter Eustace woman; she was the first Roman woman who went to great lengths to choose the city of Bethlehem for Christ. Some of Jerome's letters to Eustace are curious.He counseled her virginity carefully and candidly; he gave anatomically correct interpretations of certain euphemisms in the Old Testament; performance method.The nun is the bride of Christ; this marriage is celebrated in Solomon's Song of Solomon.In a long letter to her mother, when Eustace was sworn in as a nun, Jerome wrote the following remarkable lines: the way; and resentment not to be a soldier's wife? She has brought you a noble privilege, and you are now the mother-in-law of a god." In the same letter he said to Eustace himself: "May the secret of the boudoir keep you forever; let the bridegroom always play with you inwardly; do you pray? Then you talk to the bridegroom; do you read the scriptures Then he will talk to you. When you sleep, he will come from behind and put his hand in the doorhole, and your heart will be moved for him; and will wake up and say, 'I am killed Lovesickness.’ And he would answer: ‘My sister, my bride, you are a garden enclosed, a spring closed and a fountain closed.’” In the same letter he recounted, when he Cut off from friends and family, "and even more difficult, cut off from the usual delicacies," he still lingered on his library, which he took with him into the wilderness. "So a poor man like me would go on a hunger strike just so that he could read Cicero later on."After days and nights of conscience-stricken he fell again and read Plautus.After this indulgence he found the style of the prophets coarse and repulsive.Finally, in a fever, he dreamed that at the Last Judgment, Christ asked him who he was, and he replied that he was a Christian.Then Christ replied, "You are lying, you are a follower of Cicero; not of Christ." He was sentenced to scourging, and finally Jerome cried out in a dream: "Lord, if I Any longer to possess worldly books, or if I read such things any longer, I am cut off from my lord."He added, "This is by no means a dream or an empty dream." In the following years, there were hardly any classical expressions quoted in his Tablets.After a time, however, he quoted in his essays Virgil, Horace, and even Ovid; but these quotations seem to have come from memory, because some of the words and phrases are repeated again and again. In Jerome's letters, as far as I know, more clearly than in any other writing, the feelings arising from the fall and fall of the Roman Empire are expressed.In AD 396 he wrote: "I shudder to think of the catastrophes of modern times. For more than twenty years, the blood of the Romans was shed every day from Constantinople to the Julian Alps. Scythia, Thrace, Macedonia, Daredevil West Asia, Thessaly, Achaia, Eberus, Dalmacia, and Panania, there is no place that is not visited by Goths, Samacians, Kuadians, Alanites, The Huns, Vandals, and frontier people burned, killed and looted... The Roman world is in constant decline: but instead of bowing our heads, we hold our heads up. You think the Corinthians, Athenians, What courage were the Lasidemones, the Arcadians, and other Greeks. I have listed only a few cities, but these were the capitals of some extraordinary nations." He goes on to recount the devastation wrought by the Huns in the Eastern Roman Empire, and ends with these reflections: "Even if Thucydides and Sallust are reborn, they will not be able to properly narrate these historical facts." Seventeen years later, three years after the sack of Rome, he wrote: "The world is perishing: yes! Yet how shamefully our sins continue and grow. The famous city, the capital of the Roman Empire, is consumed by a great conflagration; and there is not a place on earth where the Romans are not running and fleeing. The Church, once considered holy, is today nothing but rubble and ashes. Yet we give our hearts to greed. We live as if we were dying tomorrow; and yet we live as if we were going to live forever We build as if we were building. Our walls are richly adorned with gold, and our ceilings and capitals glisten with gold; but Christ starved naked at our door in the form of a poor man." The above passage happened by chance in a letter he wrote to a friend who was determined to make his daughter a nun.Much of the letter was concerned with the various precepts which should be observed in the education of such a girl.Strange that, with all the affection Jerome had for the decay and decay of the ancient world, he should have thought that maintaining his virginity was more important than defeating the Huns, the Vandals, and the Goths.His thoughts never turned to any strategy of economics; he never accused the corruption of the fiscal system and the evils of relying on an army of barbarians.The same was the case with Ambrose and Augustine; Ambrose was indeed a statesman, but a statesman for the good of the church.With the minds of the best and most active men of the age so far removed from worldly things, it is no wonder that the Roman Empire eventually declined and fell.On the other hand, if decline is inevitable, the Christian worldview is well suited to imparting patience, while at the same time enabling one to maintain one's religious hopes when earthly hopes seem to be in vain.St. Augustine's City of God has the highest merit in expressing this view. In this chapter I would first describe the person of St. Augustine; what he did as a theologian and philosopher shall be left for the next chapter.Augustine was born in AD 354, nine years younger than Jerome; fourteen years younger than Ambrose.He is a native African and has spent most of his career in Africa.His mother was a Christian, but his father was not.He converted to Catholicism after being a Manichean for a time, and was baptized by Ambrose in Milan.In about 396 AD, he became the bishop of Hippo, not far from Carthage, and lived here until his death in 430 AD. We know more about his teenage years than most other preachers, because he records the period in his diary.Although this book has had many eminent imitators in later generations, notably Rousseau and Tolstoy, I do not think there was anything comparable to it before Augustine.St. Augustine is very similar to Tolstoy in many ways, but surpasses Tolstoy intellectually.He is a passionate person, quite uninhibited in his youth, but an inner impulse is urging him to seek truth and justice.Like Tolstoy, in his later years he was also haunted by a sense of sin, which made his life severe; made his philosophy inhuman.He fought fiercely against heresy, but when some of his views were reproduced by Jansenius in the seventeenth century, they were considered heretical.Nevertheless, the Catholic Church never questioned the orthodoxy of his views until the Protestants adopted them. The first events in Augustine's career recorded in , happened in his boyhood.This shows that there is no significant difference between him and other teenagers.Once he and a group of companions of similar age stole pears from a neighbor's tree.At this time he was not hungry, and there were better pears in his house.All his life he had considered it an almost unbelievable evil.If it was because of hunger, or because there was no other way to get pears, the behavior would not be so evil.But the thing is that this kind of mischief is born out of a pure love of evil itself, and it is this that makes it so evil that it cannot be described.So he asked God to forgive him: "O God, search my heart! Search my heart, which you have pitied in the depths of hell! Search now and let my heart speak to you: it is there What to pursue? It wants me to be a gratuitous evil person, to pursue evil itself when there is no evil temptation. It is filthy and dirty, but I love it; I love death, I love my mistakes, I don't love The cause of the fault, but the fault itself of loving me. Fallen from heaven. O filthy soul cast out from your presence; seek not through this shame, but after this shame itself!" And so he went on writing pages, all about pears he had stolen from a tree when he was young and naughty.To a modern man this may seem morbid; but in his day it seemed right, a sign of the divine.There was a very strong sense of sin among the Jews at the time as a way of reconciling self-esteem with external failure.Yahweh is Almighty God, and Yahweh is particularly concerned about the Jews; but why can't they prosper?Because they were corrupt: they were idolaters, they married Gentiles, they failed to keep the law.All of God's purposes were centered on the Jews.However, since justice is the highest good; at the same time, it has to be achieved through suffering, so they must first suffer chastisement, and must recognize this chastisement as an expression of God's love. Christians have replaced the elect by the church, which makes no difference to the sinful mind except one.The Church, like the Jews, has suffered; the Church has been harassed by heretics;Even so, the Jews, to a great extent, achieved a major development, which was the substitution of personal sin for communal sin.At first the Jewish nation committed the crime and was punished collectively; but later the sin became more of a personal matter and lost its political character.When the church replaced the Jewish nation, this change became more fundamental.Because the church, as a spiritual entity, cannot commit crimes, and individual sinners can still sever their relationship with the church.As mentioned above, sin is associated with ego.The so-called pride at first refers to the pride of the Jewish people, and then it becomes a personal pride-but it has nothing to do with the church, because the church never sins.There are thus two parts to Christian theology: one concerned with the Church; the other concerned with the individual soul.In later generations, Catholics emphasized the former; Protestants emphasized the latter.But in St. Augustine, the two exist equally, and there is no sense of incongruity.The saved are those whom God predetermines to save; it is a direct relationship of the soul to God.But one can never be saved without being baptized into a church; this makes the church a medium between the soul and God.Evil is a fundamental problem for this immediate relationship.For it shows how a merciful God can make man suffer, and at the same time, the individual soul can occupy the most important place in God's created world.No wonder, then, that the theology upon which the Reformation rested was born of a perverted figure of sin. The problem about pears is described here.Let us now look at formulations of some of the other issues. Augustine narrates how he learned Latin easily and happily while leaning on his mother's knees, but he hated Greek, because when he was learning Greek in school, he "was cruelly threatened and punished." , his knowledge of Greek was still very limited.From the contrast of this subject, one might think he would have drawn a lesson in favor of a moderate method of education; but what he said was: "It is evident that a free curiosity drives us to learn these things more powerfully than a dreadful sense of duty. According to your law only this sense of duty can restrain the wavering of liberty, O my God! Your law, From the master's club to the trials of the martyrs, for your laws have the effect of mixing us with some salutary pain that calls us away from that harmful pleasure,--for which it is We just left you—and came back to you." Although the teacher's whipping did not make him learn Greek, it cured his poisonous joy.For this reason, whipping also becomes a desirable part of the work of education.This view is logical to those who regard evil as the most important of human concerns.He further states that he committed crimes not only as a child, such as lying and stealing food, but earlier; Even suckling babes are full of sins, such as gluttony, envy, and other horrible evils. When he hit puberty, he was overwhelmed by lust. "When my body reached the age of sixteen, when the evil lusts of the world took possession of me--though it was forbidden by your law--and I gave myself to While I was in it, I had no way of knowing where I was, and how far I was from your heavenly joy?" His father did not bother to prevent such evil, he only helped Augustine with his studies.His mother, Santa Monica, and his father countered by persuading him to remain a virgin, but to no avail.However, even his mother did not advise him to get married at the time, "for fear that the burden of the family would hinder my future." At the age of sixteen, he went to Carthage. "A lawless love boils all around me. I am not in love yet, but I am loving it; and at the same time, out of a deep-seated desire, I hate myself for wanting nothing. I seek someone I can love, hot Loving in love, and hating safety...It was sweet to me then to love and to be loved; and sweeter when I enjoyed my beloved. So I polluted friendship with the filth of lust clear springs; covered its splendor with obscene hell." These words describe his relationship with a woman whom he had loved for many years; , had taken special interest in the child's religious education. The time had come when he and his mother had to start thinking that he should get married.He is engaged to a girl whom his mother approves of.So he had to break off with his former lover.他说：“我的情人，作为我结婚的障碍，被人从我身边扯走了。我这颗依恋着她的心被人扯裂、受伤和流着鲜血。她把孩子留给我，自己回到非洲（当时奥古斯丁住在米兰）；并向你发誓决不结交其他男人。”但由于未婚及年幼，两年之内尚不能举行婚礼，期间他又结识了一个情人，但这次却不如以前那么公开，并且很少为人所知。他的良心使他越发不安了。于是他经常祷告说：“主啊，赐给我贞操和克制吧，只是不要在当前。”在他婚期尚未到来以前，宗教终于获得了全胜，此后他终生一直过着独身生活。 现在让我们回叙一下较早的时期：十九岁那年，当他精通了修辞学之后，西塞罗的作品重新把他引向了哲学。他试着阅读圣经，但发现它缺乏西塞罗式的威严。就在这时期他信奉了摩尼教，这事曾使他母亲大为伤心。他当了修辞学的专业教师。但也热中于占星术，晚年时因占星术教导：“你的罪之所以不可避免，其原因在于天上。”而厌弃了它。他尽量阅读拉丁文的哲学书籍；他特别提及，在没有教师的帮助下，理解了亚里士多德的十大范畴。“我这个邪情恶欲的万恶奴才，自行阅读了一切所谓'文艺'之书；懂得我所能读到的一切，可是这究竟于我自己有了什么益处？……因为我背向光明，面对着被光照亮的东西；因而我的脸面……本身却未得到光辉的照耀。”这时他认为神是一个巨大的光辉物体，而他本身则是那物体的一部分。我们本来期待他详述一下摩尼教的教义，而不只是指出它们之为荒谬。 使人感到兴趣的是：圣奥古斯丁反对摩尼教最初的一些理由却是有关科学的。当他回忆，从一些卓越的天文学家作其中所学到的一些知识时，他说：“我把那些作品和摩尼基乌斯所说的对比了一下，他以狂人式的愚蠢大量写下了内容丰富的关于各至、夏至、春分、秋分、日月蚀以及其他被我从世俗哲学书籍中学到的有关问题的论证，没有一样能够使我满意，但是我却被命令着相信这些，它们不但不符合我自己推算与观察的结果而且还与它们互相背谬。”他特别细心地指出，科学上的错误不能成为信仰方面错误的标志；只有以权威自居，说成是得自神的灵感时，那才成为信仰方面错误的标志。这令人设想，如果奥古斯丁生在伽利略所处的时代，那末他又将作何感想。 为了想解决他的疑问，摩尼教中一位以学问最为著称的主教浮士德会见他并和他进行了辩难。“我首先感到他除了语法以外，对其他各门科学是极端无知的；而且即便是对于语法的知识也还是普通一般而已。但是他曾经读过塔利的《讲演集》，一小部分塞涅卡的著作，某些诗集，以及几本带有逻辑性的拉丁文摩尼教经卷。由于他素常习惯于讲话，掌握了一定程度的雄辩术，而且受到良知的统辖，显得如此温文尔雅，因而使人感到他的雄辩十分愉快而动听。” 他发现浮士德完全不能解决他在天文学方面的疑难。他说：摩尼教著作中“充斥着一些冗长的关于天空、星宿、太阳和月亮的神话”这些和天文学家的发现是不一致的；当他问浮士德这些事情的时候，浮士德便坦率地承认了他的无知。“正是如此，我却更喜欢他了。因为一个正直人的谦虚比我所要探求的知识是更有魅力的；而我发现他在一些更为困难更为微妙的问题上也还是如此。” 这种见解当真是惊人的豁达，是我们不会期待于那个时代的。而且，这和奥古斯丁晚年对待异端者所持的态度也还不十分协调。 这时，他决定到罗马去。据他说，这倒不是因为在罗马教师的收入比迦太基优厚；而是因为听说那里上课时的秩序较好。在迦太基，学生们闹得几乎无法授课；在罗马，虽说课堂秩序较好，但学生们却以欺骗的方式来拖欠束脩。 在罗马时他仍然和摩尼教徒互相来往，但已不大相信他们的正确性了。他开始认为，学院派的人们主张人应该怀疑一切的说法是正确的。但他仍同意摩尼教徒的看法认为：“并不是我们本身犯罪，而是其他某种天性（我不知道是什么天性）在我们内部犯罪”，同时，他相信恶魔是一种具有实体的东西。这明显地说明在他改宗前后，他曾为罪恶的问题所缠绕。 在罗马大约住了一年以后，西马库斯长官把他送到米兰，因为米兰市曾要求派遣一位修辞学的教师。在米兰他结识了安布洛斯，“全世界知名人士中最杰出的人物之一。”他逐渐爱上了安布洛斯的慈祥，并于天主教教义与摩尼教教义二者之间更多地爱上了前者。以前他从学院派学到的怀疑主义却暂时使他踌躇不前。不过，“由于那些哲学家没有基督教赎之名，所以我坚决拒绝把我这病弱的心交托给他们来看护。”在米兰他和他母亲生活在一片；母亲对于促成他改宗的最后阶段起了很大作用。她是个热心的天主教徒。奥古斯丁总是以一种尊敬的笔调来叙述自己的母亲。在这一期间，由于安布洛斯忙得没有机会和他私下交谈，这时母亲便对他更为重要了。 奥古斯丁于该书中将柏拉图哲学与基督教教义进行比较的那一章是饶有兴趣的。他说主在这时赐给他“一些从希腊文译成拉丁文的柏拉图主义者的著作。虽然字句有些出入，但根据不同的理由，我于其中读到以下的旨趣，'太初有道，道与上帝同在，道就是上帝：这道太初与上帝同在；万物是借着他造的，没有他就没有万物：他所创造的是生命，这生命就是人的光，光照在黑暗里，而黑暗却不接受光。'虽然说人的灵魂'给光作见证'，但他本身'却不是光'，只有上帝、上帝的道，'才是真光，它照亮一切生在世上的人，'并且'他在世界之中，而这世界也是借着他创造的，但世界却不认识他。'但是我没有从中读到：'他到他自己的地方来，他自己的人倒不接待他。凡接待他的，就是信他名的人，他就赐他们权柄，作上帝的儿女。'”他没有在其中读到：“道成肉身，住在我们中间”；也没有读到：“他就自己卑微，存心顺服，以至于死，且死在十字架上”；也没有读到：“因耶稣的名，无不屈膝”这些话。 泛言之，他从柏拉图主义者那里找到了道（logos）的形而上学教义；但是没有找到道成肉身，以及人类救赎的教义。与这些教义相似的因素曾存在于奥尔弗斯教或其他神秘宗教；但奥古斯丁则似乎对此一无所知。总之，这些宗教并不象基督教那样，与比较近期的历史事件发生过联系。 与二元论者的摩尼教徒相反，奥古斯丁开始相信：罪恶并不起源于某种实体，而是起源于意志中的邪恶。 他在圣保罗的著述中找到了特殊的安慰。 经过深刻的内心的斗争之后，他终于改了宗教（公元386年）；他抛弃了教职、情人和未婚妻；在短期间的蛰居默想后，接受了安布洛斯的洗礼。他母亲为此感到高兴，但不久她便死去了。公元388年他回到非洲，在那里度过余生；这时他完全忙于主教的公务，和进行写作来驳斥杜纳图斯派、摩尼教以及裴拉鸠斯派等异端。