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I charitas.

1 Cor. 6,

19.

47.48.

574 The Holy Ghost is God, and Man His Temple.

power; highest equality, no division, no diversity, perpetual dearness of love'. Would ye know the Holy Ghost, that He is God? Be baptized, and ye will be His temple. The Apostle says, Know ye not that your bodies are the temple within you of the Holy Ghost, Whom ye have of God? A temple is for God: thus also Solomon, king and prophet, was bidden to build a temple for God. If he had built a temple for the sun or moon or some star or some angel, would not God condemn him? Because therefore he built a temple for God, he shewed that he worshipped God. And of what did he build? Of wood and stone, because God deigned to make unto Himself by His servant an house on earth, where He might be asked, where He might be had Acts 7, in mind. Of which blessed Stephen says, Solomon built Him an house; howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in temples made by hand. If then our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost, what manner of God is it that built a temple for the Holy Ghost? But it was God. For if our bodies be a temple of the Holy Ghost, the same built this temple for the Holy Ghost, that built our bodies. Listen to the Apostle 1 Cor. saying, God hath tempered the body, giving unto that which lacked the greater honour; when he was speaking of the different members that there should be no schisms in the body. God created our body. The grass, God created; our body Who created? How do we prove that the grass is God's creating? He that clothes, the same creates. Read Mat. 6, the Gospel, If then the grass of the field, saith it, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, God so clotheth. He, then, creates Who clothes. And the Apostle: 1Cor.15, Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but a bare grain, as perchance of wheat, or of some other corn; but God giveth it a body as He would, and to each one of seeds its proper body. If then it be God that builds our bodies, God that builds our members, and our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost, doubt not that the Holy Ghost is God. And do not add as it were a third God; because Father and Son and Holy Ghost is One God. So believe ye.

12, 24.

30.

36-38.

vi.

14. It follows after commendation of the Trinity," The

Forgiveness of all sins, however great, in Baptism. 575

CATE

CHU

17.

Holy Church." God is pointed out, and His temple. For AD the temple of God is holy, says the Apostle, which (temple) are ye. This same is the holy Church, the one Church, MENOS. the true Church, the catholic Church, fighting against all1 Cor.3, heresies: fight, it can be fought down, it cannot. As for heresies, they went all out of it, like as unprofitable branches pruned from the vine: but itself abideth in its root, in its Vine, in its charity. The gates of hell shall not prevail Mat.16, against it.

18.

15. "Forgiveness of sins." Ye have [this article of] the vii. Creed perfectly in you when ye receive Baptism. Let none say, 'I have done this or that sin: perchance that is not forgiven me.' What hast thou done? How great a sin hast thou done? Name any beinous thing thou hast committed, heavy, horrible, which thou shudderest even to think of: have done what thou wilt: hast thou killed Christ? There is not than that deed any worse, because also than Christ there is nothing better. What a dreadful thing is it to kill Christ! Yet the Jews killed Him, and many afterwards believed on Him and drank His blood: they are forgiven the sin which they committed. When ye have been baptized, hold fast a good life in the commandments of God, that ye may guard your Baptism even unto the end. I do not tell you that ye will live here without sin; but they are venial, without which this life is not. For the sake of all sins was Baptism provided'; for the sake of light sins, invenwithout which we cannot be, was prayer provided'. What hath the Prayer? Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive Mat. 6, our debtors. Once for all we have washing in Baptism, every day we have washing in prayer. Only, do not commit those things for which ye must needs be separated from Christ's body which be far from you! For those whom ye have seen doing penance, have committed heinous things, agere either adulteries or some enormous crimes: for these they tentiam' pœnido penance. Because if theirs had been light sins, to blot out these daily prayer would suffice.

tus

12.

16. In three ways then are sins remitted in the Church; viii. by Baptism, by prayer, by the greater humility of penance: yet God doth not remit sins but to the baptized. The very sins which He remits first, He remits not but to the baptized.

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576 After Forgiveness in right of Baptism. Resurrection.

When? when they are baptized. The sins which are after SYM- remitted upon prayer, upon penance, to whom He remits, it is to the baptized that He remitteth. For how can they say, Our Father, who are not yet born sons? The Catechumens, MENOS So long as they be such, have upon them all their sins.

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If Catechumens, how much more Pagans? how much more heretics? But to heretics we do not change their baptism. Why? because they have baptism in the same way as a 1'cha deserter has the soldier's mark': just so these also have Baptism; they have it, but to be condemned thereby, not crowned. And yet if the deserter himself, being amended, begin to do duty as a soldier, does any man dare to change his mark?

racterem'

ix.

17. We believe also "the resurrection of the flesh," which went before in Christ: that the body too may have hope of that which went before in its Head. The Head of the Church, Christ: the Church, the body of Christ. Our Head is risen, ascended into heaven: where the Head, there also the members. In what way the resurrection of the flesh? Lest any should chance to think it like as Lazarus's resurrection, that thou mayest know it to be not so, it is added, "Into life everlasting." God regenerate you! God preserve and keep you! God bring you safe unto Himself, Who is the Life Everlasting. Amen.

S. AUGUSTINE

ON

THE PROFIT OF BELIEVING.

Retract. i. cap. 14. Moreover now at Hippo Regius as Presbyter I wrote a
book on the Profit of Believing, to a friend of mine who had been taken
in by the Manichees, and whom I knew to be still held in that error, and
to deride the Catholic school of Faith, in that men were bid believe, but
not taught what was truth by a most certain method. In this book I
said, &c.
This book begins thus, Si mihi Honorate, unum

atque idem videretur esse.'
St. Augustine enumerates his book on the Profit of Believing first amongst
those he wrote as Presbyter, to which order he was raised at Hippo about
the beginning of the year 391. The person for whom he wrote had been
led into error by himself, and appears to have been recovered from it, at
least if he is the same who wrote to St. Augustine from Carthage about
412, proposing several questions, and to whom St. Augustine wrote his
140th Epistle. Cassiodorus calls him a Presbyter, though at that time
he was not baptized. In Ep. 83, St. Augustine speaks of the death of
another Honoratus, a Presbyter. Towards the end of his life he also
wrote his 228th Epistle to a Bishop of Thabenna of the same name. Ben.
The remarks in the Retractations are given in notes to the passages
where they occur.

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1. IF, Honoratus, a heretic, and a man trusting heretics. seemed to me one and the same, I should judge it my duty to remain silent both in tongue and pen in this matter. now, whereas there is a very great difference between these two: forasmuch as he, in my opinion, is an heretic, who, for the sake of some temporal advantage, and chiefly for the sake of his own glory and preeminence, either gives birth to, or

Pp

DENDI.

DE UTILI

TATE

DENDI.

578 False rule of sense. Manichees set aside all authority.

follows, false and new opinions; but he, who trusts men of this kind, is a man deceived by a certain imagination of CRE- truth and piety. This being the case, I have not thought it my duty to be silent towards you, as to my opinions on the finding and retaining of truth: with great love of which, as you know, we have burned from our very earliest youth: but it is a thing far removed from the minds of vain men, who, having too far advanced and fallen into these corporeal things, think that there is nothing else than what they perceive by those five well-known reporters of the body; and I plagas what impressions' and images they have received from these, they carry over with themselves, even when they essay to withdraw from the senses; and by the deadly and most deceitful rule of these think that they measure most rightly the unspeakable recesses of truth. Nothing is more easy, my dearest friend, than for one not only to say, but also to think, that he hath found out the truth; but how difficult it is in reality, you will perceive, I trust, from this letter of mine. And that this may profit you, or at any rate may in no way harm you, and also all, into whose hands it shall chance to come, I have both prayed, and do pray, unto God; and I hope that it will be so, forasmuch as I am fully conscious that I have undertaken to write it, in a pious and friendly spirit, not as aiming at vain reputation, or trifling display.

2 si

2. It is then my purpose to prove to you, if I can, that the Manichees profanely and rashly inveigh against those, who, following the authority of the Catholic Faith, before that they are able gaze upon that Truth, which the pure mind beholds, are by believing forearmed, and prepared for God Who is about to give them light. For you know, Honoratus, that for no other reason we fell in with such men, than because they used to say, that, apart from all terror of authority, by pure and simple reason, they would lead within to God, and set free from all error those who were willing to be their hearers. For what else constrained me, during nearly nine years, spurning the religion which had been set in me from a child by my parents, to be a follower and diligent hearer of those men", save that they said that we are alarmed

Confess. 1. i. c. 11. 1. v. c. 14.

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