Saint Augustine who is always classed as one of the four great Latin
fathers is generally conceded to be chief among them in natural
strength of intellect. Saint Jerome, who excelled him in knowledge
of classical literature, is his inferior in intellectual acuteness;
and certainly no other theologian of the earlier ages of the Church
has done so much as has Saint Augustine to influence the thought of
its strongest minds.
Augustine (Aurelius Augustinus) was a Numidian by birth. He had a
Christian mother, whose devotion resulted in his conversion, as well
as in that of his father, who seems to have been a man of liberal
mind, aware of the value of literary education. Augustine was well
versed in the Latin classics. The extent of his knowledge of Greek
literature has been questioned, but it is conceded that he knew the
language, at least well enough for purposes of comparative study of
the Scripture text.
As a young man, his ideas of morality, as we know from his
'Confessions,' were not severe. He was not extraordinarily
licentious, but he had the introspective sensitiveness which seems
to characterize great genius wherever it is found, and in his later
life he looked with acute pain on the follies of his youth.
Becoming a Christian at the age of twenty-three, he was ordained a
priest four years later, and in 395 became Bishop of Hippo. Of his
literary works, his book 'The City of God' is accounted his masterpiece,
though it is not so generally read as his 'Confessions.' The sermon
on the Lord's Prayer here given as an illustration of his style in
the pulpit, is from his 'Homilies on the New Testament,' as
translated in Parker's 'Library of the Fathers.'