And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me,
says the LORD.
Read Chapter 9
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
You exclaim, “How fitting it was for Jeremiah, with the chorus of the prophets and all the saints, to cry out, ‘Who will give water to my head, and a fountain of tears to my eyes,’ that he might bewail the sins of the foolish people, because the church of Christ expelled the teachers of the Pelagian error.” If you wish to weep wholesomely, weep for this, that you are involved in that error, and let your tears wash you clean of the new plague. Are you ignorant, or have you forgotten or do you wish not to know that the holy, the one, the Catholic church was also signified by the word Paradise? - "Against Julian 5.6.24"
Let us collect ourselves, I exhort you. There are daily wars, submersions of towns, innumerable destructions all around us, and on every side the wrath of God is enclosing us as in a net. As though we were well-pleasing to him, we are secure. We all make our hands ready for unjust gains and not for helping others. We are all ready to plunder, but no one is ready to protect. Each one of us has much anxiety over how he may add to his wealth. No one has anxiety over how he may save his own soul. One fear possesses all, that we should not become poor. No one is in anguish and trembling out of fear that we should fall into hell. These things call for lamentation, these call for accusation, for eternal damnation. I do not wish to speak of these things, but I am constrained by my grief. Forgive me. I am forced by sorrow to utter many things, even those that I do not wish to say. I see that our wound is grievous, that our calamity is beyond comfort, that woes have overtaken us that exceed the ...
