Quotes about Augustine

We must read the Fathers cautiously, and lay them in the gold balance, for they often stumbled and went astray, and mingled in their books many monkish things. Augustine had more work and labor, to wind himself out of the Father's writings, then he had with the heretics.

Thus Augustine says: "We know that we owe our existence to His goodness. We know that we are creatures because of the kindness of God, not because of merit. For it has pleased God that no one should glory except in the Lord.

For such unjust acts of robbery lead automatically to vengeance and punishments, as Augustine's statement bears out. "Gain in the coffer," he says, "harm in the conscience." 55 No unjust gain is without most unjust harm.

Therefore Augustine was right when he said: "The external works of the Godhead are indivisible.

Christ also said, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:21). We pursue what we love. We talk about it because that is where our hearts and thoughts are. Augustine came right to the point when he said: "Whatever I love is my god.

Augustine was right when he said that we love the truth when it enlightens us, but we hate it when it convicts us.

Not only do Christians believe, they are those who "think in believing and believe in thinking," as Augustine expressed it. The world of Christian faith is not a fairy-tale, make-believe world, question-free and problem-proof, but a world where doubt is never far from faith's shoulder.

The conclusion, therefore, is that of Augustine, who said that the heart of man was created for God and that it cannot find rest until it rests in his Father's heart. Hence all men are really seeking after God, as Augustine also declared, but they do not all seek Him in the right way, nor at the right place.

The more deeply we live, the more we feel in sympathy with Augustine, and the less with Pelagius.

Augustine speaks of a Christianity which has existed since the beginning of the human race,

God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love, said Augustine.

Augustine's Confessions...What it is, therefore, he begins, that goes on within the soul, since it takes greater delight if things that it loves are found or restored to it than if it had always possessed them?