The Life and Writings of Saint Augustine

The Life and Writings

of

Saint Augustine

Wyatt North

Wyatt North Publishing

www.WyattNorth.com

Wyatt North Publishing, LLC 2012

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Publisher Introduction

** Active Table of Contents **

** Original Biography of Saint Augustine **

** Full-Length Writings by Saint Augustine **

This book comes complete with a Touch-or-Click Table of Contents, divided by each book. Additionally, you can access a full Table of Contents (located at the end of the book) by selecting the built in Kindle Table of Contents bookmark. Just touch or click Go To on your Kindle for instant access to the Table of Contents.

This specially formatted book provides everything you need to understand the life of Saint Augustine, including the well-researched original biography The Life of Saint Augustine by Wyatt North.

Additionally, this book includes the most influential full-length writings by Saint Augustine:

The Confessions

The City of God

On Christian Doctrine

On the Trinity

On Grace and Free Will

Saint Augustine was a Latin philosopher and theologian, originally from Roman Africa. His writings were very influential in the development of Western Christianity and continue to influence Christianity to this day.

In the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, he is a saint and pre-eminent Doctor of the Church.

Thank you for your purchase!

~~~ A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently ~~~

Touch-or-Click Table of Contents

(Books)

Touch-or-Click Table of Contents

(Books & Chapters)

Author Introduction

I remember first learning about Saint Augustine in Sunday school. We read the Confessions aloud as a class. Sister Mary (real name, there are probably thousands with the same name) told us that Saint Augustine was a powerful all-knowing saint. As you can imagine these dense writings took nearly a full year for us to complete as a class. As I think of it, we probably only read select chapters. Sister Mary said that it could take a lifetime to read and understand just one of his writings. Through the eyes of a ten year old, I agreed.

As I grew older and delved deeper into Christian Theology I realized that Augustine of Hippo was a great man, but he was still a man. Recounting his childhood Augustine reported that he liked to play and looking back didnt we all?

I have often wondered what separates a man from a saint and what it takes for man to become a saint. In fact, sainthood is something that we strive for as Christians. To understand and potentially reach our goal we must first understand the path we need to take.

With this book, I hope to provide an accessible Augustine, one with whom the average man can relate. In my biography I have laid out his life in laymans terms, focusing on Augustine as a man. From there, Ive included some of Augustines most influential works.

I decided to begin this voluminous collection with Augustines Confessions. By reading his autobiography, first the reader will have a great appreciation for his other writings and may be better prepared to read the biography that I have prepared.

I find Augustines life especially important because he did not start out on the right path. I can certainly relate to this, and I bet many Christians rebelled in their early years. Growing up in Texas, I first pushed religion away, seeing Gods word as the outdated, irrelevant culture of my parents generation. Like Augustine, I did not truly find religion until the later part of my life.

There is a great lyric from the band Live that nicely sums up my rediscovery of Christianity:

I don't need no one to tell me about heavenI look at my daughter, and I believe.I don't need no proof when it comes to God and truthI can see the sunset and I perceive

Maybe Ive dated myself with this beautiful post-grunge prose from nearly ten years ago. However, I think for many of my friends a life event has turned us toward the path of righteousness. For me, it was my little girl.

Augustines path toward Christianity is bit more complicated. Ive focused my exploration of Augustine on his struggle to find Faith. Yes, I could have gone on for many pages about Augustines great accomplishments (and there are many). I decided, however, that we can learn more from Augustines journey.

If we follow the life of Augustine and find a life without sin can we too be saints? Can a sinner turn his or her life around to become a saint? Perhaps that is a book for another day. For now, please enjoy the following biography and writings of Saint Augustine.

The Confessions

BOOK 1

Commencing with the invocation of God, Augustine relates in detail the beginning of his life, his infancy and boyhood, up to his fifteenth year; at which age he acknowledges that he was more inclined to all youthful pleasures and vices than to the study of letters.

Chapter 1. He Proclaims the Greatness of God, Whom He Desires to Seek and Invoke, Being Awakened by Him.

1. Great are You, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Your power, and of Your wisdom there is no end. And man, being a part of Your creation, desires to praise You, man, who bears about with him his mortality, the witness of his sin, even the witness that You resist the proud, yet man, this part of Your creation, desires to praise You. You move us to delight in praising You; for You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You. Lord, teach me to know and understand which of these should be first, to call on You, or to praise You; and likewise to know You, or to call upon You. But who is there that calls upon You without knowing You? For he that knows You not may call upon You as other than You are. Or perhaps we call on You that we may know You. But how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe without a preacher? Romans 10:14 And those who seek the Lord shall praise Him. For those who seek shall find Him, Matthew 7:7 and those who find Him shall praise Him. Let me seek You, Lord, in calling on You, and call on You in believing in You; for You have been preached unto us. O Lord, my faith calls on Youthat faith which You have imparted to me, which You have breathed into me through the incarnation of Your Son, through the ministry of Your preacher.

Chapter 2. That the God Whom We Invoke is in Us, and We in Him.

2. And how shall I call upon my God my God and my Lord? For when I call on Him I ask Him to come into me. And what place is there in me into which my God can come into which God can come, even He who made heaven and earth? Is there anything in me, O Lord my God, that can contain You? Do indeed the very heaven and the earth, which You have made, and in which You have made me, contain You? Or, as nothing could exist without You, does whatever exists contain You? Why, then, do I ask You to come into me, since I indeed exist, and could not exist if You were not in me? Because I am not yet in hell, though You are even there; for if I go down into hell You are there. I could not therefore exist, could not exist at all, O my God, unless You were in me. Or should I not rather say, that I could not exist unless I were in You from whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are all things? Romans 11:36 Even so, Lord; even so. Where do I call You to, since You are in me, or whence canst Thou come into me? For where outside heaven and earth can I go that from thence my God may come into me who has said, I fill heaven and earth? Jeremiah 23:24

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