Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| He is Sent to Milan, that He, About to Teach Rhetoric, May Be Known by Ambrose.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XIII.—He is Sent to
Milan, that He, About to Teach Rhetoric, May Be Known by
Ambrose.
23. When, therefore, they of Milan had sent to Rome to the prefect
of the city, to provide them with a teacher of rhetoric for their
city, and to despatch him at the public expense, I made interest
through those identical persons, drunk with Manichæan vanities, to
be freed from whom I was going away,—neither of us, however,
being aware of it,—that Symmachus, the then prefect, having
proved me by proposing a subject, would send me. And to Milan I
came, unto Ambrose the bishop, known to the whole world as among
the best of men, Thy devout servant; whose eloquent discourse did
at that time strenuously dispense unto Thy people the flour of Thy
wheat, the “gladness” of Thy “oil,” and the sober
intoxication of Thy “wine.”425
To him was I unknowingly led by
Thee, that by him I might knowingly be led to Thee. That man of God
received me like a father, and looked with a benevolent and
episcopal kindliness on my change of abode. And I began to love
him, not at first, indeed, as a teacher of the truth,—which I
entirely despaired of in Thy Church,—but as a man friendly to
myself. And I studiously hearkened to him preaching to the people,
not with the motive I should, but, as it were, trying to discover
whether his eloquence came up to the fame thereof, or flowed fuller
or lower than was asserted; and I hung on his words intently, but
of the matter I was but as a careless and contemptuous spectator;
and I was delighted with the pleasantness of his speech, more
erudite, yet less cheerful and soothing in manner, than that of
Faustus. Of the matter, however, there could be no comparison; for
the latter was straying amid Manichæan deceptions, whilst the
former was teaching salvation most soundly. But “salvation is far
from the wicked,”426
such as I then stood before him;
and yet I was drawing nearer gradually and
unconsciously.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
