Chapter 16.—19. Let him go now, and with panting lungs and swollen throat find fault with me as a mere dialectician. Nay, let him summon, not me, but the science of dialectics itself, to the bar of popular opinion as a forger of lies, and let him open his mouth to its widest against it, with all the noisiest uproar of a special pleader. Let him say whatever he pleases before the inexperienced, that so the learned may be
moved to wrath, while the ignorant are deceived. Let him call me, in virtue of my rhetoric, by the name of the orator Tertullus, by whom Paul was accused;2368
and let him give himself the name of Advocate,
2369
in
virtue of the pleading in which he
boasts his former
power, and for this reason delude himself with the notion that he is, or rather was, a namesake of the Holy
Ghost. Let him, with all my
heart, exaggerate the foulness of the Manichæans, and endeavor to divert it on to me by his barking. Let him quote all the exploits of those who have been
condemned, whether known or unknown to me; and let him turn into the calumnious imputation of a prejudged
crime, by some new
right entirely his own, the fact that a former
friend of mine there named me in my absence to the better securing of his own
defense. Let him read the titles that have been placed upon my letters by himself or by his
friends, as suited their
pleasure, and
boast that he has, as it were, involved me hopelessly in their expressions. When I acknowledge certain eulogies of
bread, uttered in all simplicity and merriment, let him take away my character with the absurd imputations of poisonous
baseness and madness. And let him
entertain so bad an opinion of your understanding, as to
imagine that he can be believed when he declares that
pernicious love-charms were given to a
woman, not only with the
knowledge, but actually with the complicity
2370
| 2370 "Favente," which is wanting in the Mss., was inserted in the margin by Erasmus, as being needed to complete the sense.
|
of her
husband. What the man who was afterwards to
ordain me
bishop2371
| 2371 Megalius, bishop of Calama, primate of Numidia, was the bishop who ordained Augustin, as we find in c. viii. of his life by Possidius. Augustin makes further reply to the same calumny, which was gathered from a letter of Megalius, in Contra Cresconium, Book III. c. 80, 92, and Book IV. c. 64, 78, 79.
|
wrote about me in
anger, while I was as yet a
priest, he may freely
seek to use as evidence against me. That the same man sought and obtained
forgiveness from a holy
Council for the wrong he thus had done me, he is equally at
liberty to ignore as being in my
favor,—being either so ignorant or so
forgetful of
Christian gentleness, and the
commandment of the
gospel, that he brings as an accusation against a brother what is wholly unknown to that brother himself, as he
humbly entreats that pardon may in kindness be extended to him.
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