The Works of Aurelius Augustine - 1881 Author:Augustine Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TOOK III.] GREAT CALAMITIES BEFORE CHRIST'S ADVENT. 01 BOOK THIRD. ARGUMENT. Xtf IN THE FOREGOING BOOK AUGUSTINE HAS PROVED REGARDING MORAL AKD SPIRITUA... more »L CALAMITIES, SO IN THIS BOOK HE PROVES REGARDING EXTERNAL AND BODILY DISASTERS, THAT SINCE THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY THE ROMANS HAVE BEEX CONTINUALLY SUBJECT TO THEM ; AND THAT EVEN WHEN THE FALSE CODS WERE WORSHIPPED WITHOUT A RIVAL, BEFORE THE ADVENT OF CHRIST, THEY AFFORDED NO RELIEF FROM SUCH CALAMITIES. 1. Of tlte tils which alone Um wicked fear, and which the world continually suffered, even when the gods were worshipped. OF moral and spiritual evils, which are above all others to be deprecated, I think enough has already been said to show that the false gods took no steps to prevent the people who worshipped them from being overwhelmed by such calamities, but rather aggravated the ruin. I see I must now speak of those evils which alone are dreaded by the heathen— famine, pestilence, war, pillage, captivity, massacre, and the like calamities, already enumerated in the first book. For evil men account those things alone evil which do not make men evil; neither do they blush to praise good things, and yet to remain evil among the good things they praise. It grieves them more to own a bad house than a bad life, as if it were man's greatest good to have everything good but himself. But not even such evils as were alone dreaded by the heathen were warded off by their gods, even when they were most unrestrictedly worshipped. For in various times and places before the advent of our Redeemer, the human race was crushed with numberless and sometimes incredible calamities ; and at that time what gods but those did the world worship, if you except the one nation of the Hebrews, and, beyond them, such individuals as the ...« less