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Lives of the Saints, Selected and Ed. by Mgr. Goddard
Lives of the Saints Selected and Ed by Mgr Goddard Author:Alban Butler General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1883 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: SAINT AUGUSTINE, BISHOP, C, AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH. A. D. 430. So great is the veneration which popes, councils, and the whole Church have paid to the memory of this glorious saint, through every succeeding age since his time, that to load our history with a list of his illustrious panegyrists would be a superfluous labour ; and barely to copy the sober praises, which the most judicious Christian critics have bestowed on his extraordinary learning and sanctity, would be like carrying water to the sea. For the name of the great St. Austin is alone the highest eulogium and panegyric, raises in all persons the most exalted idea, and commands the most profound respect. This perfect model of true penitents, this triumphing champion of our holy faith, and confounder of heresies, this bright light and most glorious doctor of the Church of Christ, was born on the 13th of November in the year 354, at Tagaste, a small town of Numidia, in Africa, not far from Hippo, but at some distance from the sea, which the saint had never seen till he was grown up. His parents were of good condition, yet not very rich ; his father, Patricius, was an idolater, and of a hasty choleric disposition; but by the holy example and prudent conduct of St. Monica, his wife, he at length learned the humility and meekness of the Christian religion, and was baptized a little before his death. She bore him several children; St. Austin speaks of his brother Navigius, who left a family behind him, and of a sister who died an abbess. Our saint had the misfortune to fall, in his youth, like the prodigal son, into the most frightful gulf ...« less