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88  in his last letter to count Bonifatius, that practically the one escape from an immoral life was in the vow of monastic continence. He is aware of the difficulties of the questions raised, and endeavours to face them in his books de Bono Conjugali, de Virginitate (401, against Jovinian), and ''de Continentia. He is specially anxious not to depreciate marriage; but in his attempt to explain the transmission of original sin, not merely by the fact "that the human embryo grows from the very first in a soil positively sinful," but by the assumption that the mode of ordinary human generation is inevitably sinful, he fairly lays himself open to the charge of doing so (de Nupt. II. 15; Enchir. xii. 34; de Civ.'' XIV. xvi.‒xxi.). The orthodox theology of original sin has by common consent dropped this element of the Augustinian theory, which shifts the fundamental Christian condemnation of sensuality from the basis of moral insight to that of semi-Manichean dualism. But Julian was wrong in setting it down wholly to Augustine's Manichean past. This may at most account for a bias, which neither his subsequent philosophical studies nor the atmosphere of the church were likely to eradicate. Augustine only exaggerates an instinct not dominant, but really present (Matt. xix. 12; I. Cor. vii. 1, 26) in the Christian religion from the first, strengthened by the influences of the times, especially that of the Christian Platonism, and by the end of the 4th cent, elevated to unassailable supremacy. In that cent. the influx of heathen society into the church threatened her distinctive character as a holy society. The monastic ideal of life, with its corollary of a double standard of Christian morality—baleful as the latter was in its effects—was probably the church's then only possible response to the challenge of a momentous peril. Augustine introduced monachism into North Africa, and its spread there was rapid. In Hippo it was compulsory for the clergy. At first, Augustine permitted a "secular" clergy, but toward the end of his life the permission was revoked. With celibacy went the common life and the obligation of absolute personal poverty. We saw above (§ 7, a) how Augustine had followed, early in his Christian career, the example of Anthony. He took the communism of Acts iv. 32 as the normal ideal of Christian life (Enarr. in  Ps. cxxxi. 5), and his community wad modelled upon it (supra, § 13). At the same time, in the book de Opere Monachorum (c. 400), he insists that monks must work, and not idly rely upon the alms of the faithful. He shews an almost prophetic appreciation of monastic abuses (cf. what he says of the Euchites, de Haer. lvii.). He regards poverty as a consilium (de Bono Conj. xxiii. 30, Ep. 15729), not a praeceptum. Worldly possessions are allowed to the good as well as to the evil, "et a malis habetur et a bonis; tanto melius habetur quanto minus amatur" (Ep. 15326, cf. de Civ. XVIII. liv.). The Pelagians, who naturally insisted on human effort as a condition of salvation, took a severer view of wealth than did Augustine (Epp. 157, 18632, divites baptizatos, sqq.). He combats them on Biblical grounds: Dives and Lazarus, the rich

, the rich young man, the camel and the needle's eye, St. Paul's charge to the rich in this world; but his treatment of the question is not constructively built on first principles. He perceives that it is the spirit, not the mere fact of riches or poverty that is all-important; even a rich man may be poor in spirit and ready to suffer not only the loss of all, but martyrdom itself, for Christ's sake (see Serm. 505, 14; Ep. 157,29, 34, 36, etc.; de Virg. 14). Yet riches—and this is the reflection towards which he gravitates—are, as a matter of experience, a great hindrance; the rich are as a rule the chief offenders "difficile est ut non plura peccata contrahant" (in Psalm. cxxxii. 4), therefore "abstineamus nos, fratres, a possessione rei privatae . . . fac locum domino" (ib. cxxxi.6); the counsel of poverty is the safe course. Augustine bases this on the temptation to misuse of wealth; this would tend to place the man who uses his wealth well and wisely, overcoming temptation, in God's service, higher than him who evades the trial. But the drift of church feeling was too strong for this thought to prevail. Augustine and Pelagius were agreed that monks as a class must rank above "secular" Christians; widely removed as Augustine was from the Pelagian idea of merit, yet practically he often subordinates the importance of the inward to the outward, of character to works. But monks must live, and, as we have seen, Augustine would have them work. To "take no thought for the morrow" means to seek first the Kingdom of God; not improvidence or laziness, but singleness of aim is the note of the Christian life (in Serm. in Mont. II. 56).

Augustine had occasion (Ep. 211) to address a long letter to his nuns, giving directions for the abatement of evils incidental to the common life, and for the regulation of their prayers, food, costume, and other details. This letter, a model of good sense and right-mindedness, is the basis of the "Regula" for monks printed among his works. This Rule is therefore an adaptation of Augustine's actual counsels, but can hardly be from his own hand. It has been much valued by monastic reformers, and was the basis of the rules of St. Norbet, of St. Dominic (1216), and of the different communities of "canons regular" and friars which have borne the title of "Augustinian" (from 1244).

It will be noticed that Augustine's theory of property is vitiated by the assumption that Acts iv. 32 implies a permanent condemnation of private property. This was even more conspicuously the case with St. Ambrose, who speaks very strongly of the duty of Christians to treat their possessions as the property of the poor. Augustine, in a passage not wholly consistent with some referred to above, speaks similarly of the private property of Christians as the common property of all; to treat it otherwise is damnabilis usurpatio (Ep. 10535). This "Christian communism," it may be remarked in passing, differs from that of Proudhon ("la propriété c’est le vol") as the duty to give differs from the right to take. In one point Augustine takes the opposite view to Ambrose, namely, in the theory of church property. Ambrose, in his resistance to the action of the empress Justina, who attempted 