Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/206

 188 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. fruendi Deo et invicem in Deo. Pax omnium rerumy tranquillitas ordinis. Ordo est parium dispariumqice rerum sua caique loca tribuens dispositio} For earthly peace and order there must be the concord of citizens in commanding and obeying ; and for this life's true ordering and pacifying unto life eternal, there must be an authority on earth to transmit peace and grace from God. The Roman in Augustine completes the labors of prior Eoman-minded Christians, and makes the Church absolute in authority to bind and loose. Augustine had also the training of rhetoric and the enlightenment of the philosophies, especially Neo- platonism. He combines Greek metaphysical concep- tions and late philosophic moods with his own intense Christian love of God and ardent practice of the other Christian virtues. Yet he remains a man of the Latin West. This appears in his abiding Roman qualities, and in the character of the topics interesting him ; for example, the problem of grace and free will, the nature of the soul and its relationship to God, rather than the metaphysical dogmas of the Eastern Church, which he simply accepts. He had a genius for psy- chology, in which branch of mental science his pred- ecessors were Latins rather than Greeks.* The greatness and completeness of Augustine's Christian nature consisted in the greatness of his love of God and the completeness which his mind carried out the convictions of this love to their conclusions. In this, with power unequalled since Paul, he was appropriating Christ, feeling and thinking back to 1 Civ. Dei, XIX, 13, and cf. i6., 10-12. < E.g., Tertullian and Amobius.