Augustine in His Own Words
Church as Corpus Permixtum
The Church, as Augustine often remarked, was a hodge-podge of good and bad, what he called a corpus permixtum ("mixed-up body"). In the following passage, he gives a glimpse of the varied ways outsiders viewed the Christian Church. From Expositions of the Psalms 99:
(12) Generally speaking, the Church of God is praised: "Christians are really great people." Christians alone get praised this way: "The Catholic Church is great. They all love each other; each and every one of them does all they can for one another. They pray, fast, sing hymns; they do this around the whole world. God is praised in peace, in unanimity." A person may hear this, and nothing gets said about the wicked who are mixed in. He doesn't know about them. He comes, drawn by this high praise. He then runs into these scoundrels mixed up with the others, ones he hadn't been told about before he came. He gets offended by all these false Christians and flees true Christians. On the other side, there are hate-filled people, slanderers—they rush in to condemn: "What sort of people are Christians? Who are Christians? Money-grubbers, loan-sharks. Aren't the very people who pack the theaters or the amphitheaters for the games or for the other big-time entertainments the same people who pack the churches on festival days? They're drunks, gluttons; they're jealous of each other, they tear each other down." Sure, there are Christians like that, but not every one's like that. The slanderer in his blindness says nothing about the good; the praiser in his exaggeration says nothing of the bad.19
Suspicious Conversions
In late fourth-century North Africa, Christians were a decided majority. Remaining pagans faced strong social pressures to convert. On one occasion, Augustine was called upon to defend the conversion of a banker named Faustinus who, locals suspected, had his eye on the job of mayor and who certainly realized he would never get it unless he became a Christian. This sermon was delivered not in Hippo, but in Carthage, where Bishop Aurelius routinely invited Augustine to take the podium as guest preacher. Here we see Augustine's willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to what appeared as a less-thansincere conversion. Note the way Augustine quotes people's gossip and slangy quips; note also his playful use of imagery of sheep and shepherds and of banking and investments. From Sermon 279:
19. En. Ps. 99.12 (CCL 39:1400); my trans.