have been recovered from it, at least if he is the same who wrote to St. Augustin from Carthage
THE PROFIT OF BELIEVING.
[DE UTILITATE CREDENDI.]
Retract, i, cap. 14. Moreover now at Hippo-Regius as Presbyter I wrote a book om the Profit of Believing, to a friend of mine who had been taken in by the Manichees, and whom I knew to be still held in that error, and to deride the Catholic school of Faith, in that men were bid believe, but not taught what was truth by a most certain method. In this book I said, &c, * * *, This book begins thus, '* S% mihi Honorate, unum atque idem videretur esse.
St. Augustin enumerates his book om the Profit of Believing first amongst those he wrote as Presbyter, to which order he was raised at Hippo about the beginning of the year 391. The person for whom he wrote had been led into error by himself, and appears to have been recovered from it, at least if he is the same who wrote to St. Augustin from Carthage about 412, proposing several questions, and to whom St. Augustin wrote his r4oth Epistle. Cassiodorus calls him a Presbyter, though at that time he was not baptized. Augustin speaks of the death of another Honoratus, a Presbyter.
In Ep. .83,. St. Towards the end of his life he also wrote his 228th Epistle to a Bishop of Thabenna of the same name.—(Bened, Ed.)
The remarks in the Aefractations are given in notes to the passages where they occur.
1. Ir, Honoratus, a heretic, and a man trusting heretics seemed to me one and the same, I should judge it my duty to remain silent both in tongue and pen in this matter. But now, whereas there is a very great difference between these two: forasmuch as he, in my opinion, is an heretic, who, for the sake of some temporal advantage, and chiefly for the sake of his own glory and pre-eminence, either gives birth to, or follows, false and new opinions; but he, who trusts men of this kind, is a man deceived by a certain imagination of truth and piety. This being the case, I have not thought it my duty to be silent towards you, as to my opinions on the finding and retaining of truth: with great love of which, as you know, we have burned from our very earliest youth: but it is a thing far removed far advanced and fallen into these corporeal things, think that there is nothing else than what they perceive by those five well-known reporters of the body; and what impressions * and images they have received from these, they carry over with themselves, even when they essay to withdraw from the senses; and by the deadly and most deceitful rule of these think that they measure most rightly the unspeakable recesses of truth. Nothing is more easy, my dearest friend, than for one not only to say, but also to think, that he hath found out the truth; but how difficult it is in reality, you will perceive, I trust, from this letter of mine. And that this may profit you, or at any rate may in no way harm you, and also all, into whose hands it shall chance to come,
_ from the minds of vain men, who, having too
1 Plagas.