2. Matt xxii. 37-40.
POLITICAL WRITINGS 277
I had already written a reply to your Charity, but while I was waiting for an opportunity of forwarding the letter, my beloved son Faustus arrived here on his way to your Excellency. After he had received the letter which I had intended to be carried by him to your Benevolence, he stated to me that you were very desirous that I should write you something which might build you up unto the eternal salvation of which you have hope in Christ
Jesus our Lord. And, although I was busily occupied at the time, he insisted, with an earnestness corresponding to the love which, as you know, he bears to you, that I should do this without delay. To meet his convenience, therefore, as he was in haste to depart, I thought it better to write, though necessarily without much time for reflection, rather than put off the gratification of your pious desire, my noble lord and justly distinguished and honourable son.
All is contained in these brief sentences: "Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with aU thy soul, and with all thy strength: and love thy neighbour as thyself;" ^ for these are the words in which the Lord, when on earth, gave an epitome of reUgion, saying in the gospel, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Daily advance, then, in this love, both by praying and by well-doing, that through the help of Him more desperate but unsuccessful battle, after which he left Hippo in the hands of Genseric, and returned by order of Placidia to Italy. For fuller particulars of his history, see Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. xxxiii. [Editor's note: See also E. A. Freeman, Western Europe in the Fifth Century, London, 1904, pp. 305-370; and J. L. M. de Lepper, De Rebus Gestis Bonifatii Comitis Africae, Tilburg, 1941.]
2. Matt xxii. 37-40.