about original sin, contracted from Adam, which probably presupposes the controversy with the
330 SAINT A UGUSTINE - SERMONS
NOTES
1. I presume a date after 412 is suggested, because of the very clear statement in the sermon about original sin, contracted from Adam, which probably presupposes the controversy with the Pelagians. But there is no polemic in the sermon against these last of Augustine's great adversaries, as I think there would have been when they seemed to be strong in Africa, and he was really alarmed about their influence; that is to say from about 412 to about 420. So while he continued to write against them to the end of his life, largely because their doughty champion Julian of Eclanum was writing aginst him, I don't think he was worrying so much about them after 420 as far as his flock was concerned. So I would, with some confidence, date this sermon even later, to after 420. It has a number of "old man" touches about it.
2. See Jn 21:15-17.
3. In Petro petram. In the next few sentences I will sometimes have to translate Peter as Rocky. 4. According to a rabbinic legend the rock, which Moses struck to provide water for the people, Ex 17:6, followed them as a permanent water supply throughout their forty years' wandering in the desert.
5. Augustine is thinking in terms of a harmony of the gospels. But in Luke's account there is no trial by the Jewish leaders at that moment at night; when day came, they took Jesus from the high priest's house to the council chamber for the trial, Lk 22:66-71. So it was perfectly possible for Jesus to look round at Peter in the ordinary sense; he was being held, and mocked, in another part of the courtyard, the atrium.
6. The newly baptized, the infantes, who, had been wearing their white baptismal robes, their albs, at all the services throughout Easter week.
7. Does this expression indicate that baptism was sometimes performed by "infusion,'' as the official term has it, that is by pouring water over the head, and not by immersion, by dipping the whole person in the baptismal pool? But the two methods were perhaps combined, baptizer and baptized standing together in the pool, and the former pouring water from it three times over the latter's head, the way old mosaics represent John the Baptist baptizing Jesus.