communities or Churches, each of which constituted a populus or plebs.
SERMON 192 49
7. See Lk 2:7.36-38; 1:39-45.57-63.
8. He did not, I think, mean peoples in the sense of nations, but in the sense of local Christian communities or Churches, each of which constituted a populus or plebs.
9. See Jn 3:31. 10. Something ultra-spiritual people would be tempted to do; Neoplatonists, for example, or even more the Manichees, and those influenced by them.
11. See Rom 8:3. He here seems to describe accurately enough the view of Jesus that would be held by Moslems, for example; or by Unitarians, though I imagine these would not accept the virgin birth.
12. The psalm, as Augustine knew perfectly well, is actually talking about the sun, as one of God's most splendid creatures. But it represents Christ; and therefore Augustine can apply the whole passage to Christ without a thought for the sun.
13. In the northern hemisphere, of course, and north of the tropics. Modem readers, if not Augustine, need to be reminded, perhaps, that the opposite is the case in the southern hemisphere, and that in the tropics all days are practically the same length. In the contemporary, really world-wide Church this "calendar" symbolism for Christmas (and a corresponding one for Easter) is possibly just a little parochial. Owing to that mystery, "the procession of the equinoxes," 25 December is no longer the winter (or summer) solstice.