he has in mind are really just baptism, with confirmation and eucharist perhaps included, since they
338 SAINT A UGUST1NE - SERMONS
So the power of the sacrament is charity. This charity is something the heretics do not have, though I find the form of the sacrament with them. And so, when heretics come to me, I bow to the form of the sacrament, and do not rebaptize them; but I restore the power of the sacrament, and insert the root of charity.1 2 3 4 5 6 So that will be the living souls which the land produces, so that the so may now be alive, having at last the power of the sacrament. So that's all about the text, Let the waters produce reptiles of living souls, and so on.
NOTES
1. Lambot ascribes this sermon to the Thursday after Easter, Poque to the Wednesday. 2. See Gn 1:20. This is a very literal translation of reptilia animarum vivarum, which in turn is a literal translation of the Greek of the Septuagint. I have to keep it literal, because he is going on to expound it as it stands.
3. Reading gentes instead of the text's gentibus. Though if gentibus is correct, it must mean that the sacraments are necessary so that they, the sacraments, may be evangelized to the nations—a kind of muddle typical of this Pseudo-Augustine, Augustinaster, or Augustinarius. I am beginning to wonder if he was not perhaps the priest Heraclius, Augustine's right hand man, and successor as bishop; a very worthy and devoted disciple, but with nothing of the master's genius.
4. Supplying "everybody can," which is not in the Latin; something has presumably slipped out. 5. So the fish are being identified very clumsily with the reptiles of living souls. The sacraments he has in mind are really just baptism, with confirmation and eucharist perhaps included, since they followed immediately on baptism.
6. By a canonical, and indeed sacramental, absolution.