good repeated much more regularly than does the Hebrew.
SERMON 229V 341
NOTES
1. Lambot ascribes this sermon to the Friday of Easter week, Poque to the Thursday. The Italian edition adds to it two fragments which were published in the Revue Benedictine, 79 (1969) as 229W and 229Z. That they are fragments of the same sermon as this one seems to me to be extremely doubtful; one of them at least sounds much more authentically like Augustine. So I revert here to that numbering, and give them next as fragments of distinct sermons.
This one is the last of the fragments culled from the collection of John the Deacon on Genesis. The Maurists consider all these fragments, from 229R to 229V to be from one sermon, preached therefore on one day. They do not doubt their authenticity.
2. This strikes me as a thoroughly un-Augustinian expression, of separation of the nations (or Gentiles) from his servants—and in the Church. It's the beginning of the medieval style of talking, as in St Thomas Aquinas' work, the Summa Contra Gentes, meaning non-Christians.
3. The heavenly bodies, now representing not the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit, but preach¬ ers of the gospel.
4. What is now called the sacramental character of baptism and confirmation; while the power of the sacrament is now usually referred to as the grace of the sacrament.
5. The newly baptized. 6. For Simon Magus, see Acts 8:13-20. As for St Peter, he is nowhere recorded in the New Testament as having been baptized. There could possibly be an allusion to his weeping bitterly when the cock crew, Lk 22:62, and thus "baptizing his conscience," as in Sermons 2290, 1 and 229P, 4 above. That would presuppose, of course, that the preacher, or writer of this sermon was thoroughly familiar with Augustine's treatment in that way of Peter's weeping, which is probable enough, especially if he was Heraclius.
7. An even more muddled phrase than the rest—hardly the genuine Augustine.
8. The old Latin text followed the Greek Septuagint, which has the refrain God saw that it was good repeated much more regularly than does the Hebrew.
9. Reading non vidit quia melior est, instead of the text's. . . quia melior facta est.