have conceived and brought forth wind. The "of salvation" properly belongs, with a negative, to the
126 SAINT AUGUSTINE - SERMONS
3. The question really was: since he fasted after he was baptized, why do we require catechumens to fast before they are baptized, as a preparation for baptism?
4. It is quite certain that the North African Church did distinguish between Good Friday (on which, for example, Augustine preached Sermon 218, and also his discourse of Psalm 22) and Easter day as the day of Christ's resurrection. But the whole celebration of the paschal mystery, covering the three or four days up to and including Easter Sunday, was thought of in unitary terms, and could all be called the celebration of the Lord's passion—which included, supremely, its triumphant con¬ clusion.
5. And the question of which particular day, had been, and would be, keenly, not to say bitterly, disputed between different Churches; first between the Churches of the province of Asia and other Churches in the second century: what is known as the quartodeciman controversy, because they kept Easter on the 14th day of the month (the day of Passover), whatever day of the week it was; and later, from the seventh century, between the Celtic Churches of the British Isles and the other Latin Churches; and nowadays between the Churches which follow the Gregorian calendar and those in the East which have retained the Julian.
6. See Acts 19:1-7; also 18:25; 1:5.
7. A constant point of his argument against the Donatists: that it is not really the minister of the sacrament, whoever he may be, saint or sinner, apostate or believer, that baptizes, but Christ, who uses the minister as his mere instrument.
8. Not, at least, as a religious sacrament.
9. See Col 2:11-12. By the sacrament of Christ's resurrection he probably means the sacrament of baptism, especially as he goes on to quote from a baptismal passage in Romans 6; though in his terminology he could quite easily call the resurrection a sacrament.
10. See Ex 12:1-14.
11. See 1 Cor 5:7.
12. Devotion in the strong Roman sense, which still survives faintly in our expression "devotion to duty. " Devotio in pagan Rome was a religious act by which a leader devoted himself as a sacrifice to the dii Maries, the shades of the ancestors, in order to obtain victory in battle. The great examples of this were the consuls Decius Mus and another Decius, whose stories are told by Livy in his History of Rome book VIII, chapter 9, and book X, chapter 28. Saint Thomas Aquinas refers to these stories in his question on devotion in the Summa Theologiae, Ila Ilae, 82,1.
13. A sentence almost impossible to construe or translate (in the Latin the subject is in the singular): aut ab illecebra carnali inopia aliqua spiritali veritatis et sapientiae delectatione suspensa, adfamem sitimque sentiendam descendit ejus intention clearly suffering from a surfeit of ablatives. Saint Thomas quotes it in his patristic anthology, the Catena Aurea, or Golden Chain in what is fairly evidently an abbreviated paraphrase. The best suggestion is to emend inopia to in pia. The sense would remain much the same as I have translated.
14. See Is 53:2.8.
15. See 2 Cor 5:6.
16. See Phil 1:23-24.
17. See Rv 5:5.
18. See Rv 4:7.
19. See Ps 104:20. 20. See Mk 9:29.
21. Devorator, a very unusual word, occurring in the Vulgate in Wis 12:5, and possibly in Augustine's version in Jgs 14:14, Samson's riddle about the lion he had killed.
22. See 2 Cor 5:6.
23. Reading yarn gratum ... instead of the tam gratum ... of the text, which would mean "the so acceptable ..."
24. See Rom 8:6.
25. Where in fact the prophet is saying something quite different, and much less gratifying: we have conceived and brought forth wind. The "of salvation" properly belongs, with a negative, to the next sentence.