of Jesus seem to be. Augustine though doesn't take them as a general statement, but as a particular
SERMON 215 165 sects and names it would take far too long to explain now. You see, we have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.20 One thing only I urge you to take to heart, and that is by every means possible to turn your minds and your ears away from the person who is not a Catholic, so that you may be able to lay hold of the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the flesh and life everlasting through the one, true, and holy Catholic Church, in which we learn of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, to whom is honor and glory for ever and ever.
NOTES
1. The sermon was preached in Hippo Regius on the fifth Sunday of Lent (or the Saturday preceding it). My first inclination was to assign it to the early years of Augustine's ministry, between 391 and 395, for reasons of style; there is much professional rhetoric, but few of those homely touches that mark his preaching in his prime. But considerations set out in note 18 below I think oblige us to date the sermon late, about 425 or so. Old age, no doubt, can have the same sort of effect on a preacher's style as youthful inexperience.
2. This settles a question I raised in Sermon 213, note 11, about how the creed was given back. The opening phrase is strange; he means, I take it, the mystery of faith; in his final section 9 he refers to the sacrament of faith. The phrase has been introduced into the revised rite of the Mass as intro¬ duction to the acclamation after the consecration; doubtless retrieved from ancient patristic practice.
3. The parades, pompae, would be pagan festivities and all the public entertainments in amphi¬ theater and circus (chariot races) and theater that were connected with them. The angels, I imagine, would be those addicts of these things who tried to seduce you to go along with them.
4. Christ within you. He here seems to treat "the new man" as being distinct from you and your renewed self.
5. He is clearly using the Nicene creed as a kind of commentary on the apostles' creed. But it probably did not feature in the regular liturgy, as it does today.
6. See Jn 10:30.
7. Reading reseravit, as suggested by the Maurists, instead of the reservavit, "preserved," of the text.
8. Reading concipiendi instead of the cognoscendi, "knowing," of the text, which could be a very easy slip of stenographer or copyist, from the phrase quoniam virum non cognosceret only a few words before.
9. A somewhat artificial speech to attribute to Mary at the annunciation! But it is just drawing out, with rhetorical license, the implications of her act of faith.
10. See Phil 2:7.
11. See Ps 130:3.
12. See Bar 3:37, where the subject is the divine wisdom.
13. A very odd question to ask, and answer to give, about a general statement, such as the words of Jesus seem to be. Augustine though doesn't take them as a general statement, but as a particular one, referring to Jesus himself. He is the impersonal "one," quis in the Latin. There can be little doubt that this was also the thought at the back of the evangelist's mind.
14. This was probably when they were first enrolled as catechumens; the sign of the cross was marked on their foreheads. This little rite has been restored in the revised order of the Christian initiation of adults.