jumenta, that is, their aids. Augustine thought, wrongly, that jumentum, a beast of burden, derives
228 SAINT A UGUST1NE - SERMONS introduction, like some of the other short sermons we have just seen. The topic he chooses to preach about is rather curious for the occasion. My feeling is that he would not have been so idiosyncratic in his younger years; and so I would be quite ready to date this sermon as late as 420.
2. See Mt 24:12.
3. Here "temptations" really do have to be understood as "trials"; but with what has already been said, it has still to be rendered "temptations."
4. See Lk 22:56-62; also Mt 14:22-31.
5. In the present vigil liturgy this canticle is sung after the reading of the story of the Exodus. Doubtless it had the same context in Augustine's North African liturgy; but it also seems from what he goes on to say, that it was sung after the neophytes had been baptized, and had entered the congregation of the faithful for the Easter eucharist. So this sermon is not an introduction to the vigil, but was preached as it was about to reach its climax.
6. Velut sua jumenta, to which he adds in a pun quite untranslatable into English, hoc est adjumenta, that is, their aids. Augustine thought, wrongly, that jumentum, a beast of burden, derives from juvo, I help, just as adjumentum derives from its strengthened form adjuvo (Questions on the Heptateuch 5, 38). In fact jumentum derives from jugum, a yoke.