hence abstinence, and the various forms of asceticism which early entered into the pietism of the Oriental monks.  That which gave the Manicheans a hold on the mind of Augustine, seeking after truth, was their arrogant claim to the solution of mysteries, especially the origin of evil, and their affectation of superior knowledge.  Their watchwords were Reason, Science, Philosophy.  Moreover, like the Sophists in the time of Socrates, they were assuming, specious, and rhetorical.  Augustine—­ardent, imaginative, credulous—­was attracted by them, and he enrolled himself in their esoteric circle.

The coarser forms of sin he now abandoned, only to resign himself to the emptiness of dreamy speculations and the praises of admirers.  He won prizes and laurels in the schools.  For nine years he was much flattered for his philosophical attainments.  I can almost see this enthusiastic youth scandalizing and shocking his mother and her friends by his bold advocacy of doctrines at war with the gospel, but which he supposed to be very philosophical.  Pert and bright young men in these times often talk as he did, but do not know enough to see their own shallowness.

     “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”

The mind of Augustine, however, was logical, and naturally profound; and at last he became dissatisfied with the nonsense with which plausible pretenders ensnared him.  He was then what we should call a schoolmaster, or what some would call a professor, and taught rhetoric for his support, which was a lucrative and honorable calling.  He became a master of words.  From words he ascended to definitions, and like all true inquirers began to love the definite, the precise.  He wanted a basis to stand upon.  He sought certitudes,—­elemental truths which sophistry could not cover up.  Then the Manicheans could no longer satisfy him.  He had doubts, difficulties, which no Manichean could explain, not even Dr. Faustus of Mileve, the great oracle and leader of the sect,—­a subtle dialectician and brilliant orator, but without depth or earnestness,—­whom he compares to a cup-bearer presenting a costly goblet, but without anything in it.  And when it became clear that this high-priest of pretended wisdom was ignorant of the things in which he was supposed to excel, but which Augustine himself had already learned, his disappointment was so great that he lost faith both in the teacher and his doctrines.  Thus this Faustus, “neither willing nor witting it,” was the very man who loosened the net which had ensnared Augustine for so many years.

He was now thirty years of age, and had taught rhetoric in Carthage, the capital of Northern Africa, with brilliant success, for three years; but panting for new honors or for new truth, he removed to Rome, to pursue both his profession and his philosophical studies.  He entered the capital of the world in the height of its material glories, but in the decline of its political importance, when Damasus occupied the episcopal