PAPYRUS.

Reduced facsimile of a Latin manuscript containing the

SERMONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE.

Sixth Century.  In the National Library at Paris.

A fine specimen of sixth-century writing upon sheets formed of two thin layers of longitudinal strips of the stem or pith of the papyrus plant pressed together at right angles to each other.

[Illustration]

Then putting my finger between (or some other mark), I shut the volume, and with a calmed countenance, made it known to Alypius.  And what was wrought in him, which I know not, he thus shewed me.  He asked to see what I had read; I shewed him, and he looked even farther than I had read, and I knew not what followed.  This followed:  “Him that is weak in the faith, receive ye”; which he applied to himself and disclosed to me.  And by this admonition was he strengthened; and by a good resolution and purpose, and most corresponding to his character, wherein he did always far differ from me for the better, without any turbulent delay he joined me.  Thence we go to my mother:  we tell her; she rejoiceth:  we relate in order how it took place; she leapeth for joy, and triumpheth and blesseth thee, “who art able to do above all that we ask or think”:  for she perceived that thou hadst given her more for me than she was wont to beg by her pitiful and most sorrowful groanings.

THE FOES OF THE CITY

From ‘The City of God’

Let these and similar answers (if any fuller and fitter answers can be found) be given to their enemies by the redeemed family of the Lord Christ, and by the pilgrim city of the King Christ.  But let this city bear in mind that among her enemies lie hid those who are destined to be fellow-citizens, that she may not think it a fruitless labor to bear what they inflict as enemies, till they become confessors of the faith.  So also, as long as she is a stranger in the world, the city of God has in her communion, and bound to her by the sacraments, some who shall not eternally dwell in the lot of the saints.  Of these, some are not now recognized; others declare themselves, and do not hesitate to make common cause with our enemies in murmuring against God, whose sacramental badge they wear.  These men you may see to-day thronging the churches with us, to-morrow crowding the theatres with the godless.  But we have the less reason to despair of the reclamation of even such persons, if among our most declared enemies there are now some, unknown to themselves, who are destined to become our friends.  In truth, these two cities are entangled together in this world, and intermingled until the last judgment shall effect their separation.  I now proceed to speak, as God shall help me, of the rise and progress and end of these two cities; and what I write, I write for the glory of the city of God, that being placed in comparison with the other, it may shine with a brighter lustre.