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lawful act of nature is (from our first parents) accompanied with our penal shame'. The cynics thought that one should be without shame, and Diogenes would have none of it, wishing to be in all things like a dog; yet even he, after one attempt, abandoned, in practice, this extreme of shamelessness. What is shameful about lust is its independence of the will. Adam and Eve, before the fall, could have had sexual intercourse without lust, though in fact they did not. Handicraftsmen, in the pursuit of their trade, move their hands without lust; similarly Adam, if only he had kept away from the apple-tree, could have performed the business of sex without the emotions that it now demands. The sexual members, like the rest of the body, would have obeyed the will. The need of lust in sexual intercourse is a punishment for Adam's sin, but for which sex might have been divorced from pleasure. Omitting some physiological details which the translator has very properly left in the decent obscurity of the original Latin, the above is St Augustine's theory as regards sex.

It is evident from the above that what makes the ascetic dislike sex is its independence of the will. Virtue, it is held, demands a complete control of the will over the body, but such control does not suffice to make the sexual act possible. The sexual act, therefore, seems inconsistent with a perfectly virtuous life.

Ever since the Fall, the world has been divided into two cities, of which one shall reign eternally with God, the other shall be in eternal torment with Satan. Cain belongs to the city of the Devil, Abel to the City of God. Abel, by grace, and in virtue of predestination, was a pilgrim on earth and a citizen of heaven. The patriarchs belonged to the City of God. Discussion of the death of Methuselah brings St Augustine to the vexed question of the comparison of the Septuagint with the Vulgate. The data, as given in the Septuagint, lead to the conclusion that Methuselah survived the flood by fourteen years, which is impossible, since he was not in the Ark. The Vulgate, following the Hebrew manuscripts, gives data from which it follows that he died in the year of the flood. On this point, St Augustine holds that St Jerome and the Hebrew manuscripts must be right. Some people maintained that the Jews had deliberately falsified the Hebrew manuscripts, out of malice towards the Christians; this hypothesis is rejected. On the other hand, the Septuagint must have been divinely inspired. The only conclusion is that Ptolemy's copyists made mistakes in transcribing the Septuagint. Speaking of the translations of the Old Testament, he says: 'The Church has received that of the Seventy, as if there were no other, as many of the Greek Christians, using this wholly, know not whether there be or no. Our Latin translation is from this also. Although one Jerome, a learned priest, and a great linguist, has translated the same Scriptures from the Hebrew into Latin. But although the Jews affirm his learned labour to be all truth, and avouch the Seventy to have oftentimes erred, yet the Churches of Christ hold no one man to be preferred before so many, especially being selected by the high priest, for this work.' He accepts the story of the miraculous agreement of the seventy independent translations, and considers this a proof that the Septuagint is divinely inspired. The Hebrew, however, is equally inspired. This conclusion leaves undecided the question as to the authority of Jerome's translation. Perhaps he might have been more decidedly on Jerome's side if the two Saints had not had a quarrel about St Peter's time-serving propensities.11

He gives a synchronism of sacred and profane history. We learn that Æneas came to Italy when Abdon12 was judge in Israel, and that the last persecution will be under Antichrist, but its date is unknown.

After an admirable chapter against judicial torture, St Augustine proceeds to combat the new Academicians, who hold all things to be doubtful. 'The Church of Christ detests these doubts as madness, having a most certain knowledge of