when combated, she comes off victorious; when craftily assailed, she gets the better of the conspirators; when slandered, she shines with additional lustre. -For what can be equal in power and strength to the Church of God? Talk not of walls, nor of arms; for walls decay with time; but the Church never grows old with age.—The devils themselves cannot overcome the Church.”(6)-Hom. de non contemnenda Ecclesia. T. xii. p. 491.-Edit. Montfaucon, Paris 1735. year 407.
CENT. V.
St. AUGUSTIN,[1] L.C.-“ If you hear him contradicting not one particle, but the whole, and declaring that it is false : what will you do? which way will you turn yourself? The rise of what book, what authority, what series of succession will you cite as a witness ? For if you shall attempt this, you will effect nothing; and you here see, what the authority of the Catholic Church can do, (i) which is confirmed by the series of Bishops, succeeding to one another, from the Sees founded by the Apostles, down to the present day: to this add the agreement of nations.” Contra Faustum L. xi. c.ü. T. viii. p. 219. Edit. PP. S. Mauri, Parisiis 1679, & seq.
“ These, so many and so great ties, bind the believing man to the Catholic Church.—But, unless the authority of this
- ↑ St. Augustin was Bishop of Hippo in Africa, and himself an African. His works are very numerous, and his name, on account of the erudition of those works, their vast researches, and their deep insight into all the ways of the divine economy, has ever borne the greatest weight in the Christian Churches. He illustrated the close of the fourth, and the beginning of the fifth, century, in the Latin Church, while St. John Chrysostom slone in the East. He died in the year 430
