Of St. Austin. His Father was a Heathen when this his Son was born, There is no instance of this nature more commonly urged than that of St Austin; and yet none that is a more palpable mistake. That he was about 33 years old [288] when he was baptized, is clear; he himself gives a large account of it in his Book of Confessions*. As he observed, † That that book was in his life-time more generally read than any other of his works, so it has happened ever since; -That, of all other, having had the fortune to be translated into many vulgar languages, every body has observed the story of his baptism; and it has cast scruples into the heads of many unlearned readers, to think, if infant baptism were then practised, why he was not baptized in infancy? As for his parents:- Possidius, who a little after his death wrote his Life, says, in the beginning thereof, That he was born of creditable and Christian parents." So here matters are brought to a fair issue. St. Austin, in his books which I have quoted ‡, makes us to understand that he never knew, heard, or read of any Christian that was an Antipædobaptist; and Pelagius, his adversary, in the question of original sin, whose interest it was to have found some, if there had been any, confesses that he knew of none; and yet now it seems St. Austin's own father was one. This must have passed for current, if St. Austin himself had not given us a truer, or, at least, a more particular account of his parents than Possidius has done; but this he does in the forementioned book of his Confessions. Only there is this difference, that the story of his baptism being set down at large, is taken notice of by every body; but his father's want of Christianity being mentioned but briefly, and by the by in one or two places, has escaped the notice of many readers. * Lib. 9, c. 6. + Retractat. lib, 2, c. 6. + Part. 1, ch. 19, Marshall, in his Defence of Infant Baptism (p. 58) or rather a friend of his, whom he made use of to search into matters of antiquity, "having himself (as he there says) but just leisure enough to look into these authors now and then;" he was taken up, I suppose, with much higher authors: Calvin, Twiss, &c.; but his friend has declared the matter very well, which was easy to do. He has produced the particular places where St. Austin tells us that his father was no baptized Christiau, nor so much as a catechumen, nor did believe in Christ, till a good while after he [St. Austin] was born; which are these: In the first book of his Confessions (ch. 11) speaking of the time when he was a child [263] (about eight or nine years old, one must guess by the story) he says of his father Ille nondum crediderat. He did not yet at that time believe.' In the second book (ch. 3) speaking to God of the state of his father and mother, at that time when he was, as himself mentions, 16 years old [170], he says, 66 In my mother's breast thou hadst already begun thy temple, and made an entrance for thy dwelling-place; but he [my father] was yet but a catechumen, and that but newly." In the ninth book (ch. 9) reckoning up, in a speech to God Almighty, the good deeds of his mother, who was then lately dead [289], he says, " Finally, she also gained over to Thee her husband in the latter end of his life [176]; and had no more occasion to bewail that [crossness and ill-nature] in him after he was fidelis, a baptized Christian; which she had endured in him before he was so." of 66 Notwithstanding all this, the life-writers copying out of Possidius, and one out of another, do to this day write him parente utroque Christiano natum, Born parents both Christians.' If he or they mean that his parents were both Christians at the time of his birth, it is a plain mistake; but if they mean that they became so before they died, it is true; but ought to have been explained so;- at least, by the modern writers, because of the occasion of mistake that it lays in the way of the Antipædobaptists, of which there was formerly no fear. * His mother indeed was a Christian (in heart and belief at least, whether baptized or not, we are not certain) at the time of his birth [254]; but what could a woman do against the will of such an imperious and choleric husband, as St. Austin in many places declares his father to have been in those times? She did what she could, or dared. He says of himself †, "I was signed with the sign of Christ's cross, and was seasoned with his salt (ceremonies then used by Christians on their children) even from the womb of my mother, who greatly trusted in thee;" but so solemn a thing as baptism she could not, nor dared not, it seems, procure to be adminstered against her husband's will; for it was not a thing then used to be huddled up in a privatę parlour, or in the woman's bed-chamber, or without Godfathers, &c,; but had many solemn circumstances, and was performed by putting the child into the water in presence of the congregation, &c. except in some particular cases of extreme haste and necessity. It was contrary to her huband's inclination that she taught her child, as she nursed him, the principles of the Christian religion, as he plainly intimates when he says "So I then believed; and so did all our family, § except my father only; who did not however so far overrule the power of my mother's godly love toward me, but that I believed in Christ, though he did not.” St. Paul persuades a believing wife to stay with an unbelieving husband, partly for the hopes there is of gaining [or converting] him; and partly, because the unbelieving party is seldom so obstinate or averse to Christianity, but that the children are allowed to be made holy [or baptized] into it:—which I shewed ¶ to be the sense which the most ancient writers give to his words. But still this must be understood to hold for *Confess. lib. 9, c. 9, &c. Cor. vii. the most part, not always. There has been seldom known any husband that would yield so little to the desires or petitions of a wife as this man would, while he was a Heathen. He used her not as a companion, but as an absolute servant, even by the account which thẻ son gives of the father after his death. In a word, St. Austin's case was the same with that of Timothy, whose mother was a Jewess; and yet his father, being a Greek, i. e. a Heathen, and probably a hater of the Jewish religion, as St. Austin's father was of the Christian, he had not been circumcised, as appears Acts xvi. 1, 3. Him Paul took and circumcised him, because of the Jews that were in those quarters; for they knew all that his father was a Greek; and, therefore, probably would be inquisitive whether he had been circumcised or not. Indeed, when St. Austin was a child not yet big enough to go to school, but capable to express his mind, and it happened that he fell ill of a sudden pain in his stomach, so violent that he was like to die; and he had, as he tells himself (lib. 1, c. 11) "the motion of mind, and the faith to beg earnestly of his mother to get him baptized" she, in that case, would have ventured to do it, and did in great haste bestir herself in providing for it; and it had been done, if he had not quickly mended of his pain; but there are several things considerable in this case-1. It was a case of great extremity;it must be done now or never;-2. It was at his own desire, so that his father could not blame his mother; 3. In that case a private and clinical baptism was sufficient; 4. It is probable that his father was now mollified in that averseness that he had for the Christian religion, in which he himself, in a few years after, thought fit to become a catechumen, or hearer. Afterward the scene altered in the family of Patrịtius, St. Austin's father [271]; for when he began to believe in Christ, and to fear God, his son Austin began to be estranged from religion and all good inclinations, by the heat of lust and fornication; and when his * Lib. 2, c. 1, 2, &c. father now joined with his mother, in persuading him to associate himself with the Christians, and of all the sorts of them to join with the Catholic church, this advice had no effect upon him at that time [273]; for he quickly after ran into the blasphemous sect of the Manichees*, who derided all baptism and the Scriptures, and were no more Christians than the Mahometans are now. Yet it had its effect afterwards [286]; for, 12 or 13 years after, when his father had now been dead a good while, and he disliking the Manichees, turned a sceptic or seeker, or (as they now call thein) a Deist, not knowing what religion to be of, he remembered the advice cf his parents, which he had formerly despised;" and I resolved (says he) † to be a catechumen in the Catholic church, which had been recommended to me by my parents so long, till some certainty should shew itself to my mind which way I were best to take;" and this proved an occasion of his final conversion [287]. I rather recite these words here, their meaning being explained by the circumstances; because, taken by themselves, they might strengthen that opinion (which has been proved a mistake) that his father was a Christian when this his son was born. Of Monica, Adeodatus, Alipius, and some others. They do none of them make Instances for this Purpose. Some, I think one or two, have named Monica, St. Austin's mother, among their instances; but without any kind of ground;-since there is no knowing whether she were born of Christian parents, and baptized in infancy, or of Heathens, and baptized at years of discretion. She bad never been known, if she had not been the mother of St. Austin. Nobody mentions her but he; and he says nothing, that I remember, of the state of her parents; but a great deal of her goodness and her care of him. * Lib, 3, c. 6. + Lib. 5, c. ult. item lib 6, c. 11, |