ALL the works of Augustine show signs of an unusual personality, and
everywhere the tone is distinctly individual, but in his sermons he is
particularly distinctive. He has, it is true, neither the satirical genius of
Asterius, nor the suppleness and clarity of the realist with the Golden Mouth.
He is far removed from the artificial solemnity of Ambrose and shows little
of the grandeur of Leo, but through his genius for the right word he surpasses
all the Church Fathers. Never once does he fail to make an idea unforgettable.
Never once does he fail, when he desires to do so, to turn a simple statement
into an aphorism. He never uses the sharpness of his mind to wound; on the
contrary, every word he says carries its conviction by reason of an irresistible
tenderness. Everyone who reads a number of his sermons will carry away
the same impression as the men of his day, for no words from the pulpit have
ever so fully come from the heart or combined that quality with such brilliance
as did the words spoken by this one man in this remote corner of Africa.

No man has ever disputed his gifts. His opponent, Secundinus the Manichee,
declares in one of his letters that he had never been able "to discern a Chris-
tian in him, but on all occasions a born orator, a veritable god of eloquence".
"The intarsia of the palace of the Anicii," so he wrote, "despite all their
polish and inlay work, do not have so powerful an effect, as do your writings
by reason of the brilliance of their eloquence." ²⁸ Yet it was not to his writings
alone that he owed his fame. When Paulinus of Nola congratulated his African
friend Romanianus on Augustine's consecration as a bishop, he wrote: I con-
gratulate you on this new acquisition, not on the mere fact of his having
become a bishop, but because the Churches of Africa can now hear him; for
the trumpet of the Lord blows through Augustine's mouth. ²⁹

What is true of all good speakers is certainly true of Augustine, namely,
that the bare text which has been reconstructed from the notes of stenographers
does not even give an approximate idea of the reality. That stream of words
that ceaselessly rushes on, sparkling and shimmering as it goes, has here been
reduced to a shadow of its true self. One must have heard the man himself,
writes Possidius, however well what he says looks on paper. ³⁰ On the great

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