the apostles.

CHAP.III. cius. Damasus had been so much of the same temYear after per, that it is likely he approved of him the better for it; and that one reason of his using those high285. flown expressions was, to ingratiate himself with him. And we find him, in his writings, during this later popedom, frequently appealing to the times of Damasus. 'I wrote,' says he, while Damasus of • blessed memory lived, a book against Helvidius, ' of the perpetual virginity of the blessed Mary: in which I had occasion, for the setting forth the advantage of virginity, to say many things of the 'inconveniences of marriage. Did that excellent • man, and learned in the scriptures, that virgin doctor of the church which is a virgin, find any fault with that discourse? And in my book to Eustochium, I said some things harder yet concerning marriage; and yet nobody was offended at it. For Damasus, being a lover of chastity, heard my commendations of virginity with a greedy ' eart.'

This last is the book which he complains is now lapidatus, "stoned;" or generally condemned.

He says also in another place", 'that Damasus did himself write in commendation of virginity, both in prose and verse.'

It is the less wonder, that in letters between these two, that did so magnify this state of life, the habit, or garment, by which the continent life of a monk was professed, should be called the garment of Christ.

t

And if what I have produced, be sufficient to

Apolog. pro libro contra Jovinianum. [Epist. 50. (Vallars. 48.) sect. 17.]

u Epist. 2. ad Nepotian. [Ep. 52.]

stles.

make this probable, then I have cleared St. Hie- CHAP.III. rome's parents of an imputation that has been laid year after on them ever since Erasmus' time, even by learned the apo men: and which St. Hierome himself would have counted a heinous one. For when he declares how • sinful it would be, if any parents that are Christians should suffer their children to die unbap* tized :' (as I have shewn he does;) he must judge that his parents had run a very sinful hazard, if they had let him continue so long, and then take so long a journey, before they had procured him baptism. And then also the picture which they have lately made in the chapel dedicated to this saint, in the church of the Invalids in France, representing his baptism at adult age, will prove a mistake. Sect. 11. Of St. Austin.

His father was a heathen, when this his son was born: and a long time after.

I. 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 thirty-three years old when 288, 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 lifetime more generally read than any has happened ever since.

other of his works; so it
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.

* Part i. ch. 15. §. 1.

y Lib. ìx. c. 6.

Retractat. lib. ìì, c. 6,

the apo.

stles.

CHAP.III. II. As for his parents: Possidius, who a little Year after after his death wrote his life, says in the beginning thereof; that he was born of creditable and Chris'tian parents.' So here matters are brought to a fair issue. St. Austin, in his books which I quoted a, 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.

And 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.

Marshall, in his Defence of Infant Baptismb, 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, Twisk, &c. But his friend has cleared this 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 Christian, nor so much

a Part i. ch. 19. §. 17 and 30. b Pag. 59. [edit. 4to. 1646.]

the apo

stles.

6

CHAP. III. His mother indeed was a Christian (in heart and Year after belief at least: whether baptized or not, we are not certain) at the time of his birth. But what could a 254. 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, or dared not, it seems, procure to be administered against her husband's will. For it. was not a thing then used to be huddled up in a private parlour, or in a woman's bedchamber, 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 husband'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 mo'ther's godly love toward me, but that I believed in Christ, though he did not f.'

St. Paul persuades a believing wife to stay with an unbelieving husband, partly for the hope there

c Confess. lib. ix. c. 9, &c.

• See part i. ch. 15. sect. 7. §. 3.
§ 1 Cor. vii.

d Ibid. lib. i. c. 1 1.

f Confess. lib. i. c. 11,