impressive specimen of this mode of instruction, which has been adopted, in a manner, by the spiritual perception of the Western Church.
On his directly practical teaching, it will be borne in mind, that to him the Church is mainly indebted for the overthrow of Pelagianism, and the vindication of the doctrine of the free grace of God. When then he insists, as he does so frequently, on the value of good works and especially almsgiving, to which he seems to recur with such especial sympathy, it will not be hastily thought that so deep and consistent a thinker, and so imbued with Divine truth, was at variance with himself and with it, and we may in his teaching gain more constraining motives to encourage ourselves and others, if so one great stain of our times, the neglect of Christ's poor, may be mitigated or effaced. On the other hand, when he speaks of heresy, he speaks of what he had himself been; of the nothingness of this world's pleasures and applause, of what he had himself, when unbaptized, too miserably tasted; of Christ's power to save out of them, what he had himself felt; of the grace of God, what he had himself used; of the value of alms, as having himself given up what was his'; of humility, as shewing it in the very language in which he praises it; of the joys of Heaven, and the love of God, as that for which he had abandoned freely and for ever all on earth, for which he was daily labouring, enduring, sighing.
It remains to say, that the text used is that of the Benedictines, in which their large resources in MSS have been
This he did immediately on his conversion; Possidius says, " He made no will, because as a poor man of God (pauper Dei) he had nothing whereof to make one." (c. ult.) The poor, Possidius calls his " compauperes,' "of whom he says "he was ever mindful, and supplied them out of the same sources as himself
and all who lived with him, [his Clergy under monastic rule,] out of the returns of the possessions of the Church, or the oblations of the faithful." c. 23. Possidius speaks, c. 4. how the report of "the continency and deep poverty of his monastery,' won those separated from the Church.