t
such pensions were not exempt from sin, were an obstacle to monastic
perfection, and opposite to their essential vow of poverty;
lamenting that after doing so much they should, for the sake of one
small reserve, destroy the merit of their whole sacrifice. This
letter is extremely useful and beautiful. L. 1, ep. 41, t. 1, p.
136.
4. Aug. Sales in Vit.
5. Aug. Sales in Vit.
6. Quel est le meilleur Gouvernment, &c. ch. 8, p. 298.

SAINT SULPICIUS SEVERUS[1]

DISCIPLE OF ST. MARTIN.

HE was born in Aquitaine, not at Agen, as Scaliger, Vossius, Baillet,
&c., have falsely inferred from a passage of his history,[2] but near
Toulouse. That he was of a very rich and illustrious Roman family, we
are assured by the two Paulinus's, and Gennadius.[3] His youth he spent
in studying the best Roman authors of the Augustan age, upon whom he
formed his style, not upon the writers of his own time: he also applied
himself to the study of the laws, and surpassed all his contemporaries
in eloquence at the bar. His wife was a lady of a consular family, whom
he lost soon after their marriage, but he continued to enjoy a very
great estate which he had inherited by her. His mother-in-law, Bassula,
loved him constantly, as if he had been her own son: they continued to
live several years in the same house, and had in all things the same
mind.[4] The death of his beloved consort contributed to wean his heart
from the world: in which resolution he seems to have been confirmed by
the example and exhortations of his pious mother-in-law. His conversion
from the world happened in the same year with that of St. Paulinus of
Nola,[5] though probably somewhat later: and St. Paulinus mentions that
Sulpicius was younger than himself, and at that time (that is, about the
year 392) in the flower of his age. De Prato imagines Sulpicius to have
been ten years younger than St. Paulinus, consequently that he was
converted in the thirty-second year of his age. Whereas St. Paulinus
distributed his whole fortune among the poor at once; Sulpicius reserved
his estates to himself and his heirs, employing the yearly revenue on
the poor, and in other pious uses, so that he was no more than a servant
of the church and the poor, to keep accounts for them.[6] But he sold so
much of them as was necessary to discharge him of all obligations to
others. Gennadius tells us that he was promoted to the priesthood; but
from the silence of St. Paulinu