ss still adhere
to the modern city, which is known in Europe by the corrupted name of
Bona. The military labors, and anxious reflections, of Count Boniface,
were alleviated by the edifying conversation of his friend St. Augustin;
[27] till that bishop, the light and pillar of the Catholic church,
was gently released, in the third month of the siege, and in the
seventy-sixth year of his age, from the actual and the impending
calamities of his country. The youth of Augustin had been stained by the
vices and errors which he so ingenuously confesses; but from the moment
of his conversion to that of his death, the manners of the bishop of
Hippo were pure and austere: and the most conspicuous of his virtues was
an ardent zeal against heretics of every denomination; the Manichaeans,
the Donatists, and the Pelagians, against whom he waged a perpetual
controversy. When the city, some months after his death, was burnt by
the Vandals, the library was fortunately saved, which contained his
voluminous writings; two hundred and thirty-two separate books or
treatises on theological subjects, besides a complete exposition of the
psalter and the gospel, and a copious magazine of epistles and homilies.
[28] According to the judgment of the most impartial critics, the
superficial learning of Augustin was confined to the Latin language;
[29] and his style, though sometimes animated by the eloquence of
passion, is usually clouded by false and affected rhetoric. But he
possessed a strong, capacious, argumentative mind; he boldly sounded the
dark abyss of grace, predestination, free will, and original sin; and
the rigid system of Christianity which he framed or restored, [30] has
been entertained, with public applause, and secret reluctance, by the
Latin church. [31]

[Footnote 26: See Cellarius, Geograph. Antiq. tom. ii. part ii. p. 112.
Leo African. in Ramusio, tom. i. fol. 70. L'Afrique de Marmol, tom. ii.
p. 434, 437. Shaw's Travels, p. 46, 47. The old Hippo Regius was finally
destroyed by the Arabs in the seventh century; but a new town, at the
distance of two miles, was built with the materials; and it contained,
in the sixteenth century, about three hundred families of industrious,
but turbulent manufacturers. The adjacent territory is renowned for a
pure air, a fertile soil, and plenty of exquisite fruits.]

[Footnote 27: The life of St. Augustin, by Tillemont, fills a quarto
volume (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiii.) of more than one thousand