Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Susan E. Schreiner, University of Chicago
John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame
Geoffrey Wainwright, Duke University
Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia
THE UNACCOMMODATED CALVIN
Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition
Richard A. Muller
THE CONFESSIONALIZATION OF HUMANISM IN REFORMATION GERMANY
Erika Rummell
THE PLEASURE OF DISCERNMENT
Marguerite de Navarre as Theologian
Carol Thysell
REFORMATION READINGS OF THE APOCALYPSE
Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg
Irena Backus
WRITING THE WRONGS
Women of the Old Testament among Biblical Commentators from Philo through the Reformation
John L. Thompson
THE HUNGRY ARE DYING
Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia
Susan R. Holman
RESCUE FOR THE DEAD
The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity
Jeffrey A. Trumbower
AFTER CALVIN
Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition
Richard A. Muller
THE POVERTY OF RICHES
St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered
Kenneth Baxter Wolf
REFORMING MARY
Changing Images of the Virgin Mary in Lutheran Sermons of the Sixteenth Century
Beth Kreitzer
TEACHING THE REFORMATION
Ministers and Their Message in Basel, 1529–1629
Amy Nelson Burnett
THE PASSIONS OF CHRIST IN HIGH-MEDIEVAL
THOUGHT
An Essay on Christological Development
Kevin Madigan
GOD’S IRISHMEN
Theological Debates in Cromwellian Ireland
Crawford Gribben
REFORMING SAINTS
Saint’s Lives and Their Authors in Germany, 1470–1530
David J. Collins
GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS ON THE TRINITY AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
In Your Light We Shall See Light
Christopher A. Beeley
THE JUDAIZING CALVIN
Sixteenth-Century Debates over the Messianic Psalms
G. Sujin Pak
THE DEATH OF SCRIPTURE AND THE RISE OF BIBLICAL STUDIES
Michael C. Legaspi
THE FILIOQUE
History of a Doctrinal Controversy
A. Edward Siecienski
ARE YOU ALONE WISE?
Debates about Certainty in the Early Modern Church
Susan E. Schreiner
EMPIRE OF SOULS
Robert Bellarmine and the Christian Commonwealth
Stefania Tutino
MARTIN BUCER’S DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION
Reformation Theology and Early Modern Irenicism
Brian Lugioyo
CHRISTIAN GRACE AND PAGAN VIRTUE
The Theological Foundation of Ambrose’s Ethics
J. Warren Smith
KARLSTADT AND THE ORIGINS OF THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY
A Study in the Circulation of Ideas
Amy Nelson Burnett
READING AUGUSTINE IN THE REFORMATION
The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620
Arnoud S. Q. Visser
SHAPERS OF ENGLISH CALVINISM, 1660–1714
Variety, Persistence, and Transformation
Dewey D. Wallace, Jr.
THE BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION OF WILLIAM OF ALTON
Timothy Bellamah, OP
MIRACLES AND THE PROTESTANT IMAGINATION
The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany
Philip M. Soergel
THE REFORMATION OF SUFFERING
Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany
Ronald K. Rittgers
CHRIST MEETS ME EVERYWHERE
Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis
Michael Cameron
Christ Meets Me Everywhere
Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis
michael cameron
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cameron, Michael.
Christ meets me everywhere : Augustine’s early figurative exegesis / Michael Cameron. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes. ISBN 978-0-19-975129-7
1. Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo. I. Title. BR65.A9C26 2012 220.6092—dc23 2012003854
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
To my sons, Erik and Matthew To my wife, Lorie sine quibus non
Sed nos, iam corpus Christi, agnoscamus in psalmo vocem nostram et dicamus ei: Narraverunt mihi iniusti delectationes, sed non sicut lex tuae, Domine. Christus mihi ubique illorum librorum, ubique illarum scripturarum peragranti et anhelanti in sudore illo damnationis humanae sive ex aperto sive ex occulto occurrit et reficit. Ipse mihi et ex nonnulla difficultate inventionis suae desiderium inflammat, quo id quod invenero, avide sorbeam medullisque reconditum salubriter teneam.
But let us, who are now the body of Christ, acknowledge our voice in the Psalm, and say to him: “The unjust have told me stories of their pleasures, but they are nothing compared to your Law, O Lord.” As I journey through it, breathing hard in that sweat of our human condemnation, Christ meets and refreshes me everywhere in those Books, everywhere in those Scriptures, in their open spaces and in their secret haunts. He sets me on fire with a desire that comes from having no little difficulty in finding him. But that only makes me eager to clutch whatever I find, to soak it deep into my bones, and to hold it close for my salvation.
(Against Faustus the Manichee 12.27 [CSEL 25/1: 356])
PART ONE: Novice: Rhetor, Convert, Seeker of Wisdom (386–391)
1. Eureka! in Milan: When Ambrose Taught Augustine What He Already Knew 23
2. A Thousand Words Is Worth a Picture: The Experiment of On Genesis, Against the Manichees 43
3. Enigma Variations: Playing Hide-and-Seek in the Figurative Reading Framework
4. Book Binder: Christ the Glue of Scriptural Unity
PART TWO: Journeyman: Priest, Apprentice, Student of Paul (391–396)
5. Reading Moses in the School of St. Paul: The Apostle and Christology 101 133
6. Hearing Voices: Christ at Prayer “in the Psalm and on the Cross” 165
PART THREE: Master: Teacher, Defender, Pastor of Souls (396–ca. 400)
7. High and Low on Jacob’s Ladder: Reading Scripture from Both Ends in On Christian Teaching and On Instructing Beginners 215
8. The Old Testament as the First Book of the New: Augustine Figures It Out Against Faustus the Manichee 251
Preface
reading augustine is like contemplating a cathedral, not a chapel. When Oliver O’Donovan wrote the foreword to the reprint of John Burnaby’s landmark study, Amor Dei: A Study in the Religion of St. Augustine, he explained how the gentle Cambridge scholar sustained his decades-long engagement with Augustine’s works. Burnaby, he wrote, “had found in Augustine of Hippo a Christian whose thought was large enough for a modern believer to devote a lifetime to.”1 A few decades into my own study of the great North African, I can now say that I know what Burnaby felt. “Large” indeed—broad, capacious, multifaceted, with grand features that nearly incarnate timeless universal truth itself, but also with hundreds of nooks and crannies belonging decisively to their time that variously fascinate, amaze, provoke, confound, or just confuse. But for all this variety Augustine reaches into the whole range of human experience, a single titanic mind that embraces the familiar and the strange while displaying both sublime harmonies and jarring contradictions.2 His sheer size makes Augustine a genuine companion for life, a friend for the journey from whom one might learn without idolizing and might dissent without bickering, as one might dissent from oneself (see Conf. 4.8.13). This outsized Augustine has been a companion like that for me and for many.
All this from a man of antiquity who remains relevant to many discussions in our day, even nonreligious ones, from pre- to postmodern thought, from political science and depth psychology to philosophies of history and theories of language. And, of course, theology: Augustine remains an inexhaustible source for Christian thought and life, like the Gothic cathedral that has remained a functioning parish church. Why this book? I’ve always wanted to know what made this man’s mind tick. The best first place to look for an answer is, of course, the Confessions, the shimmering literary edifice rising up from the late antique landscape that remains a must-read for a modern liberal education, even for those
without any interest in Augustine’s intense Christian spirituality. More than a millennium and a half after he wrote, readers of all kinds still find themselves enchanted by its rhetorical savvy, childlike candor, surging emotion, astute observations and blistering self-analysis. But they soon also become aware of having stepped into sacred space. Opening Confessions reminds me of entering Chartres Cathedral in the French countryside southwest of Paris. The atmosphere suddenly changes as you pass under the massive judgment scene on the west façade. Light, temperature, and sound seem different, and everything compels the senses toward a heightened way of seeing and feeling. How to take in such magnitude? First-time visitors to Chartres invariably gaze upward at the dazzling sculpture and stained glass, trying to make sense of everything they see; yet often they do not notice the cathedral’s own best clue to understanding, strategically placed beneath their feet. There an enormous labyrinth built into the floor lies, with a rose at the center, symbolizing the long, twisting journey of spirit that one must take in order to truly arrive at this place, that is, inwardly as well as outwardly. The labyrinth at ground level readies the mind to explore the mysterious stories above. I suggest that Augustine, with no little difficulty, learned a similar lesson about Scripture itself, which jolts readers by first commending the humility of “divinity made weak at their feet” ( Conf. 7.18.24) before raising them up to envision the sublime. While Chartres offers itself as the vestibule of heaven, the Scripture maze of Confessions seeks to bring readers into the anteroom of spiritual truth. Augustine’s figurative reading likewise leads readers along a labyrinthine path of asking, seeking, and knocking that prepares them to understand the rest of what he had to say. Not only do we find again and again that Augustine uses Scripture’s words to form or determine or otherwise advance his most important teachings. It becomes apparent that his way of composing thoughts strategically disallows mere casual dipping and detached observation about spiritual truth, and compels readers to make some kind of commitment to follow his lines of spiritual logic to their end. 3 Augustine laid down these lines measure by measure in the first decade and a half as a committed Catholic Christian, while gradually building up his framework for understanding Scripture as a single Book. The launch point for these lines of logic, as we’ll see, was a lesson in learning how to read the Old Testament figuratively. This book describes Augustine’s progress in constructing a Christian spiritual logic about Scripture.
Small seeds of this study were sown when I first read Confessions as a young man; that event changed me in more ways than one. Besides prompting my own pilgrimage of faith, it also single-handedly ignited my serious interest in the Bible. The italicized Scripture quotes that dapple R. S. Pine-Coffin’s Penguin translation of the Confessions were as mystifying to me as they were numerous. What the heck was going on between Augustine and that Book? So I began to study the Bible, eventually taking up critical New Testament studies in graduate school at the University of Chicago. But when I kept looking for a way to marry my fascination with the biblical texts to my desire to engage theology historically, eventually I returned to Augustine and his reading of Scripture. Bernard McGinn had just treated the patristic era in the first volume of his history of western Christian mysticism, The Foundations of Mysticism; he told me about the growing scholarly interest in ancient exegesis and suggested looking into Augustine’s expositions of the Psalms. Reading those books was an exotic revelation; they were, of course, unlike anything I’d learned about in New Testament Studies or the Journal of Biblical Literature. But their very strangeness was compelling, and stoked me to understand them on Augustine’s own terms. I wrote a dissertation on his reading of the Psalms against the Donatists whose first part took a stab at describing the trajectory of his early reading; a summary of that attempt was published as an essay in the volume Augustine and the Bible. 4 While this book doesn’t contradict that essay, it does use different language and develops entirely new aspects. More reading and deeper research—with Augustine one can always do more and go deeper, and then there’s the secondary literature—gave me the experience of countless others before me who have turned a page in Augustine only to find some vast new tract of thought waiting to be traversed. The poetic sigh of Pope came to mind more than once: “Hills peep o’er Hills, and Alps on Alps arise!”5 But at the same time it was clear that these new ideas were necessary for mapping the wider and richer terrain of Augustine’s developing construction of Christian hermeneutics. Like the earlier essay, this book explores Augustine’s thought about salvation’s “temporal dispensation” centered on the historical human reality of Christ. But it gives much sharper attention to the importance of Christ’s crucifixion in Augustine’s hermeneutics, to the ongoing importance of his anti-Manichean polemic, and to the rhetorical dimensions of his exegesis. The new work turned up fresh perspectives that this book explores, like Augustine’s construction of Christ’s human will-to-death as the expression of divine love par excellence, his interrelationship of perspectives on
Scripture for beginning and advanced believers, his use of rhetorical impersonation as a theological template, his perception of Christ changing the Law of Moses into a medium of grace and truth, and his theory of Christian reading for explaining the New Testament’s annexation and transformation of Israel’s Scriptures. All of this fed into Augustine’s gradual development in reading the Old Testament figuratively in the 380s and 390s, and the story that this book seeks to tell.
Most of the translations of Augustine are my own, but when using an existing translation I indicate it with a note (e.g., “trans. Chadwick”). I am grateful to the following publishers for permission to use translations for which they hold copyright: the Augustinian Heritage Institute, which owns the rights to works by various translators in the series “The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century,” published by New City Press of Hyde Park, New York; Oxford University Press for permission to use Henry Chadwick’s translation, St. Augustine: Confessions, in their series “World’s Classics” (Oxford: 1992). For permission to use my previously published work to which they hold copyright, I thank WileyBlackwell for use of “Augustine and Scripture,” from The Blackwell Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey (2012), 200–214; University of Notre Dame Press, for the use of “The Christological Substructure of Augustine’s Figurative Exegesis,” in Augustine and the Bible, trans. and ed. Pamela Bright (1999), 74–103; and Augustinian Studies, for use of “Totus Christus and the Psychagogy of Augustine’s Sermons” (36:1 [2005], 59–70); “Figures of Speech and Knowledge of God in Augustine’s Early Biblical Interpretation” (38:1 [2007], 61–85); “Valerius of Hippo: A Profile” (40:1 [2009], 5–26); and “‘She Arranges All Things Pleasingly’ (Wis. 8:1): The Rhetorical Base of Augustine’s Hermeneutic” (41:1 [2010], 55–67).
I wish to thank my family for their longstanding support: parents Geri and Ben (+2008) Cameron; brothers Gary, Jeff, Steve, and Tom (+2001); sister Peg; and in-laws Jane and Neil (+2007) Simmons. Many others have helped to make this work possible: Linnea Martin, Fr. Tom Seitz (+2007), Robert F. Jerrick, Carole Eipers, Larry Hurtado, Gary B. McGee (+2008), Murray Wagner, Lauree Hersch Meyer, Grady Snyder, Hans Dieter Betz, Langdon Gilkey (+2004), B. A. Gerrish, Susan Schreiner, David Tracy, and especially Bernard McGinn, whose mentoring and friendship have meant so much to me. A number of scholars over the years have given generous support by sending me their work or discussing mine at meetings of the North American Patristics Society, the Reconsiderations conference at Villanova University, the Oxford International
Conference on Patristic Studies, and elsewhere. I am deeply grateful to them all: Isabelle Bochet, Patout Burns, Phil Cary, John Cavadini, Brian Daley, Hubertus Drobner, Paula Fredriksen, Carol Harrison, Bill Haynes, David Hunter, Kari Kloos, Paul Kolbet, Rick Layton, Peter Martens, Mick McCarthy, Hildegund Müller, Chad Pecknold, Eric Plumer, Karla Pollmann, Ed Smither, Ken Steinhauser, Caroline Tolton, Tarmo Toom, Fred Van Fleteren, Mark Vessey, and Dorothea Weber. I have learned from them all, and beg their indulgence for the times I’ve disagreed with their views or stubbornly stuck to my own!
I also give heartfelt thanks to people who went above and beyond scholarly duty to comment on my work in detail. The distinguished Robert L. Wilken, whose blend of high-quality scholarship, deep faith, and lucid writing I can only hope to emulate, gratified me with a perceptive critique of an early version of the book; he sharpened my focus and gave deep encouragement. The omnivorous Lewis Ayres read the manuscript at a middle stage, clarified questions, offered wise suggestions, and gave real support. Also a candid and kindly obstinate anonymous reader at Oxford University Press pushed me to rethink key perspectives. My friend Jean Brodahl contributed much needed editorial expertise at an important moment, while the sagacious William Harmless, S.J., helped me to aim for both a work of high-quality scholarship and a worthy piece of writing. He and Jonathan Yates each generously read portions and made comments in lengthy conversations over lunch, on the phone, and by email. My former student Paul Senz was smart and dogged in helping to prepare the indices. At Oxford University Press, Cynthia Read shepherded this project with patience and grace for longer than she expected, and I thank the stable of editors there for their expertise, especially Kay Kodner and Kiruthika Govindaraju. I am deeply grateful to all these people for their time and energy, which has made this book so much better, or at least less wrong-headed, than it would have been without them. Needless to say, though it must be said, none among those mentioned is responsible for errors of judgment or detail in what follows—I took care of that all by myself!
I am grateful for gifts of time and financial backing from my institutional home in the gorgeous Pacific Northwest, the University of Portland. A portion of the manuscript was written with the help of a grant from its Arthur Butine Faculty Development Fund, and it was completed during a full-year sabbatical from teaching in 2010–2011. That support was seconded by a succession of chairs in the Theology Department, Russ
Preface
Butkus, Matt Baasten, and Will Deming, and of deans in the College of Arts and Sciences, Marlene Moore and Fr. Stephen Rowan. Thanks to all.
I wish to give special thanks for Thomas F. Martin, O.S.A., dear friend and fellow Chicagoan (and longsuffering White Sox fan). I discussed many of this book’s ideas with Tom, and without him it simply would not have happened. Along with many others, I’ve missed Tom’s love and wisdom since his passing in 2009, but was gratified to complete the book’s final writing push as the inaugural Thomas F. Martin Saint Augustine Fellow at Villanova University in the fall of 2010. So I send warm thanks to all my friends at Villanova, especially the director of the Augustinian Institute which sponsored me, Allan Fitzgerald, O.S.A. (yet another generous conversation partner), and his assistant Anna Misticoni, for their many kindnesses during those idyllic months.
Finally, profound gratitude goes to my sons, Erik and Matthew, twin rods of spiritual steel in my heart who strengthen me constantly with their love, music, laughter, and hope; and to my beautiful wife, Lorie Simmons, skilled reader, tender and dearest friend, for a thousand and one kindnesses and the utter joy of her companionship. I dedicate this book to them.
Portland, Oregon May 5, 2012
Abbreviations
Works of Augustine (Note: English abbreviations are for frequent main text references. Latin abbreviations are for end notes.)
English Titles Eng. abbrev. Latin Titles Lat. abbrev.
Against Adimantus the Disciple of Mani
On the Advantage of Believing
The Christian Contest
Adim. Contra Adimantum Manichaei discipulum c. Adim.
Adv. Believ. De utilitate credendi util. cred.
De agone christiano agon. On Christian Teaching Chr. Teach. De doctrina christiana doc. Chr.
The City of God
De civitate Dei civ. Dei
Commentary on Galatians Comm. Gal. Expositio epistulae ad Galatas exp. Gal.
Unfinished Commentary on Romans
Epistulae ad Romanos inchoata expositio ep. Rm. inch. Confessions Conf. Confessiones conf.
On Dialectic Dial. De dialectica dial.
Eighty-Three Miscellaneous Questions
83 QQ. De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus div. qu.
Expositions of the Psalms Exp. Ps. Enarrationes in Psalmos en. Ps.
On Divine Order De ordine ord.
On Faith and the Creed F. Creed De fide et symbolo f. et symb.
Against Faustus the Manichee
Faust. Contra Faustum Manichaeum c. Faust. (continued)
English Titles
Against Felix the Manichee
Against Fortunatus the Manichee, a Debate
On Free Choice
On Genesis, Against the Manichees
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis
Literal Commentary on Genesis
Handbook on Faith, Hope and Love
On the Happy Life
On the Harmony of the Evangelists
On Instructing Beginners
Abbreviations
Eng. abbrev.
Latin Titles Lat. abbrev.
Contra Felicem Manichaeum c. Fel.
Fort. Acta contra Fortunatum Manichaeum c. Fort.
De libero arbitrio lib. arb.
Gen. Man. De Genesi contra Manichaeos Gn. c. Man.
Un. Lit. Gen.
De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber Gn. litt. imp.
De Genesi ad litteram Gn. litt.
Enchiridion de fide spe et caritate ench.
De beata vita b. vita
Harm. Ev.
Instr. Beg.
De consensu evangelistarum cons. ev.
De catechizandis rudibus cat. rud.
Letters Epistulae ep.
The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount
On the Soul’s Magnitude
De sermone Domini in monte s. Dom. m.
De quantitate animae quant. an. Against Mani’s Letter Called “The Foundation”
Contra epistulam Manichaei quam vocant fundamenti c. ep. Man.
Against Maximinus the Arian
On Merits and Forgiveness of Sin and Infant Baptism
Answers to Simplicianus
On Music
Contra Maximinum Arrianum c. Max.
De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum pecc. mer.
Ad Simplicianum de diversis quaestionibus
Simpl.
De musica mus.
English Titles
Practices of the Catholic Church and of the Manichees
On the Predestination of the Saints
Propositions on Romans
A Psalm against the Faction of Donatus
Questions on the Heptateuch
Questions on the Gospels
Revisions
Against Secundinus the Manichee
Letter of Secundinus to Augustine
Sermons
Sermons (Dolbeau)
Against the Skeptics
Soliloquies
On the Soul and its Origin
On the Spirit and the Letter
On the Teacher
Tractates on John’s Gospel
Tractates on John’s First Letter
On the Trinity
On True Religion
On the Two Souls
Abbreviations
Eng. abbrev.
Latin Titles
Lat. abbrev.
Practices De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et Manichaeorum mor.
De praedestinatione sanctorum praed. sanct.
Propp. Expositio quarumdam propositionum ex ep. ad Romanos exp. prop. Rm.
Psalmus contra partem Donati ps. c. Don.
Quaestiones in Heptateuchum qu.
Quaestiones evangeliorum qu. ev.
Rev. Retractationes retr.
Contra Secundinum Manichaeum c. Sec.
Secundini epistula Sec. epist.
Serm. Sermones ad populum s.
Sermones Dolbeau s. Dolbeau
Skept. Contra Academicos c. Acad.
Sol. Soliloquiorum sol.
De anima et eius origine an. et or.
De spiritu et littera spir. et litt.
De magistro mag.
Tr. John
In Iohannis evangelium tractatus Io. ev. tr.
In epistulam Iohannis ad Parthos ep. Io. tr.
Trin. De trinitate trin.
True Rel. De vera religione vera rel.
De duabus animabus duab. an.
Abbreviations
Modern Publications
De doctrina christiana: A Classic of Western Culture, ed. Duane W. H. Arnold and Pamela Bright (Notre Dame, 1995).
Arnold-Bright
Augustinus-Lexikon A-L
Augustinian Studies (Villanova) AS
Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia ATA
Bibliothèque augustinienne BA
CETEDOC Library of Christian Latin Texts CLCLT
Collection des Études Augustiniennes, Série Antiquité CEASA
Corpus Christianorum Series Latina CCL
Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum CSEL
Fathers of the Church (CUA Press) FC
Journal of Early Christian Studies JECS
Loeb Classical Library LCL
Oxford World’s Classics OWC
Patrologia Latina PL
Recherches augustiniennes RA
Revue des études augustiniennes [et patristiques] REA[P]
Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum SEA
Studia Patristica SP
Works of Saint Augustine (New City Press) WSA
Christ Meets Me Everywhere
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Introduction
Ask, Seek, Knock
approaching augustine’s figurative reading
on august 24, 410, a late antique version of September 11, 2001, the sack and pillage of Rome by the Visigoths under Alaric sent shock waves through the empire. Long-established Roman families abuzz with dismay and indignation blamed the imperial capitulation to Christianity. Though Constantine had legitimated Christianity nearly a century before, and Theodosius had made it the official religion thirty years earlier, many cultural elite still thought that this upstart mystical philosophy from the east had weakened Rome and displaced traditional values. Among them was a quick-witted young aristocrat named Volusianus, lately arrived in North Africa, who was skeptical about the newfangled Christian religion. His mother and niece, among others, had already been swept away by the Christian tide, but he himself remained unmoved. One day a note arrived from a local bishop, known to his family, who briefly invited a conversation about the Christian Scriptures. At the bottom appeared a simple signature: Augustinus episcopus. Volusianus could not know that coming centuries would reverberate with the sound of that name—Augustine of Hippo, teacher of love, bishop of souls, and doctor of the Church catholic. Volusianus’s response was cordial, urbane, even artful, but also laced with irony (Letter 135). Aware that Augustine taught rhetoric and loved philosophy, Volusianus told a story. He had attended a dinner party with erudite friends who loved to converse about the heady pleasures of rhetorical composition, the sweetness of poetry, and the sublimity of philosophy. But then someone interrupted the amiable proceedings with an incongruous question about Christianity. Could anyone help him understand this strange philosophy? Can someone “full of Christianity’s wisdom” help him make sense
of its claim about a divinity bundled in a tiny human body? What strange divine “arrangement” (dispensatio) allows a god to take flesh? Is he not a capricious god who demands sacrifice at one time and refuses it at another (136.2)?1 Did others not work better miracles than Jesus? Did not Jesus’ teachings overturn the very foundations of the state and, indeed, did not those who follow them fatally compromise Rome’s security against the marauding Visigoths in 410? Augustine picked up quickly on the thinly veiled ruse—at one point Volusianus drops the pose with a wink and calls them “my questions” (135.2)— but the questions struck a nerve, as we can see from Letters 137 and 138 where Augustine works through the issues in brief. But the beginning of Augustine’s reply is notable: he instructs Volusianus about the need to understand first, before considering any particular claim of Christian thought, how Christians think. Seeing that so many people seek Christian salvation, Augustine contends, and so many discriminating minds seek Christian wisdom, the right first question should concern its source, the Christian Scriptures. One finds there humility so disarming, and wisdom so rich, and eloquence so deep that its attraction for so many begins to make sense. “Before I answer your questions,” Augustine tells Volusianus in so many words, “you must enter into the Christian mind by learning how to read the Christian books.”
The Christian writings are so astonishingly profound that even if I had more free time, more intense desire, and more talent to master them alone, from the beginning of boyhood up to my decrepit old age, I would still find myself making progress in them on a daily basis. I don’t mean to say that readers come to those matters necessary for salvation with such great difficulty. But even though each person grasps them through the faith without which no one lives a pious and upright life, many, many things remain to be understood by those making progress. These matters are cloaked in such shadows of mysteries, and such fathomless wisdom lies hidden in them—not only in the words they use to say what they say but also in the realities that give themselves to be understood in them. So much so that those with the most years of experience, with the most intelligence, and with the most intense desire to learn are the very ones who experience what the same Scriptures say elsewhere: “When people come to the end, then they’re at the beginning” [Sirach 18:6].2
This paragraph, streaked with allusions to Cicero that Volusianus will have recognized,3 sowed the seed of what became one of Augustine’s most celebrated works, The City of God. Volusianus’s questions had prompted Augustine to form plans for a large-scale work to detail Christianity’s
place in the world and its relationship to Rome. The following year he wrote the first of the work’s thousand pages and spent the next decade writing the rest. The last twelve books unfurled, at great length, a biblical vision of world history that became the closest facsimile of a biblical theology that Augustine ever wrote.
Augustine had come a very long way round to write that paragraph, which contrasts sharply with his first opinion of Scripture recounted in Confessions. In his student days in Carthage he was fresh from small-town North Africa and oh-so-ready to drop the folksy, anti-intellectual ways of the Church of his mother Monica. Sensitive, ambitious, rhetorically gifted, and intellectually haughty, Augustine became hungry for wisdom. On first picking up the Scriptures, however, looking for a Ciceronian eloquence that simply wasn’t there, he reacted with dismay and tossed them aside (Conf. 3.5.9). That high-horse attitude, he later winced to confess, wrecked whatever chance he had of attaining Christian wisdom early on and also left him vulnerable to spiritual wolves. Clueless about Scripture’s strategy of leading readers into teachable humility, he made the beginner’s mistake of hasty judgment. He later saw that to the extent he judged Scripture backward and foolish, its power recessed and its wisdom turned opaque. Hindsight had taught him that what he had actually needed was instruction in how to read; this odd collection of writings required first submitting to its humble, earthy style. But Scripture not only counsels humility, it also imparts it. The simplicity and concreteness of its “humble discourse” (sermo humilis) stamps the believing reader with its own lowly character; the response of faith replicates the humility of the humble man Jesus Christ, whose example lances the boil of human pride.4 It was a perspective Augustine hoped Volusianus would understand before making any judgments about Christianity:
But as to its way of communicating, Holy Scripture is composed in a style that is accessible to everyone, even if only a few plumb its depths. It contains plain passages that speak like a familiar friend, without pretense, to the hearts of the unlearned and learned alike. Indeed, whenever hiding something in a mysterious passage, it doesn’t mount up with the kind of exalted speech that sluggish and untrained minds dare not pretend to (think of how the poor feel in the presence of the rich). Instead, it invites everyone with its humble discourse (sermo humilis), and feeds them all, not only with passages whose meanings stand out plainly, but also with ones enveloped in secrecy. It does this so that all readers can be exercised
in the truth—the same truth shared out equally in obvious texts and hidden ones. But so that open truths (aperta) do not become tiresome, the same ones can become closed (operta), so that readers may yearn for them; and being yearned for, they are in a way refreshed, and being refreshed they nestle agreeably into the soul. These saving truths correct twisted characters, feed little ones, and delight great ones.5
Augustine was handing Volusianus the golden key to reading Christian Scripture that astutely discerns the interplay between its clear and obscure passages, the aperta and operta, the “open” and the “closed.” These were Augustine’s most basic hermeneutical categories.6 In learning how to read, one first plotted the baseline of understanding by locating the aperta passages, chief among them being the twin commands to love God and neighbor “on which hang all the Law and Prophets” (Matt. 22:38–40). Then came scrutiny of the operta passages; though fashioned as “mysteries” because of the mists of their figurative language, yet those were the passages that generated fresh understandings of the marvelous but oftrepeated truths of salvation. This interplay of open and closed texts worked to communicate saving truth, and affected readers in such a way that they not only received truth but also delighted in it. This, in a nutshell, was the scriptural strategy for figurative reading.
The aperta/operta dynamic worked microcosmically when applied to individual passages, but more importantly it operated macrocosmically for comprehending the complete Christian Bible. Yet the unity between its two major parts, the Old and New Testaments, was counterintuitive. On the surface, nothing seemed more opposed to Christianity than the Scriptures of Israel. These two bodies of literature could not have been more differently composed or oriented to more different ends; produced in various languages, times, and cultural milieus, they reflected diverse practices, institutions and values, esteemed different heroes, ideas, and worldviews, and rested upon contrasting dramatic scenarios. The deliverance of the Exodus and giving of the Sinai covenant through Moses were intended to confirm the election of Israel and build its earthly kingdom in time; that contrasted sharply with the spiritual salvation wrought by Jesus of Nazareth and proclaimed to all nations as a gospel leading to an eternal kingdom after time. The split was especially evident in their attitudes toward the Law of Moses, which parts of the New Testament openly contrasted with the salvation of Christ.
A few Christian groups eventually felt that contrast so sharply that they never accepted the Old Testament’s authority as Christian Scripture, and they just lopped it off from the New. Such were the Marcionites and Gnostic groups in the second century; and also their heirs in the third century and later, the Manichees, with whom Augustine fell in as a teenager. For nine years Augustine the Manichee argued publicly that Israel’s god and its preoccupation with material goods were antithetical to true Christianity. That was at the beginning of his long road from hyperreligious vehemence as a Manichean Hearer rejecting the Old Testament to second naïveté as a Catholic bishop preaching those same texts to feed his flock. His path features a gradually developing rationale for faith that could articulate how the two Testaments were bound together and were mutually interpreting. This book tells the story of Augustine’s trajectory of understanding: how he recovered the Old Testament by learning how to read it figuratively. The logic of biblical unity, suggested in the New Testament’s use of the Old, drew on the familiar rhetorical analysis of figurative language but also transformed it for spiritual purposes. Readers of Confessions will recognize the dramatic shift that happened under the preaching of Bishop Ambrose in the 380s; less well known are the incremental shifts and accommodations that occurred after he became a priest in the church at Hippo in the early 390s. The beginning splash that remade Augustine’s mind in Milan sent smaller and subtler ripples of insight back to him in North Africa; cumulatively, but just as momentously, they too altered his thought. This study covers the years from his conversion to Catholicism under the bishop of Milan to his achievement of relative stability in reading and preaching Scripture during his first years as bishop of Hippo. Not accidentally this was the same decade and a half of his ongoing campaign to overcome the peculiarly Manichean form of biblicism that he had once embraced.
How the Study Is Structured
The study divides this period of Augustine’s most significant development into three chronologically ordered segments of roughly a halfdecade each, and then subdivides each segment into chapters dealing with the most important texts and themes in that period. Part One covers the earliest period from Augustine’s embrace of Catholicism to the eve of ordination to priesthood (386–391), when he worked as a Christian teacher and writer at-large with strong philosophical and ascetic leanings.
Chapter 1 treats the critical early turning point in Augustine’s relationship to the Bible, when Ambrose reversed his youthful distaste and rejection of the Old Testament by positing the Pauline axiom, “the letter kills, but the spirit makes alive” (2 Cor. 3:6). That helped Augustine to identify God’s communication in Scripture with what he knew from his own teaching of rhetoric. We’ll look at how Augustine suddenly “got” the Bible and the way that major spiritual-intellectual puzzle pieces fell into place for him. Chapters 2 and 3 consider how Ambrose’s Pauline insight played out in this period. Chapter 2 studies Augustine’s initial foray into the work of biblical interpretation, On Genesis, Against the Manichees, where he adumbrates his earliest approach to figurative Old Testament interpretation. We’ll see how certain categories, tools, and strategies that were familiar from Augustine’s teaching of rhetoric helped him to translate Scripture’s rough-hewn imagery into spiritual-intellectual categories. Augustine hoped to train spiritual readers and preachers of Genesis to think figuratively and spiritually. Thus he would create a cadre of teachers who would defend simple Catholic believers from insidious Manichean attacks on their trust in the Old Testament. Chapter 3 steps back from the “trees” of Augustine’s interpretation of individual passages of Genesis to survey the “forest” of his larger hermeneutical outlook. It considers principally two works that translated his highly rhetorical approach to Scripture into a tool for spiritual ascent, Practices of the Catholic Church and of the Manichees and On True Religion. Chapter 4 then proposes a thesis for locating the center of Augustine’s developing framework for interpretation in his understanding of Jesus Christ, the center of God’s temporal plan for salvation. Augustine’s early focus upon immaterial, transcendent spiritual reality in this time paralleled his preoccupation with Christ’s divinity and the human Christ’s “pedagogy of the Incarnation.” Just as believers had to pass through Christ’s outer humanity to find his divinity within, so interpreters had to pass through the “husk” of the Old Testament to find its “nut” of spiritual truth within. This paralleled the key concept of his anti-Manichean argument for biblical unity at the time, congruency: While the Old obviously showed a contrast with the New, only spiritually astute readers understood its coherence with it. Despite ancient Israel’s apparent materialistic obsession with temporal goods, the Old Testament hid deeply spiritual truths that were plain to the trained Christian eye. In this period Augustine already practiced a sophisticated method of Scripture reading for spiritual ascent.
Part Two studies Augustine’s transformative period as a priest of the Catholic Church (391–396), a critical transitional time when his patterns of reading Scripture rapidly developed. His unexpected ordination to priesthood wrenched him from a much-desired life of contemplation and immersed him among the masses of simple believers who peopled the great church at Hippo. Augustine worked not merely to adjust his language to their simpler outlook but also to articulate more sharply the beginning steps of the spiritual life that made those advanced steps possible. Prior to this Augustine the lay philosopher had pursued argument and reason to express Christian faith for elite audiences, but now Augustine the Catholic presbyter tried hard to match that with skill in expressing Scripture’s most elementary teachings for the Church’s “little ones.” In order to construct a fully conscious Christian hermeneutic he immersed himself in the Bible’s central texts: Genesis, the Sermon on the Mount, the Psalms, and above all the Letters of Paul. Chapter 5 considers how Paul changed Augustine’s perception of the crucified man Jesus Christ as the core of redemption and the implications of that change for his reading of the Old Testament. He watched how Paul portrayed Christ the human being “taking up” death in a way that complemented the divine Word “taking up” human flesh. It taught Augustine a fresh understanding of redemption accomplished by the “one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5), a small but crucial advance that then rippled through the interstices of Augustine’s thought. After that his perception of scriptural unity shifted correlatively as he discerned Christ speaking in both texts, albeit in different ways. The actual fleshly death of Christ preached by Paul (and prophesied by Moses) not only advanced Augustine’s case against the Manichean “likeness” Christology that implicitly denied his true flesh but also explained the “figurative realism” by which Paul read the Old Testament Scriptures as conveying true events with larger meanings.
Augustine then applied Paul’s lessons about Christ and Scripture’s figurative dimension to his reading of the Psalms. Chapter 6 studies the impact of Paul’s hermeneutic insights upon Augustine’s early readings of Psalms 1–32, written while he was still a priest, comprising the first installment of his great Expositions of the Psalms. He read them according to the Church’s already ancient tradition, which heard them not only as speaking about Christ but even as transcribing the thoughts of Christ’s inner life. But Augustine put his own stamp on these readings. His expositions of Psalms 1–14 show him continuing to pursue earlier spiritual-philosophical
-ascetic concerns but also striking out in new directions. Some rhetorically configured readings of the Psalter provocatively suggested the use of “prosopological” exegesis, an analytical device used in the schools of grammar and rhetoric to interpret texts by identifying different speaking voices. Then he introduced something new by recalibrating his reading of Psalms 15–32 as words of the crucified Christ. With Paul’s help, Augustine discerned the dying Christ’s anguished cry of Psalm 21:2 (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) as coming from the assumed voice of sinful Adam praying for redemption, a harbinger of the believer co-crucified with Christ. Augustine discerned in this the rhetorical figure of prosopopoeia, or impersonation, which became for him a template for understanding the “wonderful exchange” of Christian redemption, that is, Christ’s life for our death, and his justice for our sin. That template also helped to explain Christ’s presence in the Old Testament by revealing him as the speaking voice transposed into the words of the prophet-psalmist. On this basis, ordinary Christian believers, members of the same body of which Christ was the head speaking in the text, could find themselves in the words of the Psalms. This fresh and powerful vision of biblical unity grounded his work of figurative reading.
Part Three shows these views percolating through Augustine’s work in the first half-decade or so of his life as a Catholic bishop (396–ca. 400). Preacher to the simple and teacher of teachers, he also remained a defender of the Christian message, especially against the Manichees. All three roles appeared directly or indirectly in the works studied in this part. Chapter 7 compares the Pauline prophecy-fulfillment structure of the Psalms expositions with the well-known hermeneutical handbook, On Christian Teaching. Their differences show Augustine working with audiences on different ends of the hermeneutical spectrum: while the Psalms expositions were largely concerned with beginners, On Christian Teaching focused on the spiritually advanced. Perhaps because it broke off in the middle of Book 3 in 396 (not completed until thirty years later), On Christian Teaching left largely unexplained the elementary biblical hermeneutics involved in the beginner’s faith in Scripture’s “temporal dispensation of salvation,” a principal theme of his many sermons. Fortunately that aspect received poignant brief treatment in the little work On Instructing Beginners, written in the early 400s. Reading these two works side-by-side shows both aspects of Augustine’s twopronged hermeneutic: the humble beginners’ “bottom-up” approach that seeks Christ the Man everywhere in both Testaments, and the adepts’ “topdown” approach that seeks spiritual understanding of the divine. Chapter 8
studies the full display of this framework in Augustine’s massive assault on Manichean hermeneutics, Against Faustus the Manichee. This work’s central thesis is that Christ indissolubly united the Testaments by “fulfilling” the Law and Prophets when he carried out what they commanded and promised; on this basis, Augustine argued, he transformed the way Christians read these texts. The clearest statement of this outlook appears in Books 15–19 that unfolded Augustine’s potent but idiosyncratic construction of John 1:17, “the Law was made grace and truth through Jesus Christ.” That is, Christ transformed the Law’s commands into channels of grace and the prophets’ promises into witnesses of truth. Because Christ thus interrelated the Old and New Testaments, figurative readings point constantly to him. As Augustine wrote in a lilting passage, “Christ meets and refreshes me everywhere in those Books.”
Those trying to get quickly to the heart of things can read chapter 1 on Augustine’s transformation under Ambrose, chapter 4 on Christ as Scripture’s hermeneutic linchpin, chapter 5 on Paul’s tutelage, chapter 6 on Christ’s voice in the Psalms, and chapter 8 on Augustine’s anti-Manichean hermeneutic. The other chapters (chapters 2 and 3 on rhetorical influences in the early works, and chapter 7’s analytical comparison of hermeneutical perspectives) offer supporting discussions or explanatory comparisons that can be skipped without losing the book’s thread.
Some Embedded Perspectives
Obviously I am going far beyond On Christian Teaching to retrieve Augustine’s way of reading Scripture. Although it is an oversimplification to say so, this approach suggests my desire to go beyond abstract statements about Scripture to try to catch his hermeneutic in the act of rising out of his practice. Augustine helps me out here because so much of his interpretative work emerges from the cut and thrust of theological engagement with real people and vital issues, in this case, (whether a passage openly acknowledges them or not) with the Manichees and their rejection of the Old Testament. Furthermore, while hoping to give usefully clear analytic descriptions of what Augustine is doing, I wish not only to describe but also to interpret Augustine’s work on Scripture, that is, to pull up what I think are the central themes of his interpretative practice along with the insights that packed the most punch for his ongoing practice of figurative reading. Let me spell out a few of these themes that will unfold in the
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played with great success. The principal support of our table we lose to-day, Mr. Brudenell, member for Rutlandshire, an extreem goodnatured, pretty kind of man; the company is going off so fast and the place is so thin, that I fear we shall miss him very much. My Aunt sends her love to you. She says she made you a promise of giving you a pair of lace ruffles or a guinea, which ever you chose, and desires you will consult with your mother which you will have, and if the lace, let her know it; for it’s sold here as well as at Bath. I should advise the money; for you have two pair of lace ruffles which I am sure is as much as you can possibly have occasion for; those you have must be taken off the footings, for the fine men weer them extreemly shallow; they should not be near a nail of a yard deep.
‘Pray make my compliments to everybody that enquires after me, and let me have a very long letter from you very soon. I have nothing to add to your entertainment, heartily wish I was at Bradfield, and beg you to tell me all you can that is doing there; and
‘Believe me with great sincerity,
‘Your most affectionate
‘E
LISA
MARIA.
‘Be sure don’t speak before my father of my playing at lottery.’
Extractsfromfurtherletters
‘My Uncle Ingoldsby I think looks very well. He asked after you, and so did my Aunt. He goes out of town for a fortnight next Monday, and Mr. and Miss go then. Dr. In. has made a new coach. Yesterday was the second day of using it, cost him 82l.; it’s very handsome, all but being painted in a mosaic, which all the smart equipages are. Miss Joy’s mother has made one this spring, cost 147l. There is hardly such a thing seen as a two-wheeled postchaise; nobody uses anything but four-wheeled ones, and numbers of them with boxes put on and run for chariots, and vastly pretty they are.
‘Now I must give you some account of the masquerade at Mrs. Onslow’s; Lady Onslow was there, Mr. and Mrs. Onslow, the Mr. Shelley we met at the Speaker’s, and Miss Freeman. Lady Onslow
was in a Venetian domino white lustring trimmed with scarlet and silver blonde. Mrs. Onslow’s dress we thought not at all pretty nor becoming; she had no jewels on, but was ornamented with mock pearl. Mr. Onslow was in a domino, as was Mr. Shelley; the first was very genteel and handsome, white lustring trimmed with an open shining gold lace and little roses of purple with gold in the middle of them. I never saw anything prettier. Miss Freeman was the sweetest figure I ever saw. Her dress, a dancer, blue satin trimmed with silver in the richest genteelest taste and very fine jewels. They say Fenton Harvey was the best figure there amongst the gentlemen, with his masque; on his dress was a domino which was reckoned the genteelest dresses.
‘Lady Coventry, amongst the ladies, was the best figure; Lady Peterson another much admired. The Town said beforehand that she was to be Eve and wear a fig leaf of diamonds; however, this was not true.’
Mrs.Tomlinson(néeElisaMariaYoung)toherFather
‘Honoured Sir,—Mr. Tomlinson and myself are your urgent petitioners for a favour which, if granted, will give us very great pleasure. It is that you will give my brother Arthur leave to make us a short visit; my mother (who we found safe and well at Chelmsford and have conducted hither) rejoins in the request; she desires you to determine in what manner is best for him to come hither on horseback, the joiner with him or in the stage coach, but either way, we beg to see him Tuesday at farthest, but on Monday if he comes on horseback. Be pleased to direct him to have his linnen washed, stocking (sic) mended, &c., and in case he comes on horseback, it may not be amiss to hint to him that he is not to reach London on one gallop, for his impatience may outrun his prudence. It was a great pleasure to hear a pretty good account of your health, and hope we shall hear often from Bradfield during my mother’s stay here.
‘Beg my love with Mr. T.’s to my brother. He desires to present his duty to you.
‘And I am, honoured Sir, ‘Your most affectionate and most dutifull daughter, ‘E. M. TOMLINSON.
‘Bucklersbury: Tuesday night, 10 o’clock (1757).’
Whilst at school I made in the playground a famous fortification, and then besieged it with mines of gun-powder, nearly blowing up two boys and an old woman selling pies. A better example was my habit of reading, which became a sort of fashion. I was thought to be of an uncommon stamp, and when the pupils returned home their parents became desirous of seeing the lad to whom they thought themselves indebted. My own acquisitions received a mortal shock on the marriage of my sister with Mr. Tomlinson, of the firm of Tomlinson & Co. The opportunity of introducing me into their counting-house was thought advantageous by my father, and in consequence orders came that I should receive immediate instruction in mercantile accounts; as a further preparation the sum of 400l.was paid to Messrs. Robertson, of Lynn, Norfolk, for a three years’ apprenticeship.
In February 1758 I took my last farewell of Lavenham, and paid a visit to my married sister in London. I remember nothing more of this visit than several performances of Mr. Garrick. When I took leave of my sister, who was far advanced in her pregnancy, she wept and said she might never see me more. This proved to be the case, as she died during her lying-in. She was a remarkably clever woman, with much beauty and vivacity of conversation, combined with much solidity of judgment. My mother grieved so much for her loss that she could never be persuaded to go out of mourning, but mourned till her own death, nor did she ever recover her cheerfulness. This had one good effect, and that a very important one for me; she never afterwards looked into any book but on the subject of religion, and her only constant companion was her Bible, herein copying the example of her father.
Every circumstance attending this new situation at Lynn was most detestable to me till I effected an improvement. This was done by hiring a lodging, surrounding myself with books, and making the
acquaintance of Miss Robertson, daughter of my employer’s partner. She was of a pleasing figure, with fine black expressive eyes, danced well, and also sang and performed well on the harpsichord; no wonder, as she received instructions from Mr. Burney.[12] He was a person held in the highest estimation for his powers of conversation and agreeable manners, which made his company much sought after by all the principal nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood. Here I must reflect, as I have done many times before, on the unfortunate idea of making me a merchant. The immediate expense absolutely thrown away differently invested would have kept me four years at the University, enabling my father to make me a clergyman and Rector of Bradfield. This living he actually gave to my Lavenham schoolmaster. The whole course of my life would in such a case have been changed. I should have known nothing of Lynn, and have taken a wife from a different quarter. I should probably have been free from all attraction to agriculture, and that circumstance alone would have changed the whole colour of my existence. I might never have been of any use to the public, but my years would have passed in a far more tranquil current, escaping so many storms and vicissitudes which blew me into a tempest of activity and involved me in great errors, great vice, and perpetual anxiety. This was not to be the case, and what I thought an evil star sent me to Lynn. In this place monthly assemblies were held, a mayor’s feast and ball in the evening, a dancing master’s ball and assemblies at the Mart. It was not common, I was told, for merchants’ clerks to frequent these, a suggestion I spurned, and attended them, dancing with the principal belles. I was complimented by the dancing master, who assured me that he pointed out my minuet as an example to his scholars. But pleasure alone would not satisfy me; I was by nature studious, and from my earliest years discovered a thirst for learning and books. These, the smallness of my allowance (I think not more than 30l. per annum), with my great foppery in dress for the balls, would not permit me to purchase and supply me with what I so much needed. Accordingly in 1758 I compiled a political pamphlet named ‘The Theatre of the Present War in North America,’ for which a bookseller allowed me ten pounds’ worth of books; as he urged me to another
undertaking I wrote three or four more political tracts, each of which procured me an addition to my little library. My first year’s apprenticeship had not expired before the death of my sister overthrew the whole plan which had sent me to Lynn. As 400l.had been paid for the agreed period of three years, I was kept there from no other motive. Under such circumstances it may be supposed that the counting-house and the business received not an atom more of attention than could be dispensed with. I was twenty years old on leaving Lynn, which I did without education, profession or employment. In June of this year (1759) my father died, and as he left debts, my mother thought it necessary to take an exact account of his effects. The following is the result:—
1
£1,106 18
I am sorry to add that money or money due to him made no part of the estimate. The fact was that my father died much in debt, and it was two years before my mother found herself tolerably free.
CHAPTER II
FARMING AND MARRIAGE, 1759-1766
The gay world A call on Dr. Johnson A venture Offer of a career Farming decided upon Garrick Marriage Mr. Harte Lord Chesterfield on farming Literary work Correspondence Birth of a daughter.
In 1761 I was at the Coronation, had a seat in the gallery of Westminster Hall, and being in the front row above the Duke’s table, I remember letting down a basket during dessert, which was filled by the present Duke of Marlborough. On this visit to London I had a mind to see everything, and ordered a full dress suit for going to Court. This was in September. In December I was again in London figuring in the gay world.[13] In January 1762 I set on foot a periodical publication entitled ‘The Universal Museum,’ which came out monthly, printed with glorious imprudence on my own account. I waited on Dr. Johnson, who was sitting by the fire so half-dressed and slovenly a figure as to make me stare at him. I stated my plan and begged that he would favour me with a paper once a month, offering at the same time any remuneration that he might name. ‘No, sir,’ he replied, ‘such a work would be sure to fail if the booksellers have not the property, and you will lose a great deal of money by it.’ ‘Certainly, sir,’ I said; ‘if I am not fortunate enough to induce authors of real talent to contribute.’ ‘No, sir, you are mistaken, such authors will not support such a work, nor will you persuade them to write in it; you will purchase disappointment by the loss of your money, and I advise you by all means to give up the plan.’ Somebody was introduced, and I took my leave. Dr. Kenrick,[14] the translator of Rousseau, was a writer of a very different stamp;
he readily engaged to write for me; so did Collier[15] and his wife, who between them translated the ‘Death of Abel.’[16] I printed five numbers of this work, and being convinced that Dr. Johnson’s advice was wise and that I should lose money by the business, I determined to give it up. With that view I procured a meeting of ten or a dozen booksellers, and had the luck and address to persuade them to take the whole scheme upon themselves. I fairly slipped my neck out of the yoke—a most fortunate occurrence, for, though they continued it under far more favourable circumstances, I believe no success ever attended it.
In September of the following year I broke a blood-vessel and was attended by a Lynn physician, who ordered me to Bristol Hotwells, as I was in a very consumptive state. I accordingly went, boarding and lodging in a house where I met very intelligent and agreeable society; amongst the number was one gentleman with whom I had many arguments concerning Rousseau and his writings, I, like a fool, much admiring both, my new acquaintance abusing them with equal heat. But the principal acquaintance I made at the Hotwells was Sir Charles Howard, K.B., then an old man. Being informed that I was a chess-player, he introduced himself to me in the pump-room and invited me to coffee and a game of chess. After some time and various conversations he made enquiries relating to my family and destination. I took it into my head that he seemed more affable when he was informed (for his enquiries were numerous) that Mr. Speaker Onslow and the Bishop of Rochester were my godfathers. On understanding that I was not bred to any profession and was without hope of any settlement in life, he asked me if I should like to enter the Army. I answered in the affirmative, but added that it could only be matter of theory, as I had not lived with any officers. He often recurred to the idea, and at last told me that he would give me a pair of colours in his own cavalry regiment, and bade me write to my mother for her approval.
This I did, and was not at all surprised by her reply. She begged and beseeched me not to think of any such employment, as my health and strength were quite inadequate to the life. I loved my dear mother too much to accept an offer against her consent. I also
became acquainted with an officer in the Army, Captain Lambert, who visited the Countess of B. at B. Castle. She was esteemed a demirep, handsome and fascinating. A little before I left Bristol I was introduced to her, and had my stay been longer should have made one in the number of her many slaves. On returning from Bristol to my mother at Bradfield, I found myself in a situation as truly helpless and forlorn as could well be imagined, without profession, business, or pursuit, I may add without one well-grounded hope of any advantageous establishment in life. My whole fortune during the life of my mother was a copyhold farm of twenty acres, producing as many pounds, and what possibility there was of turning my time to any advantage did not and could not occur to me; in truth, it was a situation without resource, and nothing but the inconsiderateness of youth could have kept me from sinking into melancholy and despair. My mother, desirous of fixing me with her, proposed that I should take a farm, and especially as the home one of eighty acres was under a lease expiring at Michaelmas. I had no more idea of farming than of physic or divinity, but as it promised, at least, to find me some employment, I agreed to the proposition, and accordingly commenced my rural operations, which entirely decided the complexion of all my remaining years. My connections at Lynn carried me often to that place, and my love of reading proved my chief resource. I farmed during the years 1763-4-5-6, having taken also a second farm that was in the hands of a tenant. I gained knowledge, but not much, and the principal effect was to convince me that in order to understand the business in any perfection it was necessary for me to continue my exertions for many years. And the circumstance which perhaps of all others in my life I most deeply regretted and considered as a sin of the blackest dye, was the publishing the result of my experience during these four years, which, speaking as a farmer, was nothing but ignorance, folly, presumption, and rascality. The only real use which resulted from those four years was to enable me to view the farms of other men with an eye of more discrimination than I could possibly have done without that practice. It was the occasion of my going on the southern tour in 1767, the northern tour in 1768, and the eastern in
1770, extending through much the greater part of the kingdom, and the exertion in these tours was admitted by all who read them (and they were very generally read) to be of most singular utility to the general agriculture of the kingdom. In these works I particularly attended to the course of the farmer’s crops, the point perhaps of all others the most important, and the more so at that period, because all preceding writers had neglected it in the most unaccountable manner. They relate good and bad rotations with the same apathy as if it was of little consequence in what order the crops of a farm were put in provided the operations of tillage and manuring were properly performed.
It has been very justly said that I first excited the agricultural spirit which has since rendered Britain so famous; and I should observe that this is not so great a compliment as at first sight it may seem, since it was nothing more than publishing to the world the exertions of many capital cultivators and in various parts of the kingdom, and especially the local practice of common farmers who, with all their merit, were unknown beyond the limits of their immediate district, and whose operation wanted only to be known to be admired.
In December 1762 I was again in London, and, as usual, constantly at the theatre. The parts in which Mr. Garrick acted to my great entertainment were, Macbeth, Benedict, Lear, Posthumus, Oakely,[17] Abel Drugger,[18] Sir J. Brute,[19] Sir J. Dominant,[20] Bayes, [21] Carlos,[22] Felix,[23] Ranger,[24] Scrub,[25] Hastings.[26] I must once for all remark that this astonishing actor so much exceeded every idea of representing character that the delusion was complete, Nature, not acting, seemed to be before the spectator, and this to a degree a thousand times beyond anything that has been seen since. The tones of his voice, the clear discrimination of feeling and passion in the vast variety of characters he represented, surpassed anything one could imagine, and raised him beyond competition. I have often reflected on the principal personages who figured in England during this age, and I am disposed to think that Garrick was by far the greatest, that is to say, he excelled all his contemporaries in the art he professed. Few men have been able to laugh at their own foibles with as much wit as Garrick. A striking instance was his little
publication called ‘An Ode to Garrick on the Talk of the Town,’ in which we find this stanza:
Two parts they readily allow Are yours, but not one more they vow, And they close their spite. You will be Sir John Brute[27] all day, And Fribble[28] all the night.
In 1765 the colour of my life was decided. I married. My wife[29] was a daughter of Alderman Allen, of Lynn, and great-granddaughter of John Allen, Esq., of Lyng House, Norfolk, who, according to the Comte de Boulainvilliers,[30] first introduced the custom of marling in the above-named county. We boarded with my mother at Lynn.
This year (1765) I was in correspondence with the Rev. Walter Harte,[31] Canon of Windsor, and author of the ‘Essays on Husbandry’ and the ‘Life of Gustavus Adolphus.’ He advised me to collect my scattered papers in the ‘Museum Rusticum,’ and, with additions, to publish them in a volume. This I did under the title of ‘A Farmer’s Letters.’ I visited Mr. Harte at Bath; his conversation was extremely interesting and instructive. I have rarely received more pleasure than in my intercourse with this amiable and deeply learned man. It is well known that he was tutor to Mr. Stanhope, natural son of Lord Chesterfield, to whom so many of that nobleman’s letters were addressed.[32]
ToMr.Harte
‘Blackheath: August 16, 1764.
‘Sir,—I give you a thousand thanks for your book, of which I’ve read every word with great pleasure and full as great astonishment. When in the name of God could you have found time to read the ten or twenty thousand authors whom you quote, of all countries and all times, from Hesiod to du Hamel?[33] Where have you ploughed, sowed, harrowed, drilled, and dug the earth for at least these forty years? for less time could not have made you such a complete
