manuscript, out of malice towards the Christians; this hypothesis is rejected. On the other hand,
the Septuagint must have been divinely inspired. The only conclusion is that Ptolemy's copyists
made mistakes in transcribing the Septuagint. Speaking of the translations of the Old
Testament, he says: "The Church has received that of the Seventy, as if there were no other, as
many of the Greek Christians, using this wholly, know not whether there be or no. Our Latin
translation is from this also, although one Jerome, a learned priest, and a great linguist, has
translated the same Scriptures from the Hebrew into Latin. But although the Jews affirm his
learned labour to be all truth, and avouch the Seventy to have oftentimes erred, yet the Churches
of Christ hold no one man to be preferred before so many, especially being selected by the High
Priest, for this work." He accepts the story of the miraculous agreement of the seventy
independent translations, and considers this a proof that the Septuagint is divinely inspired. The
Hebrew, however, is equally inspired. This conclusion leaves undecided the question as to the
authority of Jerome's translation. Perhaps he might have been more decidedly on Jerome's side
if the two Saints had not had a quarrel about Saint Peter's time-serving propensities. *
He gives a synchronism of sacred and profane history. We learn that Æneas came to Italy when
Abdon †was judge in Israel, and that the last persecution will be under Antichrist, but its date
is unknown.
After an admirable chapter against judicial torture, Saint Augustine proceeds to combat the new
Academicians, who hold all things to be doubtful. "The Church of Christ detests these doubts as
madness, having a most certain knowledge of the things it apprehends." We should believe in
the truth of the Scriptures. He goes on to explain that there is no true virtue apart from true
religion. Pagan virtue is "prostituted with the influence of obscene and filthy devils." What
would be virtues in a Christian are vices in a pagan. "Those things which she [the soul] seems
to account virtues, and thereby to sway her affections, if they be not all referred unto God, are
indeed vices rather than virtues." They that are not of this society (the Church)
* Galatians II, 11-14.â
€Of Abdon we know only that he had forty sons and thirty nephews, and that all these
seventy rode donkeys ( Judges XII, 14).