St. Augustine's Treatise on the City of God - Abridged #225043

The fall of Rome was due, in a measure, to her over weening confidence in the power of her wealth and the prestige of her name; the demoralization of the middle class; the corruption of the officials the luxury of the rich and the sloth of the masses, and that supreme contempt for the barbarians, whose tide of invasion, checked for a moment here and there, was, after some six centuries of unceasing efforts, to surge over the barriers with irre: sistible force, swallowing up all opposition in the waves of its mighty onset, sweeping onwards towards the inviolable boundaries of the doomed city in a deluge that was not to be resisted, The sack of the city assumed, however, a different aspect in relation to the Christian Church, which was to reap the fruits of this downfall of the State by means of its efficient system of organization, and by reason of its inspiring principle of spiritual regeneration. Here was a subject for the rhetorician. But who was to underl take it? A providential chance seemed to ordain that the lot should fall upon 'augustine.