ST. AUGUSTINE

AS AN

INTERPRETER OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.

BY

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, B.D.

VICAR OF ITCHENSTOKE, HANTS;
AND EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD.

LONDON:
JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND.

MDCCCLI.

IT is not my intention to offer in this present essay any estimate of the worth of St. Augustine’s theology, regarded as a whole, but so far as possible to confine myself to the subject indicated by its title, and to consider him in a single light, that is, as an interpreter of Holy Scripture. An essay undertaking this, if it were not closely watched in its growth, might easily, and almost unawares, pass into that, and thus become quite another thing from that which it was intended to be : yet it does not appear to me that an attempt to trace his leading characteristics as an expositor, to estimate his accomplishments, moral and mental, for being a successful one, to set forth the rules and principles of exposition which he either expressly laid down or habitually acted on, and to give a few specimens of his actual manner of interpretation, (which is all I propose to myself here,) need involve the logical necessity of going on to consider his whole scheme of theology. Between so great and arduous a work as that, and the comparatively humbler, and certainly more limited task which I have undertaken here, a line of distinction may very justly be drawn, and if due watchfulness is exercised, may without any great difficulty be observed.

Trench. St. Augustine as an interpreter of Holy Scripture (1851).