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God in waiting for a quarter of a century for his conversion; and also the efficaciousness of the persistence in prayer of his mother, St. Monica. His opinions on matters of conduct and discipline of ecclesiastics and people are most valuable; and the great services he rendered to religion in his writings against the Arian, Nestorian, Manichaean, Donatist and other early heresies are appreciated at their full merit by God alone. Like St. Paul, he was once a great sinner; and like St. Paul, he became, after his conversion, one of the greatest Apostles and doctors of the Church. He hid attended councils against the heretics, and about the year of 407 a council at Hippo challenged the Donatists to dispute with Catholic doctors matters doctrine; but they declined, urging as their excuse the superior eloquence of St. Austin.
In his last illness, says Butler, "he ordered the Penitential Psalms of David to be written out, and hung in tablets on the wall of his bed. Not to be interrupted in these devotions, he desired about ten days before his death, that no one should come to him except at those times when either the physicians came to visit him, or his food was brought to him. This was constantly observed, and all of the rest of his time was spent in prayer. Though the strength of his body daily and hourly declined, yet his senses and intellectual faculties continued sound to the last. He calmly resigned his spirit into the hands of God, from whom he had received it, on the 28th of August, 430, after having lived seventy-six years, and spent almost forty of them in the labors of the ministry. He made no will; for this poor man of Christ had nothing to bequeath. He had given charge that the library which he had bestowed on his church should be carefully preserved.
Possidius adds, "We being present, a sacrifice was offered to God for his recommendation and so he was buried in the same manner as St. Austin mentions to have been done for his mother." The same author tells us that, whilst he lay sick in bed, by the imposition of his hands he restored to health a sick man, who, upon the intimation made to him in a vision, was brought to the saint for that purpose; and he says: "I knew both when he was priest and when he was Bishop, that being requested to pray for certain persons that were possessed, he had poured out prayers to our Lord, and the devils departed from them." An authentic account of several other miracles with which he
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