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particular rescript, by a special messenger into Africa, to invite St. Austin to it; but he was departed to eternal bliss.
This saint was not only the oracle of his own times, but of the principal among all the Latin Fathers that came after him, who often have only copied him, and always professed to adhere to his principles: Peter Lombard, St. Thomas Aquinas and other eminent masters among the school men have trodden in their steps. The councils have frequently borrowed the words of this holy doctor in expressing their decisions. On the great commendations which Innocent I, Celestine I, St. Gregory the Great, and other popes and eminent men have bestowed of his doctrine, see Orsi, Gordeau, Massouli, Gonet, Usher and innumerable others. An abstract of his doctrine is given us by Ceillier, and in a judicious and clear manner by the learned Mr. Brerelie in a book entitled "The Religion of St. Augustine," printed in 1620. He shows how great was the veneration which the first reformers generally expressed for this father. Luther affirms that since the Apostles' time the Church never had a better doctor than St. Austin, and that after the sacred scripture there is no doctor in the Church to be compared to Austin. Dr. Coeul says that he was a man far beyond all that ever were before him, or shall in liklihood follow him, for divine and human learning, those being excepted that were inspired. Dr. Field calls him "the greatest of all the Fathers, and the worthiest divine of the Church of God ever had since the apostles' time." Mr. Forester styles him "the Monarch of the Fathers." To mention one of our own times, the learned and most celebrated professor at Berlin, James Brucker, in his "Critical History of Philosophy," extols exceedingly the astonishing genius and penetration, and the extensive learning of this admirable Doctor, and tells us he was much superior to all the other great men who adorned that most learned age in which he flourished. The same author, in his "Abridgment or Institutions of the Philosophical History," calls him "the bright star of philosophy." These testimonies agree with that of Erasmus, who calls St. Austin "the singularly excellent Father, and the chief among the greatest ornaments and lights of the Church." "Eximius pater, inter summa ecclesiae ornamenta ac luminia princeps."
This was not the St. Augustine known as the "Apostle of England."
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