Chapter 2 [II.]—In This and the Four Next Chapters He Adduces the Garbled Extracts He Has to Consider.

The paper which I now answer starts with this title: “Headings out of a book written by Augustin, in reply to which I have culled a few passages out of books.” I perceive from this that the person who forwarded these written papers to your Excellency wanted to make his extracts out of the books he does not name, with a view, so far as I can judge, to getting a quicker answer, in order that he might not delay your urgency. Now, after considering what books they were which he meant, I suppose that it must have been those which Julianus mentioned in the Epistle he sent to Rome,137    See Augustin’s Unfinished Work against Julian, i. 18. a copy of which found its way to me at the same time. For he there says: “They go so far as to allege that marriage, now in dispute, was not instituted by God,—a declaration which may be read in a work of Augustin’s, to which I have lately replied in a treatise of four books.” These are the books, as I believe, from which the extracts were taken. It would, then, have been perhaps the better course if I had set myself deliberately to disprove and refute that entire work of his,138    This Augustin afterwards did by the publication of six book against Julianus, on receiving his entire work. Augustin tells us (Unfinished Work, i. 19) that he had long endeavoured to procure a copy of Julianus’ books for the purpose of refuting them, and only succeeded in getting them after some difficulty and delay. which he spread out into four volumes. But I was most unwilling to delay my answer, even as you yourself lost no time in forwarding to me the written statements which I was requested to reply to.

CAPUT II.

2. Chartula cui nunc respondeo, hoc titulo praenotatur: «Capitula de libro Augustini quem scripsit, contra quae de libris pauca decerpsi.» Hic video, eum qui tuae Praestantiae ista scripta direxit, de nescio quibus ea libris, causa, quantum existimo, celerioris responsionis, ne tuam differret instantiam, voluisse decerpere. Qui autem sint isti libri cum cogitarem, eos esse arbitratus sum, quorum mentionem Julianus facit in epistola quam Romam misit , cujus exemplum simul ad me usque pervenit . Ibi quippe ait: «Dicunt etiam istas, quae modo aguntur, nuptias a Deo institutas non fuisse, quod in libro Augustini legitur, contra quem ego modo quatuor libellis respondi.» Credo, ex his libellis ista decerpta sunt: unde melius fortasse fuerat, ut universo ipsi operi ejus, quod quatuor voluminibus explicavit, redarguendo et refellendo nostra laboraret intentio ; nisi et ego responsionem differre noluissem; sicut nec tu transmissionem scriptorum, quibus respondendum est, distulisti.