On the Morals of the Catholic Church.
Chapter 1.—How the Pretensions of the Manichæans are to Be Refuted. Two Manichæan Falsehoods.
Chapter 2.—He Begins with Arguments, in Compliance with the Mistaken Method of the Manichæans.
Chapter 5.—Man’s Chief Good is Not the Chief Good of the Body Only, But the Chief Good of the Soul.
Chapter 8.—God is the Chief Good, Whom We are to Seek After with Supreme Affection.
Chapter 10.—What the Church Teaches About God. The Two Gods of the Manichæans.
Chapter 12.—We are United to God by Love, in Subjection to Him.
Chapter 13.—We are Joined Inseparably to God by Christ and His Spirit.
Chapter 14.—We Cleave to the Trinity, Our Chief Good, by Love.
Chapter 15.—The Christian Definition of the Four Virtues.
Chapter 16.—Harmony of the Old and New Testaments.
Chapter 17.—Appeal to the Manichæans, Calling on Them to Repent.
Chapter 19.—Description of the Duties of Temperance, According to the Sacred Scriptures.
Chapter 20.—We are Required to Despise All Sensible Things, and to Love God Alone.
Chapter 21.—Popular Renown and Inquisitiveness are Condemned in the Sacred Scriptures.
Chapter 22.—Fortitude Comes from the Love of God.
Chapter 23.—Scripture Precepts and Examples of Fortitude.
Chapter 24.—Of Justice and Prudence.
Chapter 26.—Love of Ourselves and of Our Neighbor.
Chapter 27.—On Doing Good to the Body of Our Neighbor.
Chapter 29.—Of the Authority of the Scriptures.
Chapter 30.—The Church Apostrophised as Teacher of All Wisdom. Doctrine of the Catholic Church.
Chapter 31.—The Life of the Anachoretes and Cœnobites Set Against the Continence of the Manichæans.
Chapter 32.—Praise of the Clergy.
Chapter 33.—Another Kind of Men Living Together in Cities. Fasts of Three Days.
Chapter 35.—Marriage and Property Allowed to the Baptized by the Apostles.
Chapter 15.—The Christian Definition of the Four Virtues.
25. As to virtue leading us to a happy life, I hold virtue to be nothing else than perfect love of God. For the fourfold division of virtue I regard as taken from four forms of love. For these four virtues (would that all felt their influence in their minds as they have their names in their mouths!), I should have no hesitation in defining them: that temperance is love giving itself entirely to that which is loved; fortitude is love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object; justice is love serving only the loved object, and therefore ruling rightly; prudence is love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and what helps it. The object of this love is not anything, but only God, the chief good, the highest wisdom, the perfect harmony. So we may express the definition thus: that temperance is love keeping itself entire and incorrupt for God; fortitude is love bearing everything readily for the sake of God; justice is love serving God only, and therefore ruling well all else, as subject to man; prudence is love making a right distinction between what helps it towards God and what might hinder it.19 [It would be difficult to find in Christian literature a more beautiful and satisfactory exposition of love to God. The Neo-Platonic influence is manifest, but it is Neo-Platonism thoroughly Christianized.—A.H.N.]