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,
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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,
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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.
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See Augustin’s
Unfinished Work against Julian
, i. 18.
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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.