Excerpt from Regnum Dei: Eight Lectures on the Kingdom of God in the History of Christian Thought That in some respects, as has been apparent from the time of Dante, Augustine's vision was limited, may be due to the fact that a low estimate of civil govern ment and of social life was inevitable in the age to which he belonged. But his fundamental contention that the source of social decay is the love of self, and that the love of self can only be effectually overcome by the Love of god, is as fully borne out by the signs of our times as by those of the decline of Ancient Rome. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.