Excerpt from The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Vol. 1: Bishop of Hippo; A New Translation Ome having been stormed and sacked by the Goths under Alaric their king,1 the worshippers of false gods, or pagans, as we commonly call them, made an attempt to attribute this calamity to the Christian religion, and began to blaspheme the. True God with even more than their wonted bitterness and acerbity. It was this which kindled my zeal for the house of God, and prompted me to undertake the defence of the city of God against the charges and misre presentations of its assailants. This work was in my hands for several years, owing to the interruptions occasioned by many other affairs which had a prior claim on my attention, and which I could not defer. However, this great undertak ing was at last completed in twenty-two books. Of these, the first five refute those who fancy that the polytheistic worship is necessary in _order to secure worldly prosperity, and that all these overwhehning calamities have befallen us in consequence of its prohibition. In the following five books I address myself to those who admit that such cala mities have at all times attended, and will at all times attend, the human race, and that they constantly recur in forms more or less disastrous, varying only in the scenes, occasions, and persons on whom they light, but, while admitting this, main tain that the worship of the gods is advantageous for the life to come. In these ten books, then, I refute these two Opinions, which are as groundless as they are antagonistic to the Christian religion. But that no one might have occasion to say, that though I had refuted the tenets of other men, I had omitted to establish my own, I devote to this object the second part of 1 a.d. 410. 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.