With this elaborate pedagogical tradition a clean break is made by St. Augustine. The fourth book of his De doctrina christiana[2] has historical significance in the early years of the fifth century out of all proportion to its size; for it begins rhetoric anew. It not only ignores sophistic; it goes back over centuries of the lore of personal triumph to the ancient idea of moving men to truth; and it gives to the vital counsels of Cicero a new emphasis for the urgent tasks of preaching the word of God.

Abstractly and in retrospect the very character of Christian preaching seems necessarily to reject sophistic. But at the time this seemed anything but inevitable. Sophistic was almost the only lore of public speaking then active. It dominated criticism and education. The Greek fathers Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzen might expose its falsity of conception; but they could not escape it. It had brought them up. Its stylistic habits were ingrained in their expression. Augustine too had been brought up on sophistic. Nor could he escape it. Again and again his style rings with its tradition.[3] Not only had he learned it for good; he had taught it. He had been himself, in Plutarch’s sense and Strabo’s, a sophist. We must hasten to add that the great Christians of the fourth century, if they could not escape sophistic, at least redeemed it by curbing its extravagance and turning it to nobler uses. But Augustine did much more. He set about recovering for the new generation of Christian orators the true ancient rhetoric. He saw that for Christian preaching sophistic must not only be curbed; it must be supplanted. Against the background of his day his quiet, simple book, renouncing the balances and figures of his other works without renouncing their fervor, is seen to be a startling innovation.

Not the least striking trait of the innovation is its reserve. Augustine does not attack sophistic as the Gregorys do; he ignores it. In Chapter xxxi of Book II he had, indeed, mentioned it. Discussing there not style, but matter, he had contrasted the necessary training in argument with sophistic quibbling, and had then added, forecasting Book IV, that superfluous stylistic ornament also is sophistic.

But an uninformed modern reader of Book IV would hardly be aware that sophistic existed. No denunciation could be more scathing than this silence. In Augustine’s view of Christian preaching sophistic simply has no place. A good debater, instead of parrying he counters. He spends his time on his own case. A good teacher, he tells his neophytes not what to avoid, but what to do. He has so far renounced sophistic that he has no concern to triumph. He wishes simply to teach sound rhetorical doctrine. He achieves an extraordinary conciseness not so much by compression as by undeviating straightforwardness.

A reader familiar with the times, however, will be reminded of sophistic by many allusions. Single phrases or sentences some of them, a few more extended, they all serve to illuminate by contrast the true rhetoric.

Display, inflation, thirst for applause—every reader of Augustine’s time would recognize in these allusions a repudiation of sophistic.

For Augustine thinks that Christian preaching is to be learned best from Christian preachers. As if in reply to Julian’s scornful “Let them elucidate their Matthew and Luke,”[6] he recommends not only for doctrine, but for rhetoric, the Epistles, the Prophets, and the Fathers, and proceeds to analyze their style. The analysis, though based on the current Latin version, is generally transferable to the Greek, since it is much simpler than the classification set forth by sophistic. It exhibits sentence movement simply in climax, period, balance—those devices which are most easily appropriated and most useful. The general ancient counsels of aptness and variety are applied specifically to preaching. As to cadence (clausula), Augustine dispenses with all subdivisions, and even makes bold to assert that it must sometimes be sacrificed. Similarly omitting all classification of figures, he manages to suggest in a few words what figures are for. In a word, he shows how to learn from the Canon and the Fathers the rhetoric that is vital to homiletic.

This rhetoric, not only simpler than sophistic, but quite different in emphasis, is set forth in the terms of Cicero. Augustine has gone back four and a half centuries to the days before declamatio. The instruction that he draws from his analysis of Christian literature is planned upon the “instruct, win, move” (docere, delectare, movere) of De oratore and upon the corresponding three typical styles (genus tenue—medium—grande) of Orator.[7] Evidently Augustine had the greater Cicero, not the lesser that sufficed for the Middle Age. He neither quotes nor cites any other rhetorician; and though his doctrine of aptness and of variety is common throughout the older rhetoric, for this too he had no need to go beyond the master’s two great works. Nor have any others been more persuasive as to imitation,[8] which is Augustine’s controlling idea. This first Ciceronianism, too immediately aware of the perverted imitation of style taught by sophists to fall into the archaism and redundancy of later worship of Cicero, is a penetrative recovery of Cicero’s larger meaning. Augustine’s application of the three typical styles is more just and more practically distinct than Cicero’s own. Would that all Ciceronians had been equally discerning!

TABULAR VIEW OF ST. AUGUSTINE’S DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA IV

The fourth book of the De doctrina Christiana is specifically linked by its proem to the preceding three as setting forth presentation (modus proferendi). Books I-III have dealt with study of the subject matter (inventio); Book IV is to deal with expression. Augustine thus makes the traditional fivefold division twofold. Inventio, which under sophistic had lapsed, he restores to its rightful place and gives it a new application to the exegesis of Scripture. Of the remaining four left to his second heading he discusses only style (elocutio). Delivery and memory are mentioned incidentally; plan is omitted. The omission is not negligent. The first chapter warns us not to expect a manual of rhetoric. Nevertheless a modern student cannot help wishing that so suggestive a treatise had both applied to preaching the ancient counsels as to plan and exhibited the New Testament in this aspect. Thus to analyze for imitation not only the style of the Pauline epistles, but their cogency of order, would doubtless have made the work unduly extensive. One hopes that seminarians of the fifth century were stimulated, and that seminarians of the twentieth century will be stimulated, by the example of the treatise itself to study Romans not only for appeal, but for cogency. Meantime Augustine’s fourth book remains one of the most fruitful of all discussions of style in preaching.

But to learn such skill from rules, he goes on, is the way rather for boys than for men who have immediately before them the urgent tasks of preaching.

They must, indeed, know the principles of adaptation (iv), and develop their expression as far as they can; but they will do so best by imitation.

Expressed in modern terms, Augustine’s position is that rhetoric as a classified body of doctrine is properly an undergraduate study. It is not the best approach for seminarians because its method is analytical. The young preacher, needing rather promotion than revision, will advance more rapidly by imitation.

Starting from this principle, that the more fruitful study for learning to preach is imitation of Christian eloquence, Augustine proceeds to show (vi-viii) how distinctive is the eminence of such models and how repaying to analysis. His vindication should be pondered by those who still permit themselves to disparage without distinction the literary value of the New Testament, and by those who, granting poetic to Ambrose, remain unaware of his rhetoric.

The vindication of an eloquence distinctly Christian has the more weight because its doctrine of form and substance echoes from Cicero the best ancient tradition. The older tradition had in Augustine’s time been so overlaid that he could do no better service to rhetoric than to recall it. In fact, Christian eloquence redeemed public speaking by reviving the true persuasion.

The insistence on the Ciceronian doctrine that style is not separable has a bearing more than historical. Not only for Augustine’s time, but for any time, the truism must be reasserted. His iteration is more than preoccupation with Cicero, more than repudiation of sophistic. It springs from the cardinal importance of the truism for homiletic. In the pulpit the sophistic heresy of art for art’s sake becomes intolerable.

Augustine’s next step (vii) is to support his general claims for Christian eloquence, and to show how it may be studied, by analyzing briefly three typical passages. In the first, Romans v. 3-5, he analyzes prose rhythm under the familiar heads of classical sentence movement (compositio): phrases and subordinate clauses (cæsa), coordinate clauses (membra), period (circuitus), climax (gradatio), adding the equivalent Greek terms.[14]

RHYTHMICAL ANALYSIS OF ROMANS V. 3, 4, 5

The passage is short enough, and the sentence movement simple enough, to be grasped readily. Its balance is striking without being monotonous, and is reinforced by a linking iteration that leads to a climax.[15] He is a wise teacher who begins with an instance so memorable. It must have seized even more quickly a generation familiar with both the terms and the method.

The next example, 2 Corinthians xi. 16-31, shows the same sentence devices carried through a much longer reach, and is therefore used both to reinforce the first and to add the importance of rhythmical variety. The counsel of variety, though a commonplace of the older rhetoric, had especial point by contrast with the sophistic fondness for trimming and prolonging balances. Incidental to the exhibition of variety is a reminder of aptness; and the analysis concludes:

The analysis of the third example, Amos vi. 1-6, leads the study to longer and more sustained rhythmical reaches. Lest it seem the more difficult in the more figurative version of the Septuagint, Augustine quotes it “as translated from the Hebrew into Latin style through the interpretation of the priest Jerome, expert in both languages.”

ANALYSIS OF AMOS VI. 1-6

Much more urgent, leaping to attack, rising, prolonging, varying, subsiding to a pregnant close, the prophecy widens the conception of rhythmical range. Marking the rhythms briefly, Augustine uses it also to show the oratorical force of figures.[16] Thus a few pages of analysis are made to yield wide and definite suggestion. This, perhaps, is their outstanding merit; while they show the student what to look for, they invite him to go on for himself. But the pedagogical achievement does not stop there. The professor of rhetoric has seen that rhetorical analysis must be simplified, and that it must be made progressive. Where else shall we find so much drawn from three analyses? The first reduces the complicated lore of rhythm to its essentials. The second, reinforcing and extending these, dwells upon aptness as a corrective of rhetorical zeal, and as a constructive principle. The third, quoting rhythms still more urgent with emotion, passes to the emotional value of concrete words. To bring the over-classified lore of sophistic back to the simplicity of Aristotle was a service not only to homiletic, but to all rhetoric. A greater service was to substitute for the static and formalized pedagogy of the day a vital order. Augustine had been doubtless a popular professor; Christianity made him a great teacher.

Pedagogically, therefore, even his incidental definitions are worth noticing. That the function of grammar is traditionally to impart correctness of speech (iii) is used to support the contention that even this elementary skill comes best in fact from imitation. The period (vii) is defined so as to throw the emphasis on delivery. Its “clauses are suspended by the speaker’s voice until it is concluded at the end.” Therefore it “cannot have fewer than two clauses.” So he points out in the passage above from Amos that the rhythm is available for delivery (in potestate pronuntiantis) either as a series of six or as three pairs, and that the latter is more beautiful. So he suggests limiting analysis to give room for oral interpretation.

The next and longest section (ix-xix) is based on Cicero’s “inform, please, move” (docere, delectare, movere). Distinguishing each of these tasks clearly, Augustine is at the same time careful to unite them, by progressively iterative transitions, in the single and constant task of persuasion. In exposition (docere) clearness may demand the use of popular expressions. What avails correctness in a diction that is not understood?

The correctness (integritas) of diction boasted by the sophists, and carried by them even to the pedantry of archaism, is here faced squarely. The assertion that it must sometimes be sacrificed, the making of clearness absolutely paramount, is the bolder at a time when Christian preaching was not yet recognized as having secure command of elegance. Unmistakable clearness, Augustine goes on, is so much more important in preaching than in discussions permitting question and answer that the speaker must be quick to help unspoken difficulties.

No warrant here, he adds (xi), for dilation beyond the demands of clearness, but good warrant for making instruction pleasant and appealing in order to hold attention. Passing thus to the two other tasks of oratory, he quotes (xii) Cicero’s “to instruct is of necessity, to please is for interest, to move is for victory.”[18] The three are then both carefully distinguished and shown to be a sort of geometrical progression. The first is first of necessity. It must be mastered; but it is rarely sufficient. To supply the lack, the second demands more rhetoric by demanding further adaptation to the audience; but it too must remain insufficient. So the third task, to move, is not merely the third item in a classification; it is the final stage in a progress. That progress is increasingly emotional. The last stage demands not only all the rhetoric of the preceding, but also the art of vivid imagery[19] and of urgent application. So Augustine arrives at one of those linking summaries which constitute almost a refrain.

The next chapter (xiv) warns against resting in the second stage.[20] To make the pleasing of the audience an end in itself is the typical vice of sophistic. If preaching tolerates it, “the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” Augustine quotes, not these words of St. Paul, but Jeremiah, and rises to denunciation of mere pleasing. “Far from us be that madness.” One of Cyprian’s rare descriptive passages is adduced to show how “the wholesomeness of Christian preaching has recalled his diction from [sophistic] redundancy and held it to a graver eloquence of less display.” As the ultimate objection to the sophistic ideal is moral, so is the preacher’s ultimate resource. Since his strength is derived from a source deeper than human skill, his best preparation is prayer. Augustine is not above enforcing this reminder by playing upon the words orare, orator, oratio. Nevertheless human skill is to be cultivated. Prayer itself proves the folly (xvi) of making no other preparation. He who abjures human lore of preaching because God gives us our messages might equally well abjure prayer because God knows us and our needs. The Pauline counsels specify how Timothy should preach. As God heals through doctors and medicines, so he gives the gospel to men by men and through man.

The transition (xvii) to the final task of moving men to action is another full and explicit iteration of all three, and at the same time a preparation for the next section on the corresponding three typical styles. Since the subject matter of preaching is always great, at least in implication (xviii), does it not always demand a great style? No; for a great matter (xix) may at the time rather demand exposition; and this in turn demands a restrained style. Again, a great matter may at the time rather demand praise or blame; and here enters the second task of so adapting the style as to win sympathy.

Augustine has passed (xvii-xix) from Cicero’s three tasks of oratory to his three typical styles by applying to the preacher Cicero’s definition of the orator: “He, then, shall be called eloquent who can speak small things quietly, larger things proportionally, great things greatly.”[22] Thus the three styles are genus submissum (or tenue), genus temperatum (or medium), and genus grande. As in Cicero, these correspond to docere, delectare, movere, and the second is connected with panegyric.

Augustine now proceeds to exemplify the first style (xx) from Galatians as calling for skill in reasoning and for a memory trained to bring in objections and difficulties where they can best be met. This debater’s memory is precisely the ancient memoria, the fifth of the traditional parts of rhetoric. It seems to have fallen into abeyance under sophistic. What the sophists boasted was verbal memory, which Augustine merely mentions in his appendix as something quite different.[23]

The same chapter (xx) exemplifies the second, or median style from Timothy and Romans as having the charm of aptness. Here Augustine confronts squarely the sophistic habit of making rhythmical beauty paramount and the pagan disparagement of Christian style. Some one may find the cadence of Romans xiii. 14 defective. Certainly it would soothe the ear more rhythmically if the verb came last.

The third, or great style, whether it be elegant or not, has for its distinguishing quality the force of emotional appeal. The instances are from 2 Corinthians vi and Romans viii. Romans is a long epistle, not a sermon. Though it was read aloud, of course, it is essentially a treatise, a philosophy of history. It is largely expository and argumentative. Since it is addressed primarily to reflection and reason, its main artistic reliance is on cogency of order. But even here presentation does not remain purely logical. For persuasion it must rise also emotionally. As we read in Acts xvii the outline of the apostle’s Areopagus speech, we discern beyond the logical chain of propositions an expanding conception of the Life-giver. Who can doubt that the style too, as in Romans, rose to grande? The traditional doctrine of the peroration, easily as it may be abused, is only the expression in rhetoric of the audience’s final demand and the speaker’s final answer. That demand and that answer are emotional.

Adding Galatians iv, Augustine says of it:

After quoting without further comment examples from Cyprian and Ambrose, Augustine shows (xxii, xxiii) the need of variety. More even than other forms of oratory, preaching seems to suffer from a stylistic level. No one of the three styles, least of all the third, can effectively be prolonged; the change from style to style gives relief; and subordination of what might be heightened may enhance the emotion of what must be. What must be heightened is what is to rouse the audience to action. So the test of achievement in the third style is not applause, but tears and change of life (xxiv). So also the end of all eloquence, in whatever style, is persuasion (xxv).

Thus Augustine is more explicit than Cicero in showing that the three typical styles are but three ways (xxvi) of achieving a single end, even as the three corresponding tasks, though one of them absorbs attention at a time, are but three aspects of the single task. Nor can persuasion dispense with a means beyond art, the appeal of the speaker’s life[25] (xxvii). Though the Church speaks not merely through a man, but through his office, persuasion needs for full effect his whole influence. Because his life is without shame, the preacher speaks not shamelessly (xxviii), not only with restraint and charm, but with power, to win obedience to the truth.

The historical significance of the De doctrina christiana, important as it is, should not obscure its value as a contribution to homiletic. The first homiletic, though one of the briefest, remains one of the most suggestive. It omits no essential; while it reminds us of the general principles of rhetoric, it emphasizes those applications to preaching which are distinctive; and it proceeds pedagogically. Though the doctrina of the title refers strictly to exposition, and this is amplified and iterated as a constant necessity, Augustine includes specifically and from the start both charm and appeal, and concludes by showing emotional appeal to be the final stage of the comprehensive task of persuasion. Homiletic is an application of rhetoric long established as permanent, consistent, and in both materials and conditions fairly constant. That it is also comprehensive, demanding all three typical styles, including argument in its exposition, winning sympathy in order to urge action, varying its art[26] while holding to its single aim, is most suggestively established here in its first great monument.

Not only does Augustine forbid the arid and the tedious, not only does he insist on emotional appeal; he also vindicates for Christian eloquence the importance of charm. This was the more delicate because charm was both abused by contemporary sophists and still suspected by contemporary preachers. Augustine presents it at once frankly and with just discrimination. To make it an end in itself, he is careful to show, is indeed sophistic; but to ignore it is to forget that preaching is a form of the oratory of occasion.[27] The Areopagus speech of St. Paul,[28] though it is only summarized in Acts xvii, is evidently occasional, and has clear indications of that adaptation to win sympathy which is Augustine’s interpretation of Cicero’s delectare. The speech on occasion, favorite form of oratory in Augustine’s time, had been conventionalized to the point of recipe. The recipes, though he knew them all, Augustine simply ignores; the field he redeems. He shows Christian preaching how to cultivate it for real harvest. History has shown no other direction of rhetoric to be so peculiarly homiletic.

Already Christian eloquence had reached conspicuous achievement in panegyric and more widely in the field of occasional oratory. The pagan sophist must look to his laurels. But these very triumphs had brought the danger of lapsing into too familiar conventions. What in pagan oratory might be no worse than pretty or merely exciting, in Christian oratory would be meretricious. To hold his difficult course, the preacher, as Augustine reminds him again and again, must at every moment steer for his message. He must never deviate. Though sophistic lost its dominance centuries ago, it has never been quite dead, and it always besets preaching. Therefore a constant concern of homiletic is to exorcise it by a valid rhetoric; and no book has ever revealed this more succinctly, more practically, or more suggestively than the De doctrina christiana.