While studies frequently concern preachers and their audiences, this chapter avoids the word “audience” and relies more upon the phrase that Augustine uses for the people who stand before him when he preaches: fratres mei (my brethren). The chapter first considers Augustine as preacher with a critical use of Possidius’s Life of Augustine. One of Augustine’s most devoted episcopal friends, Possidius knew him for nearly 40 years and heard him preach many times. The chapter then considers how Augustine understood the people before him. It treats how he spoke to them and how he allows us to glimpse something of who they are and how they think, with a focus on the descriptions of his people in ep. 29. Attending to this biography and letter can help us have a greater appreciation for the study of Augustine as a preacher and those with him when we focus on the extant sermon collection.

This chapter examines Augustine’s sermons given on the feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost. The homilies given on the Ascension highlight Augustine’s Christology, particularly the Ascension as disclosing Christ’s presence and the totus Christus. Augustine’s sermons on Pentecost and its vigil emphasize the unity of the church, imaged in the speaking of tongues in Acts 2, through the giving of the Holy Spirit. The sermons on Pentecost also unpack, through the image of the new wine and drunkenness in Acts 2, the newness and continuity of Pentecost as the fulfillment of the law in the Spirit’s gift of charity.

Augustine’s preaching touches numerous aspects of his theology which are predominantly present in his most important treatises. The sacraments of the Church are treated in his controversies with heretics but they are also very much present in his sermons, where he teaches the sound doctrine of the Church and performs the Christian rites for the edification of the faithful. This chapter examines Augustine’s teaching on baptism and the Eucharist in his preaching. Having considered his definition of the sacraments in general in his preached works, it presents his teaching on the sacraments in his catechesis to the baptism candidates and to the newly baptised Christians of his congregation. The study further takes into consideration what Augustine says on baptism and the Eucharist in his sermons while addressing the problems of the Donatists and Pelagians. Augustine makes difficult theological concepts understandable to his flock by adapting his language to them.

Bishop Augustine probably preached countless sermons on the New Testament, but less than three hundred remain extant. Most of his New Testament preaching is found in his 124 Homilies on the Gospel of John, his ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John, and his Sermons 51–183. The richness of these sermons is astounding. This chapter samples them, offering a starting point for further analysis. The first section focuses on the pastoral goals that stand behind Augustine’s preaching on the Gospel of Matthew. Second, the chapter turns to his anti-Donatist Homilies on the First Epistle of John, where he intersperses his commentary on 1 John with extensive citations of the Psalms and the Gospels. Third, with respect to his Homilies on the Gospel of John, the chapter shows that Augustine preaches on John with a strong eye to his central theological interests, including his well-known arguments regarding grace and predestination.

While the double love command permeates Augustine’s oeuvre, he develops it into a consistent pedagogy in his preaching. Augustine’s preaching locates the concomitant growth of love of God and love of neighbor within the whole Christ (totus Christus). He indicates to his hearers that the double love command actually involves three objects: God, neighbor, and the self. Augustine leads his hearers through a pattern of reflection concerning these loves: an articulation of the double love command, problematizing the love of self, relocating the self within the body of Christ, and the practical demands incurred by such a location for “neighbors” in Augustine’s and his hearers’ midst. The chapter pays particular attention to the way in which the parables of the prodigal son and the good Samaritan form conceptual markers for Augustine’s pedagogy. The result is a love of neighbor that includes family, friends, rivals, enemies, and the poor within the whole Christ.

This essay examines the sermons of St. Augustine (mainly nos. 184–96, ranging in date from 391 to 420) where he preaches on the nature as well as the effects of Christ’s birth. Augustine relates this revolutionary event to the festivities of January 1 as well as to the Solemnity of the Epiphany. As argued herein, Augustine’s homilies for each of these celebrations (1) stress how they fall and relate to the rest of the liturgical year, (2) focus on how the lowliness of God’s birth achieves humanity’s salvation, and (3) highlight Mary’s role in uniting heaven and earth.

Chapter 3 shifts to the period in which the constitutional debates following the revolution of 1688 gave way to a long period of greater political stability. The Tories were ousted with the coming of the Hanoverian dynasty in 1714, after which the Whigs settled into power under the leadership of Robert Walpole. The chapter first shows how the Whig oligarchy was opposed by a new generation of ‘commonwealthmen’, notably Trenchard and Gordon, and by a more conservative opposition led by Bolingbroke, who appropriated many ‘commonwealth’ themes. Next the chapter surveys the success of the Whigs in countering these opponents and cementing themselves in power. After their triumph over the Jacobite rebellion in 1745 the Whigs presided over an outpouring of patriotic sentiment. They were congratulated for repudiating arbitrary power, granting the people a voice in making the laws and guaranteeing their basic rights, and thereby ensuring that Britian was genuinely a free state.