You left out one of Augustine's last work that he felt was his best:
For it is not every one who thinks that believes, since many think in order that they may not believe; but everybody who believes, thinks,—both thinks in believing, and believes in thinking. Therefore in what pertains to religion and piety (of which the apostle was speaking), if we are not capable of thinking anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, we are certainly not capable of believing anything as of ourselves, since we cannot do this without thinking; but our sufficiency, by which we begin to believe, is of God. A Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints
I know we have had this conversation before, but the Trestise on Predestination was one of Augustine's last writings; one that he came to realize from Cyprian, that there is nothing that you have that you have not received. You received grace, faith, belief, works, everything. It demeans God for someone to say they give something to God when, in fact, God owns everything and give us our belief.
It was not thus that that pious and humble teacher thought—I speak of the most blessed Cyprian—when he said "that we must boast in nothing, since nothing is our own."6 And in order to show this, he appealed to the apostle as a witness, where he said, "For what hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received it, why boastest thou as if thou hadst not received it?" [1 Cor. 4.7.] And it was chiefly by this testimony that I myself also was convinced when I was in a similar error, thinking that faith whereby we believe on God is not God's gift, but that it is in us from ourselves, and that by it we obtain the gifts of God, whereby we may live temperately and righteously and piously in this world. For I did not think that faith was preceded by God's grace, so that by its means would be given to us what we might profitably ask, except that we could not believe if the proclamation of the truth did not precede; but that we should consent when the gospel was preached to us I thought was our own doing, and came to us from ourselves.
Is faith a gift or is it not? Augustine overlooked this in his other writings.
Harley, Again you are taking a small percentage of what Blessed Augustine wrote and using it to support reformed theology.
Father William Most wrote an excellent article on this called
ST. AUGUSTINE ON GRACE AND PREDESTINATION
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7273/augustin.htm
You Also said..
“”I know we have had this conversation before, but the Trestise on Predestination was one of Augustine’s last writings; one that he came to realize from Cyprian, that there is nothing that you have that you have not received. You received grace, faith, belief, works, everything. It demeans God for someone to say they give something to God when, in fact, God owns everything and give us our belief.””
Yes, we have gone through this before and for some reason you seem to think that because God owns everything he gives us that He also forces it on us.
LOVE DOES NOT FORCE ! It can only be love if it is FREELY accepted.
Dear Brother,I have limited time and no desire to go round and round with you on this again .
I wish you a Blessed day and hope all is well with you!