All of these objections are a combination of ignorant and superficial, and consequently not really worth addressing one by one. Superficial in that, a Bishop who believes in the doctrines of grace that animated Luther and Calvin and all the great reformers is not a Roman Catholic who can condemn Luther, but a Christian on par with Luther, whatever outward pomp he wears or mode of religious practice.
I have long noticed that Catholics are often hung up on appearance, but don't care about the actual doctrines of salvation. They would rather debate you on something irrelevant and worthless, but not on the meaning of scripture, faith, justification, and grace.
Superficial? How many Calvinists say Mass? How many are bishops? How many keep the feasts of the martyrs? How many found religious orders? I don’t think the Puritans regarded them as superficial.
No Christian has any right to take one Church Father and inflate him into the ne plus ultra of doctrinal purity. Even if Augustine believed the same as you on grace (which I find absurd by the way, since Orange and Trent based their anathemas on his formulations), he must be viewed in the context of the teaching of the entire Church, which includes the Greek, Syriac, and desert Fathers.
You say I’m the one hung up on appearance, and it’s actually the opposite. You want to play “Augustinian” dress-up and march around pretending that you are 100% in line with one of the greatest theologians of all time, when he would have excommunicated you without a second thought.
I’ve read the City of God, the Confessions, and Possidius’s biography. I’ve done special studies on his Literal Interpretation of Genesis, and his collected liturgical quotations as compiled by Bishop in the 1920s. My position is based on a solid understanding of who the man was and what he thought, not cherry-picked quotations filtered through Calvin’s Institutes.
If there’s a group today that can claim the “Augustinian” mantle, it’s the Catholic monks and nuns who live his rule.