On the Gift of Perseverance
One of Augustine’s last works, written for Prosper and Hilary in Gaul, arguing that perseverance to the end is a gift of God. In it he looks back on his own earlier books, the Confessions among them, and on how Pelagius first reacted to them.
Read the text at newadvent.org ↗The companion book, On the Predestination of the Saints (New Advent) ↗
The treatise is the second of two books that Augustine sent to Prosper of Aquitaine and a layman named Hilary, who had written to him about monks in southern Gaul who objected to his teaching on predestination. It belongs to the last two or three years of his life.
It is cited in this wiki for what Augustine says in it about his own past (20.52–53): that he had taught the same doctrine of grace before Pelagius was heard of, that the prayer of the Confessions, “Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt”, angered Pelagius when it was quoted to him at Rome, and that the story of his conversion showed God turning a will that was set against him. This is Augustine’s memory and interpretation some thirty years after he wrote the Confessions, and the anecdote about Pelagius is told by his opponent.
Cited in
- AD 386, firm date
- AD 411 to AD 418, estimated date