The Church Fathers · c. 407
Homilies on the First Epistle of John
In Epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos
Augustine of Hippo · 354 – 430
What it is
Ten sermons preached in Easter week on a letter about love, to a congregation split by the Donatist schism. The seventh contains the sentence everything else in Augustine has to be read against: love, and do what you will.
Why it lasted
The warmest thing Augustine wrote and the most quoted out of context. In place it is not permission but a standard — act from love and the act will be right; the difficulty is the love, not the licence.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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