Augustine and the Gospel

“And here lies the secret of his profound realization that Christian happiness consist in “comforted remorse”.

“Before him men were prone to conceive themselves essentially God's creatures, whose business it was to commend themselves to their Maker: no doubt they recognized that they had sinned, and that provisions had been made to relieve them of the penalty of their sins; but they built their real hope of acceptance in God's sight more of less upon their own conduct. Augustine realized to the bottom of his soul that he was a sinner and what it is to be a sinner, and therefore sought at God's hand not acceptance but salvation.”

“And this is reason why he never thought of God without thinking of sin and never thought of sin without thinking of Christ. Because he took his sin seriously, his thought and feeling alike traveled continually in this circle, and could not but travel in this circle. He thus was constantly verifying afresh the truth of the Savior's declaration that he to whom little is forgiven loves little, while he loves much who is conscious of having received much forgiveness … So he came to understand that the heights of joy are scaled only by him who has first been miserable, and that the highest happiness belongs only to him who has been the object of salvation. Self-despair, humble trust, grateful love, fullness of joy – these are steps on which his own soul climbed upward: and these steps gave their whole color and form both to his piety and to his teaching.”

- B.B. Warfield, Calvin and Augustine. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1980, p. 336-350