The following passage from the Retractations of Augustin (Book ii. ch. xlv.) is quoted by the Benedictine Fathers as a preface to this letter and the one immediately succeeding:--"I wrote also two books to Presbyter Jerome, the recluse of Bethlehem [sedentem in Bethlehem]; the one on the origin of the human soul, the other on the sentence of the Apostle James, Whosoever shall keep the whole law and offend in one point, he is guilty of all' (Jas. ii. 10), asking his opinion on both subjects. In the former letter I did not give any answer of my own to the question which I proposed; in the latter I did not keep back what seemed to me the best way to solve the question, but asked whether the same solution commended itself to his judgment. He wrote in return, expressing approbation of my submitting the questions to him, but saying that he had not leisure to send me a reply. So long as he lived, therefore, I refused to give these books to the world, lest he should perhaps at any time reply to them, in which case I would have rather published them along with his answer. After his decease, however, I published them,--the former, in order to admonish any who read it, either to forbear altogether from inquiring into the manner in which a soul is given to infants at the time of birth, or, at all events, in a matter so involved in obscurity, to accept only such a solution of the question as does not contradict the clearest truths which the Catholic faith confesses in regard to original sin in infants, as undoubtedly doomed to perdition unless they be regenerated in Christ; the latter in order that what seemed to us the true answer to the question therein discussed might be known. The work begins with the words, Deum nostrum qui nos vocavit.' " ↩