On the Profit of Believing (De Utilitate Credendi)

Retract. i. cap. 14. Moreover now at Hippo-Regius as Presbyter I wrote a book on the Profit of Believing, to a friend of mine who had been taken in by the Manichees, and whom I knew to be still held in that error, and to deride the Catholic school of Faith, in that men were bid believe, but not taught what was truth by a most certain method. In this book I said, etc. * * *. This book begins thus, "Si mihi Honorate, unum atque idem videretur esse."St. Augustine enumerates his book on the Profit of Believing first among those he wrote as Presbyter, to which order he was raised at Hippo about the beginning of the year 391. The person for whom he wrote had been led into error by himself, and appears to have been recovered from it, at least if he is the same who wrote to St. Augustine from Carthage about 412, proposing several questions, and to whom St. Augustine wrote his 140th Epistle. Cassiodorus calls him a Presbyter, though at that time he was not baptized. In Epistle 83, St. Augustine speaks of the death of another Honoratus, a Presbyter. Towards the end of his life he also wrote his 228th Epistle to a Bishop of Thabenna of the same name.- (Bened. Ed.)The remarks in the Retractations are given in notes to the passages where they occur.