The Literature Network - Books: From sex to sanctity Peter Stanford finds the great killjoy guilty as charged

Books: From sex to sanctity Peter Stanford finds the great killjoy guilty as charged

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From: The Independent - London
Date: 19990828
Author:Peter Stanford

Saint Augustine

by Gary Wills

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pounds 12.99,153pp

THERE IS something profoundly irritating about those ex-smokers who, having kicked the habit, become evangelical in the presence of an ashtray. Saint Augustine, I have always suspected, would have been a 40- a-day man, but born as he was in AD354 this addictive personality had to find other outlets. His weakness, as he detailed in his candid Confessions, was sex. And, once weaned, he became the most profound sexual pessimist that Christianity has ever known.

From an early age in his native North Africa, Augustine was, by ...

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