After that, he never thought again of anything but Truth and the Church, and the enemies of Truth and the Church: the Manichees, the Arians, the Pelagians--the Donatists, above all. He lets no error go by without refuting it, no libel without an answer. He is always on the breach. He might well be compared, in much of his writings, to one of our fighting journalists. He put into this generally thankless business a wonderful vigour and dialectical subtlety. Always and everywhere he had to have the last word. He brought eloquence to it, yet more charity--sometimes even wit. And lastly, he had a patience which nothing could dishearten. He repeats the same things a hundred times over. These tiresome repetitions, into which he was driven by the obstinacy of his opponents, caused him real pain. Every time it became necessary, he took up again the endless demonstration without letting himself grow tired. The moment it became a question of the Truth, Augustin could not see that he had any right to keep quiet.
In Africa and elsewhere they made fun of what they called his craze for scribbling. He himself, in his _Retractations_, is startled by the number of his works. He turns over the Scripture saying which the Donatists amusingly opposed to him: _Væ mullum loquentibus_--"Woe unto them of many words." But calling God to witness, he says to Him: _Væ tacentibus de te_--"Woe unto those who keep silent upon Thee." In the eyes of Augustin, the conditions were such that silence would have been cowardly. And elsewhere he adds: "They may believe me or not as they will, but I like much better to read than to write books...."
In any case, his modesty was evident. "I am myself," he acknowledges, "almost always dissatisfied with what I say." To the heretics he declares, with a glance back at his own errors, "I know by experience how easy it is to be wrong." When there is some doubt in questions of dogma, he does not force his explanations, but suggests them to his readers. How much intellectual humility is in that prayer which ends his great work on the Trinity: "Lord my God, one Trinity, if in these books I have said anything which comes from Thee, may Thou and Thy chosen receive it. But if it is from me it comes, may Thou and Thine forgive me."