of the orthodox convert, as thematically relevant. Undoubtedly the tone of the text as a whole is highly personal and quite emotional, as if Augustine is having a heartfelt heart-to-heart dialogue with God Himself. However, in the systematic presentation of subjects that Augustine selects for discussion can be discerned a latent but nevertheless--or for that very reason--institutional purpose in the presentation. Indeed, Brown characterizes the late fourth century during which Augustine's Church partisanship became settled more or less as the first generation of a religion to which adherence entailed meaningful physical danger. Constantine's conversion in about AD 330 brought to an end the centuries of Imperial persecution of Christians, and that enabled the Church to enlarge and systematize in institutional terms the doctrinal groundwork that had been laid, particularly by Paul, beginning in the apostolic period.
By Augustine's lifetime, Brown says, "the Church had settled down in Roman Society." No longer threatened with state persecution, Christ
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