Lord Bacon; the theologian and philosopher (for he was the latter,
as well as the former, in the strictest sense) to whom the world
owes, not only the formulizing of the whole scheme of the universe
for a thousand years after his death, but Calvinism (wrongly so
called) in all its forms, whether held by the Augustinian party in
the Church of Rome, or the "Reformed" Churches of Geneva, France,
and Scotland.

Whether we have the exact text of the document as Athanasius wrote
it to the "Foreign Brethren"--probably the religious folk of Treves-
-in the Greek version published by Heschelius in 1611, and in
certain earlier Greek texts; whether the Latin translation
attributed to Evagrius, which has been well known for centuries past
in the Latin Church, be actually his; whether it be exactly that of
which St. Jerome speaks, and whether it be exactly that which St.
Augustine saw, are questions which it is now impossible to decide.
But of the genuineness of the life in its entirety we have no right
to doubt, contrary to the verdicts of the most distinguished
scholars, whether Protestant or Catholic; and there is fair reason
to suppose that the document (allowing for errors and variations of
transcribers) which I have tried to translate, is that of which the
great St. Augustine speaks in the eighth book of his Confessions.

He tells us that he was reclaimed at last from a profligate life
(the thought of honourable marriage seems never to have entered his
mind), by meeting, while practising as a rhetorician at Treves, an
old African acquaintance, named Potitanius, an officer of rank.
What followed no words can express so well as those of the great
genius himself.