Styles, Similes, and Scripture in Saint Augustine’s Sermon

Style

            In paragraph 1, Saint Augustine introduces the idea of forgiveness in a mixture of all three styles and various rhetorical techniques.  He mostly includes low style to teach his audience about forgiveness, but starts his speech in an exhortation to “not despise these words, my brethren.”  Furthermore, he moves us when he laments about how human it is to get angry: “It is human to get angry: would that we did not have this power!”  He effectively empathizes with his audience through his lament while still decrying anger at the same time.  He also moves into middle style with his simile.  When he speaks of anger, he compares it to a “tender young twig” which is entertaining and instructive simultaneously, so he is combining a low and subdued style with some entertaining middle style by way of simile.

Simile

            Why the simile is so effective for his readers is because it is almost an imitation of traditional scriptural style or even a parable, like Jesus speaking about the olive tree that does not give forth fruit.  So Augustine’s Christian audience already can recognize the simile and learn to “uproot [anger] and cast it out, [so that] it will amount to nothing.”  This simile allows us to visualize anger like a weed or tree and learn how to cast it out.  It also separates anger and hatred from the individual.  Anger is a separate item growing inside the person.  Anger is not the person.

Scripture

            Comparing this simile to the actual scripture of Matthew 7:3 about the beams and the motes allows Augustine to be scripturally backed up with his argument against anger with additional information about how wrong it is to have anger when you have your own problems as well.