His writings clearly indicate that he believed that God miraculously healed people of illness in order to support the authority of those who ministered in the name of Christ.
The most detailed examples of this are written in the last book of his huge work, City of God.
Material that Augustine collected appears there in Book 22 of City of God, the eighth chapter of which is entitled, Of Miracles Which Were Wrought that the World Might Believe in Christ, and Which Have Not Ceased Since the World Believed. (To read this chapter, click on: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120122.htm )
In Chapter 8 of Book 22, Augustine gives a very lengthy description of miracles.
These were physical cures which he had either witnessed himself, or about which he had heard from those whom he considered to be reliable witnesses.
There the reader learns about a blind man cured in Milan while Augustine and Alypius were there as laymen.
He devotes many lines to another man named Innocentius, whom he knew a little later in Carthage, when Augustine as a layman was a guest in the house of Innocentius.
The miraculous cure of this man, who had been an advocate of the deputy prefecture, happened under the eyes of Augustine.
Innocentius was being treated by medical men for fistulae, of which he had a large number intricately seated in the rectum.
The description by Augustine is quite dramatic writing.
(Continued on the next page.)
ID2213
