Interesting passage from Saint Augustine's " City of God " on the " Fall of Rome " of which he was an eye witness

[ "In the foregoing book, having begun to speak of the city of God, to which I have resolved, Heaven helping me, to consecrate the whole of this work, it was my first endeavour to reply to those who attribute the wars by which the world is being devastated, and specially the recent sack of Rome by the barbarians, to the religion of Christ, which prohibits the offering of abominable sacrifices to devils. I have shown that they ought rather to attribute it to Christ, that for His name's sake the barbarians, in contravention of all custom and law of war, threw open as sanctuaries the largest churches, and in many instances showed such reverence to Christ, that not only His genuine servants, but even those who in their terror feigned themselves to be so, were exempted from all those hardships which by the custom of war may lawfully be inflicted. Then out of this there arose the question, why wicked and ungrateful men were permitted to share in these benefits; and why, too, the hardships and calamities of war were inflicted on the godly as well as on the ungodly. " ] CORECTION ? [ " No, Saint Augustine was not an eyewitness to the "Fall of Rome" in \(410\) AD; he was the bishop of Hippo, a city in North Africa, and heard the news of the Visigothic sack of Rome from a distance. He did, however, write his famous work, The City of God, in response to the event to defend Christianity and explain the event as a result of the empire's internal moral decay. Witness to the event: Augustine lived in Roman North Africa and was not in the city of Rome when it was sacked by the Visigoths in August of \(410\) AD.Immediate reaction: Upon hearing the news, he wrote letters to comfort refugees and delivered sermons to calm the fears of those in his own region, which was facing its own eventual vulnerability to Germanic tribes.The City of God: In response to the event, he wrote The City of God to refute the idea that Christianity had caused Rome's decline. He argued that the city's moral decay, not its adoption of Christianity, was the cause of its fall.Significance: The City of God is a monumental work of Christian philosophy and history that presents two "cities"—the City of God and the City of Man—as a framework for understanding the conflict between faith and disbelief.  " ]