Well, you might have a point. He’d think we were being far, far, far, too soft and would have advocated the oppression of those who “protest” against the truth faith, the Catholic Church.

The definition of a “protestant” in Brother Augies day was called Donatism, because they protested against the impiety of the Church. To address their protest, Augustine developed the doctrines that led to the slaughter and pillaging of the Donatists. Brother Augie started out magnanimous enough, but his theological dissent eventually became theological condemnation and a full on advocacy of violent repression.

As an aside, I find it rather hilarious that committed Protestants want to claim theological brother hood with a man who would most certainly have encouraged the “true” Catholic Bishops to protect their flock from such divisive schismatic’s. So, all those Calvinist Reformed types that want to put Luther and Johnny C and Augustine in the same sentence as they try to weave together their own “orthodox” apostolic succession are walking the path of highest irony.  I do soooo love irony.  
 
Anyway… before I digress; there is no real extrapolation when reading say, “On Correction of Donatists” that details his open advocacy for violence to compel conversion to what he considered the true Catholic faith.  Among the many things Augustine said on the subject he is pretty clear about his acceptance of coercion to persuade heretics:

[the] thing to be considered when any one is coerced, is not the mere fact of the coercion, but ht nature of that which he is coerced, whether it be good or bad: not that any one can be good in spite of his own will, but that, through fear of suffering what he does not desire, he either renounces his hostile prejudices or is compelled to examine truth of which he has been content ended, or seek truth of which he had been ignorant, and desiring to hold now what he had rejected.  (Ep. 93.5.16)
 

Historic ecclesiastics followed his doctrinal standard of coercion well. Pope Innocent the III certainly got the message. He was not at all shy about using force to compel fidelity to the Catholic Church.  
 
And Catholic Canon Law 1369 has this comment:

A person is to be punished with a just penalty, who … utters blasphemy, or gravely harms public morals, or rails at or excites hatred of or contempt for religion or the Church.
 

And Pope Paul III, 1576 had this warm fuzzy declaration of Christian love:

 
I do further promise and declare that I will, when opportunity presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do and to extirpate and exterminate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither sex, age nor condition; and that I will hang, waste, boil, flay, strangle and bury alive these infamous heretics; rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants’ heads against the wall, in order to annihilate forever their execrable race.
 

There is plenty more where this came from….
From my perspective the only “extrapolation” done is by scholars frantic to down play Augustine’s philosophical and doctrinal violence for the express purpose enforcing the Church definition of TRUTH. Their “extrapolation” is more like the Jedi mind trick: “These are not the heretics you seek!  That is not the rack that they were to be pull on.  He didn’t REALLY mean ‘beat them with rods’. Piffle it is no different than what happened to the wayward school boy.”

 
Lol
 
Anyway… thanks for your comment.  Hope to hear more from you.  I will give the links you offered a look see.

To that very end I wrote: http://spiritualtyranny.com/men-and-dogs/

Thanks for your comment.  And welcome.

Thanks for your comment.  Your first,  I think?

It is always good to hear that people are getting free of the most destructive body of doctrine ever perpetrated on humanity. 
Glad you were saved. 

Yee hawww

To be sure, more is coming.  I have two major projects that I am working on now that I hope to have ready for mass distribution in 2010. Of course, there is another article in the pipe–still working out the rough edges before I go to a recording session. 

As for an email list… up the in the left hand corner you should see a link for an RSS feed.  And you should also see a Technorati link at the bottom of a page.   I recently had someone bug me about Twitter. Maybe I will set up an account for that as well.

But anyway, the services mentioned are the mass distribution service for the Spiritualtyranny.com.   Click the buttons and you should get the sign up info for following posts.

Again, thanks for being out there.  I’d probably do this even if no one read, but it is great for my SELF to know that people are consuming what I create. 

I receive your blessing.

To liberty in the Anointed Jesus! 

ROTFLMBO

Lord, it’s good to be off the spiritual crack!

I was just checking in after a long absence.  As usual, I am blown away by the truth of your words.  Self-doubt was used so often in my ex-controlling church that I didn’t even know who I was anymore!  It took years for me to have any kind of trust in my ability to know and hear the Lord.  Coming off the spiritual crack was terrifying, exhausting, and absolutely life changing.  Now I get high on my freedom in Christ, and His marvelous grace!