The prenatal influence of visual impressions

[Mudhammam]

You are actually reading the City of God?  Why?  If you feel you must try some Augustine, he wrote some much shorter books that will give you the idea of how bad he is.

Since you seem to be a glutton for punishment, you should look forward to reading Aquinas when you get to his time period.  He is even worse than Augustine.

It seemed unavoidable. I'm trying to really cover all of the major points in my survey of the history of Western philosophy. I read the Confessions before this. Much better. City of God has some good moments, but far too much of it (and there's a lot) is like the above quote.