Augustine was a persecutor, and the father of generations of persecutors. "Augustine of Hippo did not shrink from giving a dogmatic basis to what had come to be the practice of the church, and even professed to find warrant for it in Scripture. 'It is, indeed, better that men should be brought to serve God by instruction than by fear of punishment, or by pain. But because the former means are better, the latter must not therefore be neglected. Many must often be brought back to their Lord, like wicked servants, by the rod of temporal suffering, before they attain the highest grade of religious development. . . . The Lord himself orders that guests be first invited, then compelled, to his great supper.' And Augustine argues that if the State has not the power to punish religious error, neither should it punish a crime like murder.
Rightly did Neander say of Augustine's teaching, that it 'contains the germ of the whole system of spiritual despotism, intolerance, and persecution, even to the court of the Inquisition.' Nor was it long before the final step was taken in the church doctrine of persecution. Leo the Great, the first of the popes, in a strict sense of that term, drew the logical inference from the premises already provided for him by the Fathers of the church, when he declared that death is the appropriate penalty for heresy" (Vedder, Our New Testament, pp. 97,98).
...Augustine, akin to the other "doctors" and "fathers" of the Catholic Church, was polluted with many heresies. Like Jerome, he was baptized in Rome, the very seat of apostasy. He adopted some of the allegorical methods of biblical interpretation which were championed by Origen, and he redefined the church and the kingdom of God as an ecclesiastical-political alliance in this present world.
He was the father of a-millennialism. "Augustine was the first who ventured to teach that the Catholic Church, in its empirical form, was the kingdom of Christ, that the millennial kingdom had commenced with the appearing of Christ, and was therefore an accomplished fact" (Encyclopedia Britannica).
Augustine taught that salvation was by grace alone, but he confused the issue by claiming that the sacraments were actual means of grace, therefore perverting the Gospel of the grace of Christ and intermingling works with grace (Berkhof, The History of Christian Doctrines, pp. 206,207).
Augustine also taught that Mary is sinless, blasphemously claiming for her that which belongs exclusively to the immaculate Lord Jesus Christ. He also taught a form of purgatory.
) ........ Would older necessitate 'better' as so many claim??? 
