I thought it was interesting how aggressive Augustine is towards... well...his former profession. Augustine taught for years before he took up the cloth, and when he stops the teaching gig he starts being a little rough to the sophists (see quote below). He advises what many people have advised in the past, which was to go and listen to people who were good at the rhetorical stuff (could stir the passions in the right way... not the bad way, of lying sophists) and learn. However, I was mighty impressed with how much credit he gives to the other pagans... all those right thinking pagans.
"It would be tedious to follow out other points, or to indicate such features in other places of the Holy Scriptures. What, if in the passages at least which I have quoted illustrative of the Apostle's eloquence, I had also wished to point out the figures of speech also taught in rhetoric? Would no serious-minded men consider that I was going too far, rather than any student, that I was satisfactory to him? All these things, when taught by professors, are esteemed of great value; they are brought at a great price, and sold with great display. Such display, even I fear to smack of, as I thus discuss these matters; but it has seemed necessary to answer the ill formed who think that our writers deserve contempt, no because they do not possess, but because they do not make display of the eloquence which the former too highly esteem."