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The Confessions of St. Augustine

by Saint of Hippo Augustine · English · Gutenberg #3296 · 622,344 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Confessions of St. Augustine

Author: Saint of Hippo Augustine

Translator: E. B. Pusey


        
Release date: June 1, 2002 [eBook #3296]
                Most recently updated: September 15, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3296

Credits: Robert S. Munday


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE ***




THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE

By Saint Augustine

Bishop of Hippo

Translated by E. B. Pusey (Edward Bouverie)


AD 401




BOOK I


Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power,
and Thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle
of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of
his sin, the witness that Thou resistest the proud: yet would man praise
Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakest us to delight in
Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless,
until it repose in Thee. Grant me, Lord, to know and understand which is
first, to call on Thee or to praise Thee? and, again, to know Thee or
to call on Thee? for who can call on Thee, not knowing Thee? for he that
knoweth Thee not, may call on Thee as other than Thou art. Or, is it
rather, that we call on Thee that we may know Thee? but how shall they
call on Him in whom they have not believed? or how shall they believe
without a preacher? and they that seek the Lord shall praise Him: for
they that seek shall find Him, and they that find shall praise Him.
I will seek Thee, Lord, by calling on Thee; and will call on Thee,
believing in Thee; for to us hast Thou been preached. My faith, Lord,
shall call on Thee, which Thou hast given me, wherewith Thou hast
inspired me, through the Incarnation of Thy Son, through the ministry of
the Preacher.

And how shall I call upon my God, my God and Lord, since, when I call
for Him, I shall be calling Him to myself? and what room is there within
me, whither my God can come into me? whither can God come into me, God
who made heaven and earth? is there, indeed, O Lord my God, aught in me
that can contain Thee? do then heaven and earth, which Thou hast made,
and wherein Thou hast made me, contain Thee? or, because nothing which
exists could exist without Thee, doth therefore whatever exists contain
Thee? Since, then, I too exist, why do I seek that Thou shouldest enter
into me, who were not, wert Thou not in me? Why? because I am not gone
down in hell, and yet Thou art there also. For if I go down into hell,
Thou art there. I could not be then, O my God, could not be at all,
wert Thou not in me; or, rather, unless I were in Thee, of whom are all
things, by whom are all things, in whom are all things? Even so, Lord,
even so. Whither do I call Thee, since I am in Thee? or whence canst
Thou enter into me? for whither can I go beyond heaven and earth, that
thence my God should come into me, who hath said, I fill the heaven and
the earth.

Do the heaven and earth then contain Thee, since Thou fillest them? or
dost Thou fill them and yet overflow, since they do not contain Thee?
And whither, when the heaven and the earth are filled, pourest Thou
forth the remainder of Thyself? or hast Thou no need that aught contain
Thee, who containest all things, since what Thou fillest Thou fillest
by containing it? for the vessels which Thou fillest uphold Thee not,
since, though they were broken, Thou wert not poured out. And when Thou
art poured out on us, Thou art not cast down, but Thou upliftest us;
Thou art not dissipated, but Thou gatherest us. But Thou who fillest
all things, fillest Thou them with Thy whole self? or, since all things
cannot contain Thee wholly, do they contain part of Thee? and all at
once the same part? or each its own part, the greater more, the smaller
less? And is, then one part of Thee greater, another less? or, art Thou
wholly every where, while nothing contains Thee wholly?

What art Thou then, my God? what, but the Lord God? For who is Lord
but the Lord? or who is God save our God? Most highest, most good, most
potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden,
yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong, stable, yet
incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old;
all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not;
ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking;
supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and
maturing; seeking, yet having all things. Thou lovest, without passion;
art jealous, without anxiety; repentest, yet grievest not; art angry,
yet serene; changest Thy works, Thy purpose unchanged; receivest again
what Thou findest, yet didst never lose; never in need, yet rejoicing
in gains; never covetous, yet exacting usury. Thou receivest over and
above, that Thou mayest owe; and who hath aught that is not Thine? Thou
payest debts, owing nothing; remittest debts, losing nothing. And what
had I now said, my God, my life, my holy joy? or what saith any man when
he speaks of Thee? Yet woe to him that speaketh not, since mute are even
the most eloquent.

Oh! that I might repose on Thee! Oh! that Thou wouldest enter into my
heart, and inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee,
my sole good! What art Thou to me? In Thy pity, teach me to utter it.
Or what am I to Thee that Thou demandest my love, and, if I give it not,
art wroth with me, and threatenest me with grievous woes? Is it then a
slight woe to love Thee not? Oh! for Thy mercies' sake, tell me, O Lord
my God, what Thou art unto me. Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. So
speak, that I may hear. Behold, Lord, my heart is before Thee; open Thou
the ears thereof, and say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. After this
voice let me haste, and take hold on Thee. Hide not Thy face from me.
Let me die--lest I die--only let me see Thy face.

Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest
enter in. It is ruinous; repair Thou it. It has that within which must
offend Thine eyes; I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? or
to whom should I cry, save Thee? Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults,
and spare Thy servant from the power of the enemy. I believe, and
therefore do I speak. Lord, Thou knowest. Have I not confessed against
myself my transgressions unto Thee, and Thou, my God, hast forgiven the
iniquity of my heart? I contend not in judgment with Thee, who art the
truth; I fear to deceive myself; lest mine iniquity lie unto itself.
Therefore I contend not in judgment with Thee; for if Thou, Lord,
shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall abide it?

Yet suffer me to speak unto Thy mercy, me, dust and ashes. Yet suffer me
to speak, since I speak to Thy mercy, and not to scornful man. Thou too,
perhaps, despisest me, yet wilt Thou return and have compassion upon me.
For what would I say, O Lord my God, but that I know not whence I
came into this dying life (shall I call it?) or living death. Then
immediately did the comforts of Thy compassion take me up, as I heard
(for I remember it not) from the parents of my flesh, out of whose
substance Thou didst sometime fashion me. Thus there received me the
comforts of woman's milk. For neither my mother nor my nurses stored
their own breasts for me; but Thou didst bestow the food of my infancy
through them, according to Thine ordinance, whereby Thou distributest
Thy riches through the hidden springs of all things. Thou also gavest me
to desire no more than Thou gavest; and to my nurses willingly to give
me what Thou gavest them. For they, with a heaven-taught affection,
willingly gave me what they abounded with from Thee. For this my good
from them, was good for them. Nor, indeed, from them was it, but through
them; for from Thee, O God, are all good things, and from my God is all
my health. This I since learned, Thou, through these Thy gifts, within
me and without, proclaiming Thyself unto me. For then I knew but to
suck; to repose in what pleased, and cry at what offended my flesh;
nothing more.

Afterwards I began to smile; first in sleep, then waking: for so it
was told me of myself, and I believed it; for we see the like in other
infants, though of myself I remember it not. Thus, little by little, I
became conscious where I was; and to have a wish to express my wishes
to those who could content them, and I could not; for the wishes were
within me, and they without; nor could they by any sense of theirs enter
within my spirit. So I flung about at random limbs and voice, making
the few signs I could, and such as I could, like, though in truth very
little like, what I wished. And when I was not presently obeyed (my
wishes being hurtful or unintelligible), then I was indignant with my
elders for not submitting to me, with those owing me no service, for
not serving me; and avenged myself on them by tears. Such have I learnt
infants to be from observing them; and that I was myself such, they, all
unconscious, have shown me better than my nurses who knew it.

And, lo! my infancy died long since, and I live. But Thou, Lord, who for
ever livest, and in whom nothing dies: for before the foundation of the
worlds, and before all that can be called "before," Thou art, and art
God and Lord of all which Thou hast created: in Thee abide, fixed
for ever, the first causes of all things unabiding; and of all things
changeable, the springs abide in Thee unchangeable: and in Thee live the
eternal reasons of all things unreasoning and temporal. Say, Lord, to
me, Thy suppliant; say, all-pitying, to me, Thy pitiable one; say, did
my infancy succeed another age of mine that died before it? was it
that which I spent within my mother's womb? for of that I have heard
somewhat, and have myself seen women with child? and what before that
life again, O God my joy, was I any where or any body? For this have I
none to tell me, neither father nor mother, nor experience of others,
nor mine own memory. Dost Thou mock me for asking this, and bid me
praise Thee and acknowledge Thee, for that I do know?

I acknowledge Thee, Lord of heaven and earth, and praise Thee for my
first rudiments of being, and my infancy, whereof I remember nothing;
for Thou hast appointed that man should from others guess much as to
himself; and believe much on the strength of weak females. Even then I
had being and life, and (at my infancy's close) I could seek for signs
whereby to make known to others my sensations. Whence could such a being
be, save from Thee, Lord? Shall any be his own artificer? or can there
elsewhere be derived any vein, which may stream essence and life into
us, save from thee, O Lord, in whom essence and life are one? for Thou
Thyself art supremely Essence and Life. For Thou art most high, and art
not changed, neither in Thee doth to-day come to a close; yet in Thee
doth it come to a close; because all such things also are in Thee. For
they had no way to pass away, unless Thou upheldest them. And since
Thy years fail not, Thy years are one to-day. How many of ours and
our fathers' years have flowed away through Thy "to-day," and from it
received the measure and the mould of such being as they had; and still
others shall flow away, and so receive the mould of their degree of
being. But Thou art still the same, and all things of tomorrow, and all
beyond, and all of yesterday, and all behind it, Thou hast done to-day.
What is it to me, though any comprehend not this? Let him also rejoice
and say, What thing is this? Let him rejoice even thus! and be content
rather by not discovering to discover Thee, than by discovering not to
discover Thee.

Hear, O God. Alas, for man's sin! So saith man, and Thou pitiest him;
for Thou madest him, but sin in him Thou madest not. Who remindeth me of
the sins of my infancy? for in Thy sight none is pure from sin, not even
the infant whose life is but a day upon the earth. Who remindeth me?
doth not each little infant, in whom I see what of myself I remember
not? What then was my sin? was it that I hung upon the breast and cried?
for should I now so do for food suitable to my age, justly should I be
laughed at and reproved. What I then did was worthy reproof; but since
I could not understand reproof, custom and reason forbade me to be
reproved. For those habits, when grown, we root out and cast away. Now
no man, though he prunes, wittingly casts away what is good. Or was
it then good, even for a while, to cry for what, if given, would hurt?
bitterly to resent, that persons free, and its own elders, yea, the very
authors of its birth, served it not? that many besides, wiser than it,
obeyed not the nod of its good pleasure? to do its best to strike and
hurt, because commands were not obeyed, which had been obeyed to its
hurt? The weakness then of infant limbs, not its will, is its innocence.
Myself have seen and known even a baby envious; it could not speak, yet
it turned pale and looked bitterly on its foster-brother. Who knows not
this? Mothers and nurses tell you that they allay these things by I know
not what remedies. Is that too innocence, when the fountain of milk
is flowing in rich abundance, not to endure one to share it, though
in extremest need, and whose very life as yet depends thereon? We bear
gently with all this, not as being no or slight evils, but because they
will disappear as years increase; for, though tolerated now, the very
same tempers are utterly intolerable when found in riper years.

Thou, then, O Lord my God, who gavest life to this my infancy,
furnishing thus with senses (as we see) the frame Thou gavest,
compacting its limbs, ornamenting its proportions, and, for its general
good and safety, implanting in it all vital functions, Thou commandest
me to praise Thee in these things, to confess unto Thee, and sing unto
Thy name, Thou most Highest. For Thou art God, Almighty and Good, even
hadst Thou done nought but only this, which none could do but Thou:
whose Unity is the mould of all things; who out of Thy own fairness
makest all things fair; and orderest all things by Thy law. This age
then, Lord, whereof I have no remembrance, which I take on others' word,
and guess from other infants that I have passed, true though the guess
be, I am yet loth to count in this life of mine which I live in this
world. For no less than that which I spent in my mother's womb, is it
hid from me in the shadows of forgetfulness. But if I was shapen in
iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me, where, I beseech Thee, O
my God, where, Lord, or when, was I Thy servant guiltless? But, lo! that
period I pass by; and what have I now to do with that, of which I can
recall no vestige?

Passing hence from infancy, I came to boyhood, or rather it came to me,
displacing infancy. Nor did that depart,--(for whither went it?)--and
yet it was no more. For I was no longer a speechless infant, but a
speaking boy. This I remember; and have since observed how I learned to
speak. It was not that my elders taught me words (as, soon after, other
learning) in any set method; but I, longing by cries and broken accents
and various motions of my limbs to express my thoughts, that so I might
have my will, and yet unable to express all I willed, or to whom I
willed, did myself, by the understanding which Thou, my God, gavest me,
practise the sounds in my memory. When they named any thing, and as they
spoke turned towards it, I saw and remembered that they called what they
would point out by the name they uttered. And that they meant this
thing and no other was plain from the motion of their body, the natural
language, as it were, of all nations, expressed by the countenance,
glances of the eye, gestures of the limbs, and tones of the voice,
indicating the affections of the mind, as it pursues, possesses,
rejects, or shuns. And thus by constantly hearing words, as they
occurred in various sentences, I collected gradually for what they
stood; and having broken in my mouth to these signs, I thereby gave
utterance to my will. Thus I exchanged with those about me these current
signs of our wills, and so launched deeper into the stormy intercourse
of human life, yet depending on parental authority and the beck of
elders.

O God my God, what miseries and mockeries did I now experience, when
obedience to my teachers was proposed to me, as proper in a boy, in
order that in this world I might prosper, and excel in tongue-science,
which should serve to the "praise of men," and to deceitful riches. Next
I was put to school to get learning, in which I (poor wretch) knew not
what use there was; and yet, if idle in learning, I was beaten. For this
was judged right by our forefathers; and many, passing the same course
before us, framed for us weary paths, through which we were fain to
pass; multiplying toil and grief upon the sons of Adam. But, Lord, we
found that men called upon Thee, and we learnt from them to think of
Thee (according to our powers) as of some great One, who, though hidden
from our senses, couldest hear and help us. For so I began, as a boy, to
pray to Thee, my aid and refuge; and broke the fetters of my tongue to
call on Thee, praying Thee, though small, yet with no small earnestness,
that I might not be beaten at school. And when Thou heardest me not (not
thereby giving me over to folly), my elders, yea my very parents, who
yet wished me no ill, mocked my stripes, my then great and grievous ill.

Is there, Lord, any of soul so great, and cleaving to Thee with so
intense affection (for a sort of stupidity will in a way do it); but
is there any one who, from cleaving devoutly to Thee, is endued with so
great a spirit, that he can think as lightly of the racks and hooks and
other torments (against which, throughout all lands, men call on Thee
with extreme dread), mocking at those by whom they are feared most
bitterly, as our parents mocked the torments which we suffered in
boyhood from our masters? For we feared not our torments less; nor
prayed we less to Thee to escape them. And yet we sinned, in writing or
reading or studying less than was exacted of us. For we wanted not, O
Lord, memory or capacity, whereof Thy will gave enough for our age; but
our sole delight was play; and for this we were punished by those who
yet themselves were doing the like. But elder folks' idleness is called
"business"; that of boys, being really the same, is punished by those
elders; and none commiserates either boys or men. For will any of sound
discretion approve of my being beaten as a boy, because, by playing a
ball, I made less progress in studies which I was to learn, only that,
as a man, I might play more unbeseemingly? and what else did he who beat
me? who, if worsted in some trifling discussion with his fellow-tutor,
was more embittered and jealous than I when beaten at ball by a
play-fellow?

And yet, I sinned herein, O Lord God, the Creator and Disposer of all
things in nature, of sin the Disposer only, O Lord my God, I sinned in
transgressing the commands of my parents and those of my masters. For
what they, with whatever motive, would have me learn, I might afterwards
have put to good use. For I disobeyed, not from a better choice, but
from love of play, loving the pride of victory in my contests, and to
have my ears tickled with lying fables, that they might itch the more;
the same curiosity flashing from my eyes more and more, for the shows
and games of my elders. Yet those who give these shows are in such
esteem, that almost all wish the same for their children, and yet are
very willing that they should be beaten, if those very games detain them
from the studies, whereby they would have them attain to be the givers
of them. Look with pity, Lord, on these things, and deliver us who call
upon Thee now; deliver those too who call not on Thee yet, that they may
call on Thee, and Thou mayest deliver them.

  As a boy, then, I had already heard of an eternal life, promised
us through the humility of the Lord our God stooping to our pride; and
even from the womb of my mother, who greatly hoped in Thee, I was sealed
with the mark of His cross and salted with His salt. Thou sawest, Lord,
how while yet a boy, being seized on a time with sudden oppression of
the stomach, and like near to death--Thou sawest, my God (for Thou wert
my keeper), with what eagerness and what faith I sought, from the pious
care of my mother and Thy Church, the mother of us all, the baptism of
Thy Christ, my God and Lord. Whereupon the mother of my flesh, being
much troubled (since, with a heart pure in Thy faith, she even more
lovingly travailed in birth of my salvation), would in eager haste
have provided for my consecration and cleansing by the health-giving
sacraments, confessing Thee, Lord Jesus, for the remission of sins,
unless I had suddenly recovered. And so, as if I must needs be
again polluted should I live, my cleansing was deferred, because the
defilements of sin would, after that washing, bring greater and more
perilous guilt. I then already believed: and my mother, and the whole
household, except my father: yet did not he prevail over the power of my
mother's piety in me, that as he did not yet believe, so neither
should I. For it was her earnest care that Thou my God, rather than he,
shouldest be my father; and in this Thou didst aid her to prevail over
her husband, whom she, the better, obeyed, therein also obeying Thee,
who hast so commanded.

  I beseech Thee, my God, I would fain know, if so Thou willest, for
what purpose my baptism was then deferred? was it for my good that the
rein was laid loose, as it were, upon me, for me to sin? or was it not
laid loose? If not, why does it still echo in our ears on all sides,
"Let him alone, let him do as he will, for he is not yet baptised?" but
as to bodily health, no one says, "Let him be worse wounded, for he is
not yet healed." How much better then, had I been at once healed; and
then, by my friends' and my own, my soul's recovered health had been
kept safe in Thy keeping who gavest it. Better truly. But how many and
great waves of temptation seemed to hang over me after my boyhood! These
my mother foresaw; and preferred to expose to them the clay whence I
might afterwards be moulded, than the very cast, when made.

  In boyhood itself, however (so much less dreaded for me than youth),
I loved not study, and hated to be forced to it. Yet I was forced; and
this was well done towards me, but I did not well; for, unless forced, I
had not learnt. But no one doth well against his will, even though what
he doth, be well. Yet neither did they well who forced me, but what was
well came to me from Thee, my God. For they were regardless how I should
employ what they forced me to learn, except to satiate the insatiate
desires of a wealthy beggary, and a shameful glory. But Thou, by whom
the very hairs of our head are numbered, didst use for my good the error
of all who urged me to learn; and my own, who would not learn, Thou
didst use for my punishment--a fit penalty for one, so small a boy and
so great a sinner. So by those who did not well, Thou didst well for me;
and by my own sin Thou didst justly punish me. For Thou hast commanded,
and so it is, that every inordinate affection should be its own
punishment.

But why did I so much hate the Greek, which I studied as a boy? I do not
yet fully know. For the Latin I loved; not what my first masters, but
what the so-called grammarians taught me. For those first lessons,
reading, writing and arithmetic, I thought as great a burden and penalty
as any Greek. And yet whence was this too, but from the sin and vanity
of this life, because I was flesh, and a breath that passeth away and
cometh not again? For those first lessons were better certainly, because
more certain; by them I obtained, and still retain, the power of reading
what I find written, and myself writing what I will; whereas in the
others, I was forced to learn the wanderings of one Aeneas, forgetful of
my own, and to weep for dead Dido, because she killed herself for love;
the while, with dry eyes, I endured my miserable self dying among these
things, far from Thee, O God my life.

For what more miserable than a miserable being who commiserates not
himself; weeping the death of Dido for love to Aeneas, but weeping not
his own death for want of love to Thee, O God. Thou light of my heart,
Thou bread of my inmost soul, Thou Power who givest vigour to my mind,
who quickenest my thoughts, I loved Thee not. I committed fornication
against Thee, and all around me thus fornicating there echoed "Well
done! well done!" for the friendship of this world is fornication
against Thee; and "Well done! well done!" echoes on till one is ashamed
not to be thus a man. And for all this I wept not, I who wept for Dido
slain, and "seeking by the sword a stroke and wound extreme," myself
seeking the while a worse extreme, the extremest and lowest of Thy
creatures, having forsaken Thee, earth passing into the earth. And
if forbid to read all this, I was grieved that I might not read what
grieved me. Madness like this is thought a higher and a richer learning,
than that by which I learned to read and write.

But now, my God, cry Thou aloud in my soul; and let Thy truth tell me,
"Not so, not so. Far better was that first study." For, lo, I would
readily forget the wanderings of Aeneas and all the rest, rather than
how to read and write. But over the entrance of the Grammar School is a
vail drawn! true; yet is this not so much an emblem of aught recondite,
as a cloak of error. Let not those, whom I no longer fear, cry out
against me, while I confess to Thee, my God, whatever my soul will, and
acquiesce in the condemnation of my evil ways, that I may love Thy
good ways. Let not either buyers or sellers of grammar-learning cry out
against me. For if I question them whether it be true that Aeneas came
on a time to Carthage, as the poet tells, the less learned will reply
that they know not, the more learned that he never did. But should I ask
with what letters the name "Aeneas" is written, every one who has
learnt this will answer me aright, as to the signs which men have
conventionally settled. If, again, I should ask which might be forgotten
with least detriment to the concerns of life, reading and writing or
these poetic fictions? who does not foresee what all must answer who
have not wholly forgotten themselves? I sinned, then, when as a boy I
preferred those empty to those more profitable studies, or rather loved
the one and hated the other. "One and one, two"; "two and two, four";
this was to me a hateful singsong: "the wooden horse lined with
armed men," and "the burning of Troy," and "Creusa's shade and sad
similitude," were the choice spectacle of my vanity.

Why then did I hate the Greek classics, which have the like tales? For
Homer also curiously wove the like fictions, and is most sweetly-vain,
yet was he bitter to my boyish taste. And so I suppose would Virgil
be to Grecian children, when forced to learn him as I was Homer.
Difficulty, in truth, the difficulty of a foreign tongue, dashed, as it
were, with gall all the sweetness of Grecian fable. For not one word of
it did I understand, and to make me understand I was urged vehemently
with cruel threats and punishments. Time was also (as an infant) I
knew no Latin; but this I learned without fear or suffering, by mere
observation, amid the caresses of my nursery and jests of friends,
smiling and sportively encouraging me. This I learned without any
pressure of punishment to urge me on, for my heart urged me to give
birth to its conceptions, which I could only do by learning words not of
those who taught, but of those who talked with me; in whose ears also I
gave birth to the thoughts, whatever I conceived. No doubt, then, that
a free curiosity has more force in our learning these things, than a
frightful enforcement. Only this enforcement restrains the rovings of
that freedom, through Thy laws, O my God, Thy laws, from the master's
cane to the martyr's trials, being able to temper for us a wholesome
bitter, recalling us to Thyself from that deadly pleasure which lures us
from Thee.

Hear, Lord, my prayer; let not my soul faint under Thy discipline, nor
let me faint in confessing unto Thee all Thy mercies, whereby Thou
hast drawn me out of all my most evil ways, that Thou mightest become a
delight to me above all the allurements which I once pursued; that I may
most entirely love Thee, and clasp Thy hand with all my affections, and
Thou mayest yet rescue me from every temptation, even unto the end. For
lo, O Lord, my King and my God, for Thy service be whatever useful
thing my childhood learned; for Thy service, that I speak, write, read,
reckon. For Thou didst grant me Thy discipline, while I was learning
vanities; and my sin of delighting in those vanities Thou hast forgiven.
In them, indeed, I learnt many a useful word, but these may as well be
learned in things not vain; and that is the safe path for the steps of
youth.

But woe is thee, thou torrent of human custom! Who shall stand against
thee? how long shalt thou not be dried up? how long roll the sons of Eve
into that huge and hideous ocean, which even they scarcely overpass who
climb the cross? Did not I read in thee of Jove the thunderer and the
adulterer? both, doubtless, he could not be; but so the feigned thunder
might countenance and pander to real adultery. And now which of our
gowned masters lends a sober ear to one who from their own school cries
out, "These were Homer's fictions, transferring things human to the
gods; would he had brought down things divine to us!" Yet more truly had
he said, "These are indeed his fictions; but attributing a divine nature
to wicked men, that crimes might be no longer crimes, and whoso commits
them might seem to imitate not abandoned men, but the celestial gods."

And yet, thou hellish torrent, into thee are cast the sons of men with
rich rewards, for compassing such learning; and a great solemnity is
made of it, when this is going on in the forum, within sight of laws
appointing a salary beside the scholar's payments; and thou lashest
thy rocks and roarest, "Hence words are learnt; hence eloquence; most
necessary to gain your ends, or maintain opinions." As if we should have
never known such words as "golden shower," "lap," "beguile," "temples
of the heavens," or others in that passage, unless Terence had brought
a lewd youth upon the stage, setting up Jupiter as his example of
seduction.

         "Viewing a picture, where the tale was drawn,
         Of Jove's descending in a golden shower
         To Danae's lap a woman to beguile."

And then mark how he excites himself to lust as by celestial authority:

         "And what God?  Great Jove,
         Who shakes heaven's highest temples with his thunder,

         And I, poor mortal man, not do the same!
         I did it, and with all my heart I did it."

Not one whit more easily are the words learnt for all this vileness;
but by their means the vileness is committed with less shame. Not that
I blame the words, being, as it were, choice and precious vessels; but
that wine of error which is drunk to us in them by intoxicated teachers;
and if we, too, drink not, we are beaten, and have no sober judge to
whom we may appeal. Yet, O my God (in whose presence I now without hurt
may remember this), all this unhappily I learnt willingly with great
delight, and for this was pronounced a hopeful boy.

Bear with me, my God, while I say somewhat of my wit, Thy gift, and on
what dotages I wasted it. For a task was set me, troublesome enough to
my soul, upon terms of praise or shame, and fear of stripes, to speak
the words of Juno, as she raged and mourned that she could not

        "This Trojan prince from Latinum turn."

Which words I had heard that Juno never uttered; but we were forced to
go astray in the footsteps of these poetic fictions, and to say in prose
much what he expressed in verse. And his speaking was most applauded, in
whom the passions of rage and grief were most preeminent, and clothed
in the most fitting language, maintaining the dignity of the character.
What is it to me, O my true life, my God, that my declamation was
applauded above so many of my own age and class? is not all this smoke
and wind? and was there nothing else whereon to exercise my wit and
tongue? Thy praises, Lord, Thy praises might have stayed the yet tender
shoot of my heart by the prop of Thy Scriptures; so had it not trailed
away amid these empty trifles, a defiled prey for the fowls of the air.
For in more ways than one do men sacrifice to the rebellious angels.

But what marvel that I was thus carried away to vanities, and went out
from Thy presence, O my God, when men were set before me as models, who,
if in relating some action of theirs, in itself not ill, they committed
some barbarism or solecism, being censured, were abashed; but when
in rich and adorned and well-ordered discourse they related their own
disordered life, being bepraised, they gloried? These things Thou seest,
Lord, and holdest Thy peace; long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and
truth. Wilt Thou hold Thy peace for ever? and even now Thou drawest out
of this horrible gulf the soul that seeketh Thee, that thirsteth for
Thy pleasures, whose heart saith unto Thee, I have sought Thy face; Thy
face, Lord, will I seek. For darkened affections is removal from Thee.
For it is not by our feet, or change of place, that men leave Thee, or
return unto Thee. Or did that Thy younger son look out for horses or
chariots, or ships, fly with visible wings, or journey by the motion of
his limbs, that he might in a far country waste in riotous living all
Thou gavest at his departure? a loving Father, when Thou gavest, and
more loving unto him, when he returned empty. So then in lustful, that
is, in darkened affections, is the true distance from Thy face.

Behold, O Lord God, yea, behold patiently as Thou art wont how carefully
the sons of men observe the covenanted rules of letters and syllables
received from those who spake before them, neglecting the eternal
covenant of everlasting salvation received from Thee. Insomuch, that
a teacher or learner of the hereditary laws of pronunciation will more
offend men by speaking without the aspirate, of a "uman being," in
despite of the laws of grammar, than if he, a "human being," hate a
"human being" in despite of Thine. As if any enemy could be more hurtful
than the hatred with which he is incensed against him; or could wound
more deeply him whom he persecutes, than he wounds his own soul by his
enmity. Assuredly no science of letters can be so innate as the record
of conscience, "that he is doing to another what from another he would
be loth to suffer." How deep are Thy ways, O God, Thou only great,
that sittest silent on high and by an unwearied law dispensing penal
blindness to lawless desires. In quest of the fame of eloquence, a man
standing before a human judge, surrounded by a human throng, declaiming
against his enemy with fiercest hatred, will take heed most watchfully,
lest, by an error of the tongue, he murder the word "human being"; but
takes no heed, lest, through the fury of his spirit, he murder the real
human being.

This was the world at whose gate unhappy I lay in my boyhood; this
the stage where I had feared more to commit a barbarism, than having
committed one, to envy those who had not. These things I speak and
confess to Thee, my God; for which I had praise from them, whom I then
thought it all virtue to please. For I saw not the abyss of vileness,
wherein I was cast away from Thine eyes. Before them what more foul than
I was already, displeasing even such as myself? with innumerable lies
deceiving my tutor, my masters, my parents, from love of play, eagerness
to see vain shows and restlessness to imitate them! Thefts also I
committed, from my parents' cellar and table, enslaved by greediness, or
that I might have to give to boys, who sold me their play, which all
the while they liked no less than I. In this play, too, I often
sought unfair conquests, conquered myself meanwhile by vain desire of
preeminence. And what could I so ill endure, or, when I detected it,
upbraided I so fiercely, as that I was doing to others? and for which
if, detected, I was upbraided, I chose rather to quarrel than to yield.
And is this the innocence of boyhood? Not so, Lord, not so; I cry Thy
mercy, my God. For these very sins, as riper years succeed, these very
sins are transferred from tutors and masters, from nuts and balls and
sparrows, to magistrates and kings, to gold and manors and slaves, just
as severer punishments displace the cane. It was the low stature then of
childhood which Thou our King didst commend as an emblem of lowliness,
when Thou saidst, Of such is the kingdom of heaven.

Yet, Lord, to Thee, the Creator and Governor of the universe, most
excellent and most good, thanks were due to Thee our God, even hadst
Thou destined for me boyhood only. For even then I was, I lived, and
felt; and had an implanted providence over my well-being--a trace of
that mysterious Unity whence I was derived; I guarded by the inward
sense the entireness of my senses, and in these minute pursuits, and in
my thoughts on things minute, I learnt to delight in truth, I hated to
be deceived, had a vigorous memory, was gifted with speech, was
soothed by friendship, avoided pain, baseness, ignorance. In so small a
creature, what was not wonderful, not admirable? But all are gifts of
my God: it was not I who gave them me; and good these are, and these
together are myself. Good, then, is He that made me, and He is my good;
and before Him will I exult for every good which of a boy I had. For it
was my sin, that not in Him, but in His creatures--myself and others--I
sought for pleasures, sublimities, truths, and so fell headlong into
sorrows, confusions, errors. Thanks be to Thee, my joy and my glory
and my confidence, my God, thanks be to Thee for Thy gifts; but do Thou
preserve them to me. For so wilt Thou preserve me, and those things
shall be enlarged and perfected which Thou hast given me, and I myself
shall be with Thee, since even to be Thou hast given me.




BOOK II


I will now call to mind my past foulness, and the carnal corruptions of
my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my God.
For love of Thy love I do it; reviewing my most wicked ways in the very
bitterness of my remembrance, that Thou mayest grow sweet unto me (Thou
sweetness never failing, Thou blissful and assured sweetness); and
gathering me again out of that my dissipation, wherein I was torn
piecemeal, while turned from Thee, the One Good, I lost myself among a
multiplicity of things. For I even burnt in my youth heretofore, to be
satiated in things below; and I dared to grow wild again, with these
various and shadowy loves: my beauty consumed away, and I stank in Thine
eyes; pleasing myself, and desirous to please in the eyes of men.

And what was it that I delighted in, but to love, and be loved? but
I kept not the measure of love, of mind to mind, friendship's bright
boundary: but out of the muddy concupiscence of the flesh, and the
bubblings of youth, mists fumed up which beclouded and overcast my
heart, that I could not discern the clear brightness of love from the
fog of lustfulness. Both did confusedly boil in me, and hurried my
unstayed youth over the precipice of unholy desires, and sunk me in a
gulf of flagitiousnesses. Thy wrath had gathered over me, and I knew it
not. I was grown deaf by the clanking of the chain of my mortality, the
punishment of the pride of my soul, and I strayed further from Thee,
and Thou lettest me alone, and I was tossed about, and wasted, and
dissipated, and I boiled over in my fornications, and Thou heldest Thy
peace, O Thou my tardy joy! Thou then heldest Thy peace, and I wandered
further and further from Thee, into more and more fruitless seed-plots
of sorrows, with a proud dejectedness, and a restless weariness.

Oh! that some one had then attempered my disorder, and turned to account
the fleeting beauties of these, the extreme points of Thy creation! had
put a bound to their pleasureableness, that so the tides of my youth
might have cast themselves upon the marriage shore, if they could not be
calmed, and kept within the object of a family, as Thy law prescribes,
O Lord: who this way formest the offspring of this our death, being
able with a gentle hand to blunt the thorns which were excluded from Thy
paradise? For Thy omnipotency is not far from us, even when we be far
from Thee. Else ought I more watchfully to have heeded the voice from
the clouds: Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh, but I
spare you. And it is good for a man not to touch a woman. And, he that
is unmarried thinketh of the things of the Lord, how he may please the
Lord; but he that is married careth for the things of this world, how he
may please his wife.

To these words I should have listened more attentively, and being
severed for the kingdom of heaven's sake, had more happily awaited Thy
embraces; but I, poor wretch, foamed like a troubled sea, following the
rushing of my own tide, forsaking Thee, and exceeded all Thy limits; yet
I escaped not Thy scourges. For what mortal can? For Thou wert ever with
me mercifully rigorous, and besprinkling with most bitter alloy all my
unlawful pleasures: that I might seek pleasures without alloy. But where
to find such, I could not discover, save in Thee, O Lord, who teachest
by sorrow, and woundest us, to heal; and killest us, lest we die from
Thee. Where was I, and how far was I exiled from the delights of Thy
house, in that sixteenth year of the age of my flesh, when the madness
of lust (to which human shamelessness giveth free licence, though
unlicensed by Thy laws) took the rule over me, and I resigned myself
wholly to it? My friends meanwhile took no care by marriage to save my
fall; their only care was that I should learn to speak excellently, and
be a persuasive orator.

For that year were my studies intermitted: whilst after my return from
Madaura (a neighbour city, whither I had journeyed to learn grammar and
rhetoric), the expenses for a further journey to Carthage were being
provided for me; and that rather by the resolution than the means of my
father, who was but a poor freeman of Thagaste. To whom tell I this? not
to Thee, my God; but before Thee to mine own kind, even to that small
portion of mankind as may light upon these writings of mine. And to what
purpose? that whosoever reads this, may think out of what depths we are
to cry unto Thee. For what is nearer to Thine ears than a confessing
heart, and a life of faith? Who did not extol my father, for that beyond
the ability of his means, he would furnish his son with all necessaries
for a far journey for his studies' sake? For many far abler citizens
did no such thing for their children. But yet this same father had no
concern how I grew towards Thee, or how chaste I were; so that I were
but copious in speech, however barren I were to Thy culture, O God, who
art the only true and good Lord of Thy field, my heart.

But while in that my sixteenth year I lived with my parents, leaving all
school for a while (a season of idleness being interposed through the
narrowness of my parents' fortunes), the briers of unclean desires grew
rank over my head, and there was no hand to root them out. When that my
father saw me at the baths, now growing towards manhood, and endued
with a restless youthfulness, he, as already hence anticipating his
descendants, gladly told it to my mother; rejoicing in that tumult of
the senses wherein the world forgetteth Thee its Creator, and becometh
enamoured of Thy creature, instead of Thyself, through the fumes of that
invisible wine of its self-will, turning aside and bowing down to the
very basest things. But in my mother's breast Thou hadst already begun
Thy temple, and the foundation of Thy holy habitation, whereas my
father was as yet but a Catechumen, and that but recently. She then was
startled with a holy fear and trembling; and though I was not as yet
baptised, feared for me those crooked ways in which they walk who turn
their back to Thee, and not their face.

Woe is me! and dare I say that Thou heldest Thy peace, O my God, while I
wandered further from Thee? Didst Thou then indeed hold Thy peace to me?
And whose but Thine were these words which by my mother, Thy faithful
one, Thou sangest in my ears? Nothing whereof sunk into my heart, so as
to do it. For she wished, and I remember in private with great anxiety
warned me, "not to commit fornication; but especially never to defile
another man's wife." These seemed to me womanish advices, which I should
blush to obey. But they were Thine, and I knew it not: and I thought
Thou wert silent and that it was she who spake; by whom Thou wert not
silent unto me; and in her wast despised by me, her son, the son of Thy
handmaid, Thy servant. But I knew it not; and ran headlong with such
blindness, that amongst my equals I was ashamed of a less shamelessness,
when I heard them boast of their flagitiousness, yea, and the more
boasting, the more they were degraded: and I took pleasure, not only in
the pleasure of the deed, but in the praise. What is worthy of dispraise
but vice? But I made myself worse than I was, that I might not be
dispraised; and when in any thing I had not sinned as the abandoned
ones, I would say that I had done what I had not done, that I might not
seem contemptible in proportion as I was innocent; or of less account,
the more chaste.

Behold with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon, and
wallowed in the mire thereof, as if in a bed of spices and precious
ointments. And that I might cleave the faster to its very centre, the
invisible enemy trod me down, and seduced me, for that I was easy to be
seduced. Neither did the mother of my flesh (who had now fled out of
the centre of Babylon, yet went more slowly in the skirts thereof as
she advised me to chastity, so heed what she had heard of me from her
husband, as to restrain within the bounds of conjugal affection, if it
could not be pared away to the quick) what she felt to be pestilent
at present and for the future dangerous. She heeded not this, for she
feared lest a wife should prove a clog and hindrance to my hopes. Not
those hopes of the world to come, which my mother reposed in Thee; but
the hope of learning, which both my parents were too desirous I should
attain; my father, because he had next to no thought of Thee, and of
me but vain conceits; my mother, because she accounted that those
usual courses of learning would not only be no hindrance, but even some
furtherance towards attaining Thee. For thus I conjecture, recalling, as
well as I may, the disposition of my parents. The reins, meantime, were
slackened to me, beyond all temper of due severity, to spend my time in
sport, yea, even unto dissoluteness in whatsoever I affected. And in all
was a mist, intercepting from me, O my God, the brightness of Thy truth;
and mine iniquity burst out as from very fatness.

Theft is punished by Thy law, O Lord, and the law written in the hearts
of men, which iniquity itself effaces not. For what thief will abide a
thief? not even a rich thief, one stealing through want. Yet I lusted to
thieve, and did it, compelled by no hunger, nor poverty, but through a
cloyedness of well-doing, and a pamperedness of iniquity. For I stole
that, of which I had enough, and much better. Nor cared I to enjoy what
I stole, but joyed in the theft and sin itself. A pear tree there was
near our vineyard, laden with fruit, tempting neither for colour nor
taste. To shake and rob this, some lewd young fellows of us went, late
one night (having according to our pestilent custom prolonged our sports
in the streets till then), and took huge loads, not for our eating, but
to fling to the very hogs, having only tasted them. And this, but to
do what we liked only, because it was misliked. Behold my heart, O
God, behold my heart, which Thou hadst pity upon in the bottom of the
bottomless pit. Now, behold, let my heart tell Thee what it sought
there, that I should be gratuitously evil, having no temptation to ill,
but the ill itself. It was foul, and I loved it; I loved to perish,
I loved mine own fault, not that for which I was faulty, but my fault
itself. Foul soul, falling from Thy firmament to utter destruction; not
seeking aught through the shame, but the shame itself!

For there is an attractiveness in beautiful bodies, in gold and silver,
and all things; and in bodily touch, sympathy hath much influence, and
each other sense hath his proper object answerably tempered. Worldy
honour hath also its grace, and the power of overcoming, and of mastery;
whence springs also the thirst of revenge. But yet, to obtain all these,
we may not depart from Thee, O Lord, nor decline from Thy law. The life
also which here we live hath its own enchantment, through a certain
proportion of its own, and a correspondence with all things beautiful
here below. Human friendship also is endeared with a sweet tie, by
reason of the unity formed of many souls. Upon occasion of all these,
and the like, is sin committed, while through an immoderate inclination
towards these goods of the lowest order, the better and higher are
forsaken,--Thou, our Lord God, Thy truth, and Thy law. For these lower
things have their delights, but not like my God, who made all things;
for in Him doth the righteous delight, and He is the joy of the upright
in heart.

When, then, we ask why a crime was done, we believe it not, unless it
appear that there might have been some desire of obtaining some of those
which we called lower goods, or a fear of losing them. For they are
beautiful and comely; although compared with those higher and beatific
goods, they be abject and low. A man hath murdered another; why? he
loved his wife or his estate; or would rob for his own livelihood; or
feared to lose some such things by him; or, wronged, was on fire to be
revenged. Would any commit murder upon no cause, delighted simply in
murdering? who would believe it? for as for that furious and savage man,
of whom it is said that he was gratuitously evil and cruel, yet is the
cause assigned; "lest" (saith he) "through idleness hand or heart should
grow inactive." And to what end? that, through that practice of guilt,
he might, having taken the city, attain to honours, empire, riches, and
be freed from fear of the laws, and his embarrassments from domestic
needs, and consciousness of villainies. So then, not even Catiline
himself loved his own villainies, but something else, for whose sake he
did them.

What then did wretched I so love in thee, thou theft of mine, thou deed
of darkness, in that sixteenth year of my age? Lovely thou wert not,
because thou wert theft. But art thou any thing, that thus I speak to
thee? Fair were the pears we stole, because they were Thy creation, Thou
fairest of all, Creator of all, Thou good God; God, the sovereign good
and my true good. Fair were those pears, but not them did my wretched
soul desire; for I had store of better, and those I gathered, only that
I might steal. For, when gathered, I flung them away, my only feast
therein being my own sin, which I was pleased to enjoy. For if aught
of those pears came within my mouth, what sweetened it was the sin.
And now, O Lord my God, I enquire what in that theft delighted me; and
behold it hath no loveliness; I mean not such loveliness as in justice
and wisdom; nor such as is in the mind and memory, and senses, and
animal life of man; nor yet as the stars are glorious and beautiful in
their orbs; or the earth, or sea, full of embryo-life, replacing by its
birth that which decayeth; nay, nor even that false and shadowy beauty
which belongeth to deceiving vices.

For so doth pride imitate exaltedness; whereas Thou alone art God
exalted over all. Ambition, what seeks it, but honours and glory?
whereas Thou alone art to be honoured above all, and glorious for
evermore. The cruelty of the great would fain be feared; but who is
to be feared but God alone, out of whose power what can be wrested or
withdrawn? when, or where, or whither, or by whom? The tendernesses of
the wanton would fain be counted love: yet is nothing more tender than
Thy charity; nor is aught loved more healthfully than that Thy truth,
bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity makes semblance of a desire
of knowledge; whereas Thou supremely knowest all. Yea, ignorance
and foolishness itself is cloaked under the name of simplicity and
uninjuriousness; because nothing is found more single than Thee: and
what less injurious, since they are his own works which injure the
sinner? Yea, sloth would fain be at rest; but what stable rest besides
the Lord? Luxury affects to be called plenty and abundance; but Thou art
the fulness and never-failing plenteousness of incorruptible pleasures.
Prodigality presents a shadow of liberality: but Thou art the most
overflowing Giver of all good. Covetousness would possess many things;
and Thou possessest all things. Envy disputes for excellency: what more
excellent than Thou? Anger seeks revenge: who revenges more justly
than Thou? Fear startles at things unwonted and sudden, which endangers
things beloved, and takes forethought for their safety; but to Thee what
unwonted or sudden, or who separateth from Thee what Thou lovest? Or
where but with Thee is unshaken safety? Grief pines away for things
lost, the delight of its desires; because it would have nothing taken
from it, as nothing can from Thee.

Thus doth the soul commit fornication, when she turns from Thee, seeking
without Thee, what she findeth not pure and untainted, till she returns
to Thee. Thus all pervertedly imitate Thee, who remove far from Thee,
and lift themselves up against Thee. But even by thus imitating Thee,
they imply Thee to be the Creator of all nature; whence there is no
place whither altogether to retire from Thee. What then did I love in
that theft? and wherein did I even corruptly and pervertedly imitate my
Lord? Did I wish even by stealth to do contrary to Thy law, because
by power I could not, so that being a prisoner, I might mimic a maimed
liberty by doing with impunity things unpermitted me, a darkened
likeness of Thy Omnipotency? Behold, Thy servant, fleeing from his Lord,
and obtaining a shadow. O rottenness, O monstrousness of life, and depth
of death! could I like what I might not, only because I might not?

What shall I render unto the Lord, that, whilst my memory recalls these
things, my soul is not affrighted at them? I will love Thee, O Lord,
and thank Thee, and confess unto Thy name; because Thou hast forgiven me
these so great and heinous deeds of mine. To Thy grace I ascribe it, and
to Thy mercy, that Thou hast melted away my sins as it were ice. To Thy
grace I ascribe also whatsoever I have not done of evil; for what might
I not have done, who even loved a sin for its own sake? Yea, all I
confess to have been forgiven me; both what evils I committed by my own
wilfulness, and what by Thy guidance I committed not. What man is
he, who, weighing his own infirmity, dares to ascribe his purity and
innocency to his own strength; that so he should love Thee the less, as
if he had less needed Thy mercy, whereby Thou remittest sins to those
that turn to Thee? For whosoever, called by Thee, followed Thy voice,
and avoided those things which he reads me recalling and confessing
of myself, let him not scorn me, who being sick, was cured by that
Physician, through whose aid it was that he was not, or rather was less,
sick: and for this let him love Thee as much, yea and more; since by
whom he sees me to have been recovered from such deep consumption of
sin, by Him he sees himself to have been from the like consumption of
sin preserved.

What fruit had I then (wretched man!) in those things, of the
remembrance whereof I am now ashamed? Especially, in that theft which
I loved for the theft's sake; and it too was nothing, and therefore the
more miserable I, who loved it. Yet alone I had not done it: such was I
then, I remember, alone I had never done it. I loved then in it also
the company of the accomplices, with whom I did it? I did not then love
nothing else but the theft, yea rather I did love nothing else; for that
circumstance of the company was also nothing. What is, in truth? who can
teach me, save He that enlighteneth my heart, and discovereth its
dark corners? What is it which hath come into my mind to enquire, and
discuss, and consider? For had I then loved the pears I stole,
and wished to enjoy them, I might have done it alone, had the bare
commission of the theft sufficed to attain my pleasure; nor needed
I have inflamed the itching of my desires by the excitement of
accomplices. But since my pleasure was not in those pears, it was in the
offence itself, which the company of fellow-sinners occasioned.

What then was this feeling? For of a truth it was too foul: and woe was
me, who had it. But yet what was it? Who can understand his errors? It
was the sport, which as it were tickled our hearts, that we beguiled
those who little thought what we were doing, and much disliked it. Why
then was my delight of such sort that I did it not alone? Because none
doth ordinarily laugh alone? ordinarily no one; yet laughter sometimes
masters men alone and singly when no one whatever is with them, if
anything very ludicrous presents itself to their senses or mind. Yet
I had not done this alone; alone I had never done it. Behold my God,
before Thee, the vivid remembrance of my soul; alone, I had never
committed that theft wherein what I stole pleased me not, but that
I stole; nor had it alone liked me to do it, nor had I done it. O
friendship too unfriendly! thou incomprehensible inveigler of the soul,
thou greediness to do mischief out of mirth and wantonness, thou thirst
of others' loss, without lust of my own gain or revenge: but when it is
said, "Let's go, let's do it," we are ashamed not to be shameless.

Who can disentangle that twisted and intricate knottiness? Foul is it: I
hate to think on it, to look on it. But Thee I long for, O Righteousness
and Innocency, beautiful and comely to all pure eyes, and of a
satisfaction unsating. With Thee is rest entire, and life imperturbable.
Whoso enters into Thee, enters into the joy of his Lord: and shall not
fear, and shall do excellently in the All-Excellent. I sank away from
Thee, and I wandered, O my God, too much astray from Thee my stay, in
these days of my youth, and I became to myself a barren land.




BOOK III


To Carthage I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron
of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a
deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might
love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a way without snares.
For within me was a famine of that inward food, Thyself, my God; yet,
through that famine I was not hungered; but was without all longing for
incorruptible sustenance, not because filled therewith, but the more
empty, the more I loathed it. For this cause my soul was sickly and full
of sores, it miserably cast itself forth, desiring to be scraped by the
touch of objects of sense. Yet if these had not a soul, they would not
be objects of love. To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to
me; but more, when I obtained to enjoy the person I loved, I defiled,
therefore, the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and
I beclouded its brightness with the hell of lustfulness; and thus
foul and unseemly, I would fain, through exceeding vanity, be fine
and courtly. I fell headlong then into the love wherein I longed to be
ensnared. My God, my Mercy, with how much gall didst Thou out of Thy
great goodness besprinkle for me that sweetness? For I was both beloved,
and secretly arrived at the bond of enjoying; and was with joy fettered
with sorrow-bringing bonds, that I might be scourged with the iron
burning rods of jealousy, and suspicions, and fears, and angers, and
quarrels.

Stage-plays also carried me away, full of images of my miseries, and of
fuel to my fire. Why is it, that man desires to be made sad, beholding
doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would no means suffer?
yet he desires as a spectator to feel sorrow at them, and this very
sorrow is his pleasure. What is this but a miserable madness? for a man
is the more affected with these actions, the less free he is from such
affections. Howsoever, when he suffers in his own person, it uses to be
styled misery: when he compassionates others, then it is mercy. But what
sort of compassion is this for feigned and scenical passions? for the
auditor is not called on to relieve, but only to grieve: and he applauds
the actor of these fictions the more, the more he grieves. And if the
calamities of those persons (whether of old times, or mere fiction)
be so acted, that the spectator is not moved to tears, he goes away
disgusted and criticising; but if he be moved to passion, he stays
intent, and weeps for joy.

Are griefs then too loved? Verily all desire joy. Or whereas no man
likes to be miserable, is he yet pleased to be merciful? which because
it cannot be without passion, for this reason alone are passions loved?
This also springs from that vein of friendship. But whither goes that
vein? whither flows it? wherefore runs it into that torrent of pitch
bubbling forth those monstrous tides of foul lustfulness, into which it
is wilfully changed and transformed, being of its own will precipitated
and corrupted from its heavenly clearness? Shall compassion then be
put away? by no means. Be griefs then sometimes loved. But beware of
uncleanness, O my soul, under the guardianship of my God, the God of our
fathers, who is to be praised and exalted above all for ever, beware of
uncleanness. For I have not now ceased to pity; but then in the theatres
I rejoiced with lovers when they wickedly enjoyed one another, although
this was imaginary only in the play. And when they lost one another, as
if very compassionate, I sorrowed with them, yet had my delight in both.
But now I much more pity him that rejoiceth in his wickedness, than him
who is thought to suffer hardship, by missing some pernicious pleasure,
and the loss of some miserable felicity. This certainly is the truer
mercy, but in it grief delights not. For though he that grieves for the
miserable, be commended for his office of charity; yet had he, who is
genuinely compassionate, rather there were nothing for him to grieve
for. For if good will be ill willed (which can never be), then may
he, who truly and sincerely commiserates, wish there might be some
miserable, that he might commiserate. Some sorrow may then be allowed,
none loved. For thus dost Thou, O Lord God, who lovest souls far more
purely than we, and hast more incorruptibly pity on them, yet are
wounded with no sorrowfulness. And who is sufficient for these things?

But I, miserable, then loved to grieve, and sought out what to grieve
at, when in another's and that feigned and personated misery, that
acting best pleased me, and attracted me the most vehemently, which
drew tears from me. What marvel that an unhappy sheep, straying from
Thy flock, and impatient of Thy keeping, I became infected with a foul
disease? And hence the love of griefs; not such as should sink deep into
me; for I loved not to suffer, what I loved to look on; but such as upon
hearing their fictions should lightly scratch the surface; upon which,
as on envenomed nails, followed inflamed swelling, impostumes, and a
putrefied sore. My life being such, was it life, O my God?

And Thy faithful mercy hovered over me afar. Upon how grievous
iniquities consumed I myself, pursuing a sacrilegious curiosity, that
having forsaken Thee, it might bring me to the treacherous abyss, and
the beguiling service of devils, to whom I sacrificed my evil actions,
and in all these things Thou didst scourge me! I dared even, while Thy
solemnities were celebrated within the walls of Thy Church, to desire,
and to compass a business deserving death for its fruits, for which Thou
scourgedst me with grievous punishments, though nothing to my fault,
O Thou my exceeding mercy, my God, my refuge from those terrible
destroyers, among whom I wandered with a stiff neck, withdrawing
further from Thee, loving mine own ways, and not Thine; loving a vagrant
liberty.

Those studies also, which were accounted commendable, had a view to
excelling in the courts of litigation; the more bepraised, the craftier.
Such is men's blindness, glorying even in their blindness. And now I
was chief in the rhetoric school, whereat I joyed proudly, and I swelled
with arrogancy, though (Lord, Thou knowest) far quieter and altogether
removed from the subvertings of those "Subverters" (for this ill-omened
and devilish name was the very badge of gallantry) among whom I lived,
with a shameless shame that I was not even as they. With them I lived,
and was sometimes delighted with their friendship, whose doings I ever
did abhor--i.e., their "subvertings," wherewith they wantonly persecuted
the modesty of strangers, which they disturbed by a gratuitous jeering,
feeding thereon their malicious birth. Nothing can be liker the very
actions of devils than these. What then could they be more truly called
than "Subverters"? themselves subverted and altogether perverted first,
the deceiving spirits secretly deriding and seducing them, wherein
themselves delight to jeer at and deceive others.

Among such as these, in that unsettled age of mine, learned I books
of eloquence, wherein I desired to be eminent, out of a damnable and
vainglorious end, a joy in human vanity. In the ordinary course of
study, I fell upon a certain book of Cicero, whose speech almost all
admire, not so his heart. This book of his contains an exhortation
to philosophy, and is called "Hortensius." But this book altered my
affections, and turned my prayers to Thyself O Lord; and made me have
other purposes and desires. Every vain hope at once became worthless to
me; and I longed with an incredibly burning desire for an immortality of
wisdom, and began now to arise, that I might return to Thee. For not
to sharpen my tongue (which thing I seemed to be purchasing with my
mother's allowances, in that my nineteenth year, my father being dead
two years before), not to sharpen my tongue did I employ that book; nor
did it infuse into me its style, but its matter.

How did I burn then, my God, how did I burn to re-mount from earthly
things to Thee, nor knew I what Thou wouldest do with me? For with Thee
is wisdom. But the love of wisdom is in Greek called "philosophy,"
with which that book inflamed me. Some there be that seduce through
philosophy, under a great, and smooth, and honourable name colouring and
disguising their own errors: and almost all who in that and former ages
were such, are in that book censured and set forth: there also is
made plain that wholesome advice of Thy Spirit, by Thy good and devout
servant: Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain
deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world,
and not after Christ. For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily. And since at that time (Thou, O light of my heart, knowest)
Apostolic Scripture was not known to me, I was delighted with that
exhortation, so far only, that I was thereby strongly roused, and
kindled, and inflamed to love, and seek, and obtain, and hold, and
embrace not this or that sect, but wisdom itself whatever it were; and
this alone checked me thus unkindled, that the name of Christ was not
in it. For this name, according to Thy mercy, O Lord, this name of
my Saviour Thy Son, had my tender heart, even with my mother's milk,
devoutly drunk in and deeply treasured; and whatsoever was without that
name, though never so learned, polished, or true, took not entire hold
of me.

I resolved then to bend my mind to the holy Scriptures, that I might see
what they were. But behold, I see a thing not understood by the proud,
nor laid open to children, lowly in access, in its recesses lofty, and
veiled with mysteries; and I was not such as could enter into it, or
stoop my neck to follow its steps. For not as I now speak, did I feel
when I turned to those Scriptures; but they seemed to me unworthy to be
compared to the stateliness of Tully: for my swelling pride shrunk from
their lowliness, nor could my sharp wit pierce the interior thereof. Yet
were they such as would grow up in a little one. But I disdained to be a
little one; and, swollen with pride, took myself to be a great one.

Therefore I fell among men proudly doting, exceeding carnal and prating,
in whose mouths were the snares of the Devil, limed with the mixture of
the syllables of Thy name, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy
Ghost, the Paraclete, our Comforter. These names departed not out of
their mouth, but so far forth as the sound only and the noise of the
tongue, for the heart was void of truth. Yet they cried out "Truth,
Truth," and spake much thereof to me, yet it was not in them: but they
spake falsehood, not of Thee only (who truly art Truth), but even of
those elements of this world, Thy creatures. And I indeed ought to have
passed by even philosophers who spake truth concerning them, for love
of Thee, my Father, supremely good, Beauty of all things beautiful.
O Truth, Truth, how inwardly did even then the marrow of my soul pant
after Thee, when they often and diversely, and in many and huge books,
echoed of Thee to me, though it was but an echo? And these were the
dishes wherein to me, hungering after Thee, they, instead of Thee,
served up the Sun and Moon, beautiful works of Thine, but yet Thy works,
not Thyself, no nor Thy first works. For Thy spiritual works are before
these corporeal works, celestial though they be, and shining. But I
hungered and thirsted not even after those first works of Thine, but
after Thee Thyself, the Truth, in whom is no variableness, neither
shadow of turning: yet they still set before me in those dishes,
glittering fantasies, than which better were it to love this very sun
(which is real to our sight at least), than those fantasies which by
our eyes deceive our mind. Yet because I thought them to be Thee, I fed
thereon; not eagerly, for Thou didst not in them taste to me as Thou
art; for Thou wast not these emptinesses, nor was I nourished by them,
but exhausted rather. Food in sleep shows very like our food awake; yet
are not those asleep nourished by it, for they are asleep. But those
were not even any way like to Thee, as Thou hast now spoken to me; for
those were corporeal fantasies, false bodies, than which these true
bodies, celestial or terrestrial, which with our fleshly sight we
behold, are far more certain: these things the beasts and birds discern
as well as we, and they are more certain than when we fancy them. And
again, we do with more certainty fancy them, than by them conjecture
other vaster and infinite bodies which have no being. Such empty husks
was I then fed on; and was not fed. But Thou, my soul's Love, in looking
for whom I fail, that I may become strong, art neither those bodies
which we see, though in heaven; nor those which we see not there; for
Thou hast created them, nor dost Thou account them among the chiefest of
Thy works. How far then art Thou from those fantasies of mine, fantasies
of bodies which altogether are not, than which the images of those
bodies, which are, are far more certain, and more certain still the
bodies themselves, which yet Thou art not; no, nor yet the soul, which
is the life of the bodies. So then, better and more certain is the life
of the bodies than the bodies. But Thou art the life of souls, the life
of lives, having life in Thyself; and changest not, life of my soul.

Where then wert Thou then to me, and how far from me? Far verily was I
straying from Thee, barred from the very husks of the swine, whom with
husks I fed. For how much better are the fables of poets and grammarians
than these snares? For verses, and poems, and "Medea flying," are more
profitable truly than these men's five elements, variously disguised,
answering to five dens of darkness, which have no being, yet slay the
believer. For verses and poems I can turn to true food, and "Medea
flying," though I did sing, I maintained not; though I heard it sung,
I believed not: but those things I did believe. Woe, woe, by what steps
was I brought down to the depths of hell! toiling and turmoiling through
want of Truth, since I sought after Thee, my God (to Thee I confess
it, who hadst mercy on me, not as yet confessing), not according to the
understanding of the mind, wherein Thou willedst that I should excel
the beasts, but according to the sense of the flesh. But Thou wert more
inward to me than my most inward part; and higher than my highest. I
lighted upon that bold woman, simple and knoweth nothing, shadowed out
in Solomon, sitting at the door, and saying, Eat ye bread of secrecies
willingly, and drink ye stolen waters which are sweet: she seduced me,
because she found my soul dwelling abroad in the eye of my flesh, and
ruminating on such food as through it I had devoured.

For other than this, that which really is I knew not; and was, as it
were through sharpness of wit, persuaded to assent to foolish deceivers,
when they asked me, "whence is evil?" "is God bounded by a bodily shape,
and has hairs and nails?" "are they to be esteemed righteous who had
many wives at once, and did kill men, and sacrifice living creatures?"
At which I, in my ignorance, was much troubled, and departing from the
truth, seemed to myself to be making towards it; because as yet I knew
not that evil was nothing but a privation of good, until at last a thing
ceases altogether to be; which how should I see, the sight of whose eyes
reached only to bodies, and of my mind to a phantasm? And I knew not God
to be a Spirit, not one who hath parts extended in length and breadth,
or whose being was bulk; for every bulk is less in a part than in the
whole: and if it be infinite, it must be less in such part as is defined
by a certain space, than in its infinitude; and so is not wholly every
where, as Spirit, as God. And what that should be in us, by which we
were like to God, and might be rightly said to be after the image of
God, I was altogether ignorant.

Nor knew I that true inward righteousness which judgeth not according
to custom, but out of the most rightful law of God Almighty, whereby
the ways of places and times were disposed according to those times and
places; itself meantime being the same always and every where, not one
thing in one place, and another in another; according to which Abraham,
and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and David, were righteous, and all
those commended by the mouth of God; but were judged unrighteous by
silly men, judging out of man's judgment, and measuring by their own
petty habits, the moral habits of the whole human race. As if in an
armory, one ignorant what were adapted to each part should cover his
head with greaves, or seek to be shod with a helmet, and complain that
they fitted not: or as if on a day when business is publicly stopped in
the afternoon, one were angered at not being allowed to keep open shop,
because he had been in the forenoon; or when in one house he observeth
some servant take a thing in his hand, which the butler is not suffered
to meddle with; or something permitted out of doors, which is forbidden
in the dining-room; and should be angry, that in one house, and one
family, the same thing is not allotted every where, and to all. Even
such are they who are fretted to hear something to have been lawful
for righteous men formerly, which now is not; or that God, for certain
temporal respects, commanded them one thing, and these another, obeying
both the same righteousness: whereas they see, in one man, and one day,
and one house, different things to be fit for different members, and
a thing formerly lawful, after a certain time not so; in one corner
permitted or commanded, but in another rightly forbidden and punished.
Is justice therefore various or mutable? No, but the times, over which
it presides, flow not evenly, because they are times. But men whose days
are few upon the earth, for that by their senses they cannot harmonise
the causes of things in former ages and other nations, which they had
not experience of, with these which they have experience of, whereas in
one and the same body, day, or family, they easily see what is fitting
for each member, and season, part, and person; to the one they take
exceptions, to the other they submit.

These things I then knew not, nor observed; they struck my sight on all
sides, and I saw them not. I indited verses, in which I might not place
every foot every where, but differently in different metres; nor even in
any one metre the self-same foot in all places. Yet the art itself, by
which I indited, had not different principles for these different cases,
but comprised all in one. Still I saw not how that righteousness, which
good and holy men obeyed, did far more excellently and sublimely contain
in one all those things which God commanded, and in no part varied;
although in varying times it prescribed not every thing at once, but
apportioned and enjoined what was fit for each. And I in my blindness,
censured the holy Fathers, not only wherein they made use of things
present as God commanded and inspired them, but also wherein they were
foretelling things to come, as God was revealing in them.

Can it at any time or place be unjust to love God with all his heart,
with all his soul, and with all his mind; and his neighbour as himself?
Therefore are those foul offences which be against nature, to be every
where and at all times detested and punished; such as were those of the
men of Sodom: which should all nations commit, they should all stand
guilty of the same crime, by the law of God, which hath not so made men
that they should so abuse one another. For even that intercourse which
should be between God and us is violated, when that same nature, of
which He is Author, is polluted by perversity of lust. But those
actions which are offences against the customs of men, are to be avoided
according to the customs severally prevailing; so that a thing agreed
upon, and confirmed, by custom or law of any city or nation, may not be
violated at the lawless pleasure of any, whether native or foreigner.
For any part which harmoniseth not with its whole, is offensive. But
when God commands a thing to be done, against the customs or compact of
any people, though it were never by them done heretofore, it is to be
done; and if intermitted, it is to be restored; and if never ordained,
is now to be ordained. For lawful if it be for a king, in the state
which he reigns over, to command that which no one before him, nor he
himself heretofore, had commanded, and to obey him cannot be against the
common weal of the state (nay, it were against it if he were not obeyed,
for to obey princes is a general compact of human society); how much
more unhesitatingly ought we to obey God, in all which He commands, the
Ruler of all His creatures! For as among the powers in man's society,
the greater authority is obeyed in preference to the lesser, so must God
above all.

So in acts of violence, where there is a wish to hurt, whether by
reproach or injury; and these either for revenge, as one enemy against
another; or for some profit belonging to another, as the robber to
the traveller; or to avoid some evil, as towards one who is feared; or
through envy, as one less fortunate to one more so, or one well thriven
in any thing, to him whose being on a par with himself he fears, or
grieves at, or for the mere pleasure at another's pain, as spectators
of gladiators, or deriders and mockers of others. These be the heads
of iniquity which spring from the lust of the flesh, of the eye, or of
rule, either singly, or two combined, or all together; and so do men
live ill against the three, and seven, that psaltery of ten strings,
Thy Ten Commandments, O God, most high, and most sweet. But what foul
offences can there be against Thee, who canst not be defiled? or
what acts of violence against Thee, who canst not be harmed? But Thou
avengest what men commit against themselves, seeing also when they sin
against Thee, they do wickedly against their own souls, and iniquity
gives itself the lie, by corrupting and perverting their nature, which
Thou hast created and ordained, or by an immoderate use of things
allowed, or in burning in things unallowed, to that use which is against
nature; or are found guilty, raging with heart and tongue against Thee,
kicking against the pricks; or when, bursting the pale of human society,
they boldly joy in self-willed combinations or divisions, according as
they have any object to gain or subject of offence. And these things are
done when Thou art forsaken, O Fountain of Life, who art the only and
true Creator and Governor of the Universe, and by a self-willed pride,
any one false thing is selected therefrom and loved. So then by a
humble devoutness we return to Thee; and Thou cleansest us from our
evil habits, and art merciful to their sins who confess, and hearest the
groaning of the prisoner, and loosest us from the chains which we made
for ourselves, if we lift not up against Thee the horns of an unreal
liberty, suffering the loss of all, through covetousness of more, by
loving more our own private good than Thee, the Good of all.

Amidst these offences of foulness and violence, and so many iniquities,
are sins of men, who are on the whole making proficiency; which by those
that judge rightly, are, after the rule of perfection, discommended, yet
the persons commended, upon hope of future fruit, as in the green blade
of growing corn. And there are some, resembling offences of foulness or
violence, which yet are no sins; because they offend neither Thee, our
Lord God, nor human society; when, namely, things fitting for a given
period are obtained for the service of life, and we know not whether out
of a lust of having; or when things are, for the sake of correction, by
constituted authority punished, and we know not whether out of a lust of
hurting. Many an action then which in men's sight is disapproved, is
by Thy testimony approved; and many, by men praised, are (Thou being
witness) condemned: because the show of the action, and the mind of the
doer, and the unknown exigency of the period, severally vary. But when
Thou on a sudden commandest an unwonted and unthought of thing, yea,
although Thou hast sometime forbidden it, and still for the time hidest
the reason of Thy command, and it be against the ordinance of some
society of men, who doubts but it is to be done, seeing that society
of men is just which serves Thee? But blessed are they who know Thy
commands! For all things were done by Thy servants; either to show forth
something needful for the present, or to foreshow things to come.

These things I being ignorant of, scoffed at those Thy holy servants and
prophets. And what gained I by scoffing at them, but to be scoffed at by
Thee, being insensibly and step by step drawn on to those follies, as
to believe that a fig-tree wept when it was plucked, and the tree, its
mother, shed milky tears? Which fig notwithstanding (plucked by some
other's, not his own, guilt) had some Manichaean saint eaten, and
mingled with his bowels, he should breathe out of it angels, yea, there
shall burst forth particles of divinity, at every moan or groan in his
prayer, which particles of the most high and true God had remained bound
in that fig, unless they had been set at liberty by the teeth or belly
of some "Elect" saint! And I, miserable, believed that more mercy was
to be shown to the fruits of the earth than men, for whom they were
created. For if any one an hungered, not a Manichaean, should ask for
any, that morsel would seem as it were condemned to capital punishment,
which should be given him.

And Thou sentest Thine hand from above, and drewest my soul out of that
profound darkness, my mother, Thy faithful one, weeping to Thee for me,
more than mothers weep the bodily deaths of their children. For she,
by that faith and spirit which she had from Thee, discerned the death
wherein I lay, and Thou heardest her, O Lord; Thou heardest her, and
despisedst not her tears, when streaming down, they watered the ground
under her eyes in every place where she prayed; yea Thou heardest her.
For whence was that dream whereby Thou comfortedst her; so that she
allowed me to live with her, and to eat at the same table in the
house, which she had begun to shrink from, abhorring and detesting
the blasphemies of my error? For she saw herself standing on a certain
wooden rule, and a shining youth coming towards her, cheerful and
smiling upon her, herself grieving, and overwhelmed with grief. But he
having (in order to instruct, as is their wont not to be instructed)
enquired of her the causes of her grief and daily tears, and she
answering that she was bewailing my perdition, he bade her rest
contented, and told her to look and observe, "That where she was, there
was I also." And when she looked, she saw me standing by her in the same
rule. Whence was this, but that Thine ears were towards her heart? O
Thou Good omnipotent, who so carest for every one of us, as if Thou
caredst for him only; and so for all, as if they were but one!

Whence was this also, that when she had told me this vision, and I would
fain bend it to mean, "That she rather should not despair of being one
day what I was"; she presently, without any hesitation, replies: "No;
for it was not told me that, 'where he, there thou also'; but 'where
thou, there he also'?" I confess to Thee, O Lord, that to the best of my
remembrance (and I have oft spoken of this), that Thy answer, through
my waking mother,--that she was not perplexed by the plausibility of my
false interpretation, and so quickly saw what was to be seen, and which
I certainly had not perceived before she spake,--even then moved me more
than the dream itself, by which a joy to the holy woman, to be fulfilled
so long after, was, for the consolation of her present anguish, so long
before foresignified. For almost nine years passed, in which I wallowed
in the mire of that deep pit, and the darkness of falsehood, often
assaying to rise, but dashed down the more grievously. All which time
that chaste, godly, and sober widow (such as Thou lovest), now more
cheered with hope, yet no whit relaxing in her weeping and mourning,
ceased not at all hours of her devotions to bewail my case unto Thee.
And her prayers entered into Thy presence; and yet Thou sufferedst me to
be yet involved and reinvolved in that darkness.

Thou gavest her meantime another answer, which I call to mind; for much
I pass by, hasting to those things which more press me to confess unto
Thee, and much I do not remember. Thou gavest her then another answer,
by a Priest of Thine, a certain Bishop brought up in Thy Church,
and well studied in Thy books. Whom when this woman had entreated to
vouchsafe to converse with me, refute my errors, unteach me ill things,
and teach me good things (for this he was wont to do, when he found
persons fitted to receive it), he refused, wisely, as I afterwards
perceived. For he answered, that I was yet unteachable, being puffed
up with the novelty of that heresy, and had already perplexed divers
unskilful persons with captious questions, as she had told him: "but
let him alone a while" (saith he), "only pray God for him, he will of
himself by reading find what that error is, and how great its impiety."
At the same time he told her, how himself, when a little one, had by his
seduced mother been consigned over to the Manichees, and had not
only read, but frequently copied out almost all, their books, and had
(without any argument or proof from any one) seen how much that sect was
to be avoided; and had avoided it. Which when he had said, and she would
not be satisfied, but urged him more, with entreaties and many tears,
that he would see me and discourse with me; he, a little displeased at
her importunity, saith, "Go thy ways and God bless thee, for it is not
possible that the son of these tears should perish." Which answer she
took (as she often mentioned in her conversations with me) as if it had
sounded from heaven.




BOOK IV


For this space of nine years (from my nineteenth year to my
eight-and-twentieth) we lived seduced and seducing, deceived and
deceiving, in divers lusts; openly, by sciences which they call liberal;
secretly, with a false-named religion; here proud, there superstitious,
every where vain. Here, hunting after the emptiness of popular praise,
down even to theatrical applauses, and poetic prizes, and strifes for
grassy garlands, and the follies of shows, and the intemperance of
desires. There, desiring to be cleansed from these defilements, by
carrying food to those who were called "elect" and "holy," out of which,
in the workhouse of their stomachs, they should forge for us Angels
and Gods, by whom we might be cleansed. These things did I follow, and
practise with my friends, deceived by me, and with me. Let the arrogant
mock me, and such as have not been, to their soul's health, stricken and
cast down by Thee, O my God; but I would still confess to Thee mine own
shame in Thy praise. Suffer me, I beseech Thee, and give me grace to go
over in my present remembrance the wanderings of my forepassed time,
and to offer unto Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving. For what am I to
myself without Thee, but a guide to mine own downfall? or what am I even
at the best, but an infant sucking the milk Thou givest, and feeding
upon Thee, the food that perisheth not? But what sort of man is any man,
seeing he is but a man? Let now the strong and the mighty laugh at us,
but let us poor and needy confess unto Thee.

In those years I taught rhetoric, and, overcome by cupidity, made sale
of a loquacity to overcome by. Yet I preferred (Lord, Thou knowest)
honest scholars (as they are accounted), and these I, without artifice,
taught artifices, not to be practised against the life of the guiltless,
though sometimes for the life of the guilty. And Thou, O God, from afar
perceivedst me stumbling in that slippery course, and amid much smoke
sending out some sparks of faithfulness, which I showed in that my
guidance of such as loved vanity, and sought after leasing, myself their
companion. In those years I had one,--not in that which is called
lawful marriage, but whom I had found out in a wayward passion, void of
understanding; yet but one, remaining faithful even to her; in whom I
in my own case experienced what difference there is betwixt the
self-restraint of the marriage-covenant, for the sake of issue, and
the bargain of a lustful love, where children are born against their
parents' will, although, once born, they constrain love.

I remember also, that when I had settled to enter the lists for a
theatrical prize, some wizard asked me what I would give him to win; but
I, detesting and abhorring such foul mysteries, answered, "Though the
garland were of imperishable gold, I would not suffer a fly to be
killed to gain me it." For he was to kill some living creatures in his
sacrifices, and by those honours to invite the devils to favour me. But
this ill also I rejected, not out of a pure love for Thee, O God of my
heart; for I knew not how to love Thee, who knew not how to conceive
aught beyond a material brightness. And doth not a soul, sighing after
such fictions, commit fornication against Thee, trust in things unreal,
and feed the wind? Still I would not forsooth have sacrifices offered
to devils for me, to whom I was sacrificing myself by that superstition.
For what else is it to feed the wind, but to feed them, that is by going
astray to become their pleasure and derision?

Those impostors then, whom they style Mathematicians, I consulted
without scruple; because they seemed to use no sacrifice, nor to pray to
any spirit for their divinations: which art, however, Christian and
true piety consistently rejects and condemns. For, it is a good thing to
confess unto Thee, and to say, Have mercy upon me, heal my soul, for I
have sinned against Thee; and not to abuse Thy mercy for a licence to
sin, but to remember the Lord's words, Behold, thou art made whole, sin
no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. All which wholesome advice
they labour to destroy, saying, "The cause of thy sin is inevitably
determined in heaven"; and "This did Venus, or Saturn, or Mars":
that man, forsooth, flesh and blood, and proud corruption, might be
blameless; while the Creator and Ordainer of heaven and the stars is
to bear the blame. And who is He but our God? the very sweetness and
well-spring of righteousness, who renderest to every man according to
his works: and a broken and contrite heart wilt Thou not despise.

There was in those days a wise man, very skilful in physic, and renowned
therein, who had with his own proconsular hand put the Agonistic garland
upon my distempered head, but not as a physician: for this disease Thou
only curest, who resistest the proud, and givest grace to the humble.
But didst Thou fail me even by that old man, or forbear to heal my soul?
For having become more acquainted with him, and hanging assiduously and
fixedly on his speech (for though in simple terms, it was vivid, lively,
and earnest), when he had gathered by my discourse that I was given to
the books of nativity-casters, he kindly and fatherly advised me to cast
them away, and not fruitlessly bestow a care and diligence, necessary
for useful things, upon these vanities; saying, that he had in his
earliest years studied that art, so as to make it the profession whereby
he should live, and that, understanding Hippocrates, he could soon have
understood such a study as this; and yet he had given it over, and taken
to physic, for no other reason but that he found it utterly false;
and he, a grave man, would not get his living by deluding people. "But
thou," saith he, "hast rhetoric to maintain thyself by, so that thou
followest this of free choice, not of necessity: the more then oughtest
thou to give me credit herein, who laboured to acquire it so perfectly
as to get my living by it alone." Of whom when I had demanded, how then
could many true things be foretold by it, he answered me (as he could)
"that the force of chance, diffused throughout the whole order of
things, brought this about. For if when a man by haphazard opens the
pages of some poet, who sang and thought of something wholly different,
a verse oftentimes fell out, wondrously agreeable to the present
business: it were not to be wondered at, if out of the soul of man,
unconscious what takes place in it, by some higher instinct an answer
should be given, by hap, not by art, corresponding to the business and
actions of the demander."

And thus much, either from or through him, Thou conveyedst to me, and
tracedst in my memory, what I might hereafter examine for myself. But at
that time neither he, nor my dearest Nebridius, a youth singularly good
and of a holy fear, who derided the whole body of divination, could
persuade me to cast it aside, the authority of the authors swaying me
yet more, and as yet I had found no certain proof (such as I sought)
whereby it might without all doubt appear, that what had been truly
foretold by those consulted was the result of haphazard, not of the art
of the star-gazers.

In those years when I first began to teach rhetoric in my native town,
I had made one my friend, but too dear to me, from a community of
pursuits, of mine own age, and, as myself, in the first opening flower
of youth. He had grown up of a child with me, and we had been both
school-fellows and play-fellows. But he was not yet my friend as
afterwards, nor even then, as true friendship is; for true it cannot be,
unless in such as Thou cementest together, cleaving unto Thee, by that
love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is
given unto us. Yet was it but too sweet, ripened by the warmth of
kindred studies: for, from the true faith (which he as a youth had
not soundly and thoroughly imbibed), I had warped him also to those
superstitious and pernicious fables, for which my mother bewailed me.
With me he now erred in mind, nor could my soul be without him. But
behold Thou wert close on the steps of Thy fugitives, at once God of
vengeance, and Fountain of mercies, turning us to Thyself by wonderful
means; Thou tookest that man out of this life, when he had scarce filled
up one whole year of my friendship, sweet to me above all sweetness of
that my life.

Who can recount all Thy praises, which he hath felt in his one self?
What diddest Thou then, my God, and how unsearchable is the abyss of
Thy judgments? For long, sore sick of a fever, he lay senseless in
a death-sweat; and his recovery being despaired of, he was baptised,
unknowing; myself meanwhile little regarding, and presuming that his
soul would retain rather what it had received of me, not what was
wrought on his unconscious body. But it proved far otherwise: for he was
refreshed, and restored. Forthwith, as soon as I could speak with him
(and I could, so soon as he was able, for I never left him, and we hung
but too much upon each other), I essayed to jest with him, as though he
would jest with me at that baptism which he had received, when utterly
absent in mind and feeling, but had now understood that he had received.
But he so shrunk from me, as from an enemy; and with a wonderful and
sudden freedom bade me, as I would continue his friend, forbear such
language to him. I, all astonished and amazed, suppressed all my
emotions till he should grow well, and his health were strong enough for
me to deal with him as I would. But he was taken away from my frenzy,
that with Thee he might be preserved for my comfort; a few days after in
my absence, he was attacked again by the fever, and so departed.

At this grief my heart was utterly darkened; and whatever I beheld was
death. My native country was a torment to me, and my father's house a
strange unhappiness; and whatever I had shared with him, wanting him,
became a distracting torture. Mine eyes sought him every where, but he
was not granted them; and I hated all places, for that they had not him;
nor could they now tell me, "he is coming," as when he was alive and
absent. I became a great riddle to myself, and I asked my soul, why she
was so sad, and why she disquieted me sorely: but she knew not what to
answer me. And if I said, Trust in God, she very rightly obeyed me not;
because that most dear friend, whom she had lost, was, being man, both
truer and better than that phantasm she was bid to trust in. Only tears
were sweet to me, for they succeeded my friend, in the dearest of my
affections.

And now, Lord, these things are passed by, and time hath assuaged my
wound. May I learn from Thee, who art Truth, and approach the ear of my
heart unto Thy mouth, that Thou mayest tell me why weeping is sweet to
the miserable? Hast Thou, although present every where, cast away our
misery far from Thee? And Thou abidest in Thyself, but we are tossed
about in divers trials. And yet unless we mourned in Thine ears, we
should have no hope left. Whence then is sweet fruit gathered from the
bitterness of life, from groaning, tears, sighs, and complaints? Doth
this sweeten it, that we hope Thou hearest? This is true of prayer, for
therein is a longing to approach unto Thee. But is it also in grief for
a thing lost, and the sorrow wherewith I was then overwhelmed? For I
neither hoped he should return to life nor did I desire this with my
tears; but I wept only and grieved. For I was miserable, and had lost my
joy. Or is weeping indeed a bitter thing, and for very loathing of the
things which we before enjoyed, does it then, when we shrink from them,
please us?

But what speak I of these things? for now is no time to question, but to
confess unto Thee. Wretched I was; and wretched is every soul bound by
the friendship of perishable things; he is torn asunder when he loses
them, and then he feels the wretchedness which he had ere yet he lost
them. So was it then with me; I wept most bitterly, and found my repose
in bitterness. Thus was I wretched, and that wretched life I held dearer
than my friend. For though I would willingly have changed it, yet was I
more unwilling to part with it than with him; yea, I know not whether I
would have parted with it even for him, as is related (if not feigned)
of Pylades and Orestes, that they would gladly have died for each other
or together, not to live together being to them worse than death. But in
me there had arisen some unexplained feeling, too contrary to this, for
at once I loathed exceedingly to live and feared to die. I suppose, the
more I loved him, the more did I hate, and fear (as a most cruel enemy)
death, which had bereaved me of him: and I imagined it would speedily
make an end of all men, since it had power over him. Thus was it with
me, I remember. Behold my heart, O my God, behold and see into me; for
well I remember it, O my Hope, who cleansest me from the impurity of
such affections, directing mine eyes towards Thee, and plucking my feet
out of the snare. For I wondered that others, subject to death, did
live, since he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I
wondered yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live,
he being dead. Well said one of his friend, "Thou half of my soul";
for I felt that my soul and his soul were "one soul in two bodies": and
therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved.
And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved
should die wholly.

O madness, which knowest not how to love men, like men! O foolish man
that I then was, enduring impatiently the lot of man! I fretted then,
sighed, wept, was distracted; had neither rest nor counsel. For I bore
about a shattered and bleeding soul, impatient of being borne by me, yet
where to repose it, I found not. Not in calm groves, not in games and
music, nor in fragrant spots, nor in curious banquetings, nor in the
pleasures of the bed and the couch; nor (finally) in books or poesy,
found it repose. All things looked ghastly, yea, the very light;
whatsoever was not what he was, was revolting and hateful, except
groaning and tears. For in those alone found I a little refreshment. But
when my soul was withdrawn from them a huge load of misery weighed
me down. To Thee, O Lord, it ought to have been raised, for Thee to
lighten; I knew it; but neither could nor would; the more, since, when I
thought of Thee, Thou wert not to me any solid or substantial thing. For
Thou wert not Thyself, but a mere phantom, and my error was my God. If
I offered to discharge my load thereon, that it might rest, it glided
through the void, and came rushing down again on me; and I had remained
to myself a hapless spot, where I could neither be, nor be from thence.
For whither should my heart flee from my heart? Whither should I
flee from myself? Whither not follow myself? And yet I fled out of my
country; for so should mine eyes less look for him, where they were not
wont to see him. And thus from Thagaste, I came to Carthage.

Times lose no time; nor do they roll idly by; through our senses they
work strange operations on the mind. Behold, they went and came day by
day, and by coming and going, introduced into my mind other imaginations
and other remembrances; and little by little patched me up again with my
old kind of delights, unto which that my sorrow gave way. And yet there
succeeded, not indeed other griefs, yet the causes of other griefs. For
whence had that former grief so easily reached my very inmost soul, but
that I had poured out my soul upon the dust, in loving one that must
die, as if he would never die? For what restored and refreshed me
chiefly was the solaces of other friends, with whom I did love, what
instead of Thee I loved; and this was a great fable, and protracted lie,
by whose adulterous stimulus, our soul, which lay itching in our ears,
was being defiled. But that fable would not die to me, so oft as any of
my friends died. There were other things which in them did more take my
mind; to talk and jest together, to do kind offices by turns; to read
together honied books; to play the fool or be earnest together; to
dissent at times without discontent, as a man might with his own self;
and even with the seldomness of these dissentings, to season our more
frequent consentings; sometimes to teach, and sometimes learn; long for
the absent with impatience; and welcome the coming with joy. These and
the like expressions, proceeding out of the hearts of those that loved
and were loved again, by the countenance, the tongue, the eyes, and
a thousand pleasing gestures, were so much fuel to melt our souls
together, and out of many make but one.

This is it that is loved in friends; and so loved, that a man's
conscience condemns itself, if he love not him that loves him again, or
love not again him that loves him, looking for nothing from his person
but indications of his love. Hence that mourning, if one die, and
darkenings of sorrows, that steeping of the heart in tears, all
sweetness turned to bitterness; and upon the loss of life of the dying,
the death of the living. Blessed whoso loveth Thee, and his friend in
Thee, and his enemy for Thee. For he alone loses none dear to him, to
whom all are dear in Him who cannot be lost. And who is this but our
God, the God that made heaven and earth, and filleth them, because by
filling them He created them? Thee none loseth, but who leaveth. And
who leaveth Thee, whither goeth or whither fleeth he, but from Thee
well-pleased, to Thee displeased? For where doth he not find Thy law in
his own punishment? And Thy law is truth, and truth Thou.

Turn us, O God of Hosts, show us Thy countenance, and we shall be whole.
For whithersoever the soul of man turns itself, unless toward Thee, it
is riveted upon sorrows, yea though it is riveted on things beautiful.
And yet they, out of Thee, and out of the soul, were not, unless they
were from Thee. They rise, and set; and by rising, they begin as it were
to be; they grow, that they may be perfected; and perfected, they wax
old and wither; and all grow not old, but all wither. So then when they
rise and tend to be, the more quickly they grow that they may be, so
much the more they haste not to be. This is the law of them. Thus much
has Thou allotted them, because they are portions of things, which
exist not all at once, but by passing away and succeeding, they together
complete that universe, whereof they are portions. And even thus is our
speech completed by signs giving forth a sound: but this again is not
perfected unless one word pass away when it hath sounded its part, that
another may succeed. Out of all these things let my soul praise Thee,
O God, Creator of all; yet let not my soul be riveted unto these things
with the glue of love, through the senses of the body. For they go
whither they were to go, that they might not be; and they rend her with
pestilent longings, because she longs to be, yet loves to repose in what
she loves. But in these things is no place of repose; they abide not,
they flee; and who can follow them with the senses of the flesh? yea,
who can grasp them, when they are hard by? For the sense of the flesh is
slow, because it is the sense of the flesh; and thereby is it bounded.
It sufficeth for that it was made for; but it sufficeth not to stay
things running their course from their appointed starting-place to the
end appointed. For in Thy Word, by which they are created, they hear
their decree, "hence and hitherto."

Be not foolish, O my soul, nor become deaf in the ear of thine heart
with the tumult of thy folly. Hearken thou too. The Word itself calleth
thee to return: and there is the place of rest imperturbable, where
love is not forsaken, if itself forsaketh not. Behold, these things
pass away, that others may replace them, and so this lower universe be
completed by all his parts. But do I depart any whither? saith the Word
of God. There fix thy dwelling, trust there whatsoever thou hast
thence, O my soul, at least now thou art tired out with vanities.
Entrust Truth, whatsoever thou hast from the Truth, and thou shalt lose
nothing; and thy decay shall bloom again, and all thy diseases be
healed, and thy mortal parts be reformed and renewed, and bound around
thee: nor shall they lay thee whither themselves descend; but they
shall stand fast with thee, and abide for ever before God, Who abideth
and standeth fast for ever.

Why then be perverted and follow thy flesh? Be it converted and follow
thee. Whatever by her thou hast sense of, is in part; and the whole,
whereof these are parts, thou knowest not; and yet they delight thee.
But had the sense of thy flesh a capacity for comprehending the whole,
and not itself also, for thy punishment, been justly restricted to
a part of the whole, thou wouldest, that whatsoever existeth at this
present, should pass away, that so the whole might better please thee.
For what we speak also, by the same sense of the flesh thou hearest; yet
wouldest not thou have the syllables stay, but fly away, that others may
come, and thou hear the whole. And so ever, when any one thing is made
up of many, all of which do not exist together, all collectively would
please more than they do severally, could all be perceived collectively.
But far better than these is He who made all; and He is our God, nor
doth He pass away, for neither doth aught succeed Him.

If bodies please thee, praise God on occasion of them, and turn back
thy love upon their Maker; lest in these things which please thee, thou
displease. If souls please thee, be they loved in God: for they too are
mutable, but in Him are they firmly stablished; else would they pass,
and pass away. In Him then be they beloved; and carry unto Him along
with thee what souls thou canst, and say to them, "Him let us love, Him
let us love: He made these, nor is He far off. For He did not make them,
and so depart, but they are of Him, and in Him. See there He is, where
truth is loved. He is within the very heart, yet hath the heart strayed
from Him. Go back into your heart, ye transgressors, and cleave fast to
Him that made you. Stand with Him, and ye shall stand fast. Rest in Him,
and ye shall be at rest. Whither go ye in rough ways? Whither go ye?
The good that you love is from Him; but it is good and pleasant through
reference to Him, and justly shall it be embittered, because unjustly is
any thing loved which is from Him, if He be forsaken for it. To what end
then would ye still and still walk these difficult and toilsome ways?
There is no rest, where ye seek it. Seek what ye seek; but it is not
there where ye seek. Ye seek a blessed life in the land of death; it is
not there. For how should there be a blessed life where life itself is
not?

"But our true Life came down hither, and bore our death, and slew him,
out of the abundance of His own life: and He thundered, calling aloud to
us to return hence to Him into that secret place, whence He came forth
to us, first into the Virgin's womb, wherein He espoused the human
creation, our mortal flesh, that it might not be for ever mortal, and
thence like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoicing as a giant
to run his course. For He lingered not, but ran, calling aloud by words,
deeds, death, life, descent, ascension; crying aloud to us to return
unto Him. And He departed from our eyes, that we might return into our
heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and lo, He is here. He would
not be long with us, yet left us not; for He departed thither, whence
He never parted, because the world was made by Him. And in this world
He was, and into this world He came to save sinners, unto whom my soul
confesseth, and He healeth it, for it hath sinned against Him. O ye sons
of men, how long so slow of heart? Even now, after the descent of Life
to you, will ye not ascend and live? But whither ascend ye, when ye are
on high, and set your mouth against the heavens? Descend, that ye may
ascend, and ascend to God. For ye have fallen, by ascending against
Him." Tell them this, that they may weep in the valley of tears, and
so carry them up with thee unto God; because out of His spirit thou
speakest thus unto them, if thou speakest, burning with the fire of
charity.

These things I then knew not, and I loved these lower beauties, and I
was sinking to the very depths, and to my friends I said, "Do we love
any thing but the beautiful? What then is the beautiful? and what is
beauty? What is it that attracts and wins us to the things we love? for
unless there were in them a grace and beauty, they could by no
means draw us unto them." And I marked and perceived that in bodies
themselves, there was a beauty, from their forming a sort of whole, and
again, another from apt and mutual correspondence, as of a part of
the body with its whole, or a shoe with a foot, and the like. And this
consideration sprang up in my mind, out of my inmost heart, and I wrote
"on the fair and fit," I think, two or three books. Thou knowest, O
Lord, for it is gone from me; for I have them not, but they are strayed
from me, I know not how.

But what moved me, O Lord my God, to dedicate these books unto Hierius,
an orator of Rome, whom I knew not by face, but loved for the fame
of his learning which was eminent in him, and some words of his I had
heard, which pleased me? But more did he please me, for that he pleased
others, who highly extolled him, amazed that out of a Syrian, first
instructed in Greek eloquence, should afterwards be formed a wonderful
Latin orator, and one most learned in things pertaining unto philosophy.
One is commended, and, unseen, he is loved: doth this love enter the
heart of the hearer from the mouth of the commender? Not so. But by one
who loveth is another kindled. For hence he is loved who is commended,
when the commender is believed to extol him with an unfeigned heart;
that is, when one that loves him, praises him.

For so did I then love men, upon the judgment of men, not Thine, O my
God, in Whom no man is deceived. But yet why not for qualities, like
those of a famous charioteer, or fighter with beasts in the theatre,
known far and wide by a vulgar popularity, but far otherwise, and
earnestly, and so as I would be myself commended? For I would not be
commended or loved, as actors are (though I myself did commend and love
them), but had rather be unknown, than so known; and even hated, than
so loved. Where now are the impulses to such various and divers kinds of
loves laid up in one soul? Why, since we are equally men, do I love
in another what, if I did not hate, I should not spurn and cast from
myself? For it holds not, that as a good horse is loved by him, who
would not, though he might, be that horse, therefore the same may be
said of an actor, who shares our nature. Do I then love in a man, what I
hate to be, who am a man? Man himself is a great deep, whose very hairs
Thou numberest, O Lord, and they fall not to the ground without Thee.
And yet are the hairs of his head easier to be numbered than his
feelings, and the beatings of his heart.

But that orator was of that sort whom I loved, as wishing to be myself
such; and I erred through a swelling pride, and was tossed about with
every wind, but yet was steered by Thee, though very secretly. And
whence do I know, and whence do I confidently confess unto Thee, that
I had loved him more for the love of his commenders, than for the very
things for which he was commended? Because, had he been unpraised, and
these self-same men had dispraised him, and with dispraise and contempt
told the very same things of him, I had never been so kindled and
excited to love him. And yet the things had not been other, nor he
himself other; but only the feelings of the relators. See where the
impotent soul lies along, that is not yet stayed up by the solidity
of truth! Just as the gales of tongues blow from the breast of the
opinionative, so is it carried this way and that, driven forward and
backward, and the light is overclouded to it, and the truth unseen. And
lo, it is before us. And it was to me a great matter, that my discourse
and labours should be known to that man: which should he approve, I were
the more kindled; but if he disapproved, my empty heart, void of Thy
solidity, had been wounded. And yet the "fair and fit," whereon I wrote
to him, I dwelt on with pleasure, and surveyed it, and admired it,
though none joined therein.

But I saw not yet, whereon this weighty matter turned in Thy wisdom,
O Thou Omnipotent, who only doest wonders; and my mind ranged through
corporeal forms; and "fair," I defined and distinguished what is so
in itself, and "fit," whose beauty is in correspondence to some other
thing: and this I supported by corporeal examples. And I turned to
the nature of the mind, but the false notion which I had of spiritual
things, let me not see the truth. Yet the force of truth did of itself
flash into mine eyes, and I turned away my panting soul from incorporeal
substance to lineaments, and colours, and bulky magnitudes. And not
being able to see these in the mind, I thought I could not see my mind.
And whereas in virtue I loved peace, and in viciousness I abhorred
discord; in the first I observed a unity, but in the other, a sort
of division. And in that unity I conceived the rational soul, and the
nature of truth and of the chief good to consist; but in this division
I miserably imagined there to be some unknown substance of irrational
life, and the nature of the chief evil, which should not only be a
substance, but real life also, and yet not derived from Thee, O my God,
of whom are all things. And yet that first I called a Monad, as it had
been a soul without sex; but the latter a Duad;--anger, in deeds of
violence, and in flagitiousness, lust; not knowing whereof I spake. For
I had not known or learned that neither was evil a substance, nor our
soul that chief and unchangeable good.

For as deeds of violence arise, if that emotion of the soul be
corrupted, whence vehement action springs, stirring itself insolently
and unrulily; and lusts, when that affection of the soul is ungoverned,
whereby carnal pleasures are drunk in, so do errors and false opinions
defile the conversation, if the reasonable soul itself be corrupted; as
it was then in me, who knew not that it must be enlightened by another
light, that it may be partaker of truth, seeing itself is not that
nature of truth. For Thou shalt light my candle, O Lord my God, Thou
shalt enlighten my darkness: and of Thy fulness have we all received,
for Thou art the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the
world; for in Thee there is no variableness, neither shadow of change.

But I pressed towards Thee, and was thrust from Thee, that I might taste
of death: for thou resistest the proud. But what prouder, than for me
with a strange madness to maintain myself to be that by nature which
Thou art? For whereas I was subject to change (so much being manifest
to me, my very desire to become wise, being the wish, of worse to become
better), yet chose I rather to imagine Thee subject to change, and
myself not to be that which Thou art. Therefore I was repelled by Thee,
and Thou resistedst my vain stiffneckedness, and I imagined corporeal
forms, and, myself flesh, I accused flesh; and, a wind that passeth
away, I returned not to Thee, but I passed on and on to things which
have no being, neither in Thee, nor in me, nor in the body. Neither were
they created for me by Thy truth, but by my vanity devised out of
things corporeal. And I was wont to ask Thy faithful little ones, my
fellow-citizens (from whom, unknown to myself, I stood exiled), I was
wont, prating and foolishly, to ask them, "Why then doth the soul err
which God created?" But I would not be asked, "Why then doth God
err?" And I maintained that Thy unchangeable substance did err upon
constraint, rather than confess that my changeable substance had gone
astray voluntarily, and now, in punishment, lay in error.

I was then some six or seven and twenty years old when I wrote those
volumes; revolving within me corporeal fictions, buzzing in the ears
of my heart, which I turned, O sweet truth, to thy inward melody,
meditating on the "fair and fit," and longing to stand and hearken to
Thee, and to rejoice greatly at the Bridegroom's voice, but could not;
for by the voices of mine own errors, I was hurried abroad, and through
the weight of my own pride, I was sinking into the lowest pit. For Thou
didst not make me to hear joy and gladness, nor did the bones exult
which were not yet humbled.

And what did it profit me, that scarce twenty years old, a book of
Aristotle, which they call the ten Predicaments, falling into my hands
(on whose very name I hung, as on something great and divine, so often
as my rhetoric master of Carthage, and others, accounted learned,
mouthed it with cheeks bursting with pride), I read and understood it
unaided? And on my conferring with others, who said that they scarcely
understood it with very able tutors, not only orally explaining it, but
drawing many things in sand, they could tell me no more of it than I had
learned, reading it by myself. And the book appeared to me to speak very
clearly of substances, such as "man," and of their qualities, as the
figure of a man, of what sort it is; and stature, how many feet high;
and his relationship, whose brother he is; or where placed; or when
born; or whether he stands or sits; or be shod or armed; or does, or
suffers anything; and all the innumerable things which might be ranged
under these nine Predicaments, of which I have given some specimens, or
under that chief Predicament of Substance.

What did all this further me, seeing it even hindered me? when,
imagining whatever was, was comprehended under those ten Predicaments,
I essayed in such wise to understand, O my God, Thy wonderful and
unchangeable Unity also, as if Thou also hadst been subjected to Thine
own greatness or beauty; so that (as in bodies) they should exist in
Thee, as their subject: whereas Thou Thyself art Thy greatness and
beauty; but a body is not great or fair in that it is a body, seeing
that, though it were less great or fair, it should notwithstanding be
a body. But it was falsehood which of Thee I conceived, not truth,
fictions of my misery, not the realities of Thy blessedness. For Thou
hadst commanded, and it was done in me, that the earth should bring
forth briars and thorns to me, and that in the sweat of my brows I
should eat my bread.

And what did it profit me, that all the books I could procure of the
so-called liberal arts, I, the vile slave of vile affections, read by
myself, and understood? And I delighted in them, but knew not whence
came all, that therein was true or certain. For I had my back to the
light, and my face to the things enlightened; whence my face, with which
I discerned the things enlightened, itself was not enlightened.
Whatever was written, either on rhetoric, or logic, geometry, music,
and arithmetic, by myself without much difficulty or any instructor,
I understood, Thou knowest, O Lord my God; because both quickness of
understanding, and acuteness in discerning, is Thy gift: yet did I not
thence sacrifice to Thee. So then it served not to my use, but rather
to my perdition, since I went about to get so good a portion of my
substance into my own keeping; and I kept not my strength for Thee, but
wandered from Thee into a far country, to spend it upon harlotries. For
what profited me good abilities, not employed to good uses? For I felt
not that those arts were attained with great difficulty, even by the
studious and talented, until I attempted to explain them to such; when
he most excelled in them who followed me not altogether slowly.

But what did this further me, imagining that Thou, O Lord God, the
Truth, wert a vast and bright body, and I a fragment of that body?
Perverseness too great! But such was I. Nor do I blush, O my God, to
confess to Thee Thy mercies towards me, and to call upon Thee, who
blushed not then to profess to men my blasphemies, and to bark against
Thee. What profited me then my nimble wit in those sciences and all
those most knotty volumes, unravelled by me, without aid from human
instruction; seeing I erred so foully, and with such sacrilegious
shamefulness, in the doctrine of piety? Or what hindrance was a far
slower wit to Thy little ones, since they departed not far from Thee,
that in the nest of Thy Church they might securely be fledged, and
nourish the wings of charity, by the food of a sound faith. O Lord our
God, under the shadow of Thy wings let us hope; protect us, and carry
us. Thou wilt carry us both when little, and even to hoar hairs wilt
Thou carry us; for our firmness, when it is Thou, then is it firmness;
but when our own, it is infirmity. Our good ever lives with Thee;
from which when we turn away, we are turned aside. Let us now, O Lord,
return, that we may not be overturned, because with Thee our good lives
without any decay, which good art Thou; nor need we fear, lest there
be no place whither to return, because we fell from it: for through our
absence, our mansion fell not--Thy eternity.




BOOK V


Accept the sacrifice of my confessions from the ministry of my tongue,
which Thou hast formed and stirred up to confess unto Thy name. Heal
Thou all my bones, and let them say, O Lord, who is like unto Thee? For
he who confesses to Thee doth not teach Thee what takes place within
him; seeing a closed heart closes not out Thy eye, nor can man's
hard-heartedness thrust back Thy hand: for Thou dissolvest it at Thy
will in pity or in vengeance, and nothing can hide itself from Thy heat.
But let my soul praise Thee, that it may love Thee; and let it confess
Thy own mercies to Thee, that it may praise Thee. Thy whole creation
ceaseth not, nor is silent in Thy praises; neither the spirit of man
with voice directed unto Thee, nor creation animate or inanimate, by the
voice of those who meditate thereon: that so our souls may from their
weariness arise towards Thee, leaning on those things which Thou hast
created, and passing on to Thyself, who madest them wonderfully; and
there is refreshment and true strength.

Let the restless, the godless, depart and flee from Thee; yet Thou seest
them, and dividest the darkness. And behold, the universe with them is
fair, though they are foul. And how have they injured Thee? or how have
they disgraced Thy government, which, from the heaven to this lowest
earth, is just and perfect? For whither fled they, when they fled from
Thy presence? or where dost not Thou find them? But they fled, that they
might not see Thee seeing them, and, blinded, might stumble against Thee
(because Thou forsakest nothing Thou hast made); that the unjust, I say,
might stumble upon Thee, and justly be hurt; withdrawing themselves from
thy gentleness, and stumbling at Thy uprightness, and falling upon their
own ruggedness. Ignorant, in truth, that Thou art every where, Whom no
place encompasseth! and Thou alone art near, even to those that remove
far from Thee. Let them then be turned, and seek Thee; because not as
they have forsaken their Creator, hast Thou forsaken Thy creation. Let
them be turned and seek Thee; and behold, Thou art there in their heart,
in the heart of those that confess to Thee, and cast themselves upon
Thee, and weep in Thy bosom, after all their rugged ways. Then dost
Thou gently wipe away their tears, and they weep the more, and joy
in weeping; even for that Thou, Lord,--not man of flesh and blood,
but--Thou, Lord, who madest them, re-makest and comfortest them. But
where was I, when I was seeking Thee? And Thou wert before me, but I had
gone away from Thee; nor did I find myself, how much less Thee!

I would lay open before my God that nine-and-twentieth year of mine
age. There had then come to Carthage a certain Bishop of the Manichees,
Faustus by name, a great snare of the Devil, and many were entangled
by him through that lure of his smooth language: which though I did
commend, yet could I separate from the truth of the things which I was
earnest to learn: nor did I so much regard the service of oratory as the
science which this Faustus, so praised among them, set before me to
feed upon. Fame had before bespoken him most knowing in all valuable
learning, and exquisitely skilled in the liberal sciences. And since I
had read and well remembered much of the philosophers, I compared some
things of theirs with those long fables of the Manichees, and found the
former the more probable; even although they could only prevail so far
as to make judgment of this lower world, the Lord of it they could by
no means find out. For Thou art great, O Lord, and hast respect unto the
humble, but the proud Thou beholdest afar off. Nor dost Thou draw near,
but to the contrite in heart, nor art found by the proud, no, not though
by curious skill they could number the stars and the sand, and measure
the starry heavens, and track the courses of the planets.

For with their understanding and wit, which Thou bestowedst on them,
they search out these things; and much have they found out; and
foretold, many years before, eclipses of those luminaries, the sun
and moon,--what day and hour, and how many digits,--nor did their
calculation fail; and it came to pass as they foretold; and they wrote
down the rules they had found out, and these are read at this day, and
out of them do others foretell in what year and month of the year, and
what day of the month, and what hour of the day, and what part of its
light, moon or sun is to be eclipsed, and so it shall be, as it is
foreshowed. At these things men, that know not this art, marvel and are
astonished, and they that know it, exult, and are puffed up; and by
an ungodly pride departing from Thee, and failing of Thy light, they
foresee a failure of the sun's light, which shall be, so long before,
but see not their own, which is. For they search not religiously whence
they have the wit, wherewith they search out this. And finding that Thou
madest them, they give not themselves up to Thee, to preserve what Thou
madest, nor sacrifice to Thee what they have made themselves; nor slay
their own soaring imaginations, as fowls of the air, nor their own
diving curiosities (wherewith, like the fishes of the sea, they wander
over the unknown paths of the abyss), nor their own luxuriousness, as
beasts of the field, that Thou, Lord, a consuming fire, mayest burn up
those dead cares of theirs, and re-create themselves immortally.

But they knew not the way, Thy Word, by Whom Thou madest these things
which they number, and themselves who number, and the sense whereby
they perceive what they number, and the understanding, out of which they
number; or that of Thy wisdom there is no number. But the Only Begotten
is Himself made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification,
and was numbered among us, and paid tribute unto Caesar. They knew not
this way whereby to descend to Him from themselves, and by Him ascend
unto Him. They knew not this way, and deemed themselves exalted amongst
the stars and shining; and behold, they fell upon the earth, and their
foolish heart was darkened. They discourse many things truly concerning
the creature; but Truth, Artificer of the creature, they seek not
piously, and therefore find Him not; or if they find Him, knowing Him
to be God, they glorify Him not as God, neither are thankful, but
become vain in their imaginations, and profess themselves to be wise,
attributing to themselves what is Thine; and thereby with most perverse
blindness, study to impute to Thee what is their own, forging lies of
Thee who art the Truth, and changing the glory of uncorruptible God
into an image made like corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed
beasts, and creeping things, changing Thy truth into a lie, and
worshipping and serving the creature more than the Creator.

Yet many truths concerning the creature retained I from these men, and
saw the reason thereof from calculations, the succession of times, and
the visible testimonies of the stars; and compared them with the saying
of Manichaeus, which in his frenzy he had written most largely on these
subjects; but discovered not any account of the solstices, or equinoxes,
or the eclipses of the greater lights, nor whatever of this sort I
had learned in the books of secular philosophy. But I was commanded to
believe; and yet it corresponded not with what had been established by
calculations and my own sight, but was quite contrary.

Doth then, O Lord God of truth, whoso knoweth these things, therefore
please Thee? Surely unhappy is he who knoweth all these, and knoweth not
Thee: but happy whoso knoweth Thee, though he know not these. And whoso
knoweth both Thee and them is not the happier for them, but for Thee
only, if, knowing Thee, he glorifies Thee as God, and is thankful, and
becomes not vain in his imaginations. For as he is better off who knows
how to possess a tree, and return thanks to Thee for the use thereof,
although he know not how many cubits high it is, or how wide it spreads,
than he that can measure it, and count all its boughs, and neither owns
it, nor knows or loves its Creator: so a believer, whose all this world
of wealth is, and who having nothing, yet possesseth all things, by
cleaving unto Thee, whom all things serve, though he know not even
the circles of the Great Bear, yet is it folly to doubt but he is in a
better state than one who can measure the heavens, and number the stars,
and poise the elements, yet neglecteth Thee who hast made all things in
number, weight, and measure.

But yet who bade that Manichaeus write on these things also, skill in
which was no element of piety? For Thou hast said to man, Behold
piety and wisdom; of which he might be ignorant, though he had perfect
knowledge of these things; but these things, since, knowing not, he most
impudently dared to teach, he plainly could have no knowledge of piety.
For it is vanity to make profession of these worldly things even when
known; but confession to Thee is piety. Wherefore this wanderer to this
end spake much of these things, that convicted by those who had truly
learned them, it might be manifest what understanding he had in the
other abstruser things. For he would not have himself meanly thought of,
but went about to persuade men, "That the Holy Ghost, the Comforter and
Enricher of Thy faithful ones, was with plenary authority personally
within him." When then he was found out to have taught falsely of the
heaven and stars, and of the motions of the sun and moon (although these
things pertain not to the doctrine of religion), yet his sacrilegious
presumption would become evident enough, seeing he delivered things
which not only he knew not, but which were falsified, with so mad a
vanity of pride, that he sought to ascribe them to himself, as to a
divine person.

For when I hear any Christian brother ignorant of these things, and
mistaken on them, I can patiently behold such a man holding his opinion;
nor do I see that any ignorance as to the position or character of the
corporeal creation can injure him, so long as he doth not believe any
thing unworthy of Thee, O Lord, the Creator of all. But it doth injure
him, if he imagine it to pertain to the form of the doctrine of piety,
and will yet affirm that too stiffly whereof he is ignorant. And yet
is even such an infirmity, in the infancy of faith, borne by our mother
Charity, till the new-born may grow up unto a perfect man, so as not
to be carried about with every wind of doctrine. But in him who in such
wise presumed to be the teacher, source, guide, chief of all whom he
could so persuade, that whoso followed him thought that he followed,
not a mere man, but Thy Holy Spirit; who would not judge that so great
madness, when once convicted of having taught any thing false, were
to be detested and utterly rejected? But I had not as yet clearly
ascertained whether the vicissitudes of longer and shorter days and
nights, and of day and night itself, with the eclipses of the greater
lights, and whatever else of the kind I had read of in other books,
might be explained consistently with his sayings; so that, if they by
any means might, it should still remain a question to me whether it
were so or no; but I might, on account of his reputed sanctity, rest my
credence upon his authority.

And for almost all those nine years, wherein with unsettled mind I had
been their disciple, I had longed but too intensely for the coming of
this Faustus. For the rest of the sect, whom by chance I had lighted
upon, when unable to solve my objections about these things, still held
out to me the coming of this Faustus, by conference with whom these
and greater difficulties, if I had them, were to be most readily and
abundantly cleared. When then he came, I found him a man of pleasing
discourse, and who could speak fluently and in better terms, yet still
but the self-same things which they were wont to say. But what availed
the utmost neatness of the cup-bearer to my thirst for a more precious
draught? Mine ears were already cloyed with the like, nor did they seem
to me therefore better, because better said; nor therefore true, because
eloquent; nor the soul therefore wise, because the face was comely,
and the language graceful. But they who held him out to me were no good
judges of things; and therefore to them he appeared understanding and
wise, because in words pleasing. I felt however that another sort of
people were suspicious even of truth, and refused to assent to it, if
delivered in a smooth and copious discourse. But Thou, O my God, hadst
already taught me by wonderful and secret ways, and therefore I believe
that Thou taughtest me, because it is truth, nor is there besides Thee
any teacher of truth, where or whencesoever it may shine upon us. Of
Thyself therefore had I now learned, that neither ought any thing to
seem to be spoken truly, because eloquently; nor therefore falsely,
because the utterance of the lips is inharmonious; nor, again, therefore
true, because rudely delivered; nor therefore false, because the
language is rich; but that wisdom and folly are as wholesome and
unwholesome food; and adorned or unadorned phrases as courtly or country
vessels; either kind of meats may be served up in either kind of dishes.

That greediness then, wherewith I had of so long time expected that man,
was delighted verily with his action and feeling when disputing, and his
choice and readiness of words to clothe his ideas. I was then delighted,
and, with many others and more than they, did I praise and extol him.
It troubled me, however, that in the assembly of his auditors, I was not
allowed to put in and communicate those questions that troubled me,
in familiar converse with him. Which when I might, and with my friends
began to engage his ears at such times as it was not unbecoming for him
to discuss with me, and had brought forward such things as moved me; I
found him first utterly ignorant of liberal sciences, save grammar, and
that but in an ordinary way. But because he had read some of Tully's
Orations, a very few books of Seneca, some things of the poets, and such
few volumes of his own sect as were written in Latin and neatly, and
was daily practised in speaking, he acquired a certain eloquence, which
proved the more pleasing and seductive because under the guidance of a
good wit, and with a kind of natural gracefulness. Is it not thus, as I
recall it, O Lord my God, Thou judge of my conscience? before Thee is
my heart, and my remembrance, Who didst at that time direct me by the
hidden mystery of Thy providence, and didst set those shameful errors of
mine before my face, that I might see and hate them.

For after it was clear that he was ignorant of those arts in which I
thought he excelled, I began to despair of his opening and solving the
difficulties which perplexed me (of which indeed however ignorant, he
might have held the truths of piety, had he not been a Manichee). For
their books are fraught with prolix fables, of the heaven, and stars,
sun, and moon, and I now no longer thought him able satisfactorily to
decide what I much desired, whether, on comparison of these things with
the calculations I had elsewhere read, the account given in the books of
Manichaeus were preferable, or at least as good. Which when I proposed
to be considered and discussed, he, so far modestly, shrunk from the
burthen. For he knew that he knew not these things, and was not ashamed
to confess it. For he was not one of those talking persons, many of whom
I had endured, who undertook to teach me these things, and said nothing.
But this man had a heart, though not right towards Thee, yet neither
altogether treacherous to himself. For he was not altogether ignorant of
his own ignorance, nor would he rashly be entangled in a dispute, whence
he could neither retreat nor extricate himself fairly. Even for this I
liked him the better. For fairer is the modesty of a candid mind, than
the knowledge of those things which I desired; and such I found him, in
all the more difficult and subtile questions.

My zeal for the writings of Manichaeus being thus blunted, and
despairing yet more of their other teachers, seeing that in divers
things which perplexed me, he, so renowned among them, had so turned
out; I began to engage with him in the study of that literature, on
which he also was much set (and which as rhetoric-reader I was at that
time teaching young students at Carthage), and to read with him, either
what himself desired to hear, or such as I judged fit for his genius.
But all my efforts whereby I had purposed to advance in that sect,
upon knowledge of that man, came utterly to an end; not that I detached
myself from them altogether, but as one finding nothing better, I had
settled to be content meanwhile with what I had in whatever way fallen
upon, unless by chance something more eligible should dawn upon me.
Thus, that Faustus, to so many a snare of death, had now neither willing
nor witting it, begun to loosen that wherein I was taken. For Thy hands,
O my God, in the secret purpose of Thy providence, did not forsake my
soul; and out of my mother's heart's blood, through her tears night and
day poured out, was a sacrifice offered for me unto Thee; and Thou didst
deal with me by wondrous ways. Thou didst it, O my God: for the steps
of a man are ordered by the Lord, and He shall dispose his way. Or how
shall we obtain salvation, but from Thy hand, re-making what it made?

Thou didst deal with me, that I should be persuaded to go to Rome, and
to teach there rather, what I was teaching at Carthage. And how I was
persuaded to this, I will not neglect to confess to Thee; because herein
also the deepest recesses of Thy wisdom, and Thy most present mercy to
us, must be considered and confessed. I did not wish therefore to go to
Rome, because higher gains and higher dignities were warranted me by my
friends who persuaded me to this (though even these things had at that
time an influence over my mind), but my chief and almost only reason
was, that I heard that young men studied there more peacefully, and were
kept quiet under a restraint of more regular discipline; so that they
did not, at their pleasures, petulantly rush into the school of
one whose pupils they were not, nor were even admitted without his
permission. Whereas at Carthage there reigns among the scholars a most
disgraceful and unruly licence. They burst in audaciously, and
with gestures almost frantic, disturb all order which any one hath
established for the good of his scholars. Divers outrages they commit,
with a wonderful stolidity, punishable by law, did not custom uphold
them; that custom evincing them to be the more miserable, in that they
now do as lawful what by Thy eternal law shall never be lawful; and they
think they do it unpunished, whereas they are punished with the very
blindness whereby they do it, and suffer incomparably worse than what
they do. The manners then which, when a student, I would not make my
own, I was fain as a teacher to endure in others: and so I was well
pleased to go where, all that knew it, assured me that the like was not
done. But Thou, my refuge and my portion in the land of the living;
that I might change my earthly dwelling for the salvation of my soul,
at Carthage didst goad me, that I might thereby be torn from it; and at
Rome didst proffer me allurements, whereby I might be drawn thither,
by men in love with a dying life, the one doing frantic, the other
promising vain, things; and, to correct my steps, didst secretly use
their and my own perverseness. For both they who disturbed my quiet were
blinded with a disgraceful frenzy, and they who invited me elsewhere
savoured of earth. And I, who here detested real misery, was there
seeking unreal happiness.

But why I went hence, and went thither, Thou knewest, O God, yet
showedst it neither to me, nor to my mother, who grievously bewailed my
journey, and followed me as far as the sea. But I deceived her, holding
me by force, that either she might keep me back or go with me, and I
feigned that I had a friend whom I could not leave, till he had a fair
wind to sail. And I lied to my mother, and such a mother, and escaped:
for this also hast Thou mercifully forgiven me, preserving me, thus full
of execrable defilements, from the waters of the sea, for the water of
Thy Grace; whereby when I was cleansed, the streams of my mother's eyes
should be dried, with which for me she daily watered the ground under
her face. And yet refusing to return without me, I scarcely persuaded
her to stay that night in a place hard by our ship, where was an Oratory
in memory of the blessed Cyprian. That night I privily departed, but she
was not behind in weeping and prayer. And what, O Lord, was she with so
many tears asking of Thee, but that Thou wouldest not suffer me to sail?
But Thou, in the depth of Thy counsels and hearing the main point of her
desire, regardest not what she then asked, that Thou mightest make me
what she ever asked. The wind blew and swelled our sails, and withdrew
the shore from our sight; and she on the morrow was there, frantic with
sorrow, and with complaints and groans filled Thine ears, Who didst then
disregard them; whilst through my desires, Thou wert hurrying me to end
all desire, and the earthly part of her affection to me was chastened
by the allotted scourge of sorrows. For she loved my being with her, as
mothers do, but much more than many; and she knew not how great joy Thou
wert about to work for her out of my absence. She knew not; therefore
did she weep and wail, and by this agony there appeared in her the
inheritance of Eve, with sorrow seeking what in sorrow she had brought
forth. And yet, after accusing my treachery and hardheartedness, she
betook herself again to intercede to Thee for me, went to her wonted
place, and I to Rome.

And lo, there was I received by the scourge of bodily sickness, and I
was going down to hell, carrying all the sins which I had committed,
both against Thee, and myself, and others, many and grievous, over and
above that bond of original sin, whereby we all die in Adam. For
Thou hadst not forgiven me any of these things in Christ, nor had He
abolished by His Cross the enmity which by my sins I had incurred with
Thee. For how should He, by the crucifixion of a phantasm, which I
believed Him to be? So true, then, was the death of my soul, as that
of His flesh seemed to me false; and how true the death of His body,
so false was the life of my soul, which did not believe it. And now the
fever heightening, I was parting and departing for ever. For had I then
parted hence, whither had I departed, but into fire and torments, such
as my misdeeds deserved in the truth of Thy appointment? And this she
knew not, yet in absence prayed for me. But Thou, everywhere present,
heardest her where she was, and, where I was, hadst compassion upon me;
that I should recover the health of my body, though frenzied as yet
in my sacrilegious heart. For I did not in all that danger desire Thy
baptism; and I was better as a boy, when I begged it of my mother's
piety, as I have before recited and confessed. But I had grown up to my
own shame, and I madly scoffed at the prescripts of Thy medicine, who
wouldest not suffer me, being such, to die a double death. With which
wound had my mother's heart been pierced, it could never be healed. For
I cannot express the affection she bore to me, and with how much more
vehement anguish she was now in labour of me in the spirit, than at her
childbearing in the flesh.

I see not then how she should have been healed, had such a death of mine
stricken through the bowels of her love. And where would have been those
her so strong and unceasing prayers, unintermitting to Thee alone? But
wouldest Thou, God of mercies, despise the contrite and humbled heart of
that chaste and sober widow, so frequent in almsdeeds, so full of duty
and service to Thy saints, no day intermitting the oblation at Thine
altar, twice a day, morning and evening, without any intermission,
coming to Thy church, not for idle tattlings and old wives' fables; but
that she might hear Thee in Thy discourses, and Thou her in her prayers.
Couldest Thou despise and reject from Thy aid the tears of such an one,
wherewith she begged of Thee not gold or silver, nor any mutable or
passing good, but the salvation of her son's soul? Thou, by whose gift
she was such? Never, Lord. Yea, Thou wert at hand, and wert hearing and
doing, in that order wherein Thou hadst determined before that it should
be done. Far be it that Thou shouldest deceive her in Thy visions and
answers, some whereof I have, some I have not mentioned, which she laid
up in her faithful heart, and ever praying, urged upon Thee, as
Thine own handwriting. For Thou, because Thy mercy endureth for ever,
vouchsafest to those to whom Thou forgivest all of their debts, to
become also a debtor by Thy promises.

Thou recoveredst me then of that sickness, and healedst the son of Thy
handmaid, for the time in body, that he might live, for Thee to bestow
upon him a better and more abiding health. And even then, at Rome, I
joined myself to those deceiving and deceived "holy ones"; not with
their disciples only (of which number was he, in whose house I had
fallen sick and recovered); but also with those whom they call "The
Elect." For I still thought "that it was not we that sin, but that I
know not what other nature sinned in us"; and it delighted my pride, to
be free from blame; and when I had done any evil, not to confess I had
done any, that Thou mightest heal my soul because it had sinned against
Thee: but I loved to excuse it, and to accuse I know not what other
thing, which was with me, but which I was not. But in truth it was
wholly I, and mine impiety had divided me against myself: and that sin
was the more incurable, whereby I did not judge myself a sinner; and
execrable iniquity it was, that I had rather have Thee, Thee, O God
Almighty, to be overcome in me to my destruction, than myself of Thee to
salvation. Not as yet then hadst Thou set a watch before my mouth, and a
door of safe keeping around my lips, that my heart might not turn
aside to wicked speeches, to make excuses of sins, with men that work
iniquity; and, therefore, was I still united with their Elect.

But now despairing to make proficiency in that false doctrine, even
those things (with which if I should find no better, I had resolved to
rest contented) I now held more laxly and carelessly. For there half
arose a thought in me that those philosophers, whom they call Academics,
were wiser than the rest, for that they held men ought to doubt
everything, and laid down that no truth can be comprehended by man:
for so, not then understanding even their meaning, I also was clearly
convinced that they thought, as they are commonly reported. Yet did I
freely and openly discourage that host of mine from that over-confidence
which I perceived him to have in those fables, which the books of
Manichaeus are full of. Yet I lived in more familiar friendship with
them, than with others who were not of this heresy. Nor did I maintain
it with my ancient eagerness; still my intimacy with that sect (Rome
secretly harbouring many of them) made me slower to seek any other way:
especially since I despaired of finding the truth, from which they had
turned me aside, in Thy Church, O Lord of heaven and earth, Creator of
all things visible and invisible: and it seemed to me very unseemly to
believe Thee to have the shape of human flesh, and to be bounded by the
bodily lineaments of our members. And because, when I wished to think on
my God, I knew not what to think of, but a mass of bodies (for what was
not such did not seem to me to be anything), this was the greatest, and
almost only cause of my inevitable error.

For hence I believed Evil also to be some such kind of substance, and
to have its own foul and hideous bulk; whether gross, which they called
earth, or thin and subtile (like the body of the air), which they
imagine to be some malignant mind, creeping through that earth. And
because a piety, such as it was, constrained me to believe that the good
God never created any evil nature, I conceived two masses, contrary
to one another, both unbounded, but the evil narrower, the good more
expansive. And from this pestilent beginning, the other sacrilegious
conceits followed on me. For when my mind endeavoured to recur to the
Catholic faith, I was driven back, since that was not the Catholic faith
which I thought to be so. And I seemed to myself more reverential, if I
believed of Thee, my God (to whom Thy mercies confess out of my mouth),
as unbounded, at least on other sides, although on that one where the
mass of evil was opposed to Thee, I was constrained to confess Thee
bounded; than if on all sides I should imagine Thee to be bounded by the
form of a human body. And it seemed to me better to believe Thee to have
created no evil (which to me ignorant seemed not some only, but a bodily
substance, because I could not conceive of mind unless as a subtile
body, and that diffused in definite spaces), than to believe the nature
of evil, such as I conceived it, could come from Thee. Yea, and our
Saviour Himself, Thy Only Begotten, I believed to have been reached
forth (as it were) for our salvation, out of the mass of Thy most lucid
substance, so as to believe nothing of Him, but what I could imagine in
my vanity. His Nature then, being such, I thought could not be born
of the Virgin Mary, without being mingled with the flesh: and how that
which I had so figured to myself could be mingled, and not defiled, I
saw not. I feared therefore to believe Him born in the flesh, lest
I should be forced to believe Him defiled by the flesh. Now will Thy
spiritual ones mildly and lovingly smile upon me, if they shall read
these my confessions. Yet such was I.

Furthermore, what the Manichees had criticised in Thy Scriptures, I
thought could not be defended; yet at times verily I had a wish to
confer upon these several points with some one very well skilled in
those books, and to make trial what he thought thereon; for the words
of one Helpidius, as he spoke and disputed face to face against the
said Manichees, had begun to stir me even at Carthage: in that he
had produced things out of the Scriptures, not easily withstood, the
Manichees' answer whereto seemed to me weak. And this answer they
liked not to give publicly, but only to us in private. It was, that the
Scriptures of the New Testament had been corrupted by I know not whom,
who wished to engraff the law of the Jews upon the Christian faith: yet
themselves produced not any uncorrupted copies. But I, conceiving of
things corporeal only, was mainly held down, vehemently oppressed and
in a manner suffocated by those "masses"; panting under which after the
breath of Thy truth, I could not breathe it pure and untainted.

I began then diligently to practise that for which I came to Rome, to
teach rhetoric; and first, to gather some to my house, to whom, and
through whom, I had begun to be known; when lo, I found other offences
committed in Rome, to which I was not exposed in Africa. True, those
"subvertings" by profligate young men were not here practised, as was
told me: but on a sudden, said they, to avoid paying their
master's stipend, a number of youths plot together, and remove to
another;--breakers of faith, who for love of money hold justice cheap.
These also my heart hated, though not with a perfect hatred: for
perchance I hated them more because I was to suffer by them, than
because they did things utterly unlawful. Of a truth such are base
persons, and they go a whoring from Thee, loving these fleeting
mockeries of things temporal, and filthy lucre, which fouls the hand
that grasps it; hugging the fleeting world, and despising Thee, Who
abidest, and recallest, and forgivest the adulteress soul of man, when
she returns to Thee. And now I hate such depraved and crooked persons,
though I love them if corrigible, so as to prefer to money the learning
which they acquire, and to learning, Thee, O God, the truth and fulness
of assured good, and most pure peace. But then I rather for my own sake
misliked them evil, than liked and wished them good for Thine.

When therefore they of Milan had sent to Rome to the prefect of the
city, to furnish them with a rhetoric reader for their city, and sent
him at the public expense, I made application (through those very
persons, intoxicated with Manichaean vanities, to be freed wherefrom
I was to go, neither of us however knowing it) that Symmachus, then
prefect of the city, would try me by setting me some subject, and so
send me. To Milan I came, to Ambrose the Bishop, known to the whole
world as among the best of men, Thy devout servant; whose eloquent
discourse did then plentifully dispense unto Thy people the flour of Thy
wheat, the gladness of Thy oil, and the sober inebriation of Thy wine.
To him was I unknowing led by Thee, that by him I might knowingly be
led to Thee. That man of God received me as a father, and showed me an
Episcopal kindness on my coming. Thenceforth I began to love him, at
first indeed not as a teacher of the truth (which I utterly despaired
of in Thy Church), but as a person kind towards myself. And I listened
diligently to him preaching to the people, not with that intent I ought,
but, as it were, trying his eloquence, whether it answered the fame
thereof, or flowed fuller or lower than was reported; and I hung on his
words attentively; but of the matter I was as a careless and scornful
looker-on; and I was delighted with the sweetness of his discourse,
more recondite, yet in manner less winning and harmonious, than that of
Faustus. Of the matter, however, there was no comparison; for the one
was wandering amid Manichaean delusions, the other teaching salvation
most soundly. But salvation is far from sinners, such as I then stood
before him; and yet was I drawing nearer by little and little, and
unconsciously.

For though I took no pains to learn what he spake, but only to hear how
he spake (for that empty care alone was left me, despairing of a way,
open for man, to Thee), yet together with the words which I would
choose, came also into my mind the things which I would refuse; for
I could not separate them. And while I opened my heart to admit "how
eloquently he spake," there also entered "how truly he spake"; but this
by degrees. For first, these things also had now begun to appear to
me capable of defence; and the Catholic faith, for which I had thought
nothing could be said against the Manichees' objections, I now thought
might be maintained without shamelessness; especially after I had heard
one or two places of the Old Testament resolved, and ofttimes "in a
figure," which when I understood literally, I was slain spiritually.
Very many places then of those books having been explained, I now blamed
my despair, in believing that no answer could be given to such as hated
and scoffed at the Law and the Prophets. Yet did I not therefore then
see that the Catholic way was to be held, because it also could find
learned maintainers, who could at large and with some show of reason
answer objections; nor that what I held was therefore to be condemned,
because both sides could be maintained. For the Catholic cause seemed to
me in such sort not vanquished, as still not as yet to be victorious.

Hereupon I earnestly bent my mind, to see if in any way I could by any
certain proof convict the Manichees of falsehood. Could I once have
conceived a spiritual substance, all their strongholds had been beaten
down, and cast utterly out of my mind; but I could not. Notwithstanding,
concerning the frame of this world, and the whole of nature, which the
senses of the flesh can reach to, as I more and more considered and
compared things, I judged the tenets of most of the philosophers to have
been much more probable. So then after the manner of the Academics (as
they are supposed) doubting of every thing, and wavering between all, I
settled so far, that the Manichees were to be abandoned; judging that,
even while doubting, I might not continue in that sect, to which I
already preferred some of the philosophers; to which philosophers
notwithstanding, for that they were without the saving Name of Christ,
I utterly refused to commit the cure of my sick soul. I determined
therefore so long to be a Catechumen in the Catholic Church, to which
I had been commended by my parents, till something certain should dawn
upon me, whither I might steer my course.




BOOK VI


O Thou, my hope from my youth, where wert Thou to me, and whither wert
Thou gone? Hadst not Thou created me, and separated me from the beasts
of the field, and fowls of the air? Thou hadst made me wiser, yet did I
walk in darkness, and in slippery places, and sought Thee abroad out of
myself, and found not the God of my heart; and had come into the depths
of the sea, and distrusted and despaired of ever finding truth. My
mother had now come to me, resolute through piety, following me over sea
and land, in all perils confiding in Thee. For in perils of the sea, she
comforted the very mariners (by whom passengers unacquainted with the
deep, use rather to be comforted when troubled), assuring them of a safe
arrival, because Thou hadst by a vision assured her thereof. She found
me in grievous peril, through despair of ever finding truth. But when
I had discovered to her that I was now no longer a Manichee, though
not yet a Catholic Christian, she was not overjoyed, as at something
unexpected; although she was now assured concerning that part of my
misery, for which she bewailed me as one dead, though to be reawakened
by Thee, carrying me forth upon the bier of her thoughts, that Thou
mightest say to the son of the widow, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise;
and he should revive, and begin to speak, and Thou shouldest deliver him
to his mother. Her heart then was shaken with no tumultuous exultation,
when she heard that what she daily with tears desired of Thee was
already in so great part realised; in that, though I had not yet
attained the truth, I was rescued from falsehood; but, as being assured,
that Thou, Who hadst promised the whole, wouldest one day give the rest,
most calmly, and with a heart full of confidence, she replied to me,
"She believed in Christ, that before she departed this life, she should
see me a Catholic believer." Thus much to me. But to Thee, Fountain
of mercies, poured she forth more copious prayers and tears, that Thou
wouldest hasten Thy help, and enlighten my darkness; and she hastened
the more eagerly to the Church, and hung upon the lips of Ambrose,
praying for the fountain of that water, which springeth up unto life
everlasting. But that man she loved as an angel of God, because she knew
that by him I had been brought for the present to that doubtful state of
faith I now was in, through which she anticipated most confidently that
I should pass from sickness unto health, after the access, as it were,
of a sharper fit, which physicians call "the crisis."

When then my mother had once, as she was wont in Afric, brought to the
Churches built in memory of the Saints, certain cakes, and bread and
wine, and was forbidden by the door-keeper; so soon as she knew that the
Bishop had forbidden this, she so piously and obediently embraced
his wishes, that I myself wondered how readily she censured her own
practice, rather than discuss his prohibition. For wine-bibbing did not
lay siege to her spirit, nor did love of wine provoke her to hatred of
the truth, as it doth too many (both men and women), who revolt at a
lesson of sobriety, as men well-drunk at a draught mingled with
water. But she, when she had brought her basket with the accustomed
festival-food, to be but tasted by herself, and then given away, never
joined therewith more than one small cup of wine, diluted according to
her own abstemious habits, which for courtesy she would taste. And if
there were many churches of the departed saints that were to be honoured
in that manner, she still carried round that same one cup, to be
used every where; and this, though not only made very watery, but
unpleasantly heated with carrying about, she would distribute to those
about her by small sips; for she sought there devotion, not pleasure.
So soon, then, as she found this custom to be forbidden by that famous
preacher and most pious prelate, even to those that would use it
soberly, lest so an occasion of excess might be given to the drunken;
and for these, as it were, anniversary funeral solemnities did much
resemble the superstition of the Gentiles, she most willingly forbare
it: and for a basket filled with fruits of the earth, she had learned to
bring to the Churches of the martyrs a breast filled with more
purified petitions, and to give what she could to the poor; that so
the communication of the Lord's Body might be there rightly celebrated,
where, after the example of His Passion, the martyrs had been sacrificed
and crowned. But yet it seems to me, O Lord my God, and thus thinks my
heart of it in Thy sight, that perhaps she would not so readily have
yielded to the cutting off of this custom, had it been forbidden by
another, whom she loved not as Ambrose, whom, for my salvation,
she loved most entirely; and he her again, for her most religious
conversation, whereby in good works, so fervent in spirit, she was
constant at church; so that, when he saw me, he often burst forth into
her praises; congratulating me that I had such a mother; not knowing
what a son she had in me, who doubted of all these things, and imagined
the way to life could not be found out.

Nor did I yet groan in my prayers, that Thou wouldest help me; but
my spirit was wholly intent on learning, and restless to dispute. And
Ambrose himself, as the world counts happy, I esteemed a happy man, whom
personages so great held in such honour; only his celibacy seemed to me
a painful course. But what hope he bore within him, what struggles he
had against the temptations which beset his very excellencies, or what
comfort in adversities, and what sweet joys Thy Bread had for the hidden
mouth of his spirit, when chewing the cud thereof, I neither could
conjecture, nor had experienced. Nor did he know the tides of my
feelings, or the abyss of my danger. For I could not ask of him, what
I would as I would, being shut out both from his ear and speech by
multitudes of busy people, whose weaknesses he served. With whom when he
was not taken up (which was but a little time), he was either refreshing
his body with the sustenance absolutely necessary, or his mind with
reading. But when he was reading, his eye glided over the pages, and
his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were at rest.
Ofttimes when we had come (for no man was forbidden to enter, nor was it
his wont that any who came should be announced to him), we saw him thus
reading to himself, and never otherwise; and having long sat silent
(for who durst intrude on one so intent?) we were fain to depart,
conjecturing that in the small interval which he obtained, free from the
din of others' business, for the recruiting of his mind, he was loth to
be taken off; and perchance he dreaded lest if the author he read should
deliver any thing obscurely, some attentive or perplexed hearer should
desire him to expound it, or to discuss some of the harder questions; so
that his time being thus spent, he could not turn over so many volumes
as he desired; although the preserving of his voice (which a very little
speaking would weaken) might be the truer reason for his reading to
himself. But with what intent soever he did it, certainly in such a man
it was good.

I however certainly had no opportunity of enquiring what I wished of
that so holy oracle of Thine, his breast, unless the thing might be
answered briefly. But those tides in me, to be poured out to him,
required his full leisure, and never found it. I heard him indeed every
Lord's day, rightly expounding the Word of truth among the people; and
I was more and more convinced that all the knots of those crafty
calumnies, which those our deceivers had knit against the Divine Books,
could be unravelled. But when I understood withal, that "man created
by Thee, after Thine own image," was not so understood by Thy spiritual
sons, whom of the Catholic Mother Thou hast born again through grace,
as though they believed and conceived of Thee as bounded by human shape
(although what a spiritual substance should be I had not even a faint or
shadowy notion); yet, with joy I blushed at having so many years barked
not against the Catholic faith, but against the fictions of carnal
imaginations. For so rash and impious had I been, that what I ought by
enquiring to have learned, I had pronounced on, condemning. For Thou,
Most High, and most near; most secret, and most present; Who hast not
limbs some larger, some smaller, but art wholly every where, and no
where in space, art not of such corporeal shape, yet hast Thou made man
after Thine own image; and behold, from head to foot is he contained in
space.

Ignorant then how this Thy image should subsist, I should have knocked
and proposed the doubt, how it was to be believed, not insultingly
opposed it, as if believed. Doubt, then, what to hold for certain,
the more sharply gnawed my heart, the more ashamed I was, that so long
deluded and deceived by the promise of certainties, I had with childish
error and vehemence, prated of so many uncertainties. For that they were
falsehoods became clear to me later. However I was certain that they
were uncertain, and that I had formerly accounted them certain, when
with a blind contentiousness, I accused Thy Catholic Church, whom I now
discovered, not indeed as yet to teach truly, but at least not to teach
that for which I had grievously censured her. So I was confounded, and
converted: and I joyed, O my God, that the One Only Church, the body of
Thine Only Son (wherein the name of Christ had been put upon me as an
infant), had no taste for infantine conceits; nor in her sound doctrine
maintained any tenet which should confine Thee, the Creator of all, in
space, however great and large, yet bounded every where by the limits of
a human form.

I joyed also that the old Scriptures of the law and the Prophets were
laid before me, not now to be perused with that eye to which before they
seemed absurd, when I reviled Thy holy ones for so thinking, whereas
indeed they thought not so: and with joy I heard Ambrose in his sermons
to the people, oftentimes most diligently recommend this text for a
rule, The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life; whilst he drew
aside the mystic veil, laying open spiritually what, according to the
letter, seemed to teach something unsound; teaching herein nothing that
offended me, though he taught what I knew not as yet, whether it were
true. For I kept my heart from assenting to any thing, fearing to fall
headlong; but by hanging in suspense I was the worse killed. For I
wished to be as assured of the things I saw not, as I was that seven and
three are ten. For I was not so mad as to think that even this could not
be comprehended; but I desired to have other things as clear as this,
whether things corporeal, which were not present to my senses, or
spiritual, whereof I knew not how to conceive, except corporeally. And
by believing might I have been cured, that so the eyesight of my soul
being cleared, might in some way be directed to Thy truth, which abideth
always, and in no part faileth. But as it happens that one who has tried
a bad physician, fears to trust himself with a good one, so was it with
the health of my soul, which could not be healed but by believing, and
lest it should believe falsehoods, refused to be cured; resisting Thy
hands, Who hast prepared the medicines of faith, and hast applied
them to the diseases of the whole world, and given unto them so great
authority.

Being led, however, from this to prefer the Catholic doctrine, I felt
that her proceeding was more unassuming and honest, in that she required
to be believed things not demonstrated (whether it was that they could
in themselves be demonstrated but not to certain persons, or could not
at all be), whereas among the Manichees our credulity was mocked by a
promise of certain knowledge, and then so many most fabulous and
absurd things were imposed to be believed, because they could not be
demonstrated. Then Thou, O Lord, little by little with most tender and
most merciful hand, touching and composing my heart, didst persuade
me--considering what innumerable things I believed, which I saw not, nor
was present while they were done, as so many things in secular history,
so many reports of places and of cities, which I had not seen; so many
of friends, so many of physicians, so many continually of other men,
which unless we should believe, we should do nothing at all in this
life; lastly, with how unshaken an assurance I believed of what
parents I was born, which I could not know, had I not believed upon
hearsay--considering all this, Thou didst persuade me, that not they who
believed Thy Books (which Thou hast established in so great authority
among almost all nations), but they who believed them not, were to be
blamed; and that they were not to be heard, who should say to me, "How
knowest thou those Scriptures to have been imparted unto mankind by the
Spirit of the one true and most true God?" For this very thing was
of all most to be believed, since no contentiousness of blasphemous
questionings, of all that multitude which I had read in the
self-contradicting philosophers, could wring this belief from me,
"That Thou art" whatsoever Thou wert (what I knew not), and "That the
government of human things belongs to Thee."

This I believed, sometimes more strongly, more weakly otherwhiles; yet I
ever believed both that Thou wert, and hadst a care of us; though I was
ignorant, both what was to be thought of Thy substance, and what way led
or led back to Thee. Since then we were too weak by abstract reasonings
to find out truth: and for this very cause needed the authority of Holy
Writ; I had now begun to believe that Thou wouldest never have given
such excellency of authority to that Writ in all lands, hadst Thou not
willed thereby to be believed in, thereby sought. For now what things,
sounding strangely in the Scripture, were wont to offend me, having
heard divers of them expounded satisfactorily, I referred to the depth
of the mysteries, and its authority appeared to me the more venerable,
and more worthy of religious credence, in that, while it lay open to all
to read, it reserved the majesty of its mysteries within its profounder
meaning, stooping to all in the great plainness of its words and
lowliness of its style, yet calling forth the intensest application of
such as are not light of heart; that so it might receive all in its open
bosom, and through narrow passages waft over towards Thee some few, yet
many more than if it stood not aloft on such a height of authority, nor
drew multitudes within its bosom by its holy lowliness. These things
I thought on, and Thou wert with me; I sighed, and Thou heardest me; I
wavered, and Thou didst guide me; I wandered through the broad way of
the world, and Thou didst not forsake me.

I panted after honours, gains, marriage; and thou deridedst me. In these
desires I underwent most bitter crosses, Thou being the more gracious,
the less Thou sufferedst aught to grow sweet to me, which was not Thou.
Behold my heart, O Lord, who wouldest I should remember all this, and
confess to Thee. Let my soul cleave unto Thee, now that Thou hast freed
it from that fast-holding birdlime of death. How wretched was it! and
Thou didst irritate the feeling of its wound, that forsaking all else,
it might be converted unto Thee, who art above all, and without whom all
things would be nothing; be converted, and be healed. How miserable was
I then, and how didst Thou deal with me, to make me feel my misery on
that day, when I was preparing to recite a panegyric of the Emperor,
wherein I was to utter many a lie, and lying, was to be applauded by
those who knew I lied, and my heart was panting with these anxieties,
and boiling with the feverishness of consuming thoughts. For, passing
through one of the streets of Milan, I observed a poor beggar, then, I
suppose, with a full belly, joking and joyous: and I sighed, and spoke
to the friends around me, of the many sorrows of our frenzies; for that
by all such efforts of ours, as those wherein I then toiled dragging
along, under the goading of desire, the burthen of my own wretchedness,
and, by dragging, augmenting it, we yet looked to arrive only at that
very joyousness whither that beggar-man had arrived before us, who
should never perchance attain it. For what he had obtained by means of a
few begged pence, the same was I plotting for by many a toilsome turning
and winding; the joy of a temporary felicity. For he verily had not the
true joy; but yet I with those my ambitious designs was seeking one much
less true. And certainly he was joyous, I anxious; he void of care, I
full of fears. But should any ask me, had I rather be merry or fearful?
I would answer merry. Again, if he asked had I rather be such as he was,
or what I then was? I should choose to be myself, though worn with cares
and fears; but out of wrong judgment; for, was it the truth? For I ought
not to prefer myself to him, because more learned than he, seeing I
had no joy therein, but sought to please men by it; and that not to
instruct, but simply to please. Wherefore also Thou didst break my bones
with the staff of Thy correction.

Away with those then from my soul who say to her, "It makes a difference
whence a man's joy is. That beggar-man joyed in drunkenness; Thou
desiredst to joy in glory." What glory, Lord? That which is not in
Thee. For even as his was no true joy, so was that no true glory: and
it overthrew my soul more. He that very night should digest his
drunkenness; but I had slept and risen again with mine, and was to sleep
again, and again to rise with it, how many days, Thou, God, knowest. But
"it doth make a difference whence a man's joy is." I know it, and the
joy of a faithful hope lieth incomparably beyond such vanity. Yea, and
so was he then beyond me: for he verily was the happier; not only for
that he was thoroughly drenched in mirth, I disembowelled with cares:
but he, by fair wishes, had gotten wine; I, by lying, was seeking for
empty, swelling praise. Much to this purpose said I then to my friends:
and I often marked in them how it fared with me; and I found it went ill
with me, and grieved, and doubled that very ill; and if any prosperity
smiled on me, I was loth to catch at it, for almost before I could grasp
it, it flew away.

These things we, who were living as friends together, bemoaned together,
but chiefly and most familiarly did I speak thereof with Alypius and
Nebridius, of whom Alypius was born in the same town with me, of persons
of chief rank there, but younger than I. For he had studied under me,
both when I first lectured in our town, and afterwards at Carthage, and
he loved me much, because I seemed to him kind, and learned; and I him,
for his great towardliness to virtue, which was eminent enough in one of
no greater years. Yet the whirlpool of Carthaginian habits (amongst whom
those idle spectacles are hotly followed) had drawn him into the
madness of the Circus. But while he was miserably tossed therein, and
I, professing rhetoric there, had a public school, as yet he used not my
teaching, by reason of some unkindness risen betwixt his father and me.
I had found then how deadly he doted upon the Circus, and was deeply
grieved that he seemed likely, nay, or had thrown away so great promise:
yet had I no means of advising or with a sort of constraint reclaiming
him, either by the kindness of a friend, or the authority of a master.
For I supposed that he thought of me as did his father; but he was not
such; laying aside then his father's mind in that matter, he began to
greet me, come sometimes into my lecture room, hear a little, and be
gone.

I however had forgotten to deal with him, that he should not, through
a blind and headlong desire of vain pastimes, undo so good a wit. But
Thou, O Lord, who guidest the course of all Thou hast created, hadst
not forgotten him, who was one day to be among Thy children, Priest
and Dispenser of Thy Sacrament; and that his amendment might plainly be
attributed to Thyself, Thou effectedst it through me, unknowingly. For
as one day I sat in my accustomed place, with my scholars before me,
he entered, greeted me, sat down, and applied his mind to what I
then handled. I had by chance a passage in hand, which while I was
explaining, a likeness from the Circensian races occurred to me, as
likely to make what I would convey pleasanter and plainer, seasoned
with biting mockery of those whom that madness had enthralled; God, Thou
knowest that I then thought not of curing Alypius of that infection. But
he took it wholly to himself, and thought that I said it simply for his
sake. And whence another would have taken occasion of offence with me,
that right-minded youth took as a ground of being offended at himself,
and loving me more fervently. For Thou hadst said it long ago, and put
it into Thy book, Rebuke a wise man and he will love Thee. But I had
not rebuked him, but Thou, who employest all, knowing or not knowing, in
that order which Thyself knowest (and that order is just), didst of my
heart and tongue make burning coals, by which to set on fire the
hopeful mind, thus languishing, and so cure it. Let him be silent in Thy
praises, who considers not Thy mercies, which confess unto Thee out of
my inmost soul. For he upon that speech burst out of that pit so deep,
wherein he was wilfully plunged, and was blinded with its wretched
pastimes; and he shook his mind with a strong self-command; whereupon
all the filths of the Circensian pastimes flew off from him, nor came he
again thither. Upon this, he prevailed with his unwilling father that he
might be my scholar. He gave way, and gave in. And Alypius beginning
to be my hearer again, was involved in the same superstition with me,
loving in the Manichees that show of continency which he supposed true
and unfeigned. Whereas it was a senseless and seducing continency,
ensnaring precious souls, unable as yet to reach the depth of virtue,
yet readily beguiled with the surface of what was but a shadowy and
counterfeit virtue.

He, not forsaking that secular course which his parents had charmed him
to pursue, had gone before me to Rome, to study law, and there he was
carried away incredibly with an incredible eagerness after the shows of
gladiators. For being utterly averse to and detesting spectacles, he was
one day by chance met by divers of his acquaintance and fellow-students
coming from dinner, and they with a familiar violence haled him,
vehemently refusing and resisting, into the Amphitheatre, during these
cruel and deadly shows, he thus protesting: "Though you hale my body to
that place, and there set me, can you force me also to turn my mind or
my eyes to those shows? I shall then be absent while present, and
so shall overcome both you and them." They, hearing this, led him on
nevertheless, desirous perchance to try that very thing, whether he
could do as he said. When they were come thither, and had taken their
places as they could, the whole place kindled with that savage pastime.
But he, closing the passage of his eyes, forbade his mind to range
abroad after such evil; and would he had stopped his ears also! For in
the fight, when one fell, a mighty cry of the whole people striking him
strongly, overcome by curiosity, and as if prepared to despise and be
superior to it whatsoever it were, even when seen, he opened his eyes,
and was stricken with a deeper wound in his soul than the other, whom he
desired to behold, was in his body; and he fell more miserably than he
upon whose fall that mighty noise was raised, which entered through his
ears, and unlocked his eyes, to make way for the striking and beating
down of a soul, bold rather than resolute, and the weaker, in that it
had presumed on itself, which ought to have relied on Thee. For so soon
as he saw that blood, he therewith drunk down savageness; nor turned
away, but fixed his eye, drinking in frenzy, unawares, and was delighted
with that guilty fight, and intoxicated with the bloody pastime. Nor was
he now the man he came, but one of the throng he came unto, yea, a true
associate of theirs that brought him thither. Why say more? He beheld,
shouted, kindled, carried thence with him the madness which should goad
him to return not only with them who first drew him thither, but also
before them, yea and to draw in others. Yet thence didst Thou with a
most strong and most merciful hand pluck him, and taughtest him to have
confidence not in himself, but in Thee. But this was after.

But this was already being laid up in his memory to be a medicine
hereafter. So was that also, that when he was yet studying under me at
Carthage, and was thinking over at mid-day in the market-place what he
was to say by heart (as scholars use to practise), Thou sufferedst him
to be apprehended by the officers of the market-place for a thief. For
no other cause, I deem, didst Thou, our God, suffer it, but that he who
was hereafter to prove so great a man, should already begin to learn
that in judging of causes, man was not readily to be condemned by man
out of a rash credulity. For as he was walking up and down by himself
before the judgment-seat, with his note-book and pen, lo, a young man, a
lawyer, the real thief, privily bringing a hatchet, got in, unperceived
by Alypius, as far as the leaden gratings which fence in the
silversmiths' shops, and began to cut away the lead. But the noise of
the hatchet being heard, the silversmiths beneath began to make a stir,
and sent to apprehend whomever they should find. But he, hearing their
voices, ran away, leaving his hatchet, fearing to be taken with it.
Alypius now, who had not seen him enter, was aware of his going, and
saw with what speed he made away. And being desirous to know the matter,
entered the place; where finding the hatchet, he was standing, wondering
and considering it, when behold, those that had been sent, find him
alone with the hatchet in his hand, the noise whereof had startled and
brought them thither. They seize him, hale him away, and gathering the
dwellers in the market-place together, boast of having taken a notorious
thief, and so he was being led away to be taken before the judge.

But thus far was Alypius to be instructed. For forthwith, O Lord, Thou
succouredst his innocency, whereof Thou alone wert witness. For as he
was being led either to prison or to punishment, a certain architect met
them, who had the chief charge of the public buildings. Glad they
were to meet him especially, by whom they were wont to be suspected of
stealing the goods lost out of the market-place, as though to show him at
last by whom these thefts were committed. He, however, had divers times
seen Alypius at a certain senator's house, to whom he often went to pay
his respects; and recognising him immediately, took him aside by the
hand, and enquiring the occasion of so great a calamity, heard the whole
matter, and bade all present, amid much uproar and threats, to go with
him. So they came to the house of the young man who had done the
deed. There, before the door, was a boy so young as to be likely, not
apprehending any harm to his master, to disclose the whole. For he
had attended his master to the market-place. Whom so soon as Alypius
remembered, he told the architect: and he showing the hatchet to the
boy, asked him "Whose that was?" "Ours," quoth he presently: and being
further questioned, he discovered every thing. Thus the crime being
transferred to that house, and the multitude ashamed, which had begun
to insult over Alypius, he who was to be a dispenser of Thy Word, and an
examiner of many causes in Thy Church, went away better experienced and
instructed.

Him then I had found at Rome, and he clave to me by a most strong tie,
and went with me to Milan, both that he might not leave me, and might
practise something of the law he had studied, more to please his parents
than himself. There he had thrice sat as Assessor, with an uncorruptness
much wondered at by others, he wondering at others rather who could
prefer gold to honesty. His character was tried besides, not only with
the bait of covetousness, but with the goad of fear. At Rome he was
Assessor to the count of the Italian Treasury. There was at that time a
very powerful senator, to whose favours many stood indebted, many much
feared. He would needs, by his usual power, have a thing allowed him
which by the laws was unallowed. Alypius resisted it: a bribe was
promised; with all his heart he scorned it: threats were held out; he
trampled upon them: all wondering at so unwonted a spirit, which neither
desired the friendship, nor feared the enmity of one so great and so
mightily renowned for innumerable means of doing good or evil. And the
very judge, whose councillor Alypius was, although also unwilling
it should be, yet did not openly refuse, but put the matter off upon
Alypius, alleging that he would not allow him to do it: for in truth had
the judge done it, Alypius would have decided otherwise. With this one
thing in the way of learning was he well-nigh seduced, that he might
have books copied for him at Praetorian prices, but consulting justice,
he altered his deliberation for the better; esteeming equity whereby he
was hindered more gainful than the power whereby he were allowed. These
are slight things, but he that is faithful in little, is faithful also
in much. Nor can that any how be void, which proceeded out of the mouth
of Thy Truth: If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon,
who will commit to your trust true riches? And if ye have not been
faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which
is your own? He being such, did at that time cleave to me, and with me
wavered in purpose, what course of life was to be taken.

Nebridius also, who having left his native country near Carthage, yea
and Carthage itself, where he had much lived, leaving his excellent
family-estate and house, and a mother behind, who was not to follow him,
had come to Milan, for no other reason but that with me he might live in
a most ardent search after truth and wisdom. Like me he sighed, like
me he wavered, an ardent searcher after true life, and a most acute
examiner of the most difficult questions. Thus were there the mouths
of three indigent persons, sighing out their wants one to another, and
waiting upon Thee that Thou mightest give them their meat in due season.
And in all the bitterness which by Thy mercy followed our worldly
affairs, as we looked towards the end, why we should suffer all this,
darkness met us; and we turned away groaning, and saying, How long shall
these things be? This too we often said; and so saying forsook them not,
for as yet there dawned nothing certain, which these forsaken, we might
embrace.

And I, viewing and reviewing things, most wondered at the length of time
from that my nineteenth year, wherein I had begun to kindle with the
desire of wisdom, settling when I had found her, to abandon all the
empty hopes and lying frenzies of vain desires. And lo, I was now in
my thirtieth year, sticking in the same mire, greedy of enjoying things
present, which passed away and wasted my soul; while I said to myself,
"Tomorrow I shall find it; it will appear manifestly and I shall grasp
it; lo, Faustus the Manichee will come, and clear every thing! O you
great men, ye Academicians, it is true then, that no certainty can
be attained for the ordering of life! Nay, let us search the more
diligently, and despair not. Lo, things in the ecclesiastical books
are not absurd to us now, which sometimes seemed absurd, and may be
otherwise taken, and in a good sense. I will take my stand, where, as
a child, my parents placed me, until the clear truth be found out. But
where shall it be sought or when? Ambrose has no leisure; we have no
leisure to read; where shall we find even the books? Whence, or when
procure them? from whom borrow them? Let set times be appointed, and
certain hours be ordered for the health of our soul. Great hope has
dawned; the Catholic Faith teaches not what we thought, and vainly
accused it of; her instructed members hold it profane to believe God to
be bounded by the figure of a human body: and do we doubt to 'knock,'
that the rest 'may be opened'? The forenoons our scholars take up; what
do we during the rest? Why not this? But when then pay we court to our
great friends, whose favour we need? When compose what we may sell
to scholars? When refresh ourselves, unbending our minds from this
intenseness of care?

"Perish every thing, dismiss we these empty vanities, and betake
ourselves to the one search for truth! Life is vain, death uncertain; if
it steals upon us on a sudden, in what state shall we depart hence?
and where shall we learn what here we have neglected? and shall we not
rather suffer the punishment of this negligence? What, if death itself
cut off and end all care and feeling? Then must this be ascertained.
But God forbid this! It is no vain and empty thing, that the excellent
dignity of the authority of the Christian Faith hath overspread the
whole world. Never would such and so great things be by God wrought for
us, if with the death of the body the life of the soul came to an end.
Wherefore delay then to abandon worldly hopes, and give ourselves wholly
to seek after God and the blessed life? But wait! Even those things are
pleasant; they have some, and no small sweetness. We must not lightly
abandon them, for it were a shame to return again to them. See, it is
no great matter now to obtain some station, and then what should we more
wish for? We have store of powerful friends; if nothing else offer, and
we be in much haste, at least a presidentship may be given us: and a
wife with some money, that she increase not our charges: and this shall
be the bound of desire. Many great men, and most worthy of imitation,
have given themselves to the study of wisdom in the state of marriage."

While I went over these things, and these winds shifted and drove my
heart this way and that, time passed on, but I delayed to turn to the
Lord; and from day to day deferred to live in Thee, and deferred not
daily to die in myself. Loving a happy life, I feared it in its own
abode, and sought it, by fleeing from it. I thought I should be too
miserable, unless folded in female arms; and of the medicine of Thy
mercy to cure that infirmity I thought not, not having tried it. As for
continency, I supposed it to be in our own power (though in myself I did
not find that power), being so foolish as not to know what is written,
None can be continent unless Thou give it; and that Thou wouldest give
it, if with inward groanings I did knock at Thine ears, and with a
settled faith did cast my care on Thee.

Alypius indeed kept me from marrying; alleging that so could we by no
means with undistracted leisure live together in the love of wisdom, as
we had long desired. For himself was even then most pure in this point,
so that it was wonderful; and that the more, since in the outset of his
youth he had entered into that course, but had not stuck fast therein;
rather had he felt remorse and revolting at it, living thenceforth until
now most continently. But I opposed him with the examples of those who
as married men had cherished wisdom, and served God acceptably, and
retained their friends, and loved them faithfully. Of whose greatness of
spirit I was far short; and bound with the disease of the flesh, and its
deadly sweetness, drew along my chain, dreading to be loosed, and as if
my wound had been fretted, put back his good persuasions, as it were the
hand of one that would unchain me. Moreover, by me did the serpent
speak unto Alypius himself, by my tongue weaving and laying in his
path pleasurable snares, wherein his virtuous and free feet might be
entangled.

For when he wondered that I, whom he esteemed not slightly, should stick
so fast in the birdlime of that pleasure, as to protest (so oft as we
discussed it) that I could never lead a single life; and urged in my
defence when I saw him wonder, that there was great difference between
his momentary and scarce-remembered knowledge of that life, which so
he might easily despise, and my continued acquaintance whereto if the
honourable name of marriage were added, he ought not to wonder why I
could not contemn that course; he began also to desire to be married;
not as overcome with desire of such pleasure, but out of curiosity. For
he would fain know, he said, what that should be, without which my life,
to him so pleasing, would to me seem not life but a punishment. For his
mind, free from that chain, was amazed at my thraldom; and through that
amazement was going on to a desire of trying it, thence 

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