 Book 1. CHAPTERS I THROUGH TEN OF THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. GUSTEEN. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Marianne Spiegel. THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. GUSTEEN, BISHOP OF HIPPO. TRANSLATED BY THE REVEREND E. B. PUSY. Book 1. Confessions of the greatness and unsearchableness of God, of God's mercies in infancy and boyhood, and human willfulness, of His own sins of idleness, abuse of His studies, and God's gifts up to His fifteenth year. CHAPTER 1 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 resisteth the proud. Yet would man praise thee, he but a particle of thy creation. Thou awakeest us to delight in thy praise, for thou madeest 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, whether 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, ought 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 shouldst enter into me, who were not, were 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, were 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 the earth then contain thee, since thou fillest them? Or does thou fill them, and yet overflow, since they do not contain thee? And whither, when the heaven and the earth are filled, pourst thou forth the remainder of thyself? Or hast thou no need that ought 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 art 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 everywhere, while nothing contains thee wholly? Chapter 4 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 grievous not, art angry, yet serene, changes thy works, thy purpose unchanged, receiveth again what thou findest, yet did 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 ought that is not thine? Thou payest debts, owing nothing, remittest debts, losing nothing, and what have 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. CHAPTER V O, that I might repose on thee O, that thou wouldst enter into my heart and inebriate it, that I may forget my ills and embrace thee, my soul 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? O, 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, shouldst mark iniquities, oh Lord, who shall abide it? Chapter 6 Yet suffer me to speak unto thy mercy, me, dost and ashes. Yet suffer me to speak, since I speak to thy mercy, and not to scornful man. Thou, too, perhaps despiseth me, yet wilt thou return and have compassion upon me? For what would I say, oh 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 they 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 distributus thy riches through the hidden springs of all things. Thou also gaveest me to desire no more than thou gaveest, and to my nurses willingly to give me what thou gaveest 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, oh God, are all good things, and from my God is all my help. This I sense 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 livests, and in whom nothing dies, for before the foundations 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 supplicant, say, all pitying, to me, thy pityable 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, oh God, my joy, was I anywhere or anybody? For this I have none to tell me, neither father nor mother, nor experience of others, nor mine own memory. Does 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, say 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, say from thee, oh 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, for neither in thee doth today 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 appellest them, and since thy years fail not, thy years are one to day. How many of ours and our father's years have flowed away through thy today, and from it received the measure and 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 today. 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. Chapter 7 Here, O God, alas for man's sin, so sayeth man, and thou piteest him, for thou madeest him, but sin in him thou madeest 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? Does 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 person's 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 extremist 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 gave us 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 hath Thou done not but only this, which none could do but Thou, whose unity is the mould of all things, who out of Thine 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, yet I am loath 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, oh 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 come to boyhood, or rather it came to me, displacing infancy, nor did that depart, for wither 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 sense 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, so that 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, gave us me, practice 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 back of elders. Oh 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 in 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 feigned to pass, multiplying toil and grief upon the sons of Adam. But, Lord, we found that men called upon thee, and we learned from them to think of thee, according to our powers, as of some great one who, though hidden from our senses, quits here 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 hurtest 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 thou wilt give enough for our age, but our soul delight was play, and for this we were punished by those who yet themselves were doing the like. But elder folk's 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 at 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 my masters. For what they, with whatever motive, would have me learn, I might afterward 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 attained 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 were to my keeper, with what eagerness and what faith I sought, from the pious care of my mother and thy church, the mother of a soul, 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, should 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 hest so commanded. I beseech thee, my God, I would feign know, if so thou willest, for what purpose my baptism was then deferred. Was it for my good, that the rain was laid loose, as it were, upon me, for my 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 baptized. But as to bodily health, no one says, let him be the worst wounded, for he is not yet healed. How much better then, had I been at once healed, and then, by my friend's diligence in my own, my soul's recovered health had been kept safe in thy keeping who gave itst it? Better truly. But how many and great waves of temptation seem to hang over me after my boyhood? These my mother foresaw, and preferred to expose to them the clay whence I might afterwards be molded, than the very cast when made. CHAPTER XII 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. CHAPTER XIII 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 passes 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, Ianus, forgetful of my own, and to weep for dead Daito, 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 Daito for love to Ianus, 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 give us vigor 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 all this I wept not, I, who wept for Daito's lane, 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 richer learning than that by which I learned to read and write. But now, my God, cry 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 avail drawn. True. Yet is this not so much an emblem of ought, recondite, as a cloak of air? 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 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 do not know, the more learned that he never did. But should I ask with what letters the name Aeneas is written, everyone who has learned this will answer me a right, as to the signs which men have conventionally settled. If, again, I should ask, what 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 sing-song. The wooden horse lined with armed men, and the burning of Troy, and Carissa'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 mostly 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, oh my God, thy laws, from the master's cane to the martyr's trials. Being able to temper us for a wholesome bitter, recalling us to thyself from that deadly pleasure which lures us from thee. CHAPTER XV Here, Lord, my prayer, let not my soul faint under thy discipline, nor let me faint confessing unto thee all thy mercies whereby thou hast drawn me out of all my most evil ways, that thou mightst 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 mayst 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 dits 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. CHAPTER XVI But woe is thee, thou torrent of human custom, who shall stand against thee? How long shall 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 I not read in thee of Jove, the thunderer and the adulterer? But 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 from whom 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 man, that crimes might be no longer crimes, and who so 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 roars, hence words are learned, 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 Joves 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 wit more easily are the words learned 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 air 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, oh my God, in whose presence I now, without hurt, may remember this, all this unhappily I learned 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 dodges 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 Latium turn. Which words I had heard 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, oh 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 my presence, oh 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 solicism, being censured, were abashed. But when in rich and adorned and well-ordered discourse they related to their own disordered life, being bepraised, they gloried. These things thou seest, Lord, and holdest thy peace, longsuffering and plenteous in mercy and truth, wilt thou hold thy peace for ever, and even now thou drost out of this horrible gulf the soul that seeketh thee, that thirsteth for thy pleasures, whom heart sayeth 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 invisible wings, or journey by the motion of his limbs, that he might, in a fair 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 his, in darkened affections, is the true distance from thy face. Behold, O Lord God, yey, behold patiently as thou art want, 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. In so much that a teacher or learner of the hereditary laws of pronunciation will more offend man by speaking without the aspirate of an umen being, in desperate of the laws of grammar than if he, a human being, hate a human being in despite of thine. And if any enemy could be more hurtful than the hatred with which he is incensed against him, or who could wound more deeply him whom he persecutes than he wounds his own soul by his enmity. Assurely no signs of letters can be so innate as the record of conscience, that he is doing to another what from another he would be loath to suffer. How deep are thy ways, O God, thou only great, that sitteth silent on heaven by an unwearyed 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 unhappily 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 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 fowl 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, up braided I so fiercely, as that I was doing to others. And for which if detected I was up braided I chose rather to quarrel than to yield. And is this the innocence of boyhood? Not so, Lord, not so. I cry thy mercy, oh 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 severe punishments displace the cane. It was the low stature, then, of childhood, which thou, our king, dits commence an emblem of lowliness when thou saidest, 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 had thou destined for me a boyhood only. For even then I was, I lived and felt, and had an implanted providence over my own 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 our 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 exalt 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 these 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 2 Object of these confessions, further ills of idleness developed in his sixteenth year, evils of ill society which betrayed him into theft. 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, oh 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 here to four, 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 beloved? 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, this 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 into a gulf of flogidiousness. 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 leadest 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. O, that someone had then atempered my disorder, and turned to account the fleeting beauties of these the extreme points of thy creation, had put abound to their pleasurableness, so that 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 form us 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 trouble to see, following the rushing of my own tide, forsaking thee and exceeding all thy limits. Yet I escaped not thy scourges. For what mortal can, for thou were't ever with me mercifully rigorous, and bestrinkling 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 teaches 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 to be a persuasive orator. CHAPTER III For that year where my studies intermitted, whilst after my return from Madhara, 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 the guest. To whom tell I this? Not 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 near 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 briars 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 Baz, 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 tool-mote of the senses wherein the world forgeteth thee its creator, and becomeeth enamored 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 template, and the foundation of thy holy habitation, whereas my father was as yet but a catechumen, and that but recently. She was then startled with a holy fear and trembling, and though I was not as yet baptized, feared for me those crooked ways in which they walk, who turn their backs to thee, and not their face. Woe is me, and dare I say that thou heldest thy peace, oh 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 where I was 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'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 werest silent, and that it was she who spake, by whom thou werest not silent unto me, and in her was 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 less shamefulness, 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. Who is worthy of dispraise but vice? But I made myself worse than I was, that I might not be dispraised, and when in anything 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. 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 paired 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 these 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 reigns, meantime, were slackened to me, beyond all temper of due severity, to spend my time in sport, yea, even unto disillutinous, in whatsoever I affected. And in all this was amissed, intercepting from me, oh my God, the brightness of thy truth, and mine iniquity burst out as from very fatness. CHAPTER IV Th'av, dispunished by thy law, oh Lord, and the law written in the hearts of men, which iniquity itself afaces not. For what thief will abide a thief? Not even a rich thief, one stealing through want. Yet I lusted to thief, and I did it, compelled by no hunger, nor poverty, but through a coyadness 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 color 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 street 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 hast 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 my own fault, not that for which I was faulty, but my fault itself. Foul soul, falling from thy firmament into utter destruction, not seeking ought through the shame, but the shame itself. Chapter 5 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 has his proper object answerably tempered. Worldly honor 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 appears 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 beautific 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 fear to lose some such thing 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. Then to what end? That, through that practice of guilt, he might, having taken the city, attain to honors, 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. Chapter 6 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 word'st not, because thou word'st theft. But art thou anything, that thus I speak to thee? Fair were the pairs 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 pairs, but not them did my wretched soul desire, for I had stole 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 ought of those pairs came within my mouth, what sweetened it was the sin. And now, O Lord my God, I inquire what in that theft delighted me, and behold, it had no loveliness. I mean not such loveliness as injustice and wisdom, nor such as 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 honors and glory, whereas thou alone art to be honored above all and glorious for evermore. The cruelty of the great would fame be feared, but who is to be feared but God alone, out of whose power what can be rested or withdrawn, when, or where, or wither, or by whom? The tenderness of the wanton would fame be counted love, yet is nothing more tender than thy charity, nor is ought loved more healthfully than 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 un-injuriousness, 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 fame be at rest, but what stable rest besides the Lord luxury affects to be called plenty and abundance. But thou art the fullness and never-failing plenteousness of incorruptible pleasures. Prodigality resembles 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 unwanted and sudden, which endanger things beloved, and takes forethought for their safety. But to thee what unwanted, or sudden, or who separated 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 pervertily imitate thee, who remove far from thee, and lifteth 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 where they're all together 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? Yay, all I confess to have been forgiven me, both what evils I committed by my own willfulness, and what by thy guidance I committed not. What man is he, who weighing his own infirmity, dares to ascribe his purity and innocencey 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, yay, 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 light consumption of sin preserved? Chapter 8 What fruit had I then, wretched man, in those things of the resemblance 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, yay, 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 inquire, and discuss, and consider? For had I then loved the pairs I stole, and wished to enjoy them, I might have done it alone, and had the bare commission of the theft suffice 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 pairs 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 they were doing and much misliked 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, 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. Oh friendship too unfriendly, thou incomprehensible invagler of the soul, thou greediness to do mischief out of mirth and wantonness, thou thirst of others' laws 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. Chapter 10 Who can disentangle that twisted and intricate naughtiness? Foul it is, I hate to think on it, to look on it. But thee I long for, oh righteousness and innocencey, beautiful and comely to all pure eyes and of a satisfaction unsating, with thee is rest entire and life imperturbable. Who so 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, oh my God, too much astray from thee my stay, in these days of my youth, and I became to myself a barren land. End of Book 2 Book 3 Of The Confessions by St. Augustine Translated by E. B. Pusey This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Marianne. Book 3 His residence at Carthage, from his seventeenth to his nineteenth year, source of his disorders, love of shows, advance in studies and love of wisdom, distaste for scripture, led astray to the Manichians, refutation of some of their tenants, grief of his mother Monica at his heresy and prayers for his conversion, her vision from God and answer through a bishop. 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 away 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 their width, 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 feign, through exceeding vanity, be fine and courtly. I fell headlong, then, into the love wherein I longed to be ensnared. My God, my mercy, and with how much gall didst thou out of thy great goodness besprinkle me for 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. Chapter 2 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, yet which yet himself would by 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 cynical passions? For the auditor is not called on to relieve, but only to grieve, and he applies 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 willfully 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 forever. 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 love us souls far more purely than we, and hast more incorruptibly pity on them, yet art 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 my 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 inventum'd nails followed inflamed swelling, impostumes, and a putrified 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 into 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 scourges 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 my known 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 arrogancey. Though, Lord, thou knowest, far quieter and altogether removed from the subvertings of those subvertors, for this ill-omend 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. Their subvertings, wherewith they wantonly persecuted the modesty of strangers, which they disturbed by a gratuitous jeering, feeding thereon their malicious mirth. Nothing can be likeer the very actions of devils than these. What then could they be more truly called than subvertors, than selves subverted and altogether perverted first, the deceiving spirit secretly deriding and seducing them, wherein themselves delight to jeer at and deceive others. CHAPTER IV Among such as these, in that unsettled age of mine I learned books of eloquence, wherein I desired to be eminent, out of a damnable and vain glorious 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 seem 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 remount from earthly things to thee, nor knew I what thou wouldst 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 honorable name coloring 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's also made plain that wholesome advice of thy spirit, by thy good and devout servant, beware lest any men 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 fullness 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 and kindled, that the name of Christ was not in it. For this name, according to thy mercy, O Lord, this name of my Savior 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. CHAPTER V 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 lowness, 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 prattling, in whose mouths were the snares of the devil, lined 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 the 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. Oh truth, truth, how inwardly did even then the mirror 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, know nor thy first works. For thy spiritual works are before these corporal 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 which is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Yet they still set before me in those dishes glittering fantasies, than which better were 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 was not in 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 anyway like to thee, as thou has not spoken to me, for those were corporal fantasies, false bodies, than which these true bodies, celestial or terrestrial, from which 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 I was 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, for thou has 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 changes not life of my soul. Where, then, worked thou then to me, and how far from me, for 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 media-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 media-flying, though I did sing, I maintained not, though I heard it sung, I believed not, but those things I did believe. Whoa, whoa, by what steps I was 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 has mercy on me as not yet confessing. Not according to the understanding of the mind were in thou wilts'd that I should exceed the beast, 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 knowing nothing, shadowed out in Solomon, sitting at the door and saying, each 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 eyes of my flesh, and ruminating on such food as though 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 bodily shape, and has hairs and nails? Are they to be esteemed righteous, who had many wives at once, and did kill men, and sacrificed living creatures? And 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 everywhere as spirit, as God. And what that should be in us, by which we are like to God, and might in Scripture 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 everywhere, 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 of what were adopted to each part should cover his head with graves, 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 everywhere 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 who stays are few upon the earth, for that by their senses they cannot harmonize the causes of things in former ages and other nations which they had no 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 indicted verses in which I might not place every foot everywhere, but differently in different meters, nor even in any one meter, the self-same foot in all places. Yet the art itself, by which I indicted, 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 everything at once, but a portioned and enjoined that which 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. CHAPTER VIII. 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 everywhere 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 the 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 city, whether native or foreigner. For any part which harmonizes 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 here to fore, 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 hitherto, had commanded, and to obey him cannot be against the common wheel 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, whether 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 traveler, 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 who's 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 to riders and markers 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 too combined, or altogether. And so do men live ill against the three, and seven, that sultry of ten strings, thy ten commandments, O God, most high and most sweet. But what foul offences can there be against thee who can't not be defiled? Or what acts of violence against thee who can't 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 offense. 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 there from 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 not lift 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. CHAPTER IX Amidst these offenses 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 offenses 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 disproved, 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, severely vary. But when, thou, on a sudden commandist an unwanted and unthought of, turning, yea, although thou hast some time forbidden it, and still for the time hightest 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 shine forth something needful for the present, or to foreshow things to come. CHAPTER X 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 others, not his own guilt, had some, Menachian, St. Eaton, 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, believe that more mercy was to be shown to the fruits of the earth than men for whom they were created. For if any one, a hungered, not a Menachian, should ask for any, that morsel would seem as if 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 hurtest her, O Lord. Thou hurtest her, and despiseth not her tears, when streaming down they watered the ground under her eyes in every place where she prayed. Yea, thou hurtest her. From whence was that dream whereby thou comfortest 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 want, not to be instructed, inquired of her the causes of her grief and daily tears, and she answered that she was bewailing my perdition, he bade her rest contented, and hold 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 God omnipotent, who so cherished for every one of us, as thou cherished 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 feign, 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 was it not told me, that where he, thou there 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 filled so long after, was, for the consolation of her present anguish, so long before, foresignified. For almost nine years past, in which I wallowed in the mire of that deep pit, and the darkness of falsehood, often a saying 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 wit relaxing in her weeping and mourning, ceased not at all hours of her devotions, to bewail my case to thee, and her prayers entered into thy presence, and yet thou sufferest me to be yet involved and re-involved in that darkness. CHAPTER XII Thou gaveest her, meantime, another answer, which I call to mind, for much I pass by, hastening to those things which more press me to confess unto thee, and much I do not remember. Thou gaveest 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 vouch safe to converse with me, refute my errors, untiech me ill things, and teach me good things, for this he was want to do when he found persons fitted to receive it. He refused, wisely, as I afterwards perceived. For he answered that I was yet untiejable, being puffed up with the novelty of that heresy, and had already perplexed diverse, unskillful persons with capitious questions, as she had told them. But let him alone a while, sayeth he. Only pray God for him. He will of himself by reading find what that error is, and how great its impiety. At that same time he told her, how himself, when a little one, had by his seduced mother been consigned over to the manachese, 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, within treaties and many tears, that he would see me, and discourse with me, he, a little displeased at her importunity, sayeth, 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?