 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mark Barnes, www.414.org.uk Confessions by Saint Augustine Translated by Albert C. Outlaw Book 3 Chapter 8 Can it ever, at any time or place, be unrighteous for a man to love God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind and his neighbour as himself? Similarly, offenses against nature are everywhere and at all times to be held in detestation and should be punished. Such offenses, for example, were those of the sodomites, and, even if all nations should commit them, they would all be judged guilty of the same crime by the Divine Law, which has not made man so that they should ever abuse one another in that way. For the fellowship that should be between God and us is violated whenever that nature of which he is the author is polluted by perverted lust. But these offenses, against customary morality, are to be avoided according to the variety of such customs. Thus, what is agreed upon by convention and confirmed by custom or the law of any city or nation may not be violated at the lawless pleasure of any, whether citizen or stranger, for any part that is not consistent with its whole is unseemly. Nevertheless, when God commands anything contrary to the customs or compacts of any nation, even though it were never done by them before, it is to be done, and if it has been interrupted, it is to be restored, and if it has never been established, it is to be established. For it is lawful for a king, in the state over which he reigns, to command that which neither he himself nor anyone before him had commanded. And if it cannot be held to be inimicable to the public interest to obey him, and in truth it would be inimicable if he were not obeyed, since obedience to princes is a general compact of human society, how much more then ought we unhesitatingly to obey God, the governor of all his creatures? For, just as among the authorities in human society the greater authority is obeyed before the lesser, so also must God be above all. This applies as well to deeds of violence where there is a real desire to harm another, either by humiliating treatment or by injury. Either of these may be done for reasons of revenge, as one enemy against another, or in order to obtain some advantage over another, as in the case of the highwayman and the traveller, else they may be done in order to avoid some other evil, as in the case of one who fears another. Or through envy, as for example an unfortunate man harm in a happy one just because he is happy, or they may be done by a prosperous man against someone whom he fears will become equal to himself or whose equality he resents. There may even be done for the mere pleasure in another man's pain, as the spectators of gladiatorial shows or the people who deride and mock at others. These are the major forms of iniquity that spring out of the lust of the flesh and of the eye and of power. Sometimes there is just one, sometimes two together, sometimes all of them at once, thus we live, offending against the three and the seven, that harp of ten strings, thy decalogue, oh God, most high and most sweet. But now how can offenses of vileness harm thee who cannot be defiled? Or how can deeds of violence harm thee who cannot be harmed? Still thou dost punish these sins which men commit against themselves, because even when they sin against thee they are also committed in piety against their own souls. Iniquity gives itself the lie, either by corrupting or by perverting that nature which thou hast made and ordained. And they do this by an immoderate use of lawful things, or by lustful desire for things forbidden as against nature, or when they are guilty of sin by raging with heart and voice against thee, rebelling against thee, kicking against the pricks, or when they cast aside respect for human society and take audacious delight in conspiracies and feuds according to their private likes and dislikes. This is what happens whenever thou art forsaken of fountain of life, who art the one and true creator and ruler of the universe. This is what happens when through self-willed pride a part is loved under the false assumption that it is the whole. Therefore we must return to thee in humble piety and let thee purges from our evil ways and be merciful to those who confess their sins to thee, and hear the groanings of the prisoners and loosen us from those fetters which we have forged for ourselves. This thou wilt do, provided we do not raise up against thee the arrogance of a false freedom. For thus we lose all through craving more, by loving our own good more than thee, the common good of all. Chapter 9 But among all these vices and crimes and manifold iniquities there are also the sins that are committed by men who are on the whole making progress toward the good. When these are judged rightly and after the rule of perfection the sins are censored, but the men are to be commended because they show the hope of bearing fruit like the green shoot of the growing corn. And there are some deeds that resemble vice and crime and yet are not sin, because they neither offend thee, our Lord God, nor social custom. For example, when suitable reserves for hard times are provided we cannot judge that this is done merely from a hoarding impulse. Or again, when acts are punished by constituted authority for the sake of correction we cannot judge that they are done merely out of a desire to inflict pain. Thus many a deed which is disapproved in man's sight may be approved by thy testimony. And many a man who is praised by men is condemned as thou art witness, because frequently the deed itself, the mind of the doer and the hidden exigency of the situation all vary among themselves. But when, contrary to human expectation, thou command is something unusual or unthought of, indeed something thou mayst formally have forbidden about which thou mayst conceal the reason for thy command at that particular time. And even though it may be contrary to the ordinance of some society of men, who doubts but that it should be done, because only that society of men is righteous which obeys thee. But blessed are they who know what thou dost command, for all things done by those who obey thee either exhibit something necessary at that particular time or they foreshadow things to come. Chapter 10 But I was ignorant of this, and so I mocked those holy servants and prophets of thine. Yet what did I gain by mocking them, save to be mocked in turn by thee? Insensibly and little by little I was led on to such follies as to believe that a fig tree wept when it was plucked, and that the sap of the mother tree was tears. Notwithstanding this, if a fig was plucked, by not his own but another man's wickedness, some manache and saint might eat it, digest it in its stomach, and breathe it out again in the form of angels. Indeed, in his prayers he would assuredly groan and sigh forth particles of God, although these particles of the most high and true God would have remained bound in that fig unless they had been set free by the teeth and belly of some elect saint. And, wretched that I was, I believed that more mercy was to be shown to the fruits of the earth than unto men, for whom these fruits were created. For if a hungry man, who was not a manachean, should beg for any food, the morsel that we gave to him would seem condemned, as it were, to capital punishment. CHAPTER 11 And now thou dist stretched forth thy hand from above, and distraught up my soul out of that profound darkness, because my mother, thy faithful one, wept to thee, on my behalf more than mothers are accustomed to weep for the bodily deaths of their children. For by the light of faith and spirit which she received from thee, she saw that I was dead. And thou dist hearer, O Lord, thou dist hearer, and despise not her tears, when pouring down they watered the earth under her eyes in every place where she prayed, thou dist truly hear her. For what other source was there for that dream by which thou disconsole her, so that she permitted me to live with her, to have my meals in the same house at the same table, which she had begun to avoid, even while she hated and detested the blasphemies of my error? In her dream she saw herself standing on a sort of wooden rule, and saw a bright youth approaching her, joyous and smiling at her, while she was grieving and bowed down with sorrow. But when he inquired of her the cause of her sorrow and daily weeping, not to learn from her but to teach her as his customary envisions, and when she answered that it was my soul's doom she was lamenting, he bade her rest content, and told her to look and see that where she was there I was also. And when she looked she saw me standing near her on the same rule. Whence came this vision unless it was thy ears were inclined toward her heart? O thou omnipotent good, thou carest for every one of us as thou discare for him only, and so for all as if they were but one. And what was the reason for this also that when she told me of this vision I tried to put this construction on it, that she would not despair of be in some day what I was? She replied immediately without hesitation no, for it was not told me that where he is there you shall be, but where you are there he will be. I confess my remembrance of this to thee, O Lord, as far as I can recall it, and I have often mentioned it. Thy answer, given through my watchful mother, in the fact that she was not disturbed by the plausibility of my false interpretation, but saw immediately what should have been seen, and which I certainly had not seen until she spoke, this answer moved me more deeply than the dream itself. Still, by that dream the joy that was to come to that pious woman so long after was predicted long before as a consolation for her present anguish. Nearly nine years past in which I wallowed in the mud of that deep pit and in the darkness of falsehood, striving often to rise but be in all the more heavily dashed down. But all that time this chaste, pious and sober widow, such as thou dost love, was now more buoyed up with hope, though no less zealous in her weeping and mourning, and she did not cease to bewail my case before thee in all the hours of her supplication. Her prayers entered thy presence, and yet thou dist allow me still to tumble and toss around in that darkness. CHAPTER 12 Meanwhile, thou gavest her yet another answer as I remember, for I pass over many things hastening on to those things which more strongly impel me to confess thee, and many things I have simply forgotten. But thou gavest her then another answer, by a priest of thine, a certain bishop reared in thy church and well versed in thy books. When that woman begged him to agree to have some discussion with me, to refute my errors, to help me to unlearn evil and to learn the good, for it was his habit to do this when he found people ready to receive it, he refused, very prudently as I afterward realized. For he answered that I was still unteachable, being inflated with the novelty of that heresy, and that I had already perplexed diverse inexperienced persons with vexatious questions as she herself had told him. But let him alone for a time, he said, only pray God for him. He will, of his own accord, by reading, come to discover what an error it is, and how great its impiety is. He went on to tell her at the same time how he himself, as a boy, had been given over to the Manacheans by his misguided mother, and not only had read, but had even copied out almost all their books. Yet he had come to see, without external arguments or proof from anyone else, how much that sect was to be shunned, and had shunned it. When he had said this she was not satisfied, but repeated more earnestly her entreaties, and shed copious tears, still beseeching him to see and talk with me. Finally the bishop, a little vexed at her impunity, exclaimed, Go your way, as you live it cannot be that the son of these tears should perish. As she often told me afterward, she accepted this answer, as though it were a voice from heaven. End of book 3 Book 4 Chapter 1 During this period of nine years, from my nineteenth year to my twenty-eighth, I went astray and led others astray. I was deceived and deceived others in varied lustful projects, sometimes publicly by the teaching of what men style the liberal arts, sometimes secretly under the false guise of religion. In the one I was proud of myself, in the other superstitious, in all vain. In my public life I was striving after the emptiness of popular fame, going so far as to seek theatrical applause, entering poetic contests, striving for the straw garlands and the vanity of theatricals and intemperate desires. In my private life I was seeking to be purged from these corruptions of ours by carrion food to those who are called elect and holy, which in the laboratory of their stomachs they should make into angels and gods for us, and by them we might be set free. These projects I followed out and practiced with my friends, who were both deceived with me and by me. Let the proud laugh at me, and those who have not yet been savenly cast down and stricken by thee, oh my God! Nevertheless I would confess to thee my shame, to thy glory. Bear with me, I beseech thee, and give me the grace to retrace in my present memory the devious ways of my past errors, and thus be able to offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving. For what am I to myself without thee, but a guide to my own downfall? Or what am I, even at best, but once suckled on thy milk and feeding on thee, oh food that never perishes? What indeed is any man, seeing that he is but a man? Therefore let the strong and the mighty laugh at us, but let us who are poor and needy confess to thee. Chapter 2 During those years I taught the art of rhetoric. Conquered by the desire for gain, I offered for sale speaking skills with which to conquer others. And yet, oh Lord, thou knowest that I really preferred to have honest scholars or what were esteemed as such, and, without tricks of speech, I taught these scholars the tricks of a guilty man. And thou, oh God, did see me from afar, stumbling on that slippery path and sending out some flashes of fidelity amid much smoke, guiding those who loved vanity and sought after lying, being myself their companion. In those years I had a mistress to whom I was not joined in lawful marriage. She was a woman I had discovered in my wayward passion, void as it was of understanding, yet she was the only one. And I remained faithful to her, and with her I discovered, by my own experience, what a great difference there is between the restraint of the marriage bond contracted with a view to having children and the compact of a lustful love where children are born against the parent's will. Although once they are born they compel our love. I remember too that when I decided to compete for a theatrical prize, some magician, I do not remember him now, asked me what I would give him to be certain to win. But I detested and abominated such filthy mysteries and answered that even if the garland was of imperishable gold I would still not permit a fly to be killed to win it for me. For he would have slain certain living creatures in his sacrifices and by those honours would have invited the devils to help me. This evil thing I refused, but not out of a pure love of thee, O God of my heart, for I knew not how to love thee, because I knew not how to conceive of anything beyond corporeal splendours. And does not a soul, sighing after such idle fictions, commit fornication against thee, trust in false things and feed on the winds? But still I would not have sacrifices offered to devils on my behalf, though I was myself still offering them sacrifices of a sort by my own superstition. For what else is it to feed on the winds, but to feed on the devils, that is, in our wanderings to become their sport and mockery? Chapter 3 And yet, without scruple I consulted those other imposters whom they call astrologers, because they use no sacrifices and invoke the aid of no spirit for their divinations. Still, true Christian piety must necessarily reject and condemn their art. It is good to confess to thee and to say, Have mercy on me, heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee. Not to abuse thy goodness as a license to sin, but to remember the words of the Lord, Behold, you are made whole, sin no more, lest a worse thing befall you. All this wholesome advice, labour to destroy when they say, The cause of your sin is inevitably fixed in the heavens, and this is the doing of Venus or of Saturn or of Mars. All this is in order that a man who is only flesh and blood and proud corruption may regard himself as blameless, while the creator and ordainer of heaven and the stars must bear the blame of our rills and misfortunes. But who is this creator but thou, our God, the sweetness and wellspring of righteousness who rendereth to every man according to his works and despises not a broken and a contrite heart? There was at that time a wise man, very skillful and quite famous in medicine. He was proconsol then, and with his own hand he placed on my distempered head the crown I had won in a rhetorical contest. He did not do this as a physician, however, and for this distemper only thou canst heal who resisteth the proud and giveeth grace to the humble. But didst thou fail me in that old man or forebear from healing my soul? Actually, when I became better acquainted with him I used to listen, rapt and eager to his words, for though he spoke in a simple language his conversation was replete with vivacity, life and earnestness. He recognised from my own talk that I was given to books of the horoscope casters but he, in a kind and fatherly way, advised me to throw them away and not to spend idly on these vanities, care and labour that might otherwise go into useful things. He said that he himself in his earlier years had studied the astrologers art with a view to gain in his living by it as a profession. Since he had already understood Hippocrates he was fully qualified to understand this too. Yet he had given it up and followed medicine for the simple reason that he had discovered astrology to be utterly false and as a man of honest character he was unwilling to gain his living by beguiling people. But you, he said, have the profession of rhetoric to support yourself by so that you are following this delusion in free will and not necessity. All the more therefore you ought to believe me since I worked at it to learn the art perfectly because I wished to gain my living by it. When I asked him to account for the fact that many true things are foretold by astrology he answered me reasonably enough that the force of chance and the whole order of nature brought these things about. For when a man, by accident, opens the leaves of some poet who sang and intended something far different a verse oftentimes turns out to be wondrously apposite to the reader's present business. It is not to be wondered at, he continued, if out of the human mind by some higher instinct which does not know what goes on within itself an answer should be arrived at by chance to fit both the business and the action of the inquirer. And thus truly either by him or through him thou wast looking after me and thou disfixed all this in my memory so that afterward I might search it out for myself. But at that time neither the proconsul nor my dear Nebrideus a splendid youth and most circumspect who scoffed at the whole business of divination could persuade me to give it up. For the authority of the astrological authors influenced me more than they did. And thus far I had come upon no certain proof such as I sought by which it could be shown without doubt that what had been truly foretold by those consulted came from accidents or chance and not from the art of the stargazers. Chapter 4 In those years when I first began to teach rhetoric in my native town with my dear friend about my own age who was associated with me in the same studies like myself he was just rising up into the flower of youth he had grown up with me from childhood and we had both been school fellows and playmates but he was not then my friend nor indeed ever became my friend in the true sense of the term for there is no true friendship save between those thou dost bind together and that love which is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us still it was a sweet friendship being ripened by the zeal of common studies moreover I had turned him away from the true faith which he had not soundly and thoroughly mastered as a youth and turned him towards those superstitious and harmful fables which my mother mourned in me with me this man went wandering off in error and my soul could not exist without him but behold thou was close behind thy fugitives at once a god of vengeance and a fountain of mercies who dost turn us to thyself by ways that make us marvel thus thou dost take that man out of this life when he had scarcely completed one whole year of friendship with me sweeter to me than the sweetness of my life thus far who can show forth all thy praise for that which he has experienced in himself alone what was it that thou didst do to me at that time oh my god how unsearchable are the depths of thy judgments for when sore sick of a fever he long lay unconscious in a death sweat and everyone despaired of his recovery he was baptised by knowledge and I myself cared little at the time presuming that his soul would retain what it had taken from me rather than what was done to his unconscious body it turned out however far differently for he was revived and restored immediately as soon as I could talk to him and I did this as soon as he was able for I never left him and we hung on each other over much I tried to jest with him supposing that he also would jest in return about that baptism which he had received when his mind and senses were inactive but which he had since learned that he had received but he recoiled from me as if I were his enemy and with a remarkable and unexpected freedom he admonished me that if I desire to continue as his friend I must cease to say such things confounded and confused I concealed my feelings till he should get well and his health recover enough to allow me to deal with him as I wished but he was snatched away from my madness that with thee he might be preserved for my consolation a few days after during my absence the fever returned and he died my heart was utterly darkened by this sorrow and everywhere I looked I saw death my native place was a torture room to me and my father's house a strange unhappiness and all the things I had done with him now that he was gone became a frightful torment my eyes sought him everywhere but they did not see him and I hated all places because he was not in them because they could not say to me look he is coming as they did when he was alive and absent I became a hard riddle to myself and I asked my soul why she was so downcast and why this disquieted me so sorely but she did not know how to answer me and if I said hope thou in God she very properly disobeyed me because that dearest friend she had lost was an actual man both truer and better than the imagined deity she was ordered to put her hope in nothing but tears were sweet to me and they took my friend's place in my heart's desire Chapter 5 but now oh Lord these things are past and time has healed my wound let me learn from thee who art truth and put the ear of my heart to thy mouth that thou mayest tell me why weeping should be so sweet to the unhappy hast thou though omnipresent dismissed our miseries from thy concern thou abidest in thyself while we are disquieted with trial after trial yet unless we wept in thy ears would there be no hope for us remaining how does it happen that such sweet fruit is plucked from the bitterness of life from groans, tears, sighs and lamentations is it the hope that thou wilt hear us that sweetens it this is true in the case of prayer for in a prayer there is a desire to approach thee but is it also the case in grief for a lost love and in the kind of sorrow that had then overwhelmed me for I had neither a hope of his coming back to life nor in all my tears did I seek this I simply grieved and wept for I was miserable and had lost my joy or is weeping a bitter thing that gives us pleasure because of our aversion to the things we once enjoyed and this only as long as we load them Chapter 6 but why do I speak of these things now is not the time rather to confess to thee I was wretched and every soul is wretched that is fettered in the friendship of mortal things it is torn to pieces when it loses them and then realizes the misery which it had even before it lost them thus it was at that time with me I wept most bitterly and found a rest in bitterness I was wretched and yet that wretched life I still held dearer than my friend for though I would willingly have changed it I was still more unwilling to lose it than to have lost him indeed I doubt whether I was willing to lose it even for him as they tell unless it be fiction of the friendship of Orestes and Pilates they would have gladly died for one another or both together and their love together was worse than death to them but a strange kind of feeling had come over me quite different from this for now it was weary some to live and a fearful thing to die I suppose that the more I loved him the more I hated and feared as the most cruel enemy that death which had robbed me of him I even imagined that it would suddenly annihilate since it had such a power over him this is the way I remember it was with me look into my heart O God behold and look deep within me for I remember it well O my hope who cleanses me from the uncleanness of such affections directing my eyes toward thee and plucking my feet out of the snare and I marveled that other mortals went on live in since he whom I had loved would never die was now dead and I marveled all the more that I who had been a second self to him could go on live in when he was dead someone spoke rightly of his friend as being his soul's other half for I felt that my soul and his soul were but one soul in two bodies consequently my life was now a horror to me and to live as a half self but it may have been that I was afraid to die lest he should then die wholly whom I had so greatly loved Chapter 7 O madness that knows not how to love men as they should be loved O foolish man that I was then enduring with so much rebellion the lot of every man who was fretted sighed wept, tormented myself and took neither rest nor counsel for I was dragging around my torn and bloody soul it was impatient of my dragging it around and yet I could not find a place to lay it down not in pleasant groves nor in sport or song nor in fragrant bowers nor in magnificent banquetins nor in the pleasures of the bed or couch not even in books or poetry did it find rest all things looked gloomy even the very light itself whatsoever was not what he was was now repulsive and hateful except my groans and tears for in those alone I found a little rest but when my soul left off weeping a heavy burden of misery weighed me down it should have been raised up to thee, O Lord I lived this I knew but I was neither willing nor able to do especially since in my thoughts of thee thou was not thyself but only an empty phantasm thus my error was my God if I tried to cast off my burden on this phantasm that it might find rest there it sank through the vacuum and came rushing down again upon me thus I remained to myself an unhappy lodging where I could neither stay nor leave for where could my heart fly from my heart and where could I fly from my own self where would I not follow myself and yet I did flee from my native place so that my eyes would look for him less in a place where they were not a custom to see him thus I left the town of Tagastay and returned to Kathage Chapter 8 Time never lapses nor does it glide at leisure through our sense perceptions it does strange things in the mind lo, time came and went from day to day and by coming and going it brought to my mind other ideas and remembrances and little by little they patched me up again with earlier kinds of pleasure and my sorrow yielded a bit to them and followed after this sorrow not other sorrows just like it but the causes of other sorrows for why had that first sorrow so easily penetrated to the quick except that I had poured out my soul onto the dust by loving a man as if he would never die who nevertheless had to die what revived and refreshed me more than anything else was the consolation of other friends with whom I went on loving instead of thee this was a monstrous fable and a tedious lie which was corrupt in my soul with its itching ears by its adulterous rubbing and that fable would not die to me as often as one of my friends died and there were other things in our companionship that took strong hold of my mind to discourse and jest with him to indulge in courteous exchanges to read pleasant books together to trifle together to be earnest together to differ at times without ill humour as a man might do with himself and even through these infrequent dissensions to find zest in our more frequent agreements sometimes teaching sometimes being taught longing for someone absent with impatience and welcoming the home-comer with joy these and similar tokens of friendship which spring spontaneously from the heart of those who love and are loved in return in countenance, tongue, eyes and a thousand ingratiating gestures were all so much fuel to melt our souls together and out of the many made us one Chapter 9 This is what we love in our friends and we love it so much that a man's conscience accuses itself if he does not love one who loves him or respond in love to love seeking nothing from the other but the evidences of his love This is the source of our moaning when one dies the gloom of sorrow the steeping of the heart in tears all sweetness turned to bitterness and the feeding of death in the living because of the loss of the life of the dying Blessed is he who loves thee and who loves his friend in thee and his enemy also for thy sake for he alone loses none dear to him if all are dear in him who cannot be lost for who is this but our God the God that created heaven and earth and filled them because he created them by filling them up none loses thee but he who leaves thee and he who leaves thee where does he go or where can he flee but from thee well pleased to thee offended for where does he not find thy law fulfilled in his own punishment thy law is the truth and thou art truth This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org This is a LibriVox recording by Mark Barnes www.414.org.uk Confessions by Saint Augustine translated by Albert C. Outlaw Book 4 Chapter 10 Turn us again, O Lord God of Hosts Cause thy face to shine and we shall be saved for wherever the soul of man turns itself unless toward thee it is enmeshed in sorrows even though it is surrounded by beautiful things outside thee and outside itself for lovely things would simply not be unless they were from thee they come to be and they pass away and by come in they begin to be and they grow toward perfection then when perfect they begin to wax old and perish and old still all perish therefore when they rise and grow toward being the more rapidly they grow to maturity so also the more rapidly they hasten back toward non-being this is the way of things this is the lot thou has given them because they are part of things which do not all exist at the same time but by passing away and succeed in each other they all make up the universe of which they are all parts for example our speech is accomplished by sounds which signify meanings but a meaning is not complete unless one word passes away when it has sounded its part so that the next may follow after it let my soul praise thee in all these things oh God the creator of all but let not my soul be stuck to these things by the glue of love through the senses of the body for they go where they were meant to go that they may exist no longer and they rend the soul with pestilent desires because she longs to be and yet loves to rest secure in the created things she loves but in these things there is no rest in place to be found they do not abide they flee away and who is he who can follow them with his physical senses or who can grasp them even when they are present for our physical sense is slow because it is a physical sense and bears its own limitations in itself the physical sense is quite sufficient for what it was made to do but it is not sufficient to stay things from running their courses from the beginning appointed to the end appointed for in thy word by which they were created they hear their appointed bound from there to here Chapter 11 be not foolish oh my soul and do not let the tumult of your vanity deafened the ear of your heart be attentive the word itself calls you to return and with him is a place of unperturbed rest where love is not forsaken unless it first forsakes behold these things pass away that others may come to be in their place thus even this lowest level of unity may be complete in all its parts but do I ever pass away asks the word of God fix your habitation in him oh my soul commit whatsoever you have to him for at long last you are now becoming tired of deceit commit to truth whatever you have received from the truth and you will lose nothing what is decayed will flourish again your diseases will be healed your perishable part shall be reshaped and renovated and made whole again in you and these perishable things will not carry you with them down to where they go when they perish but shall stand and abide and you with them before God who abides and continues forever why then my perverse soul do you go on following your flesh instead let it be converted so as to follow you whatever you feel through it is but partial you do not know the whole of which sensations are but parts and yet the parts delight you but if my physical senses had been able to comprehend the whole and had not as part of their punishment received only a portion of the whole as their own province you would then desire that whatever exists in the present time should also pass away so that the whole might please you more for what we speak you also hear through physical sensation and yet you would not wish that the syllable should remain instead you wish them to fly past so that others may follow them and the whole be heard thus it is always that there are many parts which do not co-exist simultaneously the whole gives more delight than the parts could ever do perceived separately but far better than all this is he who made it all he is our God and he does not pass away for there is nothing to take his place Chapter 12 if physical objects please you praise God for them if physical objects please you praise God for them but turn back your love to their creator lest in those things which please you you displease him if souls please you let them be loved in God for in themselves they are mutable but in him firmly established without him they would simply cease to exist in him then let them be loved and bring along to him with yourself as many souls of him for he himself created all these and he is not far away from them for he did not create them and then go away they are of him and in him behold there he is wherever truth is known he is within the inmost heart yet the heart has wandered away from him return to your heart O you transgressors and hold fast to him who made you stand with him and you shall stand fast rest in him and you shall be at rest where do you go along these rugged paths where are you going the good that you love is from him and in so far as it is also for him it is both good and pleasant but it will rightly be turned to bitterness if whatever comes from him is not rightly loved and if he is deserted for the love of the creature why then will you wander farther and farther in these difficult and toilsome ways there is no rest where you seek it seek what you seek but remember that it is not where you seek it you seek for a blessed life in the land of death it is not there for how can there be a blessed life where life itself is not but our very life came down to earth and bore our death and slew it with the very abundance of his own life and thundering he called us to return to him into that secret place from which he came forth to us coming first in the vaginal womb where the human creature our mortal flesh was joined to him that it might not be forever mortal and came as a bridegroom coming out his chamber rejoicing as a strong man to run a race for he did not delay but ran through the world crying out by words deeds, death, life, descent, ascension crying aloud to us to return to him and he departed from our sight that we might return to our hearts and find him there for he left us and behold he is here he could not be with us long yet he did not leave us he went back to the place where we were left for the world was made by him in this world he was and into this world he came to save sinners to him my soul confesses and he heals it because it had sinned against him oh sons of men how long will you be so slow of heart even now after life itself has come down to you will you not ascend and live but where will you climb if you are already on a pinnacle and have set your mouth against the heavens first come down that you may climb up climb up to God for you have fallen by trying to climb against him tell this to the souls you love that they may weep in the valley of tears and so bring them along with you to God because it is by his spirit that you speak thus to them if as you speak you burn with the fire of love Chapter 13 these things I did not understand at that time and I loved those inferior beauties and I was sinking down to the very depths and I said to my friends do we love anything but the beautiful what then is the beautiful and what is beauty what is it that allures and unites us to the things we love for unless there were grace and beauty in them they could not possibly attract us to them and I reflected on this and I saw that in the objects themselves there is a kind of beauty which comes from their form in a hole and another kind of beauty that comes from mutual fitness as the harmony of one part of the body with its hole or a shoe with a foot and so on and this idea sprang up in my mind out of my inmost heart and I wrote some books two or three I think on the beautiful and the fitting thou knowest them, O Lord they have escaped my memory I no longer have them somehow they have been mislaid Chapter 14 what was it, O Lord, my God that prompted me to dedicate these books to Hierius, an orator of Rome a man I did not know by sight but whom I loved for his reputation of learning in which he was famous and also for some words of his that I had heard which had pleased me but he pleased me more because he pleased others who gave him high praise and expressed amazement that a Syrian who had first studied Greek eloquence should thereafter become so wonderful a Latin orator and also so well versed in philosophy thus a man we have never seen is commended and loved does a love like this come into the heart of the hearer from the mouth of him who sings the other's praise not so instead one catches the spark of love from one who loves this is why we love one who is praised when the eulogist is believed to give his praise from an unfaithed heart that is when he who loves him praises him thus it was that I loved men on the basis of other men's judgment and not thine, oh my God in whom no man is deceived but why is it that the feeling I had for such men was not like my feeling toward the renowned charioteer or the great gladiatorial hunter veined far and wide and popular with a mob actually I admired the orator in a different and more serious fashion as I would myself desire to be admired for I did not want them to praise and love me as actors were praised and loved although I myself praise and love them too I would prefer being unknown than known in that way or even being hated than loved in that way how are these various influences and diverse sorts of love distributed within one soul what is it that I am in love with in another which if I did not hate I should neither detest nor repel from myself seeing that we are equally men for it does not follow that because the good horse is admired by a man who would not be that horse even if he could the same kind of admiration should be given to an actor who shares our nature do I then love that in a man which I also a man would hate to be man is himself a great deep thou does number his very hairs oh Lord and they do not fall to the ground without thee and yet the hairs of his heads are more readily numbered than are his affections and the movements of his heart but that orator whom I admired so much was the kind of man I wished myself to be thus I aired through a swelling pride and was carried about with every wind but through it all I was being piloted by thee though most secretly and how is it that I know whence comes my confident confession to thee that I loved him more because of the love of those who praised him than for the things they praised in him because if he had gone unpraised and these same people had criticized him and had spoken the same things of him in a tone of scorn and disapproval I should never have been kindled and provoked a love him and yet his qualities would not have been different nor would he have been different himself only the appraisals of the spectators see where the helpless soul lies prostrate that is not yet sustained by the stability of truth just as the breezes of speech blow from the breast of the opinionated so also the soul is tossed this way and that driven forward and backward and the light is obscured to it and the truth not seen and yet there it is in front of us and to me it was a great matter that both my literary work and my zest for learning should be known by that man for if he approved them I would be even more fond of him but if he disapproved this vain heart of mine devoid of thy steadfastness would have been offended and so I meditated on the problem of the beautiful and the fitting and dedicated my essay on it to him I regarded it admiringly though no one else joined me in doing so Chapter 15 but I had not seen how the main point in these great issues lie really in thy craftsmanship O omnipotent one who alone doeth great wonders and so my mind range through the corporeal forms and I defined and distinguish as beautiful that which is so in itself and as fit that which is beautiful in relation to some other thing this argument I supported by corporeal examples and I turned my attention to the nature of the mind but the false opinions which I held concerning spiritual things prevented me from seeing the truth still the very power of truth forced itself onto my gaze and I turned my throbbing soul away from the incorporeal substance to qualities of line and colour and shape and because I could not perceive these with my mind I concluded that I could not perceive my mind and since I loved the peace which is in virtue and hated the discord which is in vice I distinguished between the unity there is in virtue and the discord there is in vice I conceived that unity consisted of the rational soul and the nature of truth and the highest good but I imagined that in the disunity there was some kind of substance of irrational life and some kind of entity in the supreme evil this evil I thought was not only a substance but real life as well and yet I believed that it did not come from thee oh my god from whom there are all things and the first I called a monad as if it were a soul without sex the other I called a dyad which showed itself in anger in deeds of violence in deeds of passion and lust but I did not know what I was talking about for I had not understood nor had I been taught that evil is not a substance at all and that our soul is not that supreme and unchangeable good for just as in violence acts if the emotion of the soul from whence the violent impulse springs is depraved and asserts itself incidentally and mutinously and just as in the acts of passion if the affection of the soul which gives rise to the carnal desires is unrestrained so also in the same way errors and false opinions contaminate life if the rational soul itself is depraved thus it was then with me for I was ignorant that my soul had to be enlightened by another light if it was to be partaker of the truth since it is not itself the essence of truth for thou wilt light my lamp the Lord my God will lighten the darkness and of his fullness have we all received for that was the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world for in thee there is no variableness neither shadow of turning but I pushed on toward thee and was pressed back by thee that I might know the taste of death for thou resistest the proud and what greater pride could there be for me than with a marvellous madness to assert myself to be that nature which thou art I was mutable this much was clear enough to me because my very longing to become wise arose out of a wish to change from worse to better yet I chose rather to think thee mutable than to think that I was not as thou art for this reason I was thrust back thou disresist my fickle pride thus I went on imagining corporeal forms and since I was flesh I accused the flesh and since I was a wind that passes away I did not return to thee but went wandering and wandering on toward those things that have no being neither in thee nor in me nor in the body these fancies were not created for me by thy truth but conceived by my own vain conceit out of sensory notions and I used to ask thy faithful children my own fellow citizens from whom I stood unconsciously exiled I used flippantly and foolishly to ask them why then does the soul which God created err? but I would not allow anyone to ask me why then does God err? I prefer to contend that thy immutable substance was involved in error through necessity rather than admit that my own mutable substance had gone astray of its own free will and had fallen into error as its punishment I was about 26 or 27 when I wrote these books analysing and reflecting upon those sensory images that I remembered in the ears of my heart I was straining those ears to hear thy inward melody oh sweet truth pondering on the beautiful and the fitting and longing to stay and hear thee and to rejoice greatly at the bridegroom's voice yet I could not for by the clamour of my own errors I was hurried outside myself and by the weight of my own pride I was sinking ever lower you did not make me to hear joy and gladness nor did the bones rejoice which were not yet humbled and what did it profit me that when I was scarcely 20 years old a book of Aristotle's entitled the ten categories fell into my hands on the very title of this I hung as on something great and divine since my rhetoric master at Carthage and others who had reputations for learning were always referring to it with such swell in pride I read it by myself and understood it and what did it mean that when I discussed it with others they said that even with the assistance of tutors who not only explained it orally but drew many diagrams in the sand they scarcely understood it and could tell me no more about it than I had acquired in the reading of it by myself alone for the book appeared to me to speak plainly enough about substances such as man and of their qualities such as the shape of a man his kind his stature how many feet high and his family relationship his status when born whether he is sitting or standing he is shod or armed or is doing something or having something done to him and all the innumerable things that are classified under these nine categories of which I have given some examples or under the chief category of substance what did all this profit me since it actually hindered me when I imagined that whatever existed was comprehended within those ten categories I tried to interpret them oh my god so that even thy wonderful and unchangeable unity could be understood as subjected to their own magnitude or beauty as if they existed in thee as their subject as they do in corporeal bodies whereas thou art thyself thy own magnitude and beauty a body is not great or fair because it is a body because even if it were less great or less beautiful it would still be a body but my conception of thee was falsity not truth it was a figment of my own misery not the stable ground of thy blessedness for thou has commanded and it was carried out in me that the earth should bring forth briars and thorns for me and that with heavy labour I should gain my bread and what did it profit me that I could read and understand for myself all the books I could get in the so-called liberal arts when I was actually a worthless slave of wicked lust I took delight in them not knowing the real source of what it was in them for I had my back toward the light and my face toward the things on which the light falls so that my face which looked toward the illuminated things was not itself illuminated whatever was written in any of the fields of rhetoric or logic geometry music or arithmetic I could understand without any great difficulty and without the instruction of another man all this thou knowest O Lord my God because both quickness in understanding and acuteness in insight are thy gifts yet for such gift I made no thank-offering to thee therefore my abilities served not my profit but rather my loss since I went about trying to bring so larger part of my substance into my own power and I did not store up my strength for thee into the far country to prostitute my gifts in disordered appetite and what did these abilities profit me if I did not put them to good use I did not realise that those arts were understood with great difficulty even by the studious and the intelligent until I tried to explain them to others and discover that even the most proficient in them followed my explanations all too slowly since I still suppose that thou O Lord God the truth was a bright and vast body and that I was a particle of that body O perversity gone too far but so it was with me and I do not blush O my God to confess thy mercies to me in thy presence ought to call upon thee any more than I did not blush when I openly avowed my blasphemies to thee what good was it for me that my nimble wit could run through those studies and disentangle all those knotty volumes without help from a human teacher since all the while I was airing so hatefully and with such sacrilege as far as the right substance of pious faith was concerned and what kind of burden was it for thy little ones to have a far slower wit since they did not use it since they remained in the nest of thy church to become safely fledged and to nourish the wings of love by the food of a sound faith O Lord our God under the shadow of thy wings let us hope defenders and supporters thou wilt bear us up when we are little and even down to our grey hairs thou wilt carry us for our stability when it is in ourselves then it is all unstable our good lives forever with thee and when we turn from thee with a version we fall into our own perversion let us now O Lord return that we be not overturned because with thee our good lives without blemish for our good is thee thyself and we need not fear that we shall find no place to return to because we fell away from it for in our absence our home which is thy eternity does not fall away end of book 4 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Mark Barnes www.414.org.uk Confessions by Saint Augustine translated by Albert C. Outlaw Book 5 Chapter 1 Accept this sacrifice of my confessions from the hand of my tongue thou didst form it and has prompted it to praise thy name heal all my bones and let them say oh Lord who is like unto thee it is not that one who confesses to thee instructs thee as to what goes on within him for the closed heart does not bar thy sight into it nor does the hardness of our heart hold back thy hands for thou canst soften it at will either by mercy or in vengeance and there is no one who can hide himself from thy heat but let my soul praise thee that it may love thee and let it confess thy mercies to thee that it may praise thee thy whole creation praises thee without ceasing the spirit of man by his own lips by his own voice lifted up to thee animals and lifeless matter by the mouths of those who meditate upon them thus our souls may climb out of their weariness toward thee and lean on those things which thou hast created and pass through them to thee who did create them in a marvellous way with thee there is refreshment and true strength chapter 2 let the restless and the unrighteous depart and flee away from thee even so thou seest them and thy eye pierces through the shadows in which they run for lo and how have they harmed thee or in what way have thou discredited thy power which is just and perfect in its rule even to the last item in creation indeed where would they fly when they fled from thy presence wouldst thou be unable to find them but they fled that they might not see thee who sores them that they might be blinded and stumble into thee and nothing that thou hast made the unrighteous stumble against thee that they might be justly plagued fleeing from thy gentleness and colliding with thy justice and falling on their own rough paths for in truth they do not know that thou art everywhere that no place contains thee and that only thou art near even to those who go farthest from thee let them therefore turn back and seek thee and low thou art there in their hearts there in the hearts of those who confess to thee let them cast themselves upon thee and weep on thy bosom after all their weary wanderings and thou wilt gently wipe away their tears and they weep the more and rejoice in their weeping since thou, O Lord, art not in the way that thou art in the way that thou art in the way since thou, O Lord, art not a man of flesh and blood thou art the Lord who canst remake what thou didst make and canst comfort them and where was I when I was seeking thee there thou wasst before me but I had gone away even from myself and I could not find myself much less thee Chapter 3 Let me now bear in the sight of God the 29th year of my age there had just come to Carthage a certain bishop of the Manacheans foused us by name a great snare of the devil and many were entangled by him through the charm of his eloquence now even though I found this eloquence admirable I was beginning to distinguish the charm of words from the truth of things which I was eager to learn to distinguish as much as I did the kind of meat that their famous foused us served up to me in it his fame had run before him as one very skilled in an honourable learning and preeminently skilled in the liberal arts and as I had already read and stored up in memory many of the injunctions of the philosophers I began to compare some of their doctrines with the tedious fables of the philosophers whose power reached far enough to enable them to form a fair judgement of the world even though they had not discovered the sovereign lord of it all for thou art great, oh lord and thou hast respect unto the lowly but the proud thou knowest a far off thou drawest near to none but the contrite in heart and can't not be found by the proud even if in their inquisitive skill they may number the stars and map out the constellations and trace the courses of the planets for it is by the mind and the intelligence which thou gavest them that they investigate these things they have discovered much and have foretold many years in advance the day, the hour and the extents of all the eclipses of those luminaries the sun and the moon their calculations did not fail and it came to pass and they wrote down the rules they had discovered so that to this day they may be read and from them may be calculated in what year and month and day and hour of the day and at what quarter of it's light either the moon or the sun will be eclipsed and it will come to pass just as predicted and men who are ignorant in these matters marvel and are amazed by this pride withdraw from thee and forsake thy light they foretell an eclipse of the sun before it happens but they do not see their own eclips which is even now occurring for they do not ask as religious men should what is the source of the intelligence by which they investigate these matters moreover when they discover that thou didst make them they do not give themselves up to thee that thou mightest preserve and offer as sacrifice to thee what they have made of themselves for they do not slaughter their own pride as they do the sacrificial fowls nor their own curiosities by which like the fishes of the sea they wander through the unknown paths of the deep nor do they curb their own extravagances as they do those of the beasts of the field and that thou, O Lord a consuming fire may spurn up their mortal cares and renew them into immortality they do not know the way which is thy word by which thou discreate all the things that are and also the men who measure them and the senses by which they perceive what they measure and the intelligence whereby they discern the patterns of measure thus they know not that thy wisdom is not a matter of measure but the only begotten have been made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and have been numbered among us and paid tribute to Caesar and they do not know this way by which they could descend from themselves to him in order to ascend through him to him they did not know this way and so they fancied themselves exalted to the stars and the shining heavens and lo, they fell upon the earth and their foolish heart was taken away they saw many true things about the creature but they do not seek with true piety for the truth the architect of creation and hence they do not find him or if they do find him and know that he is God they do not glorify him as God neither are they thankful but become vain in their imagination and say that they themselves are wise and attributable to the truth they do not find him or if they do find him and know that he is God they attribute to themselves what is thine at the same time with the most perverse blindness they wish to attribute to thee their own quality so that they load their lies on thee who are the truth changing the glory of the incorruptible God for an image of corruptible man and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things they exchange thy truth for a lie and worshiped yet I remembered many a true saying of the philosophers about the creation and I saw the confirmation of their calculations in the orderly sequence of seasons and in the visible evidence of the stars and I compared this with the doctrines of Manny who in his voluminous folly wrote many books on these subjects but I could not discover their any account of either the solstices or the eclipses of the sun and moon or anything of the sort that I had learned in the books of secular philosophy but still I was ordered to believe even where the ideas did not correspond with even when they contradicted the rational theories established by mathematics and my own eyes but were very different chapter 4 yet is any man pleasing to thee because he knows these things? no for surely that man is unhappy who knows these things and does not know thee and that man is happy who knows thee even though he does not know these things he who knows both thee and these things is not the more blessed for his learning for thou only art his blessing if knowing thee as God he glorifies thee and gives thanks for just as that man who knows how to possess a tree and give thanks to thee for the use of it although he may not know how many feet high it is or how wide it spreads is better than the man who can measure it and count all its branches but neither owns it nor knows or loves its creator just so is a faithful man who possesses the world's wealth as though he had nothing and possesses all things although he does not know the circlings of the great bear just so it is foolish to doubt that this faithful man may truly be better than the one who can measure the heavens and number the stars and weigh the elements but who is forgetful of thee who has set in order all things in number weight and measure chapter 5 and who ordered this manny to piety for thou hath said to man behold godliness is wisdom and of this he might have been ignorant however perfectly he may have known these other things yet since he did not know even these other things and most impudently dared to teach them it is clear that he had no knowledge of piety for even when we had a knowledge of this worldly law he was folly to make a profession of it when piety comes from confession to thee from piety therefore manny had gone astray and all his show of learning only enabled the truly learned to perceive from his ignorance of what they knew how little he was to be trusted to make plain these more really difficult matters for he did not aim to be lightly esteemed but went around trying to persuade men the comforter and enricher of thy faithful ones was personally resident in him with full authority and therefore when he was detected in manifest errors about the sky, the stars the movements of the sun and moon even though these things do not relate to religious doctrine the empires presumption of the man became clearly evident for he not only taught things about which he was ignorant but also perverted them to pride so foolish and mad that he sought to claim that his own utterances were as if they had been those of a divine person when I hear of a Christian brother ignorance of these things or in error concerning them I can tolerate his uninformed opinion and I do not see that any lack of knowledge as to the form or nature of this material creation can do him much harm as long as he does not hold of all but if he thinks that his secular knowledge pertains to the essence of the doctrine of piety or ventures to assert dogmatic opinions in matters in which he is ignorant there lies the injury and yet even a weakness such as this in the infancy of our faith is tolerated by our mother charity until the new man can grow up until a perfect man and not be carried away but many had presumed to be at once the teacher, author, guide and leader of all whom he could persuade to believe this so that all who followed him believed that they were following not an ordinary man but thy Holy Spirit and who would not judge that such great madness when it once stood convicted of false teaching should then be aboard and utterly rejected of longer and shorter days and nights and the eclipses of sun and moon and whatever else I read about in other books could be explained consistently with his theories if they could have been so explained there would still have remained a doubt in my mind whether the theories were right or wrong yet I was prepared on the strength of his reputed godliness to rest my faith on his authority for the whole of the nine years that I listened with unsettled mind to the Manachean teaching I had been looking forward with unbounded eagerness to the arrival of this Faustus for all the other members of the sect that I happened to meet when they were unable to answer the questions I raised always referred me to his coming they promised that in discussion with him these and even greater difficulties if I had them cleared away when at last he did come I found him to be a man of pleasant speech who spoke of the very same things they themselves did although more fluently and in a more agreeable style but what profit was there to me in the elegance of my cup bearer since he could not offer me the more precious draft for which I thirsted my ears had already had their fill of such stuff now it did not seem any better because it was better expressed nor more true because it was dressed up in rhetoric nor could I think the man's soul necessarily wise because his face was comely and his language eloquent but they who extolled him to me were not competent judges they thought him able and wise because his eloquence delighted them at the same time I realised that there is another who is suspicious even of truth itself if it is expressed in smooth and flowing language but thou, oh my God has already taught me in wonderful and marvellous ways and therefore I believed because it is true that thou dis-teach me and that beside thee there is no other teacher of truth wherever truth shines forth already I had learned from thee that because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true nor because it is uttered with stammering lips should it be supposed false nor again is it necessarily true because rudely uttered nor untrue because the language is brilliant wisdom and folly both are like meats that are wholesome and unwholesome and words are like town-made or rustic vessels both kinds of food may be served in either kind of dish that eagerness therefore with which I had so long awaited this man was in truth delighted with his action and feeling in a disputation and with the fluent and apt words with which he clothed his ideas I was delighted therefore and I joined with others and even exceeded them in exulting and praising him yet it was a sort of annoyance to me that in his lecture room I was not allowed to introduce and raise any of those questions that troubled me in a familiar exchange of discussion with him soon as I found an opportunity for this and gained his ear at a time when it was not inconvenient for him to enter into a discussion with me and my friends I discovered at once that he knew nothing of the liberal arts except grammar and that only in an ordinary way he had however read some of Tully's orations a very few books of Seneca and some of the poets and such few books of his own sect as were written in good Latin with this meager learning and his daily practice in speaking he had acquired a sort of eloquence which proved the more delightful and enticing because it was under the direction of a ready wit and a sort of native grace was this not even as I now recall it oh Lord my God judge of my conscience my heart and my memory are laid open before thee who watched even then guiding me by the secret impulse of thy providence and were set in my shameful errors before my face for as soon as it became plain to me that Faustus was ignorant in those arts in which I believed him eminent I began to despair of his being able to clarify and explain all these perplexities that troubled me though I realised that such ignorance need not have affected the authenticity of his piety if he had not been a Manachean for their books are full of long fables about the sky and the stars and the moon and I had ceased to believe him able to show me in any satisfactory fashion what I so ardently desired whether the explanations contained in the Manachean books were better or at least as good as the mathematical explanations I had read elsewhere but when I proposed that these subjects should be considered and discussed he quite modestly did not dare to undertake the task for he was aware that he had no knowledge of these things but he was not one of those talkative people from whom I had endured so much who undertook to teach me what I wanted to know and then said nothing Faustus had a heart which if not right toward thee was at least not altogether false toward himself for he was not ignorant of his own ignorance and he did not choose to be entangled in a controversy from which he could not draw back or retire gracefully for this I liked him all the more for the modesty of an ingenious mind is a finer thing than the acquisition of that knowledge I desired and this I found to be his attitude towards all abstruse and difficult questions thus the zeal with which I had plunged into the Manachean system was checked and I despaired even more of their other teachers the very famous among them had turned out so poorly in the various matters that puzzled me and so I began to occupy myself with him in the study of his own favourite pursuit that of literature in which I was already teaching a class as a professor of rhetoric among the young Carthaginian students with Faustus then I read whatever he himself wished to read or what I judged suitable to his bent of mind endeavors to make further progress in Manacheanism came completely to an end through my acquaintance with that man I did not wholly separate myself from them but as one who had not yet found anything better I decided to content myself for the time being with what I had stumbled upon one way or another until by chance something more desirable should present itself with Faustus who had entrapped so many to their death though neither willing nor witting it now began to loosen the snare in which I had been caught for thy hands, oh my God in the hidden design of thy providence did not desert my soul and out of the blood of my mother's heart through the tears that she poured out by day and by night there was a sacrifice offered to thee for me and by marvellous ways for it was thou, oh my God, who did it for the steps of a man are ordered by the Lord and he shall choose his way how shall we attain salvation without thy hand remaking what it had already made this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Mark Barnes www.414.org.uk confessions by St Augustine translated by Albert C. Outler Book 5 Chapter 8 Thou did so deal with me, therefore that I was persuaded to go to Rome and teach there what I had been teaching at Carthage I had been teaching at Carthage I had been teaching at Carthage I had been teaching at Carthage and how I was persuaded to do this I will not omit to confess to thee for in this also the profoundest workings of thy wisdom and thy constant mercy toward us must be pondered and acknowledged I did not wish to go to Rome because of the richer fees and the higher dignity which my friends promised me there though these considerations did affect my decision my principle and almost soul motive was that I had been informed that the students there studied more quietly and were better kept under the control of stern discipline so that they did not capriciously and impudently rush into the classroom of a teacher not their own indeed they were not admitted at all without the permission of the teacher at Carthage on the contrary there was a shameful and intemperate license among the students brutally and with furious gestures would disrupt the discipline which the teacher had established for the good of his pupils many outrages they perpetrated with astounding effrontery things that would be punishable by law if they were not sustained by custom thus custom makes plain that such behavior is all the more worthless because it allows men to do what thy eternal law though the very blindness with which they act is their punishment and they suffer far greater harm than they inflict the manners that I would not adopt as a student I was compelled as a teacher to endure in others and so I was glad to go where all who knew the situation assured me that such conduct was not allowed but thou owe my refuge and my portion in the land of the living I might therefore be pulled away from it and change my worldly habitation for the preservation of my soul at the same time thou didst offer me at Rome an enticement through the agency of men enchanted with this death in life by their insane conduct in the one place and their empty promises in the other to correct my wandering footsteps thou did secretly employ their perversity and my own for those who disturbed my tranquility were blinded by shameful madness and also those who allured me elsewhere had nothing better than the earth's cunning and I who hated actual misery in the one place sought fictitious happiness in the other thou knewest the cause of my going from one country to the other O God but thou didst not disclose it either to me or to my mother who grieved deeply over my departure and followed me down to the sea she clasped me tight in her embrace will in either to keep me back or to go with me but I deceived her pretending that I had a friend whom I could not leave until he had a favorable wind to set sail thus I lied to my mother and such a mother and escaped for this too thou didst mercifully pardon me fool that I was from the waters of the sea for the water of thy grace so that when I was purified by that the fountain of my mother's eyes from which she had daily watered the ground for me as she prayed to thee should be dried and since she refused to return without me I persuaded her with some difficulty to remain that night in a place quite close to our ship where there was a shrine in memory of the blessed Cyprian secretly and she remained to pray and weep and what was it, O Lord that she was asking of thee in such a flood of tears but that thou wouldst not allow me to sail but thou taken thy own secret counsel and noted the real point to her desire did not grant what she was then asking in order to grant to her the thing that she had always been asking the wind blew and filled our sails and the shore dropped out of sight wild with grief she was there the next morning and filled thy ears with complaints and groans which thou didst disregard although at the very same time thou was using my longings as a means and was hastening me on the fulfilment of all longing thus the earthly part of her love to me was justly purged by the scourge of sorrow still like all mothers she loved to have me with her and did not know what joy thou was preparing for her through my going away not knowing this secret end she wept and mourned and saw in her agony the inheritance of Eve seeking in sorrow what she had brought forth in sorrow and yet after accusing me of perfidy and cruelty she continued her intercession for me to thee she returned to her own home in Rome chapter 9 and lo I was received in Rome by the scourge of bodily sickness and I was very near to fall into hell burdened with all the many and grievous sins I had committed against thee, myself and others all over and above that fetter of original sin whereby we all die in Adam for thou has given me none of these things in Christ neither had he abolished the cruelty that I had incurred from thee through my sins for how could he do so by the crucifixion of a phantom which was all I supposed him to be the death of my soul was as real then as the death of his flesh appeared to me unreal and the life of my soul was as false because it was as unreal as the death of his flesh was real though I believed it not my fever increased I was on the verge of passing away and perishing for if I had passed away then where should I have gone but into the fiery torment which my misdeeds deserved measured by the truth of thy rule my mother knew nothing of this yet far away she went on praying for me and thou present everywhere didst hear her where she was and had pity on me where I was so that I regained my bodily health and was rewarded in my sacrilegious heart for that peril of death did not make me wish to be baptised I was even better when as a lad I entreated baptism of my mother's devotion as I have already related and confessed but now I had since increased in dishonour and I madly scoffed at all the purposes of thy medicine which would not have allowed me though a sinner such as I was to die a double death my mother's heart been pierced with this wound it never could have been cured for I cannot adequately tell of the love she had for me or how she still travailed for me in the spirit with a far keener anguish than when she bore me in the flesh I cannot conceive therefore how she could have been healed if my death still in my sins had pierced her in most love where then would have been all her gifts to thee nowhere but with thee but couldst thou oh most merciful God despise the contrite and humble heart of that pure and prudent widow who was so constant in her arms so gracious and attentive to thy saints never missing a visit to church twice a day morning and evening and this not for vain gossiping nor old wives fables but in order that she might listen to thee in thy sermons and thou to her in her prayers couldst thou by whose gifts she was so inspired despise and disregard the tears of such a one without coming to her aid those tears by which she entreated thee not for gold or silver and not for any changing or fleeting good but for the salvation of the soul of her son by no means oh Lord it is certain that thou wouldst near carry out the plan by which thou hast predetermined it should be done far be it from thee that thou should have deluded her in those visions and the answers she had received from thee some of which I have mentioned and others not which she kept in her faithful heart and forever beseeching urge them on thee as if they had thy own signature for thou because thy mercy and jureth forever lead to those whose debts thou hast pardoned that thou likewise does become a debtor by thy promises thou distrestore me then from that illness and distheal the son of thy handmade in his body that he might live for thee and that thou mightest endow him with a better and more certain health after this at Rome I again joined those deluding and deluded saints who's house I had fallen sick but also with those whom they called the elect for it still seemed to me that it is not we who sin but some other nature sinned in us and it gratified my pride to be beyond blame and when I did anything wrong not to have to confess that I had done wrong that thou mightest heal my soul because it had sinned against thee and I love to excuse my soul and to accuse something else inside me I knew not what but which was not I but assuredly it was I and it was my impiety that had divided me against myself that sin then was all the more incurable because I did not deem myself a sinner it was an exercable iniquity oh God omnipotent that I would have preferred to have thee defeated in me to be defeated by thee to my salvation not yet therefore has thou set a watch upon my mouth and a door around my lips that my heart might not incline to evil speech to make excuse for sin with men that work iniquity and therefore I continued still in the company of their elect but now hopeless of gain in any profit from that false doctrine and negligently even to those points which I had decided to rest content with if I could find nothing better I was now half inclined to believe that those philosophers whom they called the academics were wiser than the rest in holding that we ought to doubt everything and in maintaining that man does not have the power of comprehending any certain truth for although I had not yet understood their meaning that they thought just as they are commonly reputed to do and I did not fail openly to dissuade my host from his confidence which I observed that he had in those fictions of which the works of many are full for all this I was still on terms of more intimate friendships with these people than with others who were not of their heresy I did not indeed defend it with my former ardour but my familiarity with that group and there were many of them concealed in Rome at that time made me slower to seek any other way this was particularly easy since I had no hope of finding in thy church the truth from which they had turned me aside a lord of heaven and earth creator of all things visible and invisible and it still seemed to me most unseemly to believe that thou couldst have the form of human flesh and be bounded by the bodily shape of our limbs and when I desired to meditate on my God I did not know what to think of but a huge extended body for what did not have bodily extension did not seem to me to exist and this was the greatest and almost the sole cause of my unavoidable errors and thus I also believed that evil was a similar kind of substance and that it had its own hideous and deformed extended body either in a dense form which they called the earth or in a thin and subtle form as for example the substance of the air which they imagined as some malignant spirit penetrating that earth and because my piety still compelled me to believe that the good God never created any evil substance in the sphere of two masses one opposed to the other both infinite but with the evil more contracted and the good more expansive and from this diseased beginning the other sacrilegious followed after for when my mind tried to turn back to the Catholic faith I was cast down since the Catholic faith was not what I judged it to be and it seemed to me that I had the opportunity to regard thee my God to whom I make confession of thy mercies as infinite in all respects save that one where the extended mass of evil stood opposed to thee where I was compelled to confess that thou art finite then if I should think that thou should be confined by the form of a human body on every side and it seemed better to me to believe that no evil could truly be some kind of substance but a corporeal one at that this was because I had thus far no conception of mind except as a subtle body diffused throughout local spaces this seemed better than to believe that anything could emanate from thee which had the character that I considered evil to be in its nature and I believed that our saviour himself also thy only begotten as it were for our salvation out of the mass of thy bright shining substance so that I could believe nothing about him except what I was able to harmonise with these vain imaginations I thought therefore that such a nature could not be born of the virgin Mary without being mingled with the flesh and I could not see how the divine substance as I had conceived it could be mingled thus without being contaminated I was afraid therefore to believe that he had been born in the flesh lest I should also be compelled to believe that he had been contaminated by the flesh now will thy spiritual ones smile blandly and lovingly at me if they read these confessions yet such was I Chapter 11 furthermore the things they censured in thy scriptures I thought impossible to be defended and yet occasionally I desire to confer on various matters with someone well learned in those books to test what he thought of them for already the words of one Alpideus who spoke and disputed face to face against the same Manicheans had begun to impress me even when I was at Carthage because he brought four things out of the scriptures that were not easily withstood to which their answer appeared to me feeble one of their answers they did not give forth publicly but only to us in private when they said that the writings of the New Testament had been tampered with by unknown persons who desired to engraft the Jewish law into the Christian faith but they themselves never brought forward any uncorrupted copies of the Holy Scriptures and very much ensnared and to some extent stifled I was born down by those conceptions of bodily substance I pented under this load for the air of thy truth but I was not able to breathe it pure and undefiled Chapter 12 I set about diligently to practice what I came to Rome to do the teaching of rhetoric the first task for people to whom and through whom I had begun to be known and lo I then began to learn that other offenses were committed in Rome which I had not to bear in Africa just as I had been told those riotous disruptions by young black guards were not practiced here yet now my friends told me many of the Roman students breakers of faith who for the love of money inspire together and suddenly transfer to another teacher to evade pay in their master's fees my heart hated such people though not with a perfect hatred for doubtless I hated them more because I was to suffer from them on account of their own illicit acts still such people are base indeed they fornicate against thee for they love the transitory mockeries of temporal things and the filthy gain of the hand that grabs it they embrace the fleeting world and scorn thee who are bidest and inviteest us to return to thee and who pardonest the prostituted hubered soul when it does return to thee now I hate such crooked and perverse men although I love them if they will be corrected and come to prefer the learning they obtain to money and above all to prefer thee to such learning to those pure peace but then the wish was stronger in me for my own sake not to suffer evil from them then was my desire that they should become good for thy sake Chapter 13 when therefore the officials of Milan sent to Rome to the prefect of the city to ask that he provide them with a teacher of rhetoric for their city and to send him at the public expense to the meeting persons drunk with the Manichean vanities to be freed from whom I was going away though neither they nor I were aware of it at the time they recommended that Simachas who was then prefect after he had proved me by audition should appoint me and to Milan I came to Ambro's the Bishop famed through the whole world then, thy devoted servant, is eloquent discourse in those times, abundantly provided thy people with the flower of thy wheat, the gladness of thy oil, and the sober intoxication of thy wine. To him I was led by thee, without my knowledge, that by him I might be led to thee in full knowledge. That man of God received me as a father would, and welcomed my coming as a good bishop should, and I began to love him, of course, not at the first as a teacher of the truth, for I had entirely despaired of finding that in thy church, but as a friendly man, and I studiously listened to him, though not with the right motive, as he preached to the people. I was trying to discover whether his eloquence came up to his reputation, and whether it flowed fuller or thinner than others said it did, and thus I hung on his words intently, but as to his subject matter, I was only a careless and contemptuous listener. I was delighted with the charm of his speech, which was more erudite, though less cheerful and soothing than Faustus's style. As for subject matter, however, there could be no comparison, for the latter was wandering around in Manachean deceptions, while the former was teaching salvation most soundly. But salvation is far from the wicked, such as I was then, when I stood before him, yet I was drawing nearer, gradually, and unconsciously. Four. Although I took no trouble to learn what he said, but only to hear how he said it, for this empty concern remained foremost with me, as long as I despaired of finding a clear path from man to thee, yet, along with the eloquence I prized, there also came into my mind the ideas which I ignored, for I could not separate them. And, while I opened my heart to acknowledge how skillfully he spoke, there also came an awareness of how truly he spoke, but only gradually. First of all, his ideas had already begun to appear to me defensible, and the Catholic faith for which I suppose that nothing could be said against the onslaught of the Manacheans I now realised could be maintained without presumption. This was especially clear after I had heard one or two parts of the Old Testament explained allegorically, whereas before this, when I had interpreted them literally, they had killed me spiritually. However, when many of these passages in those books were expanded to me thus, I came to blame my own despair for having believed that no reply could be given to those who hated and scoffed at the Law and the Prophets. Yet I did not see that this was reason enough to follow their Catholic way, just because it had learned advocates who could answer objections adequately and without absurdity. Nor could I see that what I had held to hear to for should now be condemned, because both sides were equally defensible. For that way did not appear to me yet vanquished, but neither did it seem yet victorious. But now, I earnestly bent my mind to require if there was possible any way to prove the Manacheans guilty of falsehood. If I could have conceived of a spiritual substance, all their strongholds would have collapsed and been cast out of my mind. But I could not. Still, concerning the body of this world, nature as a whole, now that I was able to consider and compare such things more and more, I now decided that the majority of the philosophers held the more probable views. So, in what I thought was the method of the academics, doubting everything, and fluctuating between all the options, I came to the conclusion that the Manacheans were to be abandoned. For I judged, even in that period of doubt, that I could not remain in a sect to which I preferred some of the philosophers. But I refused to commit the cure of my fainting soul to the philosophers, because they were without the saving name of Christ. I resolved therefore to become a catechumen in the Catholic Church which my parents had so much urged upon me, until something certain shone forth by which I might guide my course.