 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 1 Chapter 1 Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised. Great is thy power, and infinite is thy wisdom. And man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation. He bears his mortality about with him, and carries the evidence of his sin, and the proof that thou dost resist the proud. Still he desires to praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation. Thou has prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou has made us for thyself, and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee. Grant me, O Lord, to know and understand, whether first to invoke thee, or to praise thee, whether first to know thee, or call upon thee. But who can invoke thee, knowing thee not? For he who knows thee not, may invoke thee as another than thou art. It may be that we should invoke thee, in order that we may come to know thee. But how shall I call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe, without a preacher? Now, they shall praise the Lord who seek him. For those who seek him shall find him, and find in him shall praise him. I will seek thee, O Lord, and call upon thee. I call upon thee, O Lord, in my faith which thou has given me, which thou hast inspired in me through the humanity of thy Son, and through the ministry of thy preacher. Chapter 2 And how shall I call upon my God, my God and my Lord? For when I call on him I ask him to come into me. And what place is there in me, into which my God can come? How could God, the God who made both heaven and earth, come into me? Is there anything in me, O Lord, my God, that can contain thee? Do even the heaven and the earth which thou has made, and in which thou didst make me, contain thee? Is it possible that since without thee nothing would be which does exist? Thou didst make it so, that whatever exists has some capacity to receive thee? Why then do I ask thee to come into me, since I also am, and could not be if thou were not in me? For I am not after all in hell, and yet thou art there too, for if I go down into hell thou art there. Therefore I would not exist, I would simply not be at all, unless I exist in thee, from whom and by whom and in whom all things are. Even so, Lord, even so. Where do I call thee to, when I am already in thee? Or from whence would thou come into me? Where beyond heaven and earth could I go, that there my God might come to me? He who hath said, I fill heaven and earth. Chapter 3 Since then thou dost fill the heaven and the earth, do they contain thee? Or dost thou fill and overflow them, because they cannot contain thee? And where dost thou pour out what remains of thee after heaven and earth are full? Or indeed, is there no need that thou, who dost contain all things, should be contained by any, since those things which thou dost fill, thou fillest by containing them? For the vessels which thou dost fill do not confine thee, since even if they were broken thou wouldst not be poured out. And, when thou art poured out on us, thou art not thereby brought down, rather we are uplifted. Thou art not scattered, rather thou dost gather us together. But when thou dost fill all things, dost thou fill them with thy whole being? Or, since not even all things together could contain thee altogether, does any one thing contain a single part? And do all things contain that same part at the same time? Do singulars contain thee singly? Do greater things contain more of thee and smaller things less? Or is it not rather that thou art wholly present everywhere, yet in such a way that nothing contains thee wholly? Chapter 4 What therefore is my God? What, I ask, but the Lord God, for who is Lord but the Lord Himself, or who is God besides our God? Most high, most excellent, most potent, most omnipotent, most merciful and most just, most secret and most truly present, most beautiful and most strong, stable yet not supported, unchangeable yet changing all things, never new, never old, making all things new, yet bringing old age upon the proud and they know it not, always working, ever at rest, gathering yet need in nothing, sustaining, pervading and protecting, creating, nourishing and developing, seeking and yet possessing all things. Thou dost love, but without passion, art jealous, yet free from care, dost repents without remorse, art angry, yet remain a serene. Thou changes thy ways, leave in thy plans unchanged, thou recoverest what thou hast never really lost, thou art never in need, but still thou dost rejoice at thy gains, art never greedy, yet demandest dividends. Men pay more than is required, so that thou dost become a debtor, yet who can possess anything at all which is not already thine? Thou o'est men nothing, yet payest out to them as if in debt to thy creature, and when thou dost cancel debts, thou loosest nothing thereby. Yet, oh my God, my life, my holy joy, what is this that I have said? What can any man say when he speaks of thee? But woe to them that keep silence, since even those who say most are dumb. Chapter 5 Who shall bring me to rest in thee? Who will send thee into my heart, so to overwhelm it that my sin shall be blotted out, and I may embrace thee, my only good? What art thou to me? Have mercy, that I may speak. What am I to thee that thou shalt command me to love thee? And if I do it not, art angry and threatenest vast misery. Is it then a trifling sorrow not to love thee? It is not so to me. Tell me, by thy mercy, oh Lord my God, what thou art to me? Say to my soul, I am your salvation. So speak, that I may hear, behold, the ears of my heart are before thee, oh Lord. Open them and say to my soul, I am your salvation. I will hasten after that voice, and I will lay hold upon thee. Hide not thy face from me. Even if I die, let me see thy face, lest I die. The house of my soul is too narrow for thee to come into me. Let it be enlarged by thee. It is in ruins. Do thou restore it? There is much about it which must offend thy eyes. I confess and know it. But who will cleanse it? Or to whom shall I cry but to thee? Cleanse thou me from my secret faults, oh Lord, and keep back thy servant from strange sins. I believe, and therefore do I speak. But thou, oh Lord, thou knowest. Have I not confessed my transgressions unto thee, oh my God, and hast thou not put away the iniquity of my heart? I do not contend in judgment with thee, who are truth itself, and I would not deceive myself, lest my iniquity lie even to itself. I do not therefore contend in judgment with thee, for if thou, Lord, should mark iniquities, oh Lord, who shall stand? Chapter 6 Still, dust and ashes as I am, allow me to speak before thy mercy. Allow me to speak, for behold, it is to thy mercy that I speak, and not to a man who scorns me. Yet perhaps even thou mightest scorn me. But when thou dost turn and attend to me, thou wilt have mercy upon me. For what do I wish to say, oh Lord, my God, but that I know not whence I came hither into this life in death? Or should I call it death in life? I do not know. And yet the consolations of thy mercy have sustained me from the very beginning, as I have heard from my fleshly parents, from whom and in whom thou disform me in time. For I cannot myself remember. Thus even though they sustained me by the consolation of woman's milk, neither my mother nor my nurses fill their own breasts, but thou through them disgive me the food of infancy according to thy ordinance and thy bounty which underlie all things. For it was thou who discourse me not to want more than thou gavest, and it was thou who gavest to those who nourished me the will to give me what thou disgive them. And they, by an instinctive affection, were willing to give me what thou had supplied abundantly. It was indeed good for them that my good should come through them, though in truth it was not from them but by them. For it is from thee, O God, that all good things come, and from my God is all my health. This is what I have since learned, as thou hast made it abundantly clear by all that I have seen thee give, both to me and to those around me. For even at the very first I knew how to suck, to lie quiet when I was full and to cry when in pain. Nothing more. Afterward I began to laugh at first in my sleep, then when waking. For this I have been told about myself and I believe it, though I cannot remember it, for I see the same things in other infants. Then, little by little, I realized where I was and wished to tell my wishes to those who might satisfy them, but I could not, for my wants were inside me and they were outside and they could not by any power of theirs come into my soul. And so I would fling my arms and legs about and cry, making the few and feeble gestures that I could, though indeed the signs were not much like what I inwardly desired and when I was not satisfied, either from not being understood because what I got was not good for me. I grew indignant that my elders were not subject to me and that those on whom I actually had no claim did not wait on me as slaves and I avenged myself on them by crying. That infants are like this, I have myself been able to learn by watching them and they, though they knew me not, have shown me better what I was like than those who knew nurses who knew me. And behold, my infancy died long ago, but I am still living. But thou, O Lord, whose life is for ever and in whom nothing dies since before the world was, indeed before all that can be called before thou wadst, and thou art the God and Lord of all thy creatures and thou abide all the stable causes of all unstable things, the unchanging sources of all changeable things and the eternal reasons of non-rational and temporal things. Tell me, thy suppliant O God, tell me, O merciful one, in pity tell a pitiful creature whether my infancy followed yet another earlier age of my life that had already passed away before it. Was it such another age which I spent in my mother's womb? But something of that sort has been suggested to me, and I have myself seen pregnant women. But what, O God, my joy, preceded that period of my life? Was I indeed anywhere or anybody? No one can explain these things to me, neither father nor mother, nor the experience of others, nor my own memory. Does thou laugh at me for asking such things? Or does thou command me to praise and confess unto thee only what I know? I give thanks to thee, O Lord, of heaven and earth, giving praise to thee for that first being and my infancy of which I have no memory, for thou hast granted to man that he should come to self-knowledge through the knowledge of others and that he should believe many things and not himself on the authority of the womenfolk. Now, clearly, I had life and being, and, as my infancy closed, I was already learning signs by which my feelings could be communicated to others. Whence could such a creature come but from thee, O Lord? Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself? Or is there any other source from which being and life save this? That thou, O Lord, hast made us thou with whom being and life are one since thou thyself art supreme being and supreme life both together. For thou art infinite, and in thee there is no change nor an end to this present day although there is a sense in which it ends in thee since all things are in thee and there would be no such thing unless thou did sustain them and since thy year shall have no end thy years are an ever present day and how many of ours and our father's days have passed through this thy day and have received from it what measure and fashion of being they had and all the days to come shall so receive and so pass away but thou art the same and all the things of tomorrow and the days yet to come and all of yesterday and the days that are passed that will gather into this thy day. What is it to me if someone does not understand this? Let him still rejoice and continue to ask what is this? Let him also rejoice and prefer to seek thee even if he fails to find an answer to seek an answer and not find thee. Chapter 7 Hear me, O God, woe to the sins of men when a man cries thus thou shouest in mercy for thou discreet the man but not the sin in him who brings to remembrance the sins of my infancy for in thy sight there is none free from sin not even the infant who has lived this to my remembrance does not each little one in whom I now observe what I no longer remember of myself in what ways in that time did I sin was it that I cried for the breast if I should now so cry not indeed for the breast but for food suitable to my condition I should be most justly laughed at and rebuked what I did then deserved rebuked but did not understand those who rebuked me neither custom nor common sense permitted me to be rebuked as we grow we root out and cast away from us such childish habits yet I have not seen anyone who is wise and who cast away the good when trying to purge the bad nor was it good even in that time to strive to get by crying what if it had been given to me would have been hurtful or to be bitterly indignant for those who because they were older not slaves either but free and wiser than I would not indulge my capricious desires was it a good thing for me to try by struggling as hard as I could to harm them for not obeying me even when it would have done me harm to have been obeyed thus the infant's innocence lies in the weakness of his body and not in the infant mind I have myself observed a baby to be jealous though it could not speak it was livid as it watched another infant at the breast who is ignorant of this mothers and nurses tell us that they cure these things by I know not what remedies but is this innocence when the fountain of milk is flowing fresh and abundant that another who needs it should not be allowed to share it even though he requires such nourishment in life yet we look leniently on such things not because they are not faults or even small faults but because they will vanish as the years pass for although we allow for such things in an infant the same things could not be tolerated patiently in an adult therefore O Lord my God Thou who gave us life to the infant and a body which as we see is furnished with senses shaped with limbs beautified with form and endowed with all vital energies for its well-being and health Thou dost command me to praise thee for these things to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praise unto his name almost high for Thou art God omnipotent and good even if Thou has done no more than these things which no other but Thou canst do Thou alone who madeest all things fair and disordered everything according to Thy law I am loath to dwell on this part of my life of which O Lord I have no remembrance about which I must trust the word of others and what I can surmise from observing other infants even if such guesses are trustworthy for it lies in the deep murk of my forgetfulness and thus is like the period which I passed in my mother's womb but if I was conceived in iniquity and in sin my mother nourished me in her womb where I pray thee O my God where O Lord or when was I Thy servant ever innocent but see now I pass over that period for what have I to do with a time from which I can recall no memories Chapter 8 Did I not then, as I grew out of infancy, come next to boy-head or rather did it not come to me and succeed my infancy my infancy did not go away for where would it go it was simply no longer present I was no longer an infant who could not speak but now a chattering boy I remember this and I have since observed how I learn to speak my elders did not teach me words by rote as they taught me letters afterwards but I myself when I was unable to communicate all I wished to say to whomever I wished by means of whimperings and grunts and various gestures of my limbs which I used to reinforce my demands I myself repeated the sounds already stored in my memory by the mind which thou O God has given me when they called something by name and pointed it out while they spoke I saw it and realized that the thing they wished to indicate was called by the name they then uttered and what they meant was made plain by the gestures of their bodies by a kind of natural language common to all nations which expresses itself through changes of countenance glances of an eye gestures and intonations which indicate a disposition and attitude either to seek or to possess to reject or to avoid so it was that by frequently hearing words different phrases I gradually identify the objects which the word stood for and have informed my mouth to repeat these signs I was thereby able to express my will thus I exchanged with those about me the verbal signs by which we express our wishes and advance deeper into the stormy fellowship of human life depending all the while upon the authority of my parents and the behest of my elders chapter 9 oh my God what miseries and mockeries did I then experience when it was impressed on me that obedience to my teachers was proper to my boyhood estate if I was to flourish in this world and distinguish myself in those tricks of speech which would gain honor for me among men and deceitful riches to this end I was sent to school to get learning the value of which I knew not the wretch that I was yet if I was slow to learn I was flogged for this was deemed praiseworthy by our forefathers and many had passed before us in the same course and thus had built up the precedent for the sorrowful road on which we too were compelled to travel multiply in labor and sorrow upon the sons of Adam about this time oh Lord I observed men pray into thee and I learned from them to conceive thee after my capacity for understanding as it was then to be some great being who though not visible to our senses was able to hear and help us thus as a boy I began to pray to thee my help and my refuge and in calling on thee broke the bands of my tongue small as I was I prayed with no slight earnestness that I might not be beaten at school and when thou didst not heed me for that would have been giving me over to my folly my elders and even my parents too who wish me no ill treated my stripes as a joke though they were then a great and grievous ill to me is there anyone oh Lord with a spirit so great who cleaves to thee with such steadfast affection or is there even a kind of obtuseness that has the same effect is there any man who by cleaving devoutly to thee is endowed with so greater courage that he can regard indifferently those racks and hooks and other torture weapons from which men throughout the world pray so fervently to be spared and can they scorn those who so greatly fear these torments just as my parents were amused at the torments with which our teachers punished us boys for we were no less afraid of our pains nor did we beseech thee less to escape them yet even so we were sinning by writing or reading or studying less than our assigned lessons for I did not oh Lord lack memory or capacity for by thy will I possessed enough for my age however my mind was absorbed only in play and I was punished for this by those who were doing the same things themselves but the idling of our elders is called business the idling of boys though quite like it is punished by those same elders and no one pities either the boys or the men for will any common sense observer agree that I was rightly punished as a boy for playin' bore just because this hindered me from learning more quickly those lessons as a man I could play at more shameful games and did he by whom I was beaten do anything different when he was worsted in some small controversy with a fellow teacher he was more tormented by anger and envy than I was when beaten by a playmate in the ball game chapter 10 and yet I sinned oh Lord my God thou ruler and creator of all natural things but of sins only the ruler I sinned oh Lord my God enacting against the precepts of my parents and of those teachers for this learning which they wished me to acquire no matter what their motives were I might have put a good account afterward I disobeyed them not because I had chosen a better way but from a sheer love of play I love the vanity of victory I love to have my ears tickled with lyin' fables which made them itch even more ardently and a similar curiosity glowed more and more in my eyes for the shows and sports of my elders yet those who put on such shows are held in such high repute that almost all desire the same for their children they are therefore willing to have them beaten if their childhood games keep them from the studies by which their parents desire them to grow up to be able to give such shows look down on these things with mercy oh Lord and deliver us who now call upon thee deliver those also who do not call upon thee that they may call upon thee and thou mayst deliver them 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. Outler Book 1 Chapter 11 Even as a boy I had heard of eternal life promised to us through the humility of the Lord our God who came down to visit us in our pride and I was signed with the sign of his cross and was seasoned with his salt even from the womb of my mother who greatly trusted in thee Thou did see oh Lord how once while I was still a child I was suddenly seized with stomach pains and was at the point of death Thou did see oh my God for even then thou was my keeper with what agitation and with what faith I solicited from the piety of my mother and from thy church which is the mother of us all the baptism of thy Christ my Lord and my God the mother of my flesh was much perplexed for with a heart pure in thy faith she was always in deep travail for my eternal salvation if I had not quickly recovered she would have provided forthwith for my initiation and washing by thy life giving sacraments confessing thee oh Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of sins so my cleansing was deferred as if it were inevitable that if I should live I would be further polluted and further because the guilt contracted by sin after baptism would be still greater and more perilous thus at that time I believed along with my mother and the whole household except my father but he did not overcome the influence of my mother's piety in me nor did he prevent my believing in Christ although he had not yet believed in him for it was her desire oh my God I acknowledge thee as my father rather than him in this thou didst aid her to overcome her husband to whom though his superior she yielded obedience in this way she also yielded obedience to thee who does so command I ask thee oh my God for I would gladly know if it be thy will to what good end my baptism was deferred at that time was it indeed for my good that the reins were slackened as it were to encourage me in sin or were they not slackened if not then why is it still bind into our ears on all side let him alone let him do as he pleases for he is not yet baptized in the matter of bodily health no one says let him alone let him be worse wounded for he is not yet cured how much better then would it have been for me to have been cured at once and if thereafter through the diligent care of friends and myself my souls restored health had been kept safe in thy keeping who gave it in the first place this would have been far better in truth but how many and great the waves of temptation which appeared to hang over me as I grew out of childhood these were foreseen by my mother and she preferred that the unformed clay should be risked to them rather than the clay moulded after Christ's image CHAPTER XII but in this time of childhood which was far less dreaded for me than my adolescence I had no love of learning and hated to be driven to it yet I was driven to it just the same and good was done for me even though I did not do it well for I would not have learned if I had not been forced to it for no man does well against his will even if what he does is a good thing neither did they who forced me do well but the good that was done me came from thee, my God for they did not care about the way in which I would use what they forced me to learn and took it for granted that it was to satisfy the inordinate desires of a rich beggary and a shameful glory but thou, Lord by whom the hairs of our head are numbered didst use for my good the error of all who pushed me on to study but my error in not being willing to learn thou didst use for my punishment and I though so small a boy yet so great a sinner was not punished without warrant thus by the instrumentality of those who did not do well thou didst well for me and by my own sin thou didst justly punish me for it is even as thou hast ordained that every inordinate affection brings on its own punishment CHAPTER XIII but what were the causes for my strong dislike of Greek literature which I studied from my boyhood even to this day I have not fully understood them for Latin I loved exceedingly not just the rudiments but what the grammarians teach for those beginner's lessons in reading, writing and reckoning I considered no less a burden and pain than Greek yet whence came this unless from the sin and vanity of this life for I was but flesh a wind that passeth away and cometh not again those first lessons were better assuredly because they were more certain and through them I acquired the power of reading what I find written and of writing for myself what I will in the other subjects however I was compelled to learn about the wanderings of a certain anus, oblivious of my own wanderings and to weep for Dido dead who slew herself for love and all this while I bore with dry eyes my own wretched self die into thee, oh God my life in the midst of these things for what can be more wretched than the wretched who has no pity upon himself who sheds tears over Dido dead for the love of Aeneas but who sheds no tears for his own death in not loving thee, oh God light of my heart and bread of the inner mouth of my soul oh power that links together my mind with the inmost thoughts I did not love thee and thus committed fornication against thee those around me also sinning thus cried out well done well done the friendship of this world is fornication against thee and well done well done is cried until one feels ashamed not to show himself a man in this way for my own condition I shed no tears though I wept for Dido who sought death at the sword's point while I myself was seeking the lowest rung of thy creation having forsaken thee earth, sinking back to earth again and if I had been forbidden to read these poems I would have grieved that I was not allowed to read what grieved me this sort of madness is considered more honourable and more fruitful learning than the beginner's course in which I learned to read and write but now oh my God cry unto my soul and let thy truth say to me not so, not so that first learning was far better for obviously I would rather forget the wanderings of Aeneas and all such things than forget how to write and read still over the entrance of the grammar school their hangs avail this is not so much the sign of a covering for a mystery as a curtain for error let them exclaim against me those I no longer fear while I confess to thee my God what my soul desires and let me find some rest for in blaming my own evil ways I may come to love thy holy ways neither let those cry out against me who buy and sell the baubles of literature for if I ask them if it is true as the poet says that Aeneas once came to Carthage the unlearned will reply that they do not know and the learned will deny that it is true but if I ask with what letters the name Aeneas is written all who have ever learned this will answer correctly in accordance with the conventional understanding men have agreed upon as to these signs again if I should ask which would cause the greatest inconvenience in our life if it were forgotten reading and writing or these poetical fictions who does not see what everyone would answer who had not entirely lost his own memory I heard then when as a boy I preferred those vain studies to these more profitable ones or rather loved the one and hated the other one and one are two two and two are four this was then a truly hateful song to me but the wooden horse full of its armed soldiers and the holocaust of Troy and the spectral image of cruiser were all a most delightful and vain show but why then did I dislike Greek learning which was full of such tales for Homer was skillful in inventing such poetic fictions and is most sweetly wanton yet when I was a boy he was most disagreeable to me I believe that Virgil would have the same effect on Greek boys as Homer did on me if they were forced to learn him for the tedium of learning a foreign language mingled gore into the sweetness of those Greek and myths for I did not understand a word of the language and yet I was driven with threats and cruel punishments to learn it there was also a time when as an infant I knew no Latin but this I acquired without any fear or tormenting but merely by being alert on the blandishments of my nurses the jests of those who smiled on me and the sportiveness of those who toyed with me I learned all this indeed without being urged by any pressure of punishment for my own heart urged me to bring forth its own fashion in which I could not do except by learning words not from those who taught me but those who talked to me into whose ears I could pour forth whatever I could fashion from this it is sufficiently clear that a free curiosity is more effective in learning than a discipline based on fear yet by thy ordinance O God discipline is given to restrain the excesses of freedom this ranges from the fariol of the schoolmaster to the trials of the martyr and has the effect of mingling for us a wholesome bitterness which calls us back to thee from poisonous pleasures that first drew us from thee Chapter 15 Hear my prayer O Lord let not my soul faint under thy discipline nor let me faint in confessing unto thee thy mercies whereby thou hast saved me from all my most wicked ways till thou shalt become sweet to me beyond all the allurements that I used to follow let me come to love thee holy and grasp thy hand with my whole heart that thou mayst deliver me from every temptation even unto the last and thus O Lord my King and my God may all things useful that I learned as a boy now be offered in thy service let it be that for thy service I now speak and write and reckon for when I was learning vain things thou dost impose thy discipline upon me and thou hast forgiven me my sin of delighting in those vanities in those studies I learned many a useful word but these might have been learned in matters not so vain and surely that is the safe way for youths to walk in Chapter 16 Woe unto you, O torrent of human custom! Who shall stay your course? When will you ever run dry? How long will you carry down the sons of Eve into that vast and hideous ocean which even those who have the tree for an ark can scarcely pass over? Do I not read in you the stories of Jove, the thunderer and the adulterer? How could he be both? But so it says, and the sham thunder served as a cloak for him to play at real adultery. Yet which of our gowned masters will give a tempered hearing to a man trained in their own schools who cries out and says these were Homer's fictions he transfers things human to the gods I could have wished that he would transferred divine things to us but it would have been more true if he said these are indeed his fictions but he attributed divine attributes to sinful man that crimes might not be accounted crimes and that whoever committed such crimes might appear to imitate the celestial gods and not abandoned men and yet O torrent of hell the sons of men are still cast into you and they pay fees for learning all these things and much is made of it when this goes on in the forum under the auspices of laws over and above the fees and you beat against your rocky shore and roar here words may be learned here you can attain the eloquence which is so necessary to persuade people to your way of thinking so helpful in unfolding your opinions verily they seem to argue that we should never have understood these words golden shower bosom intrigue, highest heavens other such words if Terrence had not introduced a good for nothing youth upon the stage setting up a picture of Jove as his example of lewdness and telling the tale of Jove's descending in a golden shower into Dana's bosom with a woman to intrigue see how he excites himself to lust as if by a heavenly authority when he says great Jove who shakes the earliest heavens with his thunder shall I poor mortal man not do the same I've done it and with all my heart I'm glad these words are not learned one wit more easily because of this vileness but through them the vileness is more boldly perpetrated I do not blame the words for they as it were choice and precious vessels but I do deplore the wine poured out to us by teachers already drunk and unless we also drank we were beaten without liberty of appeal to a sober judge and yet oh my God in whose presence I can now with security recall this I learned these things willingly and with delight and for it I was called a boy of good promise Chapter 17 Bear with me oh my God while I speak a little of those talents thy gifts and of the follies on which I wasted them for a lesson was given me that sufficiently disturbed my soul for in it there was both hope of praise and fear of shame or stripes the assignment was that I should reclaim the words of Juno as she raged and sorrowed that she could not bar off Italy from all the approaches of the Chukrian king I had learned that Juno had never uttered these words and yet we were compelled to stray in the footsteps of these poetic fictions and to turn into prose what the poet had said in verse in the declamation the boy won most applause whose most strikingly reproduced the passions of anger and sorrow according to the character of the vexercised my wit and tongue thy praise oh Lord thy praises might have propped up the tendrils of my heart by their scriptures and it would not have been dragged away by these empty trifles a shameful prey to the spirit of the air for there is more than one way in which men sacrifice to the fallen angels Chapter 18 but it was no wonder that I was thus carried toward vanity and was estranged from thee oh my God when men were held up as models to me who when relating a deed of theirs not in itself evil were covered with confusion if found guilty of a barbarism or a solicism but who could tell of their own licentiousness and be applauded for it so long as they did it in a full and ornate oration of well chosen words thou seest all this oh Lord and dost keep silence longsuffering and plentious in mercy and truth as thou art will thou keep silence forever even now thou drawest from that vast deep the soul that seeks thee and thirsts after thy delight whose heart said unto thee I have sought thy face thy face Lord will I seek for I was far from thy face in the dark shadows of passion for it is not by our feet nor by change of place that either turn from thee or return to thee that younger son did not charter horses or chariots or ships or fly away on visible wings or journey by walking so that in the far country he might prodigly waste all that thou disgive when he set out a kind father when thou gavest and kinder still when he return destitute that is to say to be dark and in heart this is to be far from thy face look down oh Lord God and see patiently as thou art want to do how diligently the sons of men observe the conventional rules of letters and syllables taught them by those who learned their letters beforehand while they neglect the eternal rules of everlasting salvation taught by thee it so far that if he who practices or teaches the established rules of pronunciation should speak contrary to grammatical usage without aspirating the first syllable of hominem onymen thus making it a human being he will offend men more than if he a human being were to hate another human being contrary to thy commandments it is as if he should feel that there is an enemy who could be more destructive to himself than that hatred which excites him against his fellow man or that he could destroy him whom he hates more completely than he destroys his own soul by this same hatred now obviously there is no knowledge of letters more innate than the writing of conscience against doing unto another what one would not have done to himself how mysterious thou art who dwellest on high in silence oh thou the only great God who by an unwearyed law hurlest down the penalty of blindness to unlawful desire when a man seeking the reputation of eloquence stands before a human judge while a thronging multitude surrounds him and invades against his enemy with the most fierce hatred he takes most vigilant heed that his tongue does not slip in grammatical error for example and say inter hominibus instead of inter hominies but he takes no heed less in the fury of his spirit he cut off a man from his fellow men ex hominibus these were the customs in the midst of which I was cast an unhappy boy this was the wrestling arena in which I was more fearful of perpetrating a barbarism than having done so these things I declare and confess to thee my God I was applauded by those whom I then thought it my whole duty to please for I did not perceive the gulf of infamy wherein I was cast away from thy eyes for in thy eyes what was more infamous than I was already since I displeased even my own kind and deceived with endless lies my tutor, my masters and parents all from a love of play a craving for frivolous spectacles a stage struck restlessness to imitate what I saw in those shows I pilfered from my parents' cellar and table sometimes driven by gluttony sometimes just to have something to give to other boys in exchange for their baubles which they were prepared to sell even though they liked them as well as I moreover in this kind of play I often sought dishonest victories being myself conquered by the vain desire for preeminence and what was I so unwilling to endure and what was it that I censored so violently when I caught anyone except the very things I did to others and when I was myself detected and censured I preferred to quarrel rather than to yield is this the innocence of childhood it is not, oh Lord it is not I entreat thy mercy, oh my God for these same sins as we grow older are transferred from tutors and masters they pass from nuts and balls and sparrows to magistrates and kings to gold and lands and slaves just as the rod is succeeded by more severe chastisements it was then the fact of humility in childhood that thou, oh our king didst approve as a symbol of humility when thou saidst of such is the kingdom of heaven Chapter 19 however, oh Lord to thee most excellent and most good thou architect and governor of the universe thanks would be due thee, oh our God even if thou hath not willed that I should survive my boyhood for I existed even then I lived and felt and was solicitous about my own well-being a trace of that most mysterious unity from whence I had my being I kept watch by my inner sense over the integrity of my outer senses and even in these trifles and also in my thoughts about trifles I learned to take pleasure in truth I was averse to being deceived I had a vigorous memory I was gifted with the power of speech was softened by friendship shun sorrow, meanness, ignorance is not such an animated creature as this wonderful and praiseworthy but all these are gifts of my God I did not give them to myself moreover they are good and they all together constitute myself good then is he that made me and he is my God and before him will I rejoice exceedingly every good gift which even as a boy I had but herein lay my sin that it was not in him but in his creatures myself and the rest that I sought for pleasures, honours and truths and I fell thereby into sorrows, troubles and errors thanks be to thee my joy, my pride my confidence, my God thanks be to thee for thy gifts which do thou preserve them in me for thus wilt thou preserve me and those things which thou hast given me shall be developed and perfected and I myself shall be with thee for from thee is my being CHAPTER 1 I wish now to review in memory my past wickedness and the carnal corruptions of my soul not because I still love them but that I may love thee, oh my God for love of thy love I do this recalling in the bitterness of self-examination my wicked ways that thou mayst grow sweet to me thou sweetness without deception thou sweetness happy and assured thus thou mayst gather me up out of those fragments in which I was torn to pieces while I turned away from thee oh unity and lost myself among the many for as I became a youth I longed to be satisfied with worldly things and I dared to grow wild in a succession of various and shadowy loves my form wasted away and I became corrupt in thy eyes yet I was still pleasing to my own eyes and eager to please the eyes of men CHAPTER 2 but what was it that delighted me save to love and to be loved? still I did not keep the moderate way of the love of mine to mind the bright path of friendship instead the mists of passion steamed up out of the puddley concupience of the flesh and the hot imagination of puberty and they so obscured and overcast my heart that I was unable to distinguish pure affection from unholy desire both boiled confusedly within me and dragged my unstable youth down over the cliffs of unchaste desires and plunged me into a gulf of infamy thy anger had come upon me and I knew it not I had been defeated by the clanking of the chains of my mortality the punishment for my soul's pride and I wandered farther from thee and thou dispermit me to do so I was tossed to and fro and wasted and poured out and I boiled over in my fornications and yet thou distold thy peace oh my tardy joy thou disstill hold thy peace and I wandered still farther from thee into more and yet more barren fields of sorrow in proud dejection and restless lassitude if only there had been someone to regulate my disorder and turn to my prophet the fleeting beauties of the things around me and to fix a bound to their sweetness so that the tides of my youth might have spent themselves upon the shore of marriage then they might have been tranquilized and satisfied with having children as thy law prescribes, oh Lord oh thou who does form the offspring of our death and art able also with a tender hand to blunt the thorns which were excluded from thy paradise for thy omnipotence is not far from us even when we are far from thee now on the other hand I might have given more vigilant heed to 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 cares for the things that belong to the Lord how he may please the Lord but he that is married cares for the things that are of the world how he may please his wife I should have listened more attentively to these words and thus having been made a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake I would have with greater happiness expected thy embraces but fool that I was I foamed in my wickedness as the sea and forsaken thee followed the rushing of my own tide and burst out of all thy bounds but I did not escape thy scourges for what mortal can do so thou wast always by me mercifully angry and flavoring all my unlawful pleasures with bitter discontent in order that I may seek pleasures free from discontent but where could I find such pleasure saving thee, O Lord saving thee who thus teaches by sorrow who woundest us to healers and thus killers that we may not die apart 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 held full sway in me that madness which grants indulgence to human shamelessness even though it is forbidden by thy laws and I gave myself entirely to it meanwhile my family took no care to save me from ruin by marriage for their soul care was that I should learn how to make a powerful speech and become a persuasive orator Chapter 3 now in that year my studies were interrupted I had come back from Madura a neighbour in city where I had gone to study grammar and rhetoric and the money for a further term at Carthage was being got together for me this project was more a matter of my father's ambition than of his means for he was only a poor citizen of Taghasti to whom am I narrating all this not to thee, oh my God but to my own kind in thy presence to that small part of the human race who may chance to come upon these writings and to what end that I and all who read them may understand what depth there are from which we are to cry unto thee for what is more surely heard in thy ear than a confessing heart and a faithful life who did not extol and praise my father because he went quite beyond his means to supply his son with the necessary expenses for a far journey in the interest of his education for many far richer citizens did not do so much for their children still this same father troubled himself not at all as to how I was progressing toward thee nor how chaste I was just so long as I was skillful in speaking no matter how barren I was to thy tillage, oh God who art the one true and good Lord of my heart which is thy field during that sixteenth year of my age I lived with my parents having a holiday from school for a time this idleness imposed upon me by my parents straightened finances the thorn bushes of lust drew rank about my head and there was no hand to root them out indeed when my father saw me one day at the baths and perceived that I was becoming a man and was showing the signs of adolescence he joyfully told my mother about it as if already looking forward to grandchildren rejoicing in that sort of inebriation in which the world so often forgets thee its creator and falls in love with thy creature instead of thee the inebriation of that invisible wine of a perverted will which turns and bows down to infamy but in my mother's breast thou hast already begun to build thy temple and the foundation of thy holy habitation whereas my father was only a catechumen and that but recently she was therefore startled with a holy fear and trembling for though I had not yet been baptised she feared those crooked ways in which they walk who turned their backs to thee and not their faces woe is me do I dare affirm that thou didst hold thy peace oh my God while I wandered farther from thee didst thou really then hold thy peace then whose words were they but thine which by my mother thy faithful hand made thou didst pour into my ears none of them however sank into my heart to make me do anything she deplored and as I remember warned me privately with great solicitude not to commit fornication but above all things never to defile another man's wife these appeared to me but womanish councils which I would have blushed to obey yet they were from thee and I knew it not I thought that thou was silent and that it was only she who spoke yet it was through her that thou didst not keep silent toward me and in rejecting her council I was rejecting thee I, her son the son of thy hand made thy servant but I did not realise this and rushed on headlong with such blindness that among my friends I was ashamed to be less shameless than they when I heard them boasting of their disgraceful exploits yes, and glory in all the more the worse their baseness was what is worse I took pleasure in such exploits not for the pleasure's sake only but mostly for praise what is worthy of thy tuperation except vice itself yet I made myself out worse than I was in order that I might not go lacking for praise and when in anything I had not sinned as the worst ones in the group I would still say that I had done what I had not done in order not to appear contemptible because I was more innocent than they and not to drop in their esteem because I was more chaste behold with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon I rolled in its mire and lulled about on it as if on a bed of spices and precious ointments and drawing me closely to the very centre of that city my invisible enemy trod me down and seduced me for I was easy to seduce my mother had already fled out of the midst of Babylon and was progressing, albeit slowly towards its outskirts for in counselling me to chastity she did not bear in mind what her husband had told her about me and although she knew that my passions were destructive even then and dangerous for the future she did not think that they should be restrained by the bonds of conjugal affection if indeed they could not be cut away to the quick she took no heed of this for she was afraid lest a wife should prove a hindrance and a burden to my hopes these were not her hopes of the world to come which my mother had in thee but the hope of learning which both my parents were too anxious that I should acquire my father because he had little or no thought of thee and only vain thoughts for me my mother because she thought that the usual course of study would not only be no hindrance but actually a furtherant toward my eventual return to thee this much I conjecture recalling as well as I can the temperance of my parents meantime the reins of discipline were slackened on me so that without the restraint of due severity I might play at whatsoever I fancied even to the point of disoluteness and in all this there was that mist which shut out from my sight the brightness of thy truth, oh my God and my iniquity bulged out as it were with fatness Chapter 4 Theft is punished by thy law, O Lord and by the law written in men's hearts which not even ingrained wickedness can erase for what thief will tolerate another thief stealing from him even a rich thief will not tolerate a poor thief who is driven to theft by want yet I had a desire to commit robbery and did so, compelled to it by neither hunger nor poverty but through a contempt for well-doing and a strong impulse to iniquity for I pilfered something which I already had in sufficient measure and of much better quality I did not desire to enjoy what I stole but only the theft and the sin itself there was a pear tree close to our own vineyard heavily laden with fruit which was not tempting either for its colour or for its flavour late one night having prolonged our games in the streets until then as our bad habit was a group of young scoundrels and I among them went to shake and rob this tree we carried off a huge load of pears not to eat ourselves but to dump out to the hogs after barely tasting some of them ourselves doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden such was my heart, O God such was my heart which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there when I was being gratuitously wanton having no inducement to evil but the evil itself it was foul and I loved it I loved my own undoing I loved my error not that for which I erred but the error itself a depraved soul falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself Chapter 5 Now there is a comeliness in all beautiful bodies and in gold and silver and all things the sense of touch has its own power to please and the other senses find their proper objects in physical sensation worldly honor also has its own glory and so do the powers to command and to overcome and from these there springs up the desire for revenge yet in seeking these pleasures we must not depart from thee, O Lord nor deviate from thy law the life which we live here has its own peculiar attractiveness because it has a certain measure of comeliness of its own and a harmony with all these inferior values the bond of human friendship has a sweetness of its own binding many souls together as one yet because of these values sin is committed because we have an inordinate preference for these goods of a lower order and neglect the better and the higher good neglecting thee, O our Lord God and thy truth and thy law for these inferior values have their delights but not at all equal to my God who have made them all for in him do the righteous delight and he is the sweetness of the upright in heart when therefore we inquire why a crime was committed we do not accept the explanation unless it appears that there was the desire to obtain some of those values which we designate inferior or else a fear of losing them for truly they are beautiful and comely though in comparison with the superior and celestial goods they are abject and contemptible a man has murdered another man what was his motive? either he desired his wife or his property or else he would steal to support himself or else he was afraid of losing something to him or else having been injured he was burning to be revenged would a man commit murder without a motive taking delight simply in the act of murder? who would believe such a thing? even for that savage and brutal man of whom it was said that he was gratuitously wicked and cruel there is still a motive assigned to his deeds let through idleness he says hand or heart should grow inactive and to what purpose? why? even this, that having once got possession of the city through his practice of his wicked ways he might gain honors, empire and wealth and thus be exempt from the fear of the laws and from financial difficulties in supplying the needs of his family and from the consciousness of his own wickedness so it seems that even Catiline himself loved not his own villainies but something else and it was this that gave him the motive for his crimes Chapter 6 what was it in you, O theft of mine that I, poor wretch, doted on you deed of darkness in that sixteenth year of my age beautiful you were not for you were a theft but are you anything at all so that I could analyze the case with you? those pairs that we stole were fair to the sight because they were thy creation O beauty beyond compare O creator of all O thou good God God the highest good and my true God those pairs were truly pleasant to the sight but it was not for them that my miserable soul lusted for I had an abundance of better pairs I stole those simply that I might steal for having stolen them I threw them away my sole gratification in them was my own sin which I was pleased to enjoy for if any one of those pairs entered my mouth the only good flavor it had was my sin in eating it and now, O Lord my God I ask what it was in that theft of mine that caused me such delight for behold it had no beauty of its own certainly not the source of beauty that exists in justice and wisdom nor such as is in the mind memory senses and the animal life of man nor yet the kind that is the glory and beauty of the stars in their courses nor the beauty of the earth nor the sea teeming with spawning life and placing in birth that which dies and decays indeed it did not have that false and shadowy beauty which attends the deceptions of vice for thus we see pride where in the mask of high spiritedness although only thou, O God, art high above all ambition seeks honor and glory whereas only thou shouldst be honors above all and glorified forever the powerful man seeks to be feared because of his cruelty but who ought really to be feared but God only what can be forced away or withdrawn out of his power when or where or wither or by whom the enticements of the wanton claim the name of love and yet nothing is more enticing than thy love nor is anything loved more healthfully than thy truth bright and beautiful above all curiosity prompts a desire for knowledge whereas it is only thou who knowest all things supremely indeed ignorance and foolishness themselves go masked under the names of simplicity and innocence yet there is no being that has true simplicity like thine and none is innocent as thou art thus it is that by a sinner's own deeds he is himself harmed human sloth pretends to long for rest but what sure rest is there saving the Lord luxury would vain be called plenty and abundance but thou art the fullness and unfailing abundance of unfading joy prodigality presents a show of liberality but thou art the most lavish giver of all good things covetousness desires to possess much but thou art already the possessor of all things envy contends that its aim is for excellence but what is so excellent as thou anger seeks revenge but who avenges more justly than thou fear recalls at the unfamiliar and the sudden changes which threaten things beloved and is wary for its own security but what can happen that is unfamiliar or sudden to thee or who can deprive thee of what thou lovest where really is there unshaken security save with thee grief languishes for things lost in which desire had taken delight because it wills to have nothing taken from it just as nothing can be taken from thee thus the soul commits fornication when she is turned from thee and seeks apart from thee what she cannot find pure and untainted until she returns to thee all things thus imitate thee but pervertedly when they separate themselves far from thee and raise themselves up against thee but even in this act of perverse imitation they acknowledge thee to be creator of all nature and recognize that there is no place wither they can altogether separate themselves from thee what was it then that I loved in that theft and wherein was I imitating my lord even in a corrupt and perverted way did I wish if only by gesture to rebel against thy law even though I had no power to do so actually so that even as a captive I might produce a sort of counterfeit liberty by doing with impunity deeds that were forbidden in a deluded sense of omnipotence behold this servant of thine fleeing from his lord and following a shadow oh rottenness oh monstrousness of life and abyss of death could I find pleasure only in what was unlawful and only because it was unlawful Chapter 7 what shall I render unto the lord for the fact that while my memory recalls these things my soul no longer fears them I will love thee, oh lord and thank thee and confess to thy name because thou hast put away from me such wicked and evil deeds to thy grace I attribute it and to thy mercy that thou hast melted away my sin as if it were ice to thy grace also I attribute whatsoever of evil I did not commit for what might I not have done loving sin as I did just for the sake of sinning yea all the sins that I confess now to have been forgiven me both those which I committed willfully and those which by thy providence I did not commit what man is there who when reflecting upon his own infirmity dares to ascribe his chastity and innocence to his own powers so that he should love thee less as if he were in less need of thy mercy in which thou forgives the transgressions of those that return to thee as for the man who when called by thee obeyed thy voice and shunned those things which he here reads of me as I recall and confess them of myself let him not despise me for I who was sick have been healed by the same physician by whose aid it was that he did not fall sick or rather was less sick than I and for this let him love thee just as much indeed all the more as he sees me restored from such a great wickedness of sin by the self-same saviour by whom he sees himself preserved from such a weakness Chapter 8 What profit did I a wretched one receive from those things which when I remember them now cause me shame above all from that theft which I loved only for the theft's sake and as the theft itself was nothing I was all the more wretched in that I loved it so yet by myself alone I would not have done it I still recall how I felt about this then I could not have done it alone I loved it then because of the companionship of my accomplices with whom I did it I did not therefore love the theft alone yet indeed it was only the theft that I loved for the companionship was nothing what is this paradox who is it that can explain to me but God who illumines my heart and searches out the dark corners thereof what is it that has prompted my mind to inquire about it to discuss and to reflect upon all this for had I at that time loved the pairs that I stole and wished to enjoy them I might have done so alone if I could have been satisfied with a mere act of theft by which my pleasure was served nor did I need to have that itching of my own passions inflamed by the encouragement of my accomplices for since the pleasure I got was not from the pairs it was in the crime itself enhanced by the companionship of my fellow sinners Chapter 9 by what passion then was I animated it was undoubtedly depraved and a great misfortune for me to feel it but still what was it who can understand his errors we laughed because our hearts were tickled at the thought of deceiving the owners who had no idea of what we were doing and would have strenuously objected yet again why did I find such delight in doing this which I would not have done alone is it that no one readily laughs alone no one does so readily but still sometimes when men are by themselves and no one else is about a fit of laughter will overcome them nothing very droll presents itself to their sense or mind yet alone I would not have done it alone I could not have done it at all behold my God the lively review of my soul's career is laid bare before thee I would not have committed that theft alone my pleasure in it was not what I stole but rather the act of stealing nor would I have enjoyed doing it alone indeed I would not have done it oh friendship all unfriendly you strange seducer of the soul who hungers for mischief from impulses of mirth and wantonness who craves another's loss without any desire for one's own profit or revenge so that when they say let's go let's do it we are ashamed not to be shameless chapter 10 who can unravel such a twisted and tangled knottyness it is unclean I hate to reflect upon it I hate to look on it but I do long for thee oh righteousness and innocence so beautiful and comely to all virtuous eyes I long for thee with an insatiable satiety with thee is perfect rest and life unchanging he who enters into thee enters into the joy of his Lord and shall have no fear and shall achieve excellence in the excellent I fell away from thee oh my God and in my youth I wandered too far from thee my true support and I became to myself a wasteland End of book 2 Confessions by Saint Augustine 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 1 I came to Carthage where a cauldron of unholy loves was seething and bubbling all around me I was not in love as yet but I was in love with love and from a hidden hunger I hated myself for not feeling more intensely a sense of hunger I was looking for something to love for I was in love with loving and I hated security and a smooth way free from snares within me I had a dearth of that inner food which is thyself my God although that dearth caused me no hunger and I remained without any appetite for incorruptible food not because I was already filled with it but because the emptier I became the more I loathed it because of this my soul was unhealthy and full of sores it exuded itself forth itching to be scratched by scraping on the things of the senses yet had these things no soul they would certainly not inspire our love to love and to be loved was sweet to me and all the more when I gained the enjoyment of the body of the person I loved thus I polluted the spring of friendship with a filth of concupiscence and I dimmed its luster with a slime of lust yet foul and unclean as I was I still craved in excessive vanity to be thought elegant and obeying and I did fall precipitately into the love I was longing for my God, my mercy with how much bitterness didst thou out of thy infinite goodness flavour that sweetness for me for I was not only beloved but also I secretly reached the climax of enjoyment and yet I was joyfully bound with troublesome ticks so that I could be scourged with a burning iron rods of jealousy suspicion, fear, anger and strife Chapter 2 Stage plays also captivated me with their sights full of the images of my own miseries fuelled for my own fire Now, why does a man like to be made sad by view in doleful and tragic scenes which he himself could not by any means endure? Yet as a spectator he wishes to experience from them a sense of grief and in this very sense of grief his pleasure consists what is this but wretched madness for a man is more affected by these actions the more he is spuriously involved in these affections Now, if he should suffer them in his own person it is the custom to call this misery but when he suffers with another then it is called compassion but what kind of compassion is it that arises from view in fictitious and unreal sufferings? The spectator is not expected to aid the sufferer but merely to grieve for him and the more he grieves the more he applauds the actor of these fictions if the misfortunes of the characters whether historical or entirely imaginary are represented so as not to touch the feelings of the spectator he goes away disgusted and complaining but if his feelings are deeply touched he sits it out attentively and sheds tears of joy tears and sorrow then are loved surely every man desires to be joyful and though no one is willingly miserable one may nevertheless be pleased to be merciful so that we love their sorrows because without them we should have nothing to pity this also springs from that same vein of friendship but wither does it go? wither does it flow? why does it run into that torrent of pitch which seeds forth those huge tides of loathsome lusts in which it is changed and altered past recognition being diverted and corrupted from its celestial purity by its own will? shall then compassion be repudiated? by no means letters however love the sorrow of others but let us be aware of uncleanness oh my soul under the protection of my God the God of our fathers who is to be praised and exalted let us beware of uncleanness I have not yet ceased to have compassion but in those days in the theatres I sympathised with lovers when they sinfully enjoyed one another although this was done fictitiously in the play and when they lost one another I grieved with them as if pity in them and yet had delight in both grief and pity nowadays I feel much more pity for one who delights in his wickedness than for one who counts himself unfortunate because he fails to obtain some harmful pleasure or suffers the loss of some miserable felicity this surely is the truer compassion but the sorrow I feel in it has no delight for me for although he that grieves with the unhappy should be commended for his work of love yet he who has the power of real compassion would still prefer that there be nothing for him to grieve about for if good will were to be ill will which it cannot be only then could he who is truly and sincerely compassionate wish that there were some unhappy people so that he might commiserate them some grief may then be justified but none of it loved thus it is that thou dost act, O Lord God for thou lovest souls far more purely than we do and art more incorruptibly compassionate although thou art never wounded by any sorrow now who is sufficient for these things but at that time in my wretchedness I love to grieve and I sought for things to grieve about in another man's misery even though it was feigned and impersonated on the stage that performance of the actor pleased me best and attracted me most powerfully which moved me to tears what marvel then was it that an unhappy sheep straying from thy flock and impatient of thy care I became infected with a foul disease this is the reason for my love of griefs that they would not probe into me too deeply for I did not love to suffer in myself such things as I love to look at and they were the sort of grief that came from here in those fictions which affected only the surface of my emotion still, just as if they had been poisoned fingernails their scratching was followed by inflammation swelling, putrefaction and corruption such was my life but was it life? oh my God Chapter 3 and still thy faithful mercy hovered over me from afar in what inseemly inequities did I wear myself out following a sacrilegious curiosity which, having deserted thee then began to drag me down into the treacherous abyss into the beguiling obedience of devils to whom I made offerings of my wicked deeds and still in all this thou didst not fail to scourge me I dared even while thy solemn rites were being celebrated inside the walls of thy church to desire and to plan a project which merited death as its fruit for this thou didst chastise me with grievous punishments but nothing in comparison with my fault oh thou my greatest mercy my God, my refuge from those terrible dangers in which I wandered with a stiff neck receding farther from thee my own ways and not thine loving a vagrant liberty those studies I was then pursuing generally accounted as respectable were aimed at distinction in the courts of law to excel in which the more crafty I was the more I should be praised such is the blindness of men that they even glory in their blindness and by this time I had become a master in the school of rhetoric and I rejoiced proudly in this honour and became inflated with arrogance still I was relatively sedate, oh Lord, as thou knowest and had no share in the reckons of the wreckers for this stupid and diabolical name was regarded as the very badge of gallantry among whom I lived with a sort of ashamed embarrassment that I was not even as they were but I lived with them and at times I was delighted with their friendship even when I aboard their acts that is their wrecking in which they insonantly attacked the modesty of strangers to ment in them by uncalled for jeers gratifying their mischievous mirth nothing could more nearly resemble the actions of devils than these fellows by what name, therefore, could they be more aptly called than wreckers being themselves wrecked first and altogether turned upside down they were secretly mocked at and seduced by the deceiving spirits in the very acts by which they amused themselves in jeering and horseplay at the expense of others Chapter 6 Among such as these in that unstable period of my life I studied the books of eloquence for it was in eloquence that I was eager to be eminent though from a reprehensible and vain glorious motive and a delight in human vanity In the ordinary course of study I came upon a certain book of Cicero's whose language almost all admire though not his heart this particular book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy and was called Hortensius Now, it was this book which quite definitely changed my whole attitude and turned my prayers toward thee, O Lord and gave me new hope and new desires Suddenly every vain hope became worthless to me and with an incredible warmth of heart I yearned for an immortality of wisdom and began now to arise that I might return to thee It was not to sharpen my tongue further that I made use of that book I was now at nineteen my father had been dead two years and my mother was providing the money for my study of rhetoric What won me in it was not its style but its substance How ardent was I then, my God How ardent to fly from earthly things to thee Nor did I know how thou wast even then dealing with me For with thee is wisdom In Greek the love of wisdom is called philosophy and it was with this love that the book inflamed me There are some who seduce through philosophy under a great alluring and honourable name using it to colour and adorn their own eras and almost all who did this in Cicero's own time and earlier are censored and pointed out in this book In it there is also manifest that most salutary admonition of thy spirit spoken by thy good and pious servant Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ for in him all the fullness of the God-head dwells bodily Since at that time as thou knowest O light of my heart the words of the apostle were unknown to me I was delighted with Cicero's exotation at least enough so that I was stimulated by it and in kindle and in flame to love to seek to obtain to hold and to embrace not this or that sect but wisdom itself wherever it might be only this checked my ardour that the name of Christ was not in it for this name by thy mercy O Lord this name of my saviour thy son my tender heart had piously drunk in deeply treasured even with my mother's milk and whatsoever was lacking that name no matter how erudite polished and truthful did not quite take complete hold of me Chapter 5 I resolved therefore to direct my mind to the holy scriptures that I might see what they were and behold I saw something not comprehended by the proud nor disclosed to children something lowly in the hearing but sublime in the doing and veiled in mysteries yet I was not of the number of those who could enter into it or bend my neck to follow its steps for then it was quite different from what I now feel when I then turned toward the scriptures they appeared to me to be quite unworthy to be compared with a dignity of tully for my inflated pride was repelled by their style nor could the sharpness of my wit penetrate their inner meaning truly they were of a sort to aid the growth of little ones but I scorned to be a little one and swollen with pride I looked upon myself as fully grown Chapter 6 Thus I fell among men delirious in their pride carnal and voluble whose mouths were the snares of the devil a trap made of the mixture of the syllables of thy name and the names of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the paraclete these names were never out of their mouths but only as sound and the clatter of tongues for their heart was empty of truth still they cried truth, truth and were forever speaking the word to me but the thing itself was not in them indeed they spoke falsely not only of thee who truly art the truth but also about the basic elements of this world thy creation and indeed I should have passed by the philosophers themselves even when they were speaking truth concerning thy creatures for the sake of thy love oh highest good and my father oh beauty of all things beautiful oh truth, truth how inwardly even then did the marrow of my soul sigh for thee when frequently and in manifold ways in numerous and vast books sounded out thy name though it was only a sound and in these dishes while I starved for thee they served up to me in thy stead the sun and moon thy beauty works but still only thy works and not thyself indeed not even thy first work for thy spiritual works came before these material creations celestial and shining though they are but I was hungering and thirsting not even after those first works of thine but after thyself the truth with whom there is no variableness neither shadow of turning yet they still served me glowing fantasies in those dishes and truly it would have been better to have loved this very sun which at least is true to our sight than those illusions of theirs which deceive the mind through the eye and yet because I suppose the illusions to be from thee I fed on them not with avidity for thou didst not taste in my mouth as thou art and thou was not these empty fictions neither was I nourished by them nor was instead exhausted food in dreams appears like our food awake yet the sleepers are not nourished by it for they are asleep but the fantasies of the Manicheans were not in any way like thee as thou hast spoken to me now they were simply fantastic and false in comparison to them the actual bodies which we see with our fleshly sight both celestial and terrestrial are far more certain these true bodies even the beasts and birds perceive as well as we do and they are more certain than the images we form about them and again we do with more certainty form our conceptions about them than from them we go on by means of them to imagine of other greater and infinite bodies which have no existence with such empty husks was I then fed and yet was not fed but thou my love for whom I longed in order that I might be strong neither art those bodies that we see in heaven nor art thou those which we do not see there for thou hast created them all and yet thou reckonest them not among thy greatest works how far then art thou from those fantasies of mine fantasies of bodies which have no real being at all the images of those bodies which actually exist are far more certain than these fantasies the bodies themselves are more certain than the images yet even these thou art not even the soul which is the life of bodies clearly the life of the body is better than the body itself but thou art the life of souls life of lives have in life in thyself and never change in oh life of my soul where then was thou and how far from me far indeed was I wandering away from thee being barred even from the husks of those swine whom I fed with husks for how much better were the fables of the grammarians and the poets than these snares for verses and poems and the flying media are still more profitable truly than these men's five elements with their various colours answering to the five caves of darkness none of which exist and yet in which they slay the one who believes in them for verses and poems I can turn into food for the mind for though I sang about the flying media I never believed it but those other things I did believe whoa whoa by what steps I was dragged down to the depths of hell toiling and fuming because of my lack of the truth even when I was seeking after thee my God to thee I now confess it for thou didst have mercy on me when I had not yet confessed it I sought after thee but not according to the understanding of the mind by means of which thou has willed that I should excel the beasts but only after the guidance of my physical senses thou was more inward to me than the most inward part of me and higher than my highest reach I came upon that brazen woman devoid of prudence who in Solomon's obscure parable sits at the door of the house on a seat and says stolen waters are sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant this woman seduced me because she found my soul outside its own door dwelling on the sensations of my flesh and ruminating on such food as I had swallowed through the physical senses Chapter 7 for I was ignorant of that other reality true being and so it was that I was subtly persuaded to agree with these foolish deceivers when they put their questions to me whence comes evil and is God limited by a bodily shape and has he hairs and nails and are those patriarchs to be esteemed righteous who had many wives at one time and who killed men and who sacrificed living creatures in my ignorance I was much disturbed over these things and though I was retreating from the truth I appeared to myself to be going to ward it because I did not yet know that evil was nothing but a privation of good that indeed it has no being and how should I have seen this when the sight of my eyes went no further than physical objects and the sight of my mind reached no further than to phantasms and I did not know that God is a spirit who has no parts extended in length and breadth whose being has no mass for every mass is less than a part than in a whole and if it be an infinite mass it must be less in such parts as are limited by a certain space than its infinity it cannot therefore be wholly everywhere as spirit is as God is and I was entirely ignorant as to what is that principle within us by which we are like God which is rightly said in scripture to be made after God's image nor did I know true inner righteousness which does not judge according to custom but by the measure of the most perfect law of God Almighty by which the mores of various places and times were adapted to those places and times though the law itself is the same always and everywhere not one thing in one place and another in another by this inner righteousness Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David and all those commended by the mouth of God were righteous and were judged unrighteous only by foolish men who were judging by human judgment and gauging their judgment of the mores of the whole human race by the narrow norms of their own mores it is as if a man in an armory not knowing what peace goes on what part of the body should put a grieve on his head and a helmet on his shin and then complain because they did not fit or as if on some holiday when afternoon business was forbidden one were to grumble at not being allowed to go on selling as it had been lawful for him to do in the forenoon or again as if in a house he sees a servant handle something that the butler is not permitted to touch or when something is done behind a stable that would be prohibited in a dining room and then a person should be indignant that in one house and one family the same things are not allowed to every member of the household such is the case with those who cannot endure to hear that something was lawful for righteous men in former times that is not so now or that God for certain temporal reasons commanded then one thing to them and another now to these yet both would be serving the same righteous will these people should see that in one man one day and one house different things are fit for different members and a thing that was formerly lawful may become after a time unlawful and something allowed or commanded in one place that is justly prohibited and punished in another is justice then variable and changeable no but the times over which she presides are not all alike because they are different times but men whose days upon the earth a few cannot by their own perception harmonize the causes of former ages and other nations of which they had no experience and compare them with these of which they do have experience although in one and the same body or day or family they can readily see that what is suitable for each member season part and person may differ to the one they take up section to the other they submit these things I did not know then nor had I observed their import they met my eyes on every side and I did not see I composed poems in which I was not free to place each foot just anywhere but in one meter one way and in another meter another way nor even in any one verse was the same foot allowed in all places yet the art by which I composed did not have different principles for each of the different cases but the same law throughout still I did not see how by that righteousness to which good and holy men submitted all those things that God had commanded were gathered in a far more excellent and sublime way into one moral order and it did not vary in any essential respect though it did not in various times prescribe all things at once but rather distributed and prescribed what was proper for each and being blind I blamed those pious fathers only for making use of present things that God had commanded and inspired them to do but also for foreshadowing things to come as God revealed it to them