 Book four, chapters one to ten of The Confessions by St. Augustine, translated by E. B. Pusey. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Mary Ann. Book four. Augustine's life from nineteen to eight and twenty. Himself a Manichaean, and seducing others to the same heresy. Partial obedience amidst vanity and sin. Consulting astrologers. Only partially shaken herein. Loss of an early friend, who is converted by being baptized when in a swoon. Reflections on grief, on real and unreal friendship, and love of fame. Rights on the fair and fit, yet cannot rightly, though God had given him great talents since he entertained wrong notions of God. And so even his knowledge he applied ill. Chapter one. For this space of nine years then, from my nineteenth year to my eight and twentieth, we lived seduced and seducing, deceived and deceiving, in diverse lusts, openly by sciences which they call liberal, secretly, with a false named religion. Here proud, their superstitious, everywhere vain. Here hunting after the emptiness of popular praise, down even to theatrical applauses and poetic prizes, and stripes for grassy garlands, and the follies of shows, and the intemperance of desires. There, desiring to be cleansed from these defilements by carrying food to those who were called elect and holy, out of which, in the workhouse of their stomachs, they should forage for us angels and gods by whom we might be cleansed. These things did I follow and practice with my friends, deceived by me and with me. Let the arrogant mock me, and such as have not been, to their own soul's health, stricken and cast down by thee, oh my God. But I would still confess to thee mine own shame in thy praise. Suffer me, I beseech thee, and give me grace to go over in my present remembrance the wanderings of my for-past time, and to offer unto thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving. For what am I to myself without thee, but a guide to mine own downfall? Or what am I even at the best, but an infant sucking the milk thou givest, and feeding upon thee the food that perisheth not? But what sort of man is any man, seeing he is, but a man? Let now the strong and the mighty laugh at us, but let us poor and needy confess unto thee. In those years I taught rhetoric and overcome by cupidity, made sale of a laquacity to overcome by. Yet I preferred, Lord thou knowest, honest scholars, as they are accounted, and these I, without artifice, taught artifices, not to be practised against the life of the guiltless, though sometimes for the life of the guilty. And thou, oh God, from afar perceiveth me stumbling in that slippery course, and amid much smoke sending out some sparks of faithfulness, which I showed in that my guidance of such as loved vanity, and sought after leasing, myself their companion. In those years I had one, not in that which is called lawful marriage, but whom I had found out in a wayward passion void of understanding. Yet but one, remaining faithful even to her, in whom I in my own case experienced what difference there is betwixt the self-restraint of the marriage covenant for the sake of issue and the bargain of a lustful love, where children are born against their parents' will, although once born they constrain love. I remember also that when I had settled to enter the list for theatrical prize some wizard asked me what I would give him to win. But I, detesting and abhorring such foul mysteries, answered, though the garland were of imperishable gold, I would not suffer a fly to be killed to gain me it. For he was to kill some living creatures in his sacrifices, I'm by those honors to invite the devils to favour me. But this ill I also rejected, not out of pure love for thee, oh God of my heart, for I knew not how to love thee, who knew not how to conceive ought beyond a material brightness. And doth not a soul, sighing after such fictions, commit fornication against thee, trust in things unreal and feed the wind? Still I would not forsooth have sacrifices offered to devils for me, to whom I was sacrificing myself by that superstition. For what else is it to feed the wind, but to feed them, that is, by going astray to become their pleasure and their origin? CHAPTER III Those imposters, then, whom they style, mathematicians, I consulted without scruple, because they seemed to use no sacrifice, nor to pray to any spirit for their divinations, which art, however, Christian and true piety consistently rejects and condemns. For it is a good thing to confess unto thee, and to say, have mercy upon me, heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee, and not to abuse thy mercy for a license to sin, but to remember the Lord's words. Behold, thou art made whole, sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. All which wholesome advice they labor to destroy, saying, the cause of thy sin is inevitably determined in heaven, and this did Venus, or Saturn, or Mars, that man, forsooth, flesh and blood, and proud corruption, might be blameless, while the Creator and ordainer of heaven and the stars is to bear the blame. And who is he but our God, the very sweetness and wellspring of righteousness, who renderest to every man according to his works, and a broken and contrite heart wilt thou not despise? There was, in those days, a wise man, very skillful in physics, and renowned therein, who had with his own procounselor hand put the agnostic garland upon my distempered head, but not as a physician, for this disease thou only curest, who resisteth the proud, and give us graced the humble. But didst thou fail me, even by that old man, or forbear to heal my soul? For having become more acquainted with him, and hanging assiduously and fixedly on his speech, for though in simple terms it was vivid, lively and earnest, when he had gathered by my discourse, that I was given to the books of nativity casters, he kindly and fatherly advised me to cast them away, and not fruitlessly bestow a care and diligence necessary for useful things, upon these vanities, saying that he had in his earliest years studied that art, so as to make it the profession whereby he should live, and that, understanding Hippocrates, he could soon have understood such study as this. And yet he had given it over, and taken to physics, for no other reason but that he found it utterly false, and he, a grave man, would not get his living by deluding people. But thou, sayeth he, hast rhetoric to maintain thyself by, so that thou followest this a free choice, not of necessity, the more than oughtst thou to give me credit herein, who laboured to acquire it so perfectly as to get my living by it alone. Of whom, when I had demanded, how then could many true things be foretold by it, he answered me, as he could. That the force of chance, diffused throughout the whole order of things, brought this about. For if when a man by Hipp Hazard opens the pages of some poet, who sang and thought of something wholly different, a verse often times fell out, wondrously agreeable to the present business, it were not to be wondered at, if, out of the soul of man, unconscious of what takes place in it, by some higher instinct, an answer should be given, by Hipp, not by art, corresponding to the business and actions of the demander. And thus much, either from or through him, thou conveyest to me, and traced in my memory what I might hereafter examine for myself. But at that time neither he, nor my dearest, Nibridius, a youth singularly good and of a holy fear, who derided the whole body of divination, could persuade me to cast it aside, the authority of the authors swaying me yet more, and as yet I had found no certain proof, such as I sought, whereby it might without all doubt appear, that what had been truly foretold by those consulted was the result of Hipp Hazard, not of the art of the Stargazers. CHAPTER IV In those years, when I first began to teach rhetoric in my native town, I had made one my friend, but too dear to me, from a community of pursuits of my known age, and, as myself, in the first opening flower of youth. He had grown up of a child with me, and we had been both school-fellows and play-fellows, but he was not yet my friend as afterwards, nor even then, as true friendship is, for true it cannot be unless in such as thou cementest together, cleaving unto thee by that love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. It was it but too sweet, ripened by the warmth of kindred studies, for, from the true faith which he as a youth had not soundly and thoroughly imbibed, I had warped him also to those superstitious and pernicious fables from which my mother bewailed me. With me he now erred in mind, nor could my soul be without him. But behold, thou worked close to the steps of thy fugitives, at once got of vengeance and fountain of mercies, turning us to thyself by wonderful means. Thou tookest that man out of this life, when he had scarce filled up one whole year of my friendship, sweet to me above all sweetness of that my life. Who can recount all thy praises which he hath felt in his one self? What dits thou then, my God, and how unsearchable is the abyss of thy judgments? For long, sore, sick of fever, he lay senseless in a death sweat, and his recovery being disbared of, he was baptized unknowing, myself meanwhile little regarding, and presuming that his soul would retain rather what it had received of me, not what was wrought on his unconscious body. But it proved far otherwise, for he was refreshed and restored. Fourth with, as soon as I could speak with him, and I could so soon as he was able, for I never left him, and we hung but too much upon each other, I said to jest with him. As though he would jest with me at that baptism which he had received, when utterly absent in mind and feeling, but had now understood that he had received. But he so shrunk from me as from an enemy, and with a wonderful and sudden freedom bade me, as I would continue his friend, forbear such language to him. I, all astonished and amazed, suppressed all my emotions till he should grow well, and his health were strong enough for me to deal with him as I would. But he was taken away from my frenzy, that with thee he might be preserved for my comfort. A few days after, in my absence, he was attacked again by the fever, and so departed. At this grief my heart was utterly darkened, and whatever I beheld was death. My native country was a torment to me, and my father's house a strange unhappiness, and whatever I had shared with him, wanting him, became a distracting torture. Mine eyes thought him everywhere, but he was not granted them, and I hated all places, for that they had not him, nor could they now tell me he is coming as when he was alive and absent. I became a great riddle to myself, and asked my soul why she was so sad and why she disquieted me sorely, but she knew not what to answer me, and if I said, Trust in God, she very rightly obeyed me not, because that most dear friend whom she had lost was, being man, both truer and better, than that phantasm she was bid to trust in. Only tears were sweet to me, for they succeeded my friend in the dearest of my affections. And now, Lord, these things are passed by, and time hath assuaged my wound. May I learn from thee, who art truth, and approach the ear of my heart unto thy mouth, that thou mayest tell me why weeping is so sweet to the miserable. Hast thou, although present everywhere, cast away our miseries far from thee, and thou abidest in thyself, but we are tossed about in diverse trials? And yet, unless we mourned in thine ears, we should have no hope left. Whence, then, is sweet fruit gathered from the bitterness of life, from groaning, tears, sighs, and complaints, doth this sweeten it, that we hope thou hearest? This is true of prayer, for therein is a longing to approach unto thee. But is it also in grief for a thing lost, and the sorrow wherewith I was then overwhelmed? For I neither hoped he should return to life, nor did I desire this with my tears, but I wept only, and grieved, for I was miserable, and had lost my joy. Or is weeping indeed a bitter thing, and for very loathing of the things which we before enjoyed, does it then, when we shrink from them, please us? CHAPTER VI But what speak I of these things? For now is no time to question, but to confess unto thee. Wretched I was, and wretched is every soul bound by the friendship of perishable things. He is torn asunder when he loses them. And then he feels the wretchedness which he had ere he lost them. So was it then with me. I wept most bitterly, and found my repose in bitterness. Thus I was wretched, and that wretched life I held dearer than my friend. For though I would willingly have changed it, yet was I more willing to part with it than with him. Yay, I know not whether I would have parted with it even for him, as is related, if not feigned, of Pyleides and Orestes, that they would gladly have died for each other, or together, not to live together being to them worse than death. But in me there had arisen some unexplained feeling, too contrary to this, for at once I loathe exceedingly to live, and feared to die. I suppose, the more I loved him, the more did I hate and fear as a most cruel enemy, death, which had bereaved me of him. And I imagined it would speedily make an end of all men, since it had power over him. Thus was it with me, I remember. Behold my heart, O God, behold and see into me, for well I remember it, O my hope, who cleanseth me from the impurity of such affections, directing mine eyes towards thee, and plucking my feet out of the snare. For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead. And I wondered yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he being dead. Well said one of his friends, thou half of my soul, for I felt that my soul and his soul were one soul in two bodies, and therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live haved. And therefore, perchance, I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved, should die holy. CHAPTER VII O madness, which knowest not how to love men, like men. O foolish man that I then was, enduring impatiently the lot of man. I fretted then, sighed, wept, was distracted, had neither rest nor counsel. For I bore about a shattered and bleeding soul, impatient of being born by me, yet where to repose it I found not. Not in calm groves, not in games and music, nor in fragrant spots, nor in curious banquettings, nor in the pleasures of the bed and the couch, nor, finally, in books or posy, found it repose. All things looked gasly, yea, the very light, whosoever was not what he was, was revolting and hateful, except groaning in tears. For in those alone found I a little refreshment. But when my soul was withdrawn from them, a huge load of misery weighed me down. To thee, O Lord, it ought to have been raised, for thee to lighten. I knew it, but neither could nor would. The more, since, when I thought of thee, thou werest not to me any solid or substantial thing. For thou were to not thyself, but a mere phantom, and my error was my God. If I offered to discharge my load thereon, that it might rest, it glided through the void and came rushing down again on me, and I had remained to myself a hapless spot, where I could neither be nor be from thence. For whither should my heart flee from my heart? Whither should I flee from myself? Whither not follow myself? And yet I fled out of my country, for so should mine eyes less look for him where they were not want to see him, and thus from Thagasta I came to Carthage. Chapter 8 Times lose no time, nor do they roll idly by. Through our senses they work strange operations on the mind. Behold, they went and came day by day, and by coming and going introduced into my mind other imaginations and other remembrances, and little by little patched me up again with my old kind of delights, unto which that my sorrow gave way. And yet there succeeded, not indeed other griefs, yet the causes of other griefs. For whence had that former grief so easily reached my very inmost soul, but that I had poured out my soul upon the dust in loving one that must die as if he would never die? For what restored and refreshed me chiefly was the solaces of other friends with whom I did love. What instead of thee I loved? And this was a great fable and protracted lie, by whose adulterous stimulus our soul, which lay itching in our ears, was being defiled. But that fable would not die to me, so oft as any of my friends died. There were other things which in them did more take my mind, to talk in jest together, to do kind offices by turns, to read together honeyed books, to play the fool or be earnest together, to dissent at times without discontent, as a man might with his own self, and even with the seldomness of these dissentings to season our more frequent consentings, sometimes to teach and sometimes learn, long for the absent with impatience, and welcome the coming with joy. These and the like expressions, proceeding out of the heavens of those that loved and were loved again, by the countenance, the tongue, the eyes, and a thousand pleasing gestures, were so much fuel to melt our souls together and out of many make but one. CHAPTER IX. This is it that is loved in friends, and so loved that a man's conscience condemns itself if he love not him that loves him again, or love not again him that loves him, looking for nothing from his person but indications of his love. Hence that morning, if one die, and darkenings of sorrows, that steeping of the heart in tears, all sweetness turned to bitterness, and upon the loss of life of the dying the death of the living. Blessed who so loveth thee, and his friend in thee, and his enemy for thee, for he alone loses none dear to him, to whom all are dear in him, who cannot be lost. And who is this but our God, the God that made heaven and earth, and filleth them, because by filling them he created them? Thee none looseth, but who leaveth, and who leaveth thee, whither goeth, or whither fleeth he, but from thee well-pleased, to thee displeased? For where doth he not find thy law in his own punishment, and thy law is truth, and truth thou? X. Turn, also God of host, show us thy countenance, and we shall behold. For whithersoever the soul of man turns itself, unless towards thee it is riveted upon sorrows. Ye, though it is riveted on things beautiful. And yet they, out of thee, and out of the soul, were not, unless they were from thee. They rise and set, and by rising they begin as it were to be. They grow, that they may be perfected, and perfected, they wax old and wither. And all grow, not old, but all wither. So then, when they rise and tend to be, the more quickly they grow, that they may be, so much more, they haste not to be. This is the law of them. Thus much hast thou allotted them, because they are portions of things, which exist not at all at once, but by passing away and succeeding. They together complete that universe, whereof they are portions. And even thus is our speech completed by signs giving forth a sound. But this again is not perfected unless one word pass away when it hath sounded its part, that another may succeed. Out of all these things let my soul praise thee, O God, creator of all. Yet not let my soul be riveted unto these things with the glue of love, through the senses of the body. For they go wither they were to go, that they might not be, and they render with pestilent longings, because she longs to be, yet loves and repose, that which she loves. But in these things is no place of repose. They abide not, they flee, and who can follow them with the sense of the flesh? Yea, who can grasp them when they are hard by? For the sense of the flesh is slow, because it is the sense of the flesh, and thereby it is bounded. It suffices for that it was made for, but it suffices not to stay things running their course from their appointed starting point to the end appointed. For in thy word, by which they are created, they hear their decree, hence and hitherto. End of Book 4, Chapter 10 Book 4, chapters 11 to 16 of The Confessions by Saint Augustine, translated by E. B. Pusey, this LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Marianne. Book 4, Chapter 11 Be not foolish, O my soul, nor become deaf in the ear of thine heart with the tumult of thy folly. Harken thou, too. The word itself calleth thee to return, and there is the place of rest imperturbable, where love is not forsaken, if itself forsaketh not. Behold, these things pass away, that others may replace them, and so this lower universe be completed by all his parts. But do I depart away wither, say at the word of God? There, fix thy dwelling, trust there whatsoever thou hast, thence, O my soul, at least now thou art tired out with vanities. Intrust truth, whatsoever thou hast from the truth, and thou shalt lose nothing, and thy decay shall bloom again, and all thy diseases be healed, and thy mortal parts be reformed and renewed, and bound around thee. Nor shall they lay thee wither themselves descend, but they shall stand fast with thee and abide for ever before God, who abideth and standeth fast for ever. Why then be perverted and follow thy flesh? Be it converted and follow thee. Whatever by her thou hast sense of is in part, and the whole, whereof these are parts, thou knowest not, and yet they delight thee. But had the sense of thy flesh a capacity for comprehending the whole, and not itself also, for thy punishment been justly restricted to a part of the whole, thou wist, in whatsoever existeth at this present, should pass away, that so the whole might better please thee. For what we speak also, by the same sense of the flesh, thou hearest, and wits not thou have the syllables stay, but fly away, that others may come, and thou hear the whole. And so ever, when any one thing is made up of many, all which do not exist together, all collectively would please more than they do severally, could all be perceived collectively. But far better than these is he who made all, and he is our God, nor doth he pass away, for neither doth ought succeed him. CHAPTER 12 If bodies please thee, praise God on occasion of them, and turn back thy love upon their maker, lest in these things which please thee, thou displease. If souls please thee, be they loved in God, for they too are mutable, but in him they are firmly established, else would they pass and pass away. In him, then, be thy beloved, and carry unto him, along with thee, what souls thou canst, and say to them, him let us love, him let us love. He made these, nor is he far off. For he did not make them, and so depart, but they are of him and in him. See there he is, where truth is loved. He is within the very heart, yet hath the heart strayed from him. Go back into your heart, ye transgressors, and cleave fast unto him that made you. Stand with him, and ye shall stand fast. Rest in him, and ye shall be at rest. Wither go ye in rough ways. Wither go ye. The good that you love is from him. But it is good and pleasant, through reference to him, and justly shall it be embittered, because unjustly is anything loved which is from him, if he be forsaken for it. To what end, then, would ye still and still walk these difficult and toilsome ways? There is no rest where ye seek it. Seek what ye seek, but it is not there where ye seek it. Ye seek a blessed life in the land of death. It is not there. For how should there be a blessed life, where life itself is not? But our true life came down hither and bore our death, and slew him out of the abundance of his own life. And he thundered, calling aloud to us to return hence to him into that secret place, whence he came forth to us, first into the virgin's womb, wherein he espoused the human creation, our mortal flesh, that it might not be forever mortal, and thence like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber rejoicing as a giant to run his course. For he lingered not, but ran, calling aloud by words, deeds, death, life, descent, ascension, crying aloud to us to return unto him. And he departed from our eyes, that we might return into our heart, and there find him. For he departed, and lo, he is here. He would not be long with us, yet left us not, for he departed thither, whence he never parted, because the world was made by him. And in this world he was, and into this world he came to save sinners, under whom my soul confesseth, and he healed it, for it hath sinned against him. O ye sons of men, how long so slow of heart! Even now, after the descent of life to you, will ye not ascend and live. But wither ascend ye, when ye are on high, and set your mouth against the heavens. Descend, that ye may ascend, and ascend to God. For ye have fallen by ascending against him. Tell them this, that they may weep in the valley of tears, and so carry them up with thee unto God, because out of his spirit thou speaketh thus unto them, if thou speakest, burning with the fire of charity. CHAPTER XIII These things I then knew not, and I loved these lower beauties, and I was sinking to the very depths, and to my friends I said, Do we love anything but the beautiful? What then is the beautiful? And what is beauty? What is it that attracts and wins us to the things that we love? For unless there were in them a grace and beauty they could by no means draw us unto them. And I marked and perceived that embodies themselves there was a beauty, from there forming a sort of a hole, and again another from apt and mutual correspondence, as a part of the body with its hole, or a shoe with a foot, and the like. And this consideration sprang up in my mind, out of my inmost heart, and I wrote, On the fair and fit, I think two or three books, Thou knowest, O Lord, for it is gone from me, for I have them not, but they are straight from me, I know not how. CHAPTER 14 But what moved me, O Lord, my God, to dedicate these books unto High Arius, an orator of Rome, whom I knew not by face, but loved for the fame of his learning which was eminent in him, and some words of his I had heard which pleased me? But more did he please me, for that he pleased others, who highly extolled him, amazed, that out of Assyrian, first instructed in Greek eloquence, should afterwards be formed a wonderful Latin orator, and one most learned in things pertaining unto philosophy. One is commended and, unseen, he is loved. Doth this love enter the heart of the hearer from the mouth of the commender? Not so. But by one who loveth is another kindled. For hence he is loved, who is commended, when the commender is believed to extol him with an unveined heart, that is, when one that loves him praises him. For so did I then love men, upon the judgment of men, not thine, O my God, in whom no man is deceived. But yet why not for qualities like those of a famous charioteer, or a fighter with beasts in the theatre, known far and wide by a vulgar popularity, but far otherwise and earnestly, and so as I would be myself commended? For I would not be commended or loved, as actors are, though I myself did commend and love them, but had rather be unknown than so known, and even hated than so loved. Where now are the impulses to such various and diverse kinds of loves laid up in one soul? Why, since we are equally men, do I love in another what, if I did not hate, I should not spurn and castrum myself? For it holds not, that as a good horse is loved by him, who would not, though he might, be that horse, therefore the same may be said of an actor, who shares our nature. Do I then love in a man what I hate to be, who am a man? Man himself is a great deep, whose very hairs thou numberest, O Lord, and they fall not to the ground without thee, and yet are the hairs of his head easier to be numbered than are his feelings and the beatings of his heart. But that orator was of that sort whom I loved, as wishing to be myself such, and I aired through a swelling pride, and was tossed about with every wind, but yet was steered by thee, though very secretly. And whence do I know, and whence do I confidently confess unto thee, that I had loved him more for the love of his commenders than for the very things for which he was commended? Because, had he been unpraised, and these self-same men had dispraised him, and with dispraise and contempt told the very same things of him, I had never been so kindled and excited to love him. And yet the things had not been other, nor he himself other, but only the feelings of the relators. See where the impotent soul lies along, that is not yet stayed up by the solidity of truth, just as the gales of tongues blow from the breast of the opinionative. So it is carried this way and that, driven forward and backward, and the light is overcrowded to it and the truth unseen, and lo it is before us. And it was to me a great matter that my discourse in labours should be known to that man, which should he approve I were the more kindled, but if he disprove my empty heart, void of thy solidity had been wounded, and yet the fair and fit were on I wrote to him, I dwelt on with pleasure and surveyed it and admired it, though none joined therein. But I saw not yet where on this weighty matter turned in thy wisdom, O thou omnipotent, who only doest wonders, and my mind ranged through corporeal forms, and fair I defined and distinguished what is so in itself, and fit, whose beauty is, in correspondence to some other thing, and this I supported by corporeal examples. And I turned to the nature of the mind, but the false notion which I had of spiritual things let me not see the truth. Yet the force of truth did of itself flash into my eyes, and I turned away my panting soul from incorporeal substance to lineaments and colours and bulky magnitudes, and not being able to see these in the mind I thought I could not see my mind, and whereas in virtue I loved peace and in viciousness I abhorred discord, in the first I observed a unity but in the other a sort of division. And in that unity I conceived the rational soul and the nature of truth and of the chief good to consist. But in this division I miserably imagined there to be some unknown substance of irrational life, and the nature of the chief evil which should not only be a substance but a real life also, and yet not derived from thee, oh my God, of whom are all things. And yet that first I called a monad as it had been a soul without sex, but the later a duad, anger in deeds of violence and infligidiousness, lust, not knowing whereof I spake. For I had not known or learned that neither was evil a substance nor our soul that chief and unchangeable good. For as deeds of violence arise if that emotion of the soul be corrupted, whence vehement action springs, straying itself insolently and unruly, and thus when that affection of the soul is ungoverned whereby carnal pleasures are drunk in, so do heirs and false opinions defile the conversation if the reasonable soul itself be corrupted. As it were then in me who knew not that it must be enlightened by another light, and that it may be a partaker of truth, seeing itself is not that nature of truth. For thou shalt light my candle, oh Lord my God, thou shalt enlighten my darkness, and of thy fullness have we all received. For thou art the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. For in thee there is no variableness, neither shadow of change. But I pressed towards thee, and was thrust from thee, that I might taste of death. For thou resisteth the proud. But what prouder than for me with a strange madness to maintain myself to be that by nature which thou art? For whereas I was subject to change, so much being manifest to me, my very desire to become wise, being the wish, of worse to become better, yet chose I rather to imagine thee subject to change than myself not to be that which thou art. Therefore I was repelled by thee, and thou resisteth my vain stiff neckadness, and I imagined corporal forms, and myself flesh. I accused flesh, and a wind that passeth away, I returned not unto thee, but I passed on and on to things which have no being, neither in thee nor in me, nor in the body. Neither were they created for me by thy truth, but out of my vanity devised out of things corporal, and I was want to ask thy faithful little ones, my fellow citizens, from whom, unknown to myself, I stood exiled. I was want, pratting and foolishly, to ask them, why then doth the soul err which God created? But I would not be asked, why then doth God err? And I maintained that thy unchangeable substance did err upon constraint, rather than confess that my changeable substance had gone astray voluntarily, and now in punishment lay in error. I was then some six or seven and twenty years old when I wrote these volumes, revolving within me corporal fictions, buzzing in the ears of my heart, which I turned, O sweet truth, to that inward melody, meditating on the fair and fit, and longing to stand and hearken to thee, and to rejoice greatly at the bridegroom's voice, but could not. For by the voices of mine own heirs I was hurried abroad, and through the weight of my own pride I was sinking into the lowest pit. For thou didst not make me to hear joy and gladness, nor did the bones exalt which were not yet humbled. CHAPTER XVI And what did it profit me, that scarce twenty years old, a book of Aristotle, whom they called the ten predicaments falling into my hands, on whose very name I hung, as on something great and divine, so often as my rhetoric master of Carthage and others, accounted learned, mouthed it with cheeks bursting with pride? I read and understood it unaided. And on my conferring with others, who said that they scarcely understood it but with very able tutors, not only orally explaining it, but drawing many things in sand, they could tell me no more out of it than I had learned reading it by myself. And the book appeared to me to speak very clearly of substances, such as man, and of their qualities, as the figures of a man, of what sort it is, and stature, how many feet high, and his relationship, whose brother he is, or where placed, or when born, or whether he stands or sits, or be shod or armed, or does or suffers anything, and all the innumerable things which might be ranged under these nine predicaments, of which I have given some specimens, or under that chief predicament of substance. What did all this further me, seeing it even hindered me, when, imagining whatever was, was comprehended under those ten predicaments I said in such wise to understand, oh my God, thy wonderful and unchangeable unity also, as if thou also hadst been subjected to thine own greatness or beauty, so that, as in bodies, they should exist in thee as their subject, whereas thou thyself art thy greatness and beauty. But a body is not great or fair in that it is a body, seeing that, though it were less great or fair, it should not withstanding be a body. But it was falsehood which of thee I conceived, not truth, fictions of my misery, not the realities of thy blessedness. For thou hast commanded, and it was done in me, that the earth should bring forth briars and thorns to me, and that in the sweat of my brows I should eat my bread. And what did it profit me, that all the books I could procure of the so-called liberal arts, I, the vile slave of vile affections, read by myself and understood, and I delighted in them, but knew not whence came all that therein was true or certain. For I had my back to the light and my face to the things enlightened, whence my face, with which I discerned the things enlightened, itself was not enlightened. Whatever was written, either on rhetoric or logic, geometry, music, and arithmetic, by myself without so much difficulty or any instructor, I understood, thou noest, O Lord my God. Because both quickness of understanding and acuteness in discerning is thy gift. Yet did I not thence sacrifice to thee? So then it served not to my use, but rather to my perdition, since I went about to get so good a portion of my substance into my own keeping. And I kept not my strength for thee, but wandered from thee into a far country to spend it upon harlotries. For what profited me good abilities, not employed to good uses? For I felt not that those arts were attained with great difficulty, even by the studious and talented, until I tempted to explain them to such, when he most excelled in them, who followed me not altogether slowly. But what did this further me, imagining that thou, O Lord God, the truth, were a vast and bright body, and I a fragment of that body? Perverseness too great, but such was I. Nor do I blush, O my God, to confess to thee thy mercies towards me, and to call upon thee, who blushed not then to profess to men my blasphemies, and to bark against thee. What profited me then my nimble wit in those sciences, and all those most knotty volumes, unravelled by me, without aid from human instruction, seeing I aired so foully, and with such sacrilegious shamefulness in the doctrine of piety? Or what hindrance was a far slower wit to thy little ones, since they departed not far from thee, that in the nest of thy church they might securely be fledged, and nourish the wings of charity by the food of a sound faith? O Lord our God, under the shadow of thy wings let us hope, protect us and carry us. Thou wilt carry us both when little, and even to whore hairs wilt thou carry us, for our firmness, when it is thou, then is it firmness, but when our own is infirmity. Our good ever lives with thee, from which when we turn away we are turned aside. Let us now, O Lord, return, that we may not be overturned, because with thee our good lives without any decay, which good art thou. Nor need we fear, lest there be no place wither to return, because we fell from it, for through our absence our mansion fell not. Thy eternity. Deliverance to St. Augustine by showing the ignorance of the Manichees on those things wherein they profess to have divine knowledge. Augustine gives up all thought of going further among the Manichees, is guided to Rome and Milan, where he hears St. Ambrose, leaves the Manichees, and becomes again a catechumen in the church catholic. Heal thou all my bones, and let them say, O Lord, who is like unto thee? For he who confesses to thee doth not teach thee what takes place within him. Seeing a closed heart closes not out thy eye, nor can man's hard-heartedness thrust back thy hand. For thou dissolve us did all at thy will, in pity or in vengeance, and nothing can hide itself from thy heat. But let my soul praise thee, that it may love thee, and let it confess thy own mercies to thee, that it may praise thee. Thy whole creation ceaseth not, nor is silent in thy praises, neither the spirit of man, with voice directed unto thee, nor creation animate, or inanimate, by the voice of those who meditate thereon. That so our souls may from their weariness arise towards thee, leaning on those things which thou hast created, and passing on to thyself, who madeest them wonderfully, and there is refreshment and true strength. Chapter 2 Let the restless, the godless, depart and flee from thee, yet thou seeest them, and divideest the darkness, and behold the universe with them is fair, though they are foul. And how have they injured thee, or how have they disgraced thy government, which from the heaven to this lowest earth is just and perfect? For wither fled they, when they fled from thy presence, or where dost not thou find them? But they fled, that they might not see thee seeing them, and, blinded, might stumble against thee, because thou forsakeest nothing thou hast made. But the unjust, I say, might stumble upon thee and justly be hurt, withdrawing themselves from thy goodness, and stumbling at thy uprightness, and falling upon their own ruggedness. Ignorant, in truth, that thou art everywhere, whom no place encompasseth. And thou alone art near, even to those that remove far from thee. Let them then be turned and seek thee, because not as they have forsaken their Creator, has thou forsaken thy creation. Let them be turned and seek thee, and behold, thou art there in their heart, in the heart of those that confess to thee, and cast themselves upon thee, and weep in thy bosom, after all their rugged ways. But then dost thou gently wipe away their tears, and they weep the more, and joy in weeping, even for that thou, Lord, not man of flesh and blood, but thou, Lord, whom madeest them, and remakest and comfortest them. But where was I when I was seeking thee, and thou were't before me, but I had gone away from thee, nor did I find myself, how much less thee? Chapter 3 I would lay open before my God that nine and twentieth year of my age. There had then come to Carthage a certain bishop of the Manichees, Faustus by name, a great snare of the devil, and many were entangled by him through that lure of his smooth language, which though I did commend, yet could I separate from the truth of the things which I was earnest to learn. Nor did I so much regard the service of oratory, as the science which this Faustus, so praised among them, set before me to feed upon. Fame had before bespoken him most knowing in all valuable learning, and exquisitely skilled in the liberal sciences. And since I had read and well remembered much of the philosophers, I compared some things of theirs with those long fables of the Manichees, and found the former the more probable, even although they could only prevail so far as to make judgment of this lower world, the Lord of it they could by no means find out. For thou art great, O Lord, and hast respect unto the humble, but the proud thou holdest afar off. Nor does thou draw near, but to the contrite in heart, nor art found by the proud, no, not though by curious skill they could number the stars and the sand, and measure the starry heavens, and track the courses of the planets. For with their understanding and wit, which thou bestowest on them, they search out these things, and much have they found out, and foretold many years before, eclipses of those luminaries, the sun and moon, what day and hour, and how many digits, nor did their calculation fail. And it came to pass as they foretold, and they wrote down the rules they had found out, and these are read at this day, and out of them do others foretell in what year and month of the year, and what day of the month, and what hour of the day, and what part of its light, moon or sun is to be eclipsed, and so it shall be as it his foreshowed. At these things men, that know not this art, marvel and are astonished, and they that know it, exalt and are puffed up, and by an ungodly pride departing from thee, and failing of thy light, they foresee a failure of the sun's light, which shall be so long before, but see not their own, which is, for they search not religiously, whence they have the wit, wherewith they search this out. And finding that thou mates them, they give not themselves up to thee, to preserve what thou madeest, nor sacrifice to thee what they have made themselves, nor slay their own soaring imaginations as fowls of the air, nor their own diving curiosities, wherewith, like the fishes of the sea, they wander over the unknown paths of the abyss, nor their own luxuriousness, as beasts of the field, that thou, Lord, a consuming fire, may est burn up those dead cares of theirs, and recreate themselves immortally. But they know not the way, thy word, by whom thou madeest these things which they number, and themselves who number, and the sense whereby they perceive what they number, and the understanding out of which they number, or that of thy wisdom there is no number. But the only begotten is himself made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and was numbered among us, and paid tribute under Caesar. They knew not this way, whereby to descend to him from themselves, and by him ascend unto him. They knew not this way, and deemed themselves exalted amongst the stars and shining, and behold, they fell upon the earth, and their foolish heart was darkened. They discourse many things truly concerning the creature, but truth, artificer of the creature, they seek not piously, and therefore find him not. Or if they find him, knowing him to be God, they glorify him not as God, neither are thankful, but become vain in their imaginations, and profess themselves to be wise, attributing to themselves what is thine. And thereby, with most perverse blindness, study to impute to thee what is their own, forging ties of thee who art the truth, and changing the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things, changing thy truth into a lie, and worshiping and serving the creatures more than the Creator. Yet many truths concerning the creature retained eye from these men, and saw the reason thereof from calculations, the succession of times, and the visible testimonies of the stars, and compared them with the sayings of Menaceas, which in his frenzy he had written most largely on these subjects, but discovered not any account of the solstices, or equinoxes, or the eclipses of the greater lights, nor whatever of this sort I had learned in the books of secular philosophy. But I was commanded to believe, and yet it corresponded not with what had been established by calculations, and my own sight, but was quite contrary. Doth then, O Lord God of truth, who so knoweth these things, therefore please thee? Surely unhappy is he who knoweth all these, and knoweth not thee. But happy who so knoweth thee, though he know not these. And who so knoweth both thee and them, is not the happier for them, but for thee only, if knowing thee, he glorifies thee as God, and is thankful, and becomes not vain in his imaginations. For as he is better off, who knows how to possess a tree, and returns thanks to thee for the use thereof, although he know not how many cubits high it is, or how wide it spreads, then he that can measure it, and count all its bows, and neither owns it, nor knows the love of its creator. So a believer, whose all this world of wealth is, and who having nothing, yet possesseth all things, by cleaving unto thee, whom all things serve, though he know not even the circles of the great bear, yet it is folly to doubt, but he is in a better state, than one who can measure the heavens, and number the stars, and poise the elements, yet neglecteth thee, who hast made all things in number, weight, and measure. CHAPTER V But yet who bade that Manicheas write on these things also, skill in which was no element of piety? For thou hast said to man, behold, piety and wisdom, of which he might be ignorant, though he had perfect knowledge of these things. But these things, since knowing not, he most impudently dared to teach, he plainly could have no knowledge of piety. For it is vanity to make professions of these worldly things, even when known. But confession to thee is piety. Wherefore, this wanderer, to this end, spake much of these things, that convicted by those who had truly learned them, it might be manifest, what understanding he had in the other abtrusor things. For he would not have himself meanly thought of, but went about to persuade men, that the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the Amriture of thy faithful ones, was with plenary authority personally with him. When then he was found out to have taught falsely of the heaven and stars, and of the motions of the sun and moon, although these things pertain not to the doctrine of religion, yet his sacrilegious presumption would become evident enough, seeing he delivered things which not only he knew not, but which were falsified, with so mad a vanity of pride, that he sought to ascribe them to himself as to a divine person. For when I hear any Christian brother ignorant of these things, and mistaken of them, I can patiently behold such a man holding his opinion, nor do I see that any ignorance as to the position or character of the corporal creation can injure him, so long as he doth not believe anything unworthy of thee, O Lord, the Creator of all. But it doth injure him, if he imagine it to pertain to the form of the doctrine of piety, and will yet affirm that too stiffly were of he is ignorant. And yet is even such an infirmity, in the infancy of faith, borne by our mother, charity, till the newborn may grow up into a perfect man, so as not to be carried about with every wind of doctrine. But in him, who in such wise presumed to be the teacher, source, guide, chief of all whom he could so persuade, that who so followed him, thought that he followed not a mere man, but thy holy spirit, who would not judge that so great madness, when once convicted of having taught anything false, were to be detested and utterly rejected. But I had not as yet clearly ascertained whether the vicissitudes of longer and shorter days and nights, and of day and night itself, with the eclipses of the greater lights, and whatever else of the kind I had read of in other books, might be explained consistently with his sayings, so that, if they by any means might, it should still remain a question to me whether it were so or no, that I might, on account of his reputed sanctity, rest my credence upon his authority. CHAPTER VI And for almost all these nine years, wherein with unsettled mind I had been their disciple, I had longed but too intensely for the coming of this Faustus. For the rest of the sect, whom by chance I had lighted upon, were unable to solve my objections about these things, still held out to me the coming of this Faustus by conference with whom, these and greater difficulties, if I had them, were to be most readily and abundantly cleared. When then he came, I found him a man of pleasing discourse, and who could speak fluently and in better terms, yet still but the self- same things which they were want to say. But what availed the utmost neatness of the cupbearer to my thirst for more precious draught? Mine ears were already cloied with the like, nor did they seem to me therefore better, because better said, nor therefore true, because eloquent, nor the soul therefore wise, because the face was comely and the language graceful. But they who held him out to me were no good judges of things, and therefore to them he appeared understanding and wise, because in words pleasing. I felt, however, that another sort of people were suspicious even of truth, and refused to assent to it if delivered in a smooth and copious discourse. But thou, oh my God, hadst already taught me by wonderful and secret ways, and therefore I believe that thou taughtest me, because it is truth, nor is there besides thee any teacher of truth, where or whence so ever it may shine upon us. Of thyself, therefore, had I now learned, that neither ought anything to seem to be spoken truly, because eloquently, nor therefore falsely, because the utterance of the lips is inharmonious, nor again, therefore true, because rudely delivered, nor therefore false, because the language is rich, but that wisdom and folly are as wholesome and unwholesome food, and adorned or unadorned phrases, as courtly or country vessels. Either kind of meats may be served up in either kind of dishes. That greediness, then, were with I had of so long time expected that man was delighted verily with his action and feeling when disputing and his choice and readiness of words to clothe his ideas. I was then delighted, and, with many others and more than they, did I praise and extol him. It troubled me, however, that in the assembly of his auditors I was not allowed to put in and communicate those questions that troubled me in familiar converse with him, which when I might, and with my friends began to engage his ears at such times as it was not unbecoming for him to discuss with me, and had brought forward such things as moved me. I found him first utterly ignorant of liberal sciences, save grammar, and that but in an ordinary way. But because he had read some of Tully's orations, a very few books of Seneca, some things of the poets, and such few volumes of his own sect, as were written in Latin and neatly, and was daily practiced in speaking, he acquired a certain eloquence, which proved the more pleasing and seductive, because under the guidance of a good wit, and with a kind of natural gracefulness. Is it not thus, as I recall it, O Lord my God, thou judge of my conscience, before thee is my heart, and my remembrance, who did set that time direct me by the hidden mystery of thy providence, and did set those shameful errors of mine before th' my face that I might see and hate them. CHAPTER VII For after it was clear that he was ignorant of those arts in which I thought he excelled, I began to despair of his opening and solving the difficulties which perplexed me, of which indeed, however ignorant, he might have held the truth's impiety had he not been a managy. For their books are fraught with prolix fables of the heaven and stars, sun and moon, and I now no longer thought him able satisfactorily to decide what I much desired, whether, on comparison of these things with the calculations I had elsewhere read, the account given in the books of Menaceas were preferable, or at least as good. Which when I proposed to be considered and discussed, he, so far modestly, shrunk from the burden. For he knew that he knew not these things, and was not ashamed to confess it. For he was not one of those talking persons, many of whom I had endured, who undertook to teach me these things and said nothing. But this man had a heart, though not right towards thee, yet neither altogether treacherous to himself. For he was not altogether ignorant of his own ignorance, nor would he rashly be entangled in a dispute whence he could neither retreat nor extricate himself fairly. Even for this I liked him the better, for fair is the modesty of a candid mind than the knowledge of those things which I desired. And such I found him in all the more difficult and subtle questions. My zeal for the writings of Menaceas being thus blunted and despairing yet more of their other teachers, seeing that in diverse things which perplexed me, he, so renowned among them, had so turned out, I began to engage with him in the study of that literature, on which he also was much set, and which as a rhetoric reader I was at that time teaching young students at Carthage, and to read with him either what himself desired to hear or such as I judged fit for his genius. But all my efforts whereby I had purposed to advance in that sect upon knowledge of that man came utterly to an end. Not that I detached myself from them altogether, but as one finding nothing better I had settled to be content meanwhile with what I had in whatever way fallen upon, unless by chance something more eligible should dawn on me. Thus that Faustus, to so many a snare of death, had now, neither willing nor at witting it, begun to loosen that wherein I was taken. For thy hands, O God, in the secret purpose of thy providence, did not forsake my soul, and out of my mother's heart's blood, through her tears night and day poured out, was a sacrifice offered for me unto thee, and thou didst deal with me by wondrous ways. Thou didst it, O my God, for the steps of a man are ordered by the Lord, and he shall dispose his way. Or how shall we obtain salvation but from thy hand, remaking what it made? CHAPTER VIII Thou didst deal with me that I should be persuaded to go to Rome, and to teach there, rather, what I was teaching at Carthage, and how I was persuaded to this I will not neglect to confess to thee, because herein also the deepest recesses of thy wisdom and thy most present mercy to us must be considered and confessed. I did not wish, therefore, to go to Rome, because higher gains and higher dignities were warranted to me by my friends who persuaded me to this, though even these things had at that time an influence over my mind. But my chief and almost only reason was that I heard that young men studied there more peacefully and were kept quiet under a restraint of more regular discipline, so that they did not, as their pleasures, petulantly rush into the school of one whose peoples they were not, nor were even admitted without his permission, where as at Carthage there reigns among the scholars a most disgraceful and unruly license. They burst in audaciously, and with gestures almost frantic, disturb all order which any one hath established for the good of his scholars. Diverse outrages they commit, with a wonderful stolidity punishable by law, did not custom uphold them. That custom evincing them to be the more miserable, in that they now do as lawful, what by thy eternal law shall never be lawful, and they think they do it unpunished, whereas they are punished, with the very blindness whereby they do it, and suffer incomparably worse than what they do. The manners then which, when a student I would not make my own, I was feign as a teacher to endure in others, and so I was well pleased to go where, all that knew it, assured me that the like was not done. But thou, my refuge and my portion in the land of the living, that I might change my earthly dwelling for the salvation of my soul, at Carthage didst goad me, that I might thereby be torn from it, and at Rome didst proffer me allurements whereby I might be drawn thither, by men in love with a dying life, the one doing frantic, the other promising vain things. And, to correct my steps, did secretly use there and my own perverseness. For both they who disturbed my quiet were blinded with a disgraceful frenzy, and they who invited me elsewhere, savoured of earth, and I, who here detested real misery, was there seeking unreal happiness. But why I went hence and went thither, thou knowest, O God, yet showedst it neither to me nor to my mother, who grievously bewailed my journey, and followed me as far as the sea. But I deceived her, holding me by force, that either she might keep me back or go with me, and I feigned that I had a friend whom I could not leave till he had a fair wind to sail. And I lied to my mother, and such a mother, and escaped, for this also hast thou mercifully forgiven me, preserving me, thus full of excruble defilements from the waters of the sea, for the water of thy grace, whereby when I was cleansed the streams of my mother's eyes should be dried, with which for me she daily watered the ground under her face. And yet refusing to return without me I scarcely persuaded her to stay that night in a place hard by our ship, where it was an oratory in memory of the blessed Cyprian. That night I privily departed, but she was not behind in weeping and prayer. And what, O Lord, was she with so many tears asking of thee, but that thou wouldst not suffer me to sail? But thou, in the depths of thy councils and hearing the main point of her desire, regardest not what she then asked, that thou mightest make me what she ever asked. The wind blew and swelled our sails, and withdrew the shore from our sight, and she on the morrow was there, frantic with sorrow, and with complaints and groans filled thine ears, who didst then disregard them. Whilst through my desires they weren't hurrying me to end all desire, and the earthly part of her affection to me was chastened by the allotted scourge of sorrows. For she loved my being with her, as mothers do, but much more than many, and she knew not how great joy thou werest about to work for her out of my absence. She knew not, therefore did she weep and wail, and by this agony there appeared in her the inheritance of Eve, with sorrow seeking what in sorrow she had brought forth. And yet, after accusing my treachery and hard heartedness, she betook herself again to intercede to thee for me, and went to her wanted place and eye to Rome. And lo! there I was received by the scourge of bodily sickness, and I was going down to hell, carrying all the sins which I had committed, both against thee and myself and others, many and grievous, over and above that bond of original sin, whereby we all die in Adam. For thou hadst not forgiven me any of these things in Christ, nor had he abolished by his cross the enmity which by my sins I had incurred with thee. For how should he, by the crucifixion of a phantasm, which I believed him to be? So true, then, was the death of my soul, as that of his flesh seemed to me false, and how true the death of his body, so false was the life of my soul, which did not believe it. And now the fever heightening I was parting and departing for ever. For had I then parted hence, wither had I departed, but into fire and torments, such as my misdeeds deserved in the truth of thy appointment? And this she knew not, yet in absence prayed for me. But thou, everywhere present, hurtest her where she was, and, where I was, had compassion upon me, that I should recover the health of my body, though frenzied as yet in my sacrilegious heart. For I did not in all that danger desire thy baptism, and I was better as a boy when I begged it of my mother's piety as I have before recited and confessed. But I had grown up to my own shame, and I madly scoffed at the prescripts of thy medicine, who would not suffer me, being such, to die a double death. With which wound had my mother's heart been pierced, it could never be healed. For I cannot express the affection she bear to me, and with how much more vehement anguish she now was in labor of me, in the spirit that at her childbearing in the flesh. I see not, then, how she should have been healed, had such a death of mine stricken through the bowels of her love. And where would have been those her strong and unceasing prayers, unintermitting to thee alone? But what's thou, God of mercies, despised the contrite and humble heart of that chaste and sober widow, so frequent in almsdeeds, so full of duty and service to thy saints, no day intermitting the oblation at thine altar, twice a day, morning and evening, without any intermission, coming to thy church, not for idle tattling and old wives' fables, but that she might hear thee in thy discourses, and thou her in her prayers? Couldest thou despise and reject from thy aid the tears of such a one, where wish she begged of thee, not gold or silver, nor any mutable or passing good, but the salvation of her son's soul? Thou, by whose gift she was such? Never, Lord. Yea, thou wert at hand, and wert hearing and doing, in that order wherein thou hast determined before, that it should be done. Far be it that thou shouldst deceive her in thy visions and answers, some whereof I have, some I have not, mentioned, which she laid up in her faithful heart, and ever praying, urged upon thee, as thine own handwriting. For thou, because thy mercy endureth for ever, vouch safest to those to whom thou forgivest all their debts, to become also a debtor by thy promises. Thou recovers me then of that sickness, and healest the son of thy handmaid, for the time in body that he might live, for thee to bestow upon him a better and more abiding health. And even then, at Rome, I joined myself to those deceiving and deceived, holy ones, not with their disciples only, of which number was he in whose house I had fallen sick and recovered, but also with those whom they call the elect. For I still thought that it was not we that sin, but that I know not what other nature sinned in us, and it delighted my pride to be free from blame, and when I had done any evil, not to confess I had done any, that thou mightest heal my soul because it had sinned against thee. But I loved to excuse it, and to accuse I know not what other thing which was with me, but which I was not. But in truth it was holy I, and mine impiety had divided me against myself, and that sin was the more incurable, whereby I did not judge myself a sinner, and excrible iniquity it was, that I had rather have thee, thee, O God Almighty, to be overcome in me to my destruction, than myself of thee to salvation. Not as yet, then, hadst thou set a watch before my mouth, and a door of safekeeping around my lips, that my heart might not turn aside to wicked speeches to make excuses of sin with men that work iniquity, and therefore was I still united with their elect. But now, despairing to make proficiency in that false doctrine, even those things, with which I should find no better, I had resolved to rest contented, I now held more laxly and carelessly. For there half arose a thought in me, that those philosophers, whom they call academics, were wiser than the rest, for that they held men ought to doubt everything, and lay down that no truth can be comprehended by man, for so, not then understanding even their meaning, I also was clearly convinced that they thought as they are commonly reported. Yet did I freely and openly discourage that host of mine, from that overconfidence which I perceived him to have in those fables, which the books of Menaceas were full of? Yet I lived in more familiar friendship with them, than with others who were not of this heresy. Nor did I maintain it with my ancient eagerness. Still my intimacy with that sect, Rome secretly harboring many of them, made me slower to seek any other way, especially since I despaired of finding the truth from which they had turned me aside, in thy church, O Lord of Heaven and Earth, creator of all things visible and invisible. And it seemed to me very unseemly to believe thee, to have the shape of human flesh, and to be bounded by the bodily liniments of our members. And because, when I wished to think on my God, I knew not what to think of, but a mass of bodies, for what was not such did not seem to me to be anything. This was the greatest and almost only cause of my inevitable error. From hence I believed evil also to be some such kind of substance, and to have its own foul and hideous bulk. Whether gross, which they called earth, or thin and subtle, like that body of the air, which they imagined to be some malignant mind creeping through the earth. And because a piety, such as it was, constrained me to believe that the good God never created any evil nature, I conceived two masses, contrary to one another, both unbounded, but the evil narrower and the good more expensive. And from this pestilent beginning the other sacrilegious conceits followed on me. For when my mind endeavored to recur to the Catholic faith, I was driven back, since that was not the Catholic faith, which I thought to be so. And I seemed to myself more reverential, if I believed of thee, my God, to whom thy mercies confess out of my mouth, as unbounded, at least on other sides, although on that one where the mass of evil was opposed to thee, I was constrained to confess thee bounded. Then if on all sides I should imagine thee to be bounded by the form of a human body. And it seemed to me, better to believe thee to have created no evil, which to me ignorant seemed not some only, but a bodily substance, because I could not conceive of mind, unless as a subtle body, and that diffused indefinite spaces. Then to believe the nature of evil, such as I conceived it, could come from thee. Yay, and our Saviour himself, thy only begotten, I believe to have been reached forth, as it were, for our salvation, out of the mass of thy most lucid substance, so as to believe nothing of him, but what I could imagine in my vanity. His nature, then, being such, I thought could not have been born of the Virgin Mary without being mingled with the flesh, and how that which I had so figured to myself could be mingled and not defiled, I saw not. I feared, therefore, to believe him born in the flesh, lest I should be forced to believe him defiled by the flesh. Now will thy spiritual ones mildly and lovingly smile upon me, if they shall read these my confessions. Yet such was I. CHAPTER XI. Furthermore, what the Manichees had criticised in thy scriptures, I thought could not be defended, yet at times fairly I had a wish to confer upon these several points with someone very well skilled in these books, and to make trial what he thought thereon. For the words of one, Helpideus, as he spoke and disputed face to face against the said Manichees, had begun to stir me even at Carthage, and that he had produced things out of the scriptures not easily withstood. The Manichees' answers where to seemed to me weak. And this answer they liked not to give publicly, but only to us in private. It was that the scripture of the New Testament had been corrupted by I know not whom who wished to engraft the laws of the Jews upon the Christian faith, yet themselves produced not any incorruptible copies. But I, conceiving of things corporal only, was mainly held down, vehemently oppressed, and in a manner suffocated by those masses, panting under which, after a breath of thy truth, I could not breathe it pure and untainted. I began then diligently to practice that for which I came to Rome, to teach rhetoric, at first to gather some to my house, to whom, and through whom, I had begun to be known. When low, I found other offenses committed in Rome, to which I was not exposed in Africa. True, those subvertings by profligate young men were not here practiced, as was told me. But on a sudden, said they, to avoid paying their master's stipend, a number of views plot together and removed to another, breakers of faith, who for love of money hold justice cheap. These also my heart hated, though not with a perfect hatred, for perchance I hated them more because I was to suffer by them, than because they did things utterly unlawful. Of a truth such are base persons, and they go ahoring from thee, loving those fleeting mockeries of things temporal, and filthy lucre, which fouls the hand that grasps it, hugging the fleeting world, and despising thee, who abidus and recallus, and forgive us the adulterous soul of man, when she returns to thee. And now I hate such deprived and crooked persons, though I love them if corrigible, so as to prefer to money the learning, which they acquire, and to learning, thee, O God, the truth and fullness of assured good, and most pure peace. But then I rather for my own sake misliked them evil, than liked and wished them good for thine. CHAPTER XIII. When they for, they of Milan had sent to Rome, to the prefect of the city, to furnish them with a rhetoric reader for their city, and send him at the public expense, I made application, through those very persons, intoxicated with Manachian vanities, to be freed wherefrom I was to go, neither of us however knowing it. That Semachus, then prefect of the city, would try me by setting me some subject, and so send me. To Milan I came, to Ambrose the bishop, known to the whole world as among the best of men, thy devout servant, whose eloquent discourse did then plentifully dispense unto thy people the flower of thy wheat, the gladness of thy oil, and the sober inebriation of thy wine. To him was I unknowing led by thee, that by him I might knowingly be led to thee. That man of God received me as a father, and showed me an episcopal kindness on my coming. Thenceforth I began to love him, at first indeed, not as a teacher of the truth, which I utterly despaired of in thy church, but as a person kind towards myself. And I listened diligently to him preaching to the people, not with that intent I ought, but as it were, trying his eloquence, whether it answered the fame thereof, or flowed fuller or lower than was reported. And I hung on his words attentively, but of the matter I was, as a careless and scornful looker on. And I was delighted with the sweetness of his discourse, more recondite, yet in manner less winning and harmonious than that of Faustus. Of the matter, however, there was no comparison, for the one was wandering amid managy and delusions, the other teaching salvation most soundly. But salvation is far from sinners, such as I then stood before him, and yet I was drawing near, by little and little, and unconsciously. CHAPTER XIV For though I took no pains to learn what he spake, but only to hear how he spake, for that empty care alone was left me, despairing of a way, open for man, to thee. Yet together with the words which I would choose came also into my mind the things which I would refuse, for I could not separate them, and while I opened my heart to admit how eloquently he spake, there also entered how truly he spake, but this by degrees. For first, these things also had now begun to appear to me capable of defense, and the Catholic faith, for which I had thought nothing could be said against the managy's objections, I now thought might be maintained without shamelessness, especially after I had heard one or two places of the Old Testament resolved, and oftentimes in a figure which when I understood literally I was slain spiritually. Very many places, then, of those books having been explained, I now blamed my despair in believing that no answer could be given to such as hated and scoffed at the law and the prophets. Yet I did not therefore then see that the Catholic way was to be held because it also could find learned maintainers who could at large and with some show of reason answer objections, nor that what I held was therefore to be condemned because both sides could be maintained, for the Catholic cause seemed to me in such sort not vanquished, as still not as yet to be victorious. Hereupon I earnestly bent my mind to see if in any way I could by any certain proof convict the managy's of falsehood. Could I once have conceived a spiritual substance all their strongholds had been beaten down and cast utterly out of my mind? But I could not. Notwithstanding concerning the frame of this world and the whole of nature which the senses of the flesh can reach to, as I more and more considered and compared things, I judged the tenets of most of the philosophers to have been much more probable. So then after the manner of the academics, as they are supposed, doubting of everything and wavering between all, I settled so far that the managies were to be abandoned. Judging that, even while doubting, I might not continue in that sect to which I had already preferred some of the philosophers, to which philosophers notwithstanding, for they were without the saving name of Christ, I utterly refused to commit the cure of my sick soul. I determined therefore so long to be a catechumen in the Catholic Church, to which I had been commended by my parents, till something certain should dawn upon me, whether I might steer my course. LIBERVOCK'S RECORDING IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN Read by Marianne. BOOKS VI Arrival of Monica at Milan, her obedience to St. Ambrose and his value for her, St. Ambrose's habits, Augustine's gradual abandonment of error, finds that he has blamed the Church Catholic wrongly, desire of absolute certainty, but struck with the contrary analogy of God's natural providence, how shaken in his worldly pursuits, God's guidance of his friend, Olympius, Augustine debates with himself and his friends about their mode of life, his inveterate sins and dread of judgment. CHAPTER ONE O Thou, my hope from my youth, where were Thou to me and whither were Thou gone? Hetz not Thou created me and separated me from the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air? Thou hast made me wiser, yet did I walk in darkness and in slippery places, and sought thee abroad out of myself, and found not the God of my heart, and had come into the depths of the sea, and distrusted and disbared of ever finding truth? My mother had now come to me, resolute through piety, following me over sea and land, in all perils confiding in thee. For in perils of the sea she comforted the very mariners, by whom passengers, unacquainted with the deep, use rather to be comforted when troubled. Assuring them of a safe arrival, because Thou hats'd by a vision assured her thereof. She found me in grievous peril through despair of ever finding truth. But when I had discovered to her that I was now no longer a manachy, though not yet a Catholic Christian, she was not overjoyed, as at something unexpected. Although she was now assured concerning that part of my misery for which she bewailed me as one dead, though to be reawakened by thee, carrying me forth upon the beer of her thoughts, that Thou mightest say to the son of the widow, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise, and he should revive, and begin to speak, and thou shouldest deliver him to his mother. Her heart then was shaken with no tumultuous exultation, when she heard that what she daily with tears desired of thee was already in so great part realized, in that, though I had not yet attained the truth, I was rescued from falsehood. But as being assured that Thou, who hath promised the whole, wouldst one day give the rest, most calmly, and with a heartful of confidence, she replied to me, she believed in Christ, that before she departed this life she should see me a Catholic believer. Thus much to me. But to thee, fountain of mercies, poor she forth, more copious prayers and tears, that Thou wouldst hasten thy help and enlighten my darkness, and she hastened the more eagerly to the church, and hung upon the lips of Ambrose, praying for the fountain of that water which springeth up unto life everlasting. But that man she loved as an angel of God, because she knew that by him I had been brought for the present to that doubtful state of faith I now was in, through which she anticipated most confidently that I should pass from sickness unto health, after the access, as it were, of a sharper fit which physicians call the crisis. CHAPTER II When my mother had once, as she was want in Africa, brought to the churches, built in memory of the saints, certain cakes and bread and wine, and was forbidden by the doorkeeper, so soon as she knew that the bishop had forbidden this, she so piously and obediently embraced his wishes that I myself wondered how readily she censured her own practice rather than discuss his prohibition. For wine-bibing did not lay siege to her spirit, nor did love of wine provoke her to hatred of the truth, as it doth too many, both men and women, who revolt at a lesson of sobriety, as men well drunk at a draught mingled with water. But she, when she had brought her basket with the accustomed festival food to be but tasted by herself and then given away, never joined therewith more than one small cup of wine diluted according to her own abstemious habits, which for courtesy she would taste. And if there were many churches of the departed saints that were to be honoured in that manner, still she carried round the same one cup to be used everywhere, and this, though not only made very watery but unpleasantly heated with caring about, she would distribute to those about her by small sips, for she sought their devotion, not pleasure. So soon then as she found this custom to be forbidden by that famous preacher and most pious prelate, even to those that would use it soberly, lest so an occasion of excess might be given to the drunken, and for that these, as it were, anniversary funeral solemnities did much resemble the superstition of the Gentiles, she most willingly forbear it. And for a basket filled with fruits of the earth, she had learned to bring to the churches of the martyrs, a breast filled with more purified petitions, and to give what she could to the poor, so that the communion of the Lord's body might be there rightly celebrated, where, after the example of his passion, the martyrs had been sacrificed and crowned. But yet it seems to me, O Lord my God, and thus thinks my heart of it in thy sight, that perhaps she would not so readily have yielded to the cutting off of this custom, had it been forbidden by another, whom she loved not as Ambrose, whom, for my salvation, she loved almost entirely, and he, her again, for her most religious conversation, whereby in good works, so fervent in spirit, she was constant at church, so that, when he saw me, he often burst forth into her praises, congratulating me that I had such a mother, not knowing what a son she had in me, who doubted of all these things and imagined the way to life could not be found out. CHAPTER III Nor did I yet groan in my prayers, that thou wouldst help me, but my spirit was wholly intent on learning and restless to dispute. And Ambrose himself, as the world counts happy, I esteemed a happy man, whom personages so great held in such honour, only his celibacy seemed to me a painful course. But what hope he bore within him, what struggles he had against the temptations which beset his very excellencies, or what comfort in adversities, and what sweet joys thy bread had for the hidden mouth of his spirit, when chewing the cud thereof, I neither could conjecture nor had experienced. Nor did he know the tides of my feelings or the abyss of my danger, for I could not ask of him what I would as I would, being shut out both from his ear and speech by multitudes of busy people, whose weaknesses he served, with whom when he was not taken up, which was but a little time, he was either refreshing his body with the sustenance absolutely necessary, or his mind with reading. But when he was reading, his eye glided over the pages, and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were at rest. Often times, when we had come, for no man was forbidden to enter, nor was it his want that any who came should be announced to him, we saw him thus reading to himself, and never otherwise. And having long sat silent, for who durst intrude on one so intent, we were feigned to depart, ensuring that in the small interval which he obtained, free from the din of others' business, for the recruiting of his mind, he was loathed to be taken off. And perchance he dreaded lest if the author he read should deliver anything obscurely, some attentive or perplexed hear should desire him to expound it, or to discuss some of the harder questions, so that his time being thus spent he could not turn over so many volumes as he desired. Although the preserving of his voice, which a very little speaking would weaken, might be the truer reason for his reading to himself. But with what intent soever he did it, certainly in such a man it was good. I, however, certainly had no opportunity of inquiring what I wished, of that so holy oracle of thine, his breast, unless the thing might be answered briefly. But those tides in me, to be poured out to him, required his full leisure, and never found it. I heard him indeed every Lord's day, rightly expounding the word of truth among the people, and I was more and more convinced that all the knots of those crafty columnaries, which those are deceivers had knit against the divine books, could be unraveled. But when I understood with all, that man, created by thee after thine own image, was not so understood by thy spiritual sons, whom of the Catholic mother thou hast borne again through grace, as though they believed and conceived of thee as bounded by human shape. Although what a spiritual substance should be, I had not even a faint or shadowy notion. Yet with joy I blushed at having so many years barked not against the Catholic faith, but against the fictions of carnal imaginations. For so rash and impious had I been, that what I ought by inquiring to have learned I had pronounced on, condemning, for thou most high and most near, most secret and most present, who hast not limbs some larger, some smaller, but art wholly everywhere, and nowhere in space, art not of such corporal shape, yet hast thou made man after thine own image, and behold from head to foot is he contained in space. CHAPTER IV Ignorant then how this thy image should subsist, I should have knocked and proposed the doubt, how it was to be believed, not insultingly opposed it, as if believed. Doubt then, what to hold for certain, the more sharply nod my heart, the more ashamed I was, that so long deluded and deceived by the promise of certainties I had with childish error and vehemence, praided of so many uncertainties. For that they were falsehoods, became clear to me later. However, I was certain that they were uncertain, and that I had formally accounted them certain, when with a blind contentiousness I accused thy Catholic Church, whom I now discovered, not indeed as yet to teach truly, but at least not to teach that, for which I had grievously censured her. So I was confounded and converted, and I enjoyed, oh my God, that the one only Church, the body of thine own Son, were in the name of Christ had been put upon me as an infant, had no taste for infantine conceits, nor in her sound doctrines maintained any tenant which should confine thee, the Creator of all, in space, however great and large, yet bounded everywhere by the limits of a human form. I enjoyed also that the old scriptures of the law and the prophets were laid before me, not now to be perused with that eye to which, before they seemed absurd, when I reviled thy holy ones for so thinking, whereas indeed they thought not so, and with joy I heard ambrose in his sermons to the people, often times most diligently recommend this text for a rule, the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life, whilst he drew aside the mystic veil, laying open spiritually what, according to the letter, seemed to teach something unsound, teaching herein nothing that offended me, though he taught what I knew not as yet, whether it were true. For I kept my heart from assenting to anything, fearing to fall headlong, but by hanging in suspense I was the worst killed. For I wished to be assured of the things I saw not, as I was that seven and three are ten. For I was not so mad as to think that even this could not be comprehended, but I desired to have other things as clear as this, whether things corporal, which were not present to my senses, or spiritual, whereof I knew not how to conceive, except corporally. And by believing I might have been cured, that so the eyesight of my soul being cleared might in some way be directed to thy truth, which abideth always, and in no part faileth. But as it happens, that one, who has tried a bad physician, fears to trust himself with a good one, so was it with the health of my soul, which could not be healed but by believing, unless it should believe false hoods, refuse to be cured. Resisting thy hands, who has prepared the medicines of faith, and has to applied them to the diseases of the whole world, and given unto them so great authority. CHAPTER V Being led, however, from this to prefer the Catholic doctrine, I felt that her proceeding was more unassuming and honest, in that she required to be believed things not demonstrated, whether it was that they could in themselves be demonstrated, but not to certain persons, or could not at all be. Whereas among the Manichees our credulity was mocked by a promise of certain knowledge, and then so many most fabulous and absurd things were imposed to be believed, because they could not be demonstrated. Then thou, O Lord, little by little, with most tender and most merciful hand, touching and composing my heart, did persuade me, considering what innumerable things I believed, which I saw not, nor was present while they were done, as so many things in secular history, so many reports of places and of cities which I had not seen, so many of friends, so many of physicians, so many continually of other men, which unless we should believe, we should do nothing at all in this life. Lastly, with how unshaken and assurance I believed, of what parents I was born, which I could not know, had I not believed upon hearsay, considering all this, thou didst persuade me, that not they who believed thy books, which thou hast established in so great authority among almost all nations, but they who believed them not were to be blamed, and that they were not to be heard, who should say to me, how knowest thou these scriptures, to have been imparted unto mankind by the Spirit, of the one true and most true God? For this very thing was of all most to be believed, since no contentiousness of blasphemous questionings, of all that multitude which I had read in the self-contradicting philosophers, could ring this belief from me, that thou art, whatsoever thou wert, what I knew not, and that the government of human beings belongs to thee. This I believed, sometimes more strongly, more weakly, otherwise, yet I ever believed both that thou wert, and hadst a care of us, though I was ignorant, both what was to be thought of thy substance, and what way led, or led back to thee. Since then we were too weak by abstract reasonings to find out truth, and for this very cause needed the authority of holy writ, I had now begun to believe that thou wouldst never have given such excellency of authority to that writ in all lands, hadst thou not willed thereby to be believed in, thereby sought. For now what things, sounding strangely in the scripture, were want to offend me, having heard diverse of them expounded satisfactorily, I referred to the depth of the mysteries, and its authority appeared to me the more venerable, and more worthy of religious credence, in that, while it lay open to all to read, it reserved the majesty of its mysteries within its profounder meaning, stooping to all in the great plainness of its words, and lowness of its style, yet calling forth the intensest application of such as are not light of heart, so that it might receive all in its open bosom, and through narrow passages waft over towards thee some few, yet many more than if it stood not aloft on such a height of authority, nor drew multitudes within its bosom by its holy lowliness. These things I thought on, and thou worked with me, I sighed, and thou hurtest me, I wavered, and thou didst guide me, I wandered through the broad way of the world, and thou didst not forsake me. CHAPTER VI. I panted after honors, gains, marriage, and thou deridest me. In these desires I underwent most bitter crosses, thou being the more gracious, the less thou sufferest ought to grow sweet to me, which was not thou. Behold my heart, O Lord, who wits I should remember all this, and confess to thee. Let my soul cleave unto thee, now that thou hast freed it from that fast-holding, bird-lime of death. How wretched was it, and thou disirritate the feeling of its wound, that forsaking all else it might be converted unto thee, who art above all, and without whom all things would be nothing. Be converted, and be healed. How miserable was I then, and how disthou deal with me, to make me feel my misery on that day, when I was preparing to recite a panagyric of the Emperor, wherein I was to utter many a lie, and lying wish to be applauded by those who knew I lied, and my heart was panting with these anxieties and boiling with the feverishness of consuming thoughts. For, passing through one of the streets of Milan, I observed a poor beggar, then, I suppose, with a full belly, joking and joyous, and I sighed, and spoke to the friends around me of the many sorrows of our frenzies. For that by all such efforts of ours, as those wherein I then toiled, dragging alone, under the goading of desire, the burden of my own wretchedness, and by dragging, augmenting it, we yet looked to arrive only at that very joyousness, whether that beggar-man had arrived before us, who should never perchance attain it. For what he had obtained by means of a few begged pence, the same was I plotting for by many a toilsome turning and winding, the joy of a temporary felicity. For he verily had not the true joy, but yet I with those of my ambitious designs was seeking one much less true. And certainly he was joyous, I anxious, he void of care, I full of fears. But why should any ask me, had I rather be merry or fearful? I would answer, merry. Again, if he asked had I rather be such as he was, or what I then was, I should choose to be myself, though worn with cares and fears. But out of wrong judgment, for was it the truth? For I ought not to prefer myself to him, because more learned than he, seeing I had no joy therein, but sought to please men by it. And that not to instruct, but simply to please. Wherefore also thou didst break my bones with the staff of thy correction. Away with those then from my soul, who say to her, it makes a difference whence a man's joy is, that beggar man joyed in drunkenness, thou desirest to joy in glory. What glory, Lord? That which is not in thee. For even as his was no true joy, so was that no true glory, and it overthrew my soul more. He that very night should digest his drunkenness, but I had slept and risen again with mine, and was to sleep again, and again to rise with it, how many days thou God knowest. But it doth make a difference whence a man's joy is. I know it, and the joy of a faithful hope lieth incomparably beyond such vanity. Yea, and so was he then beyond me, for he verily was the happier. Not only for that he was thoroughly drenched in mirth, I disemboweled with cares, but he, by fair wishes, had got him wine. I, by lying, was seeking for empty, swelling praise. Much to this purpose that I then to my friends, and I often remarked in them how it fared with me, and I found it went ill with me, and grieved, and doubled that very ill. And if any prosperity smiled on me, I was loath to catch at it, for almost before I could grasp it, it flew away. CHAPTER VII These things we, who were living as friends together, bemoaned together, but chiefly and most familiarly did I speak thereof, with Olipius and Nabridius, of whom Olipius was born in the same town with me, of persons of chief rank there, but younger than I. For he had studied under me both when I first lectured in our town, and afterwards at Carthage, and he loved me much, because I seemed to him kind and learned, and I him, for his great twordliness to virtue which was eminent enough in one of no greater years. Yet the whirlpool of Carthenagian habits, amongst whom those idle spectacles are hotly followed, had drawn him into the madness of the circus. But while he was miserably tossed therein, and I, professing rhetoric there, had a public school, as yet he used not my teaching, by reason of some unkindness risen betwixt his father and me. I had found then how deadly he doted upon the circus, and was deeply grieved that he seemed likely, nay, or had thrown away so great promise, yet I had no means of advising, or with a sort of constraint reclaiming him, either by the kindness of a friend or the authority of a master. For I suppose that he thought of me as did his father, but he was not such. Laying aside then his father's mind in that matter, he began to greet me, come sometimes into my lecture room, hear a little, and be gone. I, however, had forgotten to deal with him, that he should not, through a blind and headlong desire of vain pastimes, undo so good a wit. But thou, O Lord, who guide us the course of all thou hast created, hast not forgotten him, who was one day to be among thy children, priest and dispenser of thy sacrament, and that his amendment might plainly be attributed to thyself, thou effectest it, through me, but unknowingly. For as one day I sat in my customed place, with my scholars before me, he entered, greeted me, sat down, and applied his mind to what I then handled. I had by chance a passage in hand, which while I was explaining a likeness from the sursensee and races occurred to me, as likely to make what I would convey pleasanter and plainer, seasoned with biting mockery of those whom that madness had enthralled. God, thou noest, that I then thought not of curing Olympias of that infection, but he took it wholly to himself, and thought that I said it simply for his sake, and whence another would have taken occasion of offense with me, that right-minded youth took as a ground of being offended at himself and loving me more fervently. For thou hast said it long ago, and put it into thy book. Rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee. But I had not rebuked him, but thou, whom employest all, knowing or not knowing, in that order which thyself noest, and that order is just, dist of my heart and tongue make burning coals, by which to set on fire the hopeful mind, thus languishing and so curate. Let him be silent in thy praises, who considers not thy mercies, which confess unto thee out of my inmost soul. For he upon that speech burst out of that pit so deep, wherein he was wilfully plunged, and was blinded with its wretched pastimes, and he shook his mind with a strong self-command, whereupon all the fills of the Cersensian pastimes flew off from him, nor came he again thither. Upon this he prevailed with his unwilling father, that he might be my scholar. He gave way and gave in. And Olympias, beginning to be my here again, was involved in the same superstition with me, loving in the manages that show of continency which he supposed true and unfaigned, whereas it was a senseless and seducing continency, ensnaring precious souls, unable as yet to reach the depth of virtue, yet readily beguiled with the surface of what was but a shadowy and counterfeit virtue. CHAPTER VIII. He, not forsaking that secular course which his parents had charmed him to pursue, had gone before me to Rome to study law, and there he was carried away incredibly with an incredible eagerness after the shows of gladiators. For being utterly adverse to, and detesting such spectacles, he was one day by chance met by divers of his acquaintance and fellow students, coming from dinner, and they with a familiar violence hailed him, vehemently refusing and resisting, into the amphitheater, during those cruel and deadly shows he thus protesting, though you hail my body to that place and there set me, can you force me also to turn my mind or my eyes to these shows? I shall then be absent while present, and so shall overcome both you and them. They hearing this led him on nevertheless, desirous per chance to try that very thing whether he could do as he said. When they were come thither, and had taken their places as they could, the whole place kindled with that savage pastime. But he, closing the passages of his eyes, forbade his mind to range abroad after such evils, and would he have stopped his ears also? For in the fight, when one fell, a mighty cry of the whole people striking him strongly, overcome by curiosity, and as if prepared to despise and be superior to whatsoever it were, even when seen, he opened his eyes, and was stricken with a deeper wound in his soul than the other, whom he desired to behold was in his body. And he fell more miserably than he, upon whose fall that mighty noise was raised, which entered through his ears, and unlocked his eyes to make way for the striking and beating down of the soul, bold rather than resolute, and the weaker in that it had presumed on itself which ought to have relied on thee. For so soon as he saw that blood, he therewith drunk down savageness, nor turned away but fixed his eye, drinking in frenzy, unawares, and was delighted with that guilty fight, and intoxicated with that bloody pastime. Nor was he now the man he came, but one of the throng he came into, yea, a true associate of theirs that brought him thither. Why say more? He beheld, shouted, kindled, carried thence with him the madness which should goad him to return not only with them who first drew him thither, but also before them, yea, and to draw in others. Yet thence didst thou, with the most strong and most merciful hand, pluck him, and taught us him to have confidence not in himself, but in thee. But this was