AUGUSTINE: CONFESSIONS & ENCHIRIDION
 
 Newly translated and edited
 
 by

 ALBERT C. OUTLER, Ph.D., D.D.
 
 Professor of Theology
 
 Perkins School of Theology 
 
 Southern Methodist University 
 
 Dallas, Texas
 
 First published MCMLV 
 
 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 55-5021
 
 
 
 Introduction 
 
LIKE A COLOSSUS BESTRIDING TWO WORLDS, Augustine stands as the 
last patristic and the first medieval father of Western 
Christianity.  He gathered together and conserved all the main 
motifs of Latin Christianity from Tertullian to Ambrose; he 
appropriated the heritage of Nicene orthodoxy; he was a 
Chalcedonian before Chalcedon -- and he drew all this into an 
unsystematic synthesis which is still our best mirror of the heart 
and mind of the Christian community in the Roman Empire.  More 
than this, he freely received and deliberately reconsecrated the 
religious philosophy of the Greco-Roman world to a new apologetic 
use in maintaining the intelligibility of the Christian 
proclamation.  Yet, even in his role as summator of tradition, he 
was no mere eclectic.  The center of his "system" is in the Holy 
Scriptures, as they ordered and moved his heart and mind.  It was 
in Scripture that, first and last, Augustine found the focus of 
his religious authority.
 
     At the same time, it was this essentially conservative genius 
who recast the patristic tradition into the new pattern by which 
European Christianity would be largely shaped and who, with 
relatively little interest in historical detail, wrought out the 
first comprehensive "philosophy of history." Augustine regarded 
himself as much less an innovator than a summator.  He was less a 
reformer of the Church than the defender of the Church's faith.  
His own self-chosen project was to save Christianity from the 
disruption of heresy and the calumnies of the pagans, and, above 
everything else, to renew and exalt the faithful hearing of the 
gospel of man's utter need and God's abundant grace.  But the 
unforeseen result of this enterprise was to furnish the motifs of 
the Church's piety and doctrine for the next thousand years and 
more.  Wherever one touches the Middle Ages, he finds the marks of 
Augustine's influence, powerful and pervasive -- even Aquinas is 
more of an Augustinian at heart than a "proper" Aristotelian.  In 
the Protestant Reformation, the evangelical elements in 
Augustine's thought were appealed to in condemnation of the 
corruptions of popular Catholicism -- yet even those corruptions 
had a certain right of appeal to some of the non-evangelical 
aspects of Augustine's thought and life.  And, still today, in the 
important theological revival of our own time, the influence of 
Augustine is obviously one of the most potent and productive 
impulses at work.

     A succinct characterization of Augustine is impossible, not 
only because his thought is so extraordinarily complex and his 
expository method so incurably digressive, but also because 
throughout his entire career there were lively tensions and 
massive prejudices in his heart and head.  His doctrine of God 
holds the Plotinian notions of divine unity and remotion in 
tension with the Biblical emphasis upon the sovereign God's active 
involvement in creation and redemption.  For all his devotion to 
Jesus Christ, this theology was never adequately Christocentric, 
and this reflects itself in many ways in his practical conception 
of the Christian life.  He did not invent the doctrines of 
original sin and seminal transmission of guilt but he did set them 
as cornerstones in his "system," matching them with a doctrine of 
infant baptism which cancels, ex opere operato, birth sin and 
hereditary guilt.  He never wearied of celebrating God's abundant 
mercy and grace -- but he was also fully persuaded that the vast 
majority of mankind are condemned to a wholly just and appalling 
damnation.  He never denied the reality of human freedom and never 
allowed the excuse of human irresponsibility before God -- but 
against all detractors of the primacy of God's grace, he 
vigorously insisted on both double predestination and irresistible 
grace.

     For all this the Catholic Church was fully justified in 
giving Augustine his aptest title, Doctor Gratiae.  The central 
theme in all Augustine's writings is the sovereign God of grace 
and the sovereign grace of God.  Grace, for Augustine, is God's 
freedom to act without any external necessity whatsoever -- to act 
in love beyond human understanding or control; to act in creation, 
judgment, and redemption; to give his Son freely as Mediator and 
Redeemer; to endue the Church with the indwelling power and 
guidance of the Holy Spirit; to shape the destinies of all 
creation and the ends of the two human societies, the "city of 
earth" and the "city of God." Grace is God's unmerited love and 
favor, prevenient and occurrent.  It touches man's inmost heart 
and will.  It guides and impels the pilgrimage of those called to 
be faithful.  It draws and raises the soul to repentance, faith, 
and praise.  It transforms the human will so that it is capable of 
doing good.  It relieves man's religious anxiety by forgiveness 
and the gift of hope.  It establishes the ground of Christian 
humility by abolishing the ground of human pride.  God's grace 
became incarnate in Jesus Christ, and it remains immanent in the 
Holy Spirit in the Church.

     Augustine had no system -- but he did have a stable and 
coherent Christian outlook.  Moreover, he had an unwearied, ardent 
concern: man's salvation from his hopeless plight, through the 
gracious action of God's redeeming love.  To understand and 
interpret this was his one endeavor, and to this task he devoted 
his entire genius.

     He was, of course, by conscious intent and profession, a 
Christian theologian, a pastor and teacher in the Christian 
community.  And yet it has come about that his contributions to 
the larger heritage of Western civilization are hardly less 
important than his services to the Christian Church. He was far 
and away the best -- if not the very first -- psychologist in the 
ancient world.  His observations and descriptions of human motives 
and emotions, his depth analyses of will and thought in their 
interaction, and his exploration of the inner nature of the human 
self -- these have established one of the main traditions in 
European conceptions of human nature, even down to our own time.  
Augustine is an essential source for both contemporary depth 
psychology and existentialist philosophy.  His view of the shape 
and process of human history has been more influential than any 
other single source in the development of the Western tradition 
which regards political order as inextricably involved in moral 
order.  His conception of a societas as a community identified and 
held together by its loyalties and love has become an integral 
part of the general tradition of Christian social teaching and the 
Christian vision of "Christendom." His metaphysical explorations 
of the problems of being, the character of evil, the relation of 
faith and knowledge, of will and reason, of time and eternity, of 
creation and cosmic order, have not ceased to animate and enrich 
various philosophic reflections throughout the succeeding 
centuries.  At the same time the hallmark of the Augustinian 
philosophy is its insistent demand that reflective thought issue 
in practical consequence; no contemplation of the end of life 
suffices unless it discovers the means by which men are brought to 
their proper goals.  In sum, Augustine is one of the very few men 
who simply cannot be ignored or depreciated in any estimate of 
Western civilization without serious distortion and impoverishment 
of one's historical and religious understanding.

     In the space of some forty-four years, from his conversion in 
Milan (A.D.  386) to his death in Hippo Regius (A.D.  430), 
Augustine wrote -- mostly at dictation -- a vast sprawling library 
of books, sermons, and letters, the remains of which (in the 
Benedictine edition of St.  Maur) fill fourteen volumes as they 
are reprinted in Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, Series 
Latina (Vols.  32-45).  In his old age, Augustine reviewed his 
authorship (in the Retractations) and has left us a critical 
review of ninety-three of his works he judged most important.  
Even a cursory glance at them shows how enormous was his range of 
interest.  Yet almost everything he wrote was in response to a 
specific problem or an actual crisis in the immediate situation.  
One may mark off significant developments in his thought over this 
twoscore years, but one can hardly miss the fundamental 
consistency in his entire life's work.  He was never interested in 
writing a systematic summa theologica, and would have been 
incapable of producing a balanced digest of his multifaceted 
teaching.  Thus, if he is to be read wisely, he must be read 
widely -- and always in context, with due attention to the 
specific aim in view in each particular treatise.  

     For the general reader who wishes to approach Augustine as 
directly as possible, however, it is a useful and fortunate thing 
that at the very beginning of his Christian ministry and then 
again at the very climax of it, Augustine set himself to focus his 
experience and thought into what were, for him, summings up.  The 
result of the first effort is the Confessions, which is his most 
familiar and widely read work.  The second is in the Enchiridion, 
written more than twenty years later.  In the Confessions, he 
stands on the threshold of his career in the Church. In the 
Enchiridion, he stands forth as triumphant champion of orthodox 
Christianity.  In these two works -- the nearest equivalent to 
summation in the whole of the Augustinian corpus -- we can find 
all his essential themes and can sample the characteristic flavor 
of his thought.

     Augustine was baptized by Ambrose at Milan during Eastertide, 
A.D.  387.  A short time later his mother, Monica, died at Ostia 
on the journey back to Africa.  A year later, Augustine was back 
in Roman Africa living in a monastery at Tagaste, his native town.  
In 391, he was ordained presbyter in the church of Hippo Regius (a 
small coastal town nearby).  Here in 395 -- with grave misgivings 
on his own part (cf. Sermon CCCLV, 2) and in actual violation of 
the eighth canon of Nicea (cf. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, II, 
671, and IV, 1167) -- he was consecrated assistant bishop to the 
aged Valerius, whom he succeeded the following year.  Shortly 
after he entered into his episcopal duties he began his 
Confessions, completing them probably in 398 (cf. De Labriolle, I, 
vi (see Bibliography), and di Capua, Miscellanea Agostiniana, II, 
678).

     Augustine had a complex motive for undertaking such a self-
analysis.[1]  His pilgrimage of grace had led him to a most 
unexpected outcome.  Now he felt a compelling need to retrace the 
crucial turnings of the way by which he had come.  And since he 
was sure that it was God's grace that had been his prime mover on 
that way, it was a spontaneous expression of his heart that cast 
his self-recollection into the form of a sustained prayer to God.

     The Confessions are not Augustine's autobiography.  They are, 
instead, a deliberate effort, in the permissive atmosphere of 
God's felt presence, to recall those crucial episodes and events 
in which he can now see and celebrate the mysterious actions of 
God's prevenient and provident grace.  Thus he follows the 
windings of his memory as it re-presents the upheavals of his 
youth and the stages of his disorderly quest for wisdom.  He omits 
very much indeed.  Yet he builds his successive climaxes so 
skillfully that the denouement in Book VIII is a vivid and 
believable convergence of influences, reconstructed and "placed" 
with consummate dramatic skill.  We see how Cicero's Hortensius 
first awakened his thirst for wisdom, how the Manicheans deluded 
him with their promise of true wisdom, and how the Academics upset 
his confidence in certain knowledge -- how they loosed him from 
the dogmatism of the Manicheans only to confront him with the 
opposite threat that all knowledge is uncertain.  He shows us (Bk. 
V, Ch. X, 19) that almost the sole cause of his intellectual 
perplexity in religion was his stubborn, materialistic prejudice 
that if God existed he had to exist in a body, and thus had to 
have extension, shape, and finite relation.  He remembers how the 
"Platonists" rescued him from this "materialism" and taught him 
how to think of spiritual and immaterial reality -- and so to 
become able to conceive of God in non-dualistic categories.  We 
can follow him in his extraordinarily candid and plain report of 
his Plotinian ecstasy, and his momentary communion with the One 
(Book VII).  The "Platonists" liberated him from error, but they 
could not loose him from the fetters of incontinence.  Thus, with 
a divided will, he continues to seek a stable peace in the 
Christian faith while he stubbornly clings to his pride and 
appetence.

     In Book VIII, Augustine piles up a series of remembered 
incidents that inflamed his desire to imitate those who already 
seemed to have gained what he had so long been seeking.  First of 
all, there had been Ambrose, who embodied for Augustine the 
dignity of Christian learning and the majesty of the authority of 
the Christian Scriptures.  Then Simplicianus tells him the moving 
story of Victorinus (a more famous scholar than Augustine ever 
hoped to be), who finally came to the baptismal font in Milan as 
humbly as any other catechumen.  Then, from Ponticianus he hears 
the story of Antony and about the increasing influence of the 
monastic calling.  The story that stirs him most, perhaps, relates 
the dramatic conversion of the two "special agents of the imperial 
police" in the garden at Treves -- two unlikely prospects snatched 
abruptly from their worldly ways to the monastic life.

     He makes it plain that these examples forced his own feelings 
to an intolerable tension.  His intellectual perplexities had 
become resolved; the virtue of continence had been consciously 
preferred; there was a strong desire for the storms of his breast 
to be calmed; he longed to imitate these men who had done what he 
could not and who were enjoying the peace he longed for.

     But the old habits were still strong and he could not muster 
a full act of the whole will to strike them down.  Then comes the 
scene in the Milanese garden which is an interesting parallel to 
Ponticianus' story about the garden at Treves.  The long struggle 
is recapitulated in a brief moment; his will struggles against and 
within itself.  The trivial distraction of a child's voice, 
chanting, "Tolle, lege,"  precipitates the resolution of the 
conflict.  There is a radical shift in mood and will, he turns 
eagerly to the chance text in Rom. 13:13 -- and a new spirit rises 
in his heart.

     After this radical change, there was only one more past event 
that had to be relived before his personal history could be seen 
in its right perspective.  This was the death of his mother and 
the severance of his strongest earthly tie.  Book IX tells us this 
story.  The climactic moment in it is, of course, the vision at 
Ostia where mother and son are uplifted in an ecstasy that 
parallels -- but also differs significantly from -- the Plotinian 
vision of Book VII.  After this, the mother dies and the son who 
had loved her almost too much goes on alone, now upheld and led by 
a greater and a wiser love.

     We can observe two separate stages in Augustine's 
"conversion." The first was the dramatic striking off of the 
slavery of incontinence and pride which had so long held him from 
decisive commitment to the Christian faith.  The second was the 
development of an adequate understanding of the Christian faith 
itself and his baptismal confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and 
Saviour.  The former was achieved in the Milanese garden.  The 
latter came more slowly and had no "dramatic moment." The 
dialogues that Augustine wrote at Cassiciacum the year following 
his conversion show few substantial signs of a theological 
understanding, decisively or distinctively Christian.  But by the 
time of his ordination to the presbyterate we can see the basic 
lines of a comprehensive and orthodox theology firmly laid out.  
Augustine neglects to tell us (in 398) what had happened in his 
thought between 385 and 391.  He had other questions, more 
interesting to him, with which to wrestle.

     One does not read far in the Confessions before he recognizes 
that the term "confess" has a double range of meaning.  On the one 
hand, it obviously refers to the free acknowledgment, before God, 
of the truth one knows about oneself -- and this obviously meant, 
for Augustine, the "confession of sins." But, at the same time, 
and more importantly, confiteri means to acknowledge, to God, the 
truth one knows about God.  To confess, then, is to praise and 
glorify God; it is an exercise in self-knowledge and true humility 
in the atmosphere of grace and reconciliation.

     Thus the Confessions are by no means complete when the 
personal history is concluded at the end of Book IX.  There are 
two more closely related problems to be explored: First, how does 
the finite self find the infinite God (or, how is it found of 
him?)?  And, secondly, how may we interpret God's action in 
producing this created world in which such personal histories and 
revelations do occur?  Book X, therefore, is an exploration of 
_man's way to God_, a way which begins in sense experience but 
swiftly passes beyond it, through and beyond the awesome mystery 
of memory, to the ineffable encounter between God and the soul in 
man's inmost subject-self.  But such a journey is not complete 
until the process is reversed and man has looked as deeply as may 
be into the mystery of creation, on which all our history and 
experience depend.  In Book XI, therefore, we discover why _time_ 
is such a problem and how "In the beginning God created the 
heavens and the earth" is the basic formula of a massive Christian 
metaphysical world view.  In Books XII and XIII, Augustine 
elaborates, in loving patience and with considerable allegorical 
license, the mysteries of creation -- exegeting the first chapter 
of Genesis, verse by verse, until he is able to relate the whole 
round of creation to the point where we can view the drama of 
God's enterprise in human history on the vast stage of the cosmos 
itself.  The Creator is the Redeemer!  Man's end and the beginning 
meet at a single point!

     The Enchiridion is a briefer treatise on the grace of God and 
represents Augustine's fully matured theological perspective -- 
after the magnificent achievements of the De Trinitate and the 
greater part of the De civitate Dei, and after the tremendous 
turmoil of the Pelagian controversy in which the doctrine of grace 
was the exact epicenter.  Sometime in 421, Augustine received a 
request from one Laurentius, a Christian layman who was the 
brother of the tribune Dulcitius (for whom Augustine wrote the De 
octo dulcitii quaestionibus in 423-425).  This Laurentius wanted a 
handbook (enchiridion)  that would sum up the essential Christian 
teaching in the briefest possible form.  Augustine dryly comments 
that the shortest complete summary of the Christian faith is that 
God is to be served by man in faith, hope, and love.  Then, 
acknowledging that this answer might indeed be _too_ brief, he 
proceeds to expand it in an essay in which he tries unsuccessfully 
to subdue his natural digressive manner by imposing on it a 
patently artificial schematism.  Despite its awkward form, 
however, the Enchiridion is one of the most important of all of 
Augustine's writings, for it is a conscious effort of the 
theological magistrate of the Western Church to stand on final 
ground of testimony to the Christian truth.

     For his framework, Augustine chooses the Apostles' Creed and 
the Lord's Prayer.  The treatise begins, naturally enough, with a 
discussion of God's work in creation.  Augustine makes a firm 
distinction between the comparatively unimportant knowledge of 
nature and the supremely important acknowledgment of the Creator 
of nature.  But creation lies under the shadow of sin and evil and 
Augustine reviews his famous (and borrowed!) doctrine of the 
privative character of evil.  From this he digresses into an 
extended comment on error and lying as special instances of evil.  
He then returns to the hopeless case of fallen man, to which God's 
wholly unmerited grace has responded in the incarnation of the 
Mediator and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.  The questions about the 
appropriation of God's grace lead naturally to a discussion of 
baptism and justification, and beyond these, to the Holy Spirit 
and the Church. Augustine then sets forth the benefits of 
redeeming grace and weighs the balance between faith and good 
works in the forgiven sinner.  But redemption looks forward toward 
resurrection, and Augustine feels he must devote a good deal of 
energy and subtle speculation to the questions about the manner 
and mode of the life everlasting.  From this he moves on to the 
problem of the destiny of the wicked and the mystery of 
predestination.  Nor does he shrink from these grim topics; 
indeed, he actually _expands_ some of his most rigid ideas of 
God's ruthless justice toward the damned.  Having thus treated the 
Christian faith and Christian hope, he turns in a too-brief 
concluding section to the virtue of Christian love as the heart of 
the Christian life.  This, then, is the "handbook" on faith, hope, 
and love which he hopes Laurence will put to use and not leave as 
"baggage on his bookshelf."

     Taken together, the Confessions and the Enchiridion give us 
two very important vantage points from which to view the 
Augustinian perspective as a whole, since they represent both his 
early and his mature formulation.  From them, we can gain a 
competent -- though by no means complete -- introduction to the 
heart and mind of this great Christian saint and sage.  There are 
important differences between the two works, and these ought to be 
noted by the careful reader.  But all the main themes of 
Augustinian Christianity appear in them, and through them we can 
penetrate to its inner dynamic core.

     There is no need to justify a new English translation of 
these books, even though many good ones already exist.  Every 
translation is, at best, only an approximation -- and an 
interpretation too.  There is small hope for a translation to end 
all translations.  Augustine's Latin is, for the most part, 
comparatively easy to read.  One feels directly the force of his 
constant wordplay, the artful balancing of his clauses, his 
laconic use of parataxis, and his deliberate involutions of 
thought and word order.  He was always a Latin rhetor; artifice of 
style had come to be second nature with him -- even though the 
Latin scriptures were powerful modifiers of his classical literary 
patterns.  But it is a very tricky business to convey such a Latin 
style into anything like modern English without considerable 
violence one way or the other.  A literal rendering of the text is 
simply not readable English.  And this falsifies the text in 
another way, for Augustine's Latin is eminently readable!  On the 
other side, when one resorts to the unavoidable paraphrase there 
is always the open question as to the point beyond which the 
thought itself is being recast.  It has been my aim and hope that 
these translations will give the reader an accurate medium of 
contact with Augustine's temper and mode of argumentation.  There 
has been no thought of trying to contrive an English equivalent 
for his style.  If Augustine's ideas come through this translation 
with positive force and clarity, there can be no serious reproach 
if it is neither as eloquent nor as elegant as Augustine in his 
own language.  In any case, those who will compare this 
translation with the others will get at least a faint notion of 
how complex and truly brilliant the original is!

     The sensitive reader soon recognizes that Augustine will not 
willingly be inspected from a distance or by a neutral observer.  
In all his writings there is a strong concern and moving power to 
involve his reader in his own process of inquiry and perplexity.  
There is a manifest eagerness to have him share in his own flashes 
of insight and his sudden glimpses of God's glory.  Augustine's 
style is deeply personal; it is therefore idiomatic, and often 
colloquial.  Even in his knottiest arguments, or in the 
labyrinthine mazes of his allegorizing (e.g., Confessions, Bk. 
XIII, or Enchiridion, XVIII), he seeks to maintain contact with 
his reader in genuine respect and openness.  He is never content 
to seek and find the truth in solitude.  He must enlist his 
fellows in seeing and applying the truth as given.  He is never 
the blind fideist; even in the face of mystery, there is a 
constant reliance on the limited but real powers of human reason, 
and a constant striving for clarity and intelligibility.  In this 
sense, he was a consistent follower of his own principle of 
"Christian Socratism," developed in the De Magistro and the De 
catechezandis rudibus.  

     Even the best of Augustine's writing bears the marks of his 
own time and there is much in these old books that is of little 
interest to any but the specialist.  There are many stones of 
stumbling in them for the modern secularist -- and even for the 
modern Christian!  Despite all this, it is impossible to read him 
with any attention at all without recognizing how his genius and 
his piety burst through the limitations of his times and his 
language -- and even his English translations!  He grips our 
hearts and minds and enlists us in the great enterprise to which 
his whole life was devoted: the search for and the celebration of 
God's grace and glory by which his faithful children are sustained 
and guided in their pilgrimage toward the true Light of us all.

     The most useful critical text of the Confessions is that of 
Pierre de Labriolle (fifth edition, Paris, 1950).  I have collated 
this with the other major critical editions: Martin Skutella, S.  
Aureli Augustini Confessionum Libri Tredecim (Leipzig, 1934) -- 
itself a recension of the Corpus Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum 
Latinorum XXXIII text of Pius Knoll (Vienna, 1896) -- and the 
second edition of John Gibb and William Montgomery (Cambridge, 
1927).

     There are two good critical texts of the Enchiridion and I 
have collated them: Otto Scheel, Augustins Enchiridion (zweite 
Auflage, Tubingen, 1930), and Jean Riviere, Enchiridion in the 
Bibliotheque Augustinienne, Oeuvres de S.  Augustin, premiere 
serie: Opuscules, IX: Exposes generaux de la foi (Paris, 1947).

     It remains for me to express my appreciation to the General 
Editors of this Library for their constructive help; to Professor 
Hollis W.  Huston, who read the entire manuscript and made many 
valuable suggestions; and to Professor William A.  Irwin, who 
greatly aided with parts of the Enchiridion.   These men share the 
credit for preventing many flaws, but naturally no responsibility 
for those remaining.  Professors Raymond P.  Morris, of the Yale 
Divinity School Library; Robert Beach, of the Union Theological 
Seminary Library; and Decherd Turner, of our Bridwell Library here 
at Southern Methodist University, were especially generous in 
their bibliographical assistance.  Last, but not least, Mrs.  
Hollis W.  Huston and my wife, between them, managed the difficult 
task of putting the results of this project into fair copy.  To 
them all I am most grateful.

     

       AUGUSTINE'S TESTIMONY CONCERNING THE CONFESSIONS 

     
I.  THE Retractations, II, 6 (A.D.  427)

     1.  My Confessions, in thirteen books, praise the righteous 
and good God as they speak either of my evil or good, and they are 
meant to excite men's minds and affections toward him.  At least 
as far as I am concerned, this is what they did for me when they 
were being written and they still do this when read.  What some 
people think of them is their own affair [ipse viderint];  but I 
do know that they have given pleasure to many of my brethren and 
still do so.  The first through the tenth books were written about 
myself; the other three about Holy Scripture, from what is written 
there, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,[2] 
even as far as the reference to the Sabbath rest.[3] 

     2.  In Book IV, when I confessed my soul's misery over the 
death of a friend and said that our soul had somehow been made one 
out of two souls, "But it may have been that I was afraid to die, 
lest he should then die wholly whom I had so greatly loved" (Ch. 
VI, 11) -- this now seems to be more a trivial declamation than a 
serious confession, although this inept expression may be tempered 
somewhat by the "may have been" [forte]  which I added.  And in 
Book XIII what I said -- "The firmament was made between the 
higher waters (and superior) and the lower (and inferior) waters" 
-- was said without sufficient thought.  In any case, the matter 
is very obscure.

     This work begins thus: "Great art thou, O Lord."

     
II.  De Dono Perseverantiae, XX, 53 (A.D.  428)

     Which of my shorter works has been more widely known or given 
greater pleasure than the [thirteen] books of my Confessions?   
And, although I published them long before the Pelagian heresy had 
even begun to be, it is plain that in them I said to my God, again 
and again, "Give what thou commandest and command what thou wilt." 
When these words of mine were repeated in Pelagius' presence at 
Rome by a certain brother of mine (an episcopal colleague), he 
could not bear them and contradicted him so excitedly that they 
nearly came to a quarrel.  Now what, indeed, does God command, 
first and foremost, except that we believe in him?  This faith, 
therefore, he himself gives; so that it is well said to him, "Give 
what thou commandest." Moreover, in those same books, concerning 
my account of my conversion when God turned me to that faith which 
I was laying waste with a very wretched and wild verbal assault,[4 
]do you not remember how the narration shows that I was given as a 
gift to the faithful and daily tears of my mother, who had been 
promised that I should not perish?  I certainly declared there 
that God by his grace turns men's wills to the true faith when 
they are not only averse to it, but actually adverse.  As for the 
other ways in which I sought God's aid in my growth in 
perseverance, you either know or can review them as you wish (PL, 
45, c.  1025).

     
III.  Letter to Darius (A.D.  429)

     Thus, my son, take the books of my Confessions and use them 
as a good man should -- not superficially, but as a Christian in 
Christian charity.  Here see me as I am and do not praise me for 
more than I am.  Here believe nothing else about me than my own 
testimony.  Here observe what I have been in myself and through 
myself.  And if something in me pleases you, here praise Him with 
me -- him whom I desire to be praised on my account and not 
myself.  "For it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves."[5]  
Indeed, we were ourselves quite lost; but he who made us, remade 
us [sed qui fecit, refecit].  As, then, you find me in these 
pages, pray for me that I shall not fail but that I may go on to 
be perfected.  Pray for me, my son, pray for me! (Epist. CCXXXI, 
PL, 33, c.  1025).

     

              The Confessions of Saint Augustine

      

                           BOOK ONE

     In God's searching presence, Augustine undertakes to plumb 
the depths of his memory to trace the mysterious pilgrimage of 
grace which his life has been -- and to praise God for his 
constant and omnipotent grace.  In a mood of sustained prayer, he 
recalls what he can of his infancy, his learning to speak, and his 
childhood experiences in school.  He concludes with a paean of 
grateful praise to God.  

     

                           CHAPTER I

     1.  "Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great 
is thy power, and infinite is thy wisdom."[6]  And man desires to 
praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his 
mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and 
the proof that thou dost resist the proud.  Still he desires to 
praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation.  
Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for 
thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it 
comes to rest in thee.  Grant me, O Lord, to know and understand 
whether first to invoke thee or to praise thee; whether first to 
know thee or call upon thee.  But who can invoke thee, knowing 
thee not?  For he who knows thee not may invoke thee as another 
than thou art.  It may be that we should invoke thee in order that 
we may come to know thee.  But "how shall they call on him in whom 
they have not believed?  Or how shall they believe without a 
preacher?"[7]  Now, "they shall praise the Lord who seek him,"[8] 
for "those who seek shall find him,"[9] and, finding him, shall 
praise him.  I will seek thee, O Lord, and call upon thee.  I call 
upon thee, O Lord, in my faith which thou hast given me, which 
thou hast inspired in me through the humanity of thy Son, and 
through the ministry of thy preacher.[10]

                          CHAPTER II

     2.  And how shall I call upon my God -- my God and my Lord?  
For when I call on him I ask him to come into me.  And what place 
is there in me into which my God can come?  How could God, the God 
who made both heaven and earth, come into me?  Is there anything 
in me, O Lord my God, that can contain thee?  Do even the heaven 
and the earth, which thou hast made, and in which thou didst make 
me, contain thee?  Is it possible that, since without thee nothing 
would be which does exist, thou didst make it so that whatever 
exists has some capacity to receive thee?  Why, then, do I ask 
thee to come into me, since I also am and could not be if thou 
wert not in me?  For I am not, after all, in hell -- and yet thou 
art there too, for "if I go down into hell, thou art there."[11]  
Therefore I would not exist -- I would simply not be at all -- 
unless I exist in thee, from whom and by whom and in whom all 
things are.  Even so, Lord; even so.  Where do I call thee to, 
when I am already in thee?  Or from whence wouldst thou come into 
me?  Where, beyond heaven and earth, could I go that there my God 
might come to me -- he who hath said, "I fill heaven and 
earth"?[12]

                         CHAPTER III

     3.  Since, then, thou dost fill the heaven and earth, do they 
contain thee?  Or, dost thou fill and overflow them, because they 
cannot contain thee?  And where dost thou pour out what remains of 
thee after heaven and earth are full?  Or, indeed, is there no 
need that thou, who dost contain all things, shouldst be contained 
by any, since those things which thou dost fill thou fillest by 
containing them?  For the vessels which thou dost fill do not 
confine thee, since even if they were broken, thou wouldst not be 
poured out.  And, when thou art poured out on us, thou art not 
thereby brought down; rather, we are uplifted.  Thou art not 
scattered; rather, thou dost gather us together.  But when thou 
dost fill all things, dost thou fill them with thy whole being?  
Or, since not even all things together could contain thee 
altogether, does any one thing contain a single part, and do all 
things contain that same part at the same time?  Do singulars 
contain thee singly?  Do greater things contain more of thee, and 
smaller things less?  Or, is it not rather that thou art wholly 
present everywhere, yet in such a way that nothing contains thee 
wholly?

                          CHAPTER IV

     4.  What, therefore, is my God?  What, I ask, but the Lord 
God?  "For who is Lord but the Lord himself, or who is God besides 
our God?"[13]  Most high, most excellent, most potent, most 
omnipotent; most merciful and most just; most secret and most 
truly present; most beautiful and most strong; stable, yet not 
supported; unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never 
old; making all things new, yet bringing old age upon the proud, 
and they know it not; always working, ever at rest; gathering, yet 
needing nothing; sustaining, pervading, and protecting; creating, 
nourishing, and developing; seeking, and yet possessing all 
things.  Thou dost love, but without passion; art jealous, yet 
free from care; dost repent without remorse; art angry, yet 
remainest serene.  Thou changest thy ways, leaving thy plans 
unchanged; thou recoverest what thou hast never really lost.  Thou 
art never in need but still thou dost rejoice at thy gains; art 
never greedy, yet demandest dividends.  Men pay more than is 
required so that thou dost become a debtor; yet who can possess 
anything at all which is not already thine?  Thou owest men 
nothing, yet payest out to them as if in debt to thy creature, and 
when thou dost cancel debts thou losest nothing thereby.  Yet, O 
my God, my life, my holy Joy, what is this that I have said?  What 
can any man say when he speaks of thee?  But woe to them that keep 
silence -- since even those who say most are dumb.

                          CHAPTER V

     5.  Who shall bring me to rest in thee?  Who will send thee 
into my heart so to overwhelm it that my sins shall be blotted out 
and I may embrace thee, my only good?  What art thou to me?  Have 
mercy that I may speak.  What am I to thee that thou shouldst 
command me to love thee, and if I do it not, art angry and 
threatenest vast misery?  Is it, then, a trifling sorrow not to 
love thee?  It is not so to me.  Tell me, by thy mercy, O Lord, my 
God, what thou art to me.  "Say to my soul, I am your 
salvation."[14]  So speak that I may hear.  Behold, the ears of my 
heart are before thee, O Lord; open them and "say to my soul, I am 
your salvation." I will hasten after that voice, and I will lay 
hold upon thee.  Hide not thy face from me.  Even if I die, let me 
see thy face lest I die.

     6.  The house of my soul is too narrow for thee to come in to 
me; let it be enlarged by thee.  It is in ruins; do thou restore 
it.  There is much about it which must offend thy eyes; I confess 
and know it.  But who will cleanse it?  Or, to whom shall I cry 
but to thee?  "Cleanse thou me from my secret faults," O Lord, 
"and keep back thy servant from strange sins."[15]  "I believe, 
and therefore do I speak."[16]  But thou, O Lord, thou knowest.  
Have I not confessed my transgressions unto thee, O my God; and 
hast thou not put away the iniquity of my heart?[17]  I do not 
contend in judgment with thee,[18] who art truth itself; and I 
would not deceive myself, lest my iniquity lie even to itself.  I 
do not, therefore, contend in judgment with thee, for "if thou, 
Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?"[19]

                          CHAPTER VI

     7.  Still, dust and ashes as I am, allow me to speak before 
thy mercy.  Allow me to speak, for, behold, it is to thy mercy 
that I speak and not to a man who scorns me.  Yet perhaps even 
thou mightest scorn me; but when thou dost turn and attend to me, 
thou wilt have mercy upon me.  For what do I wish to say, O Lord 
my God, but that I know not whence I came hither into this life-
in-death.  Or should I call it death-in-life?  I do not know.  And 
yet the consolations of thy mercy have sustained me from the very 
beginning, as I have heard from my fleshly parents, from whom and 
in whom thou didst form me in time -- for I cannot myself 
remember.  Thus even though they sustained me by the consolation 
of woman's milk, neither my mother nor my nurses filled their own 
breasts but thou, through them, didst give me the food of infancy 
according to thy ordinance and thy bounty which underlie all 
things.  For it was thou who didst cause me not to want more than 
thou gavest and it was thou who gavest to those who nourished me 
the will to give me what thou didst give them.  And they, by an 
instinctive affection, were willing to give me what thou hadst 
supplied abundantly.  It was, indeed, good for them that my good 
should come through them, though, in truth, it was not from them 
but by them.  For it is from thee, O God, that all good things 
come -- and from my God is all my health.  This is what I have 
since learned, as thou hast made it abundantly clear by all that I 
have seen thee give, both to me and to those around me.  For even 
at the very first I knew how to suck, to lie quiet when I was 
full, and to cry when in pain -- nothing more.

     8.  Afterward I began to laugh -- at first in my sleep, then 
when waking.  For this I have been told about myself and I believe 
it -- though I cannot remember it -- for I see the same things in 
other infants.  Then, little by little, I realized where I was and 
wished to tell my wishes to those who might satisfy them, but I 
could not!  For my wants were inside me, and they were outside, 
and they could not by any power of theirs come into my soul.  And 
so I would fling my arms and legs about and cry, making the few 
and feeble gestures that I could, though indeed the signs were not 
much like what I inwardly desired and when I was not satisfied -- 
either from not being understood or because what I got was not 
good for me -- I grew indignant that my elders were not subject to 
me and that those on whom I actually had no claim did not wait on 
me as slaves -- and I avenged myself on them by crying.  That 
infants are like this, I have myself been able to learn by 
watching them; and they, though they knew me not, have shown me 
better what I was like than my own nurses who knew me.

     9.  And, behold, my infancy died long ago, but I am still 
living.  But thou, O Lord, whose life is forever and in whom 
nothing dies -- since before the world was, indeed, before all 
that can be called "before," thou wast, and thou art the God and 
Lord of all thy creatures; and with thee abide all the stable 
causes of all unstable things, the unchanging sources of all 
changeable things, and the eternal reasons of all non-rational and 
temporal things -- tell me, thy suppliant, O God, tell me, O 
merciful One, in pity tell a pitiful creature whether my infancy 
followed yet an earlier age of my life that had already passed 
away before it.  Was it such another age which I spent in my 
mother's womb?  For something of that sort has been suggested to 
me, and I have myself seen pregnant women.  But what, O God, my 
Joy, preceded _that_ period of life?  Was I, indeed, anywhere, or 
anybody?  No one can explain these things to me, neither father 
nor mother, nor the experience of others, nor my own memory.  Dost 
thou laugh at me for asking such things?  Or dost thou command me 
to praise and confess unto thee only what I know?

     10.  I give thanks to thee, O Lord of heaven and earth, 
giving praise to thee for that first being and my infancy of which 
I have no memory.  For thou hast granted to man that he should 
come to self-knowledge through the knowledge of others, and that 
he should believe many things about himself on the authority of 
the womenfolk.  Now, clearly, I had life and being; and, as my 
infancy closed, I was already learning signs by which my feelings 
could be communicated to others.

     Whence could such a creature come but from thee, O Lord?  Is 
any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself?  Or is there 
any other source from which being and life could flow into us, 
save this, that thou, O Lord, hast made us -- thou with whom being 
and life are one, since thou thyself art supreme being and supreme 
life both together.  For thou art infinite and in thee there is no 
change, nor an end to this present day -- although there is a 
sense in which it ends in thee since all things are in thee and 
there would be no such thing as days passing away unless thou 
didst sustain them.  And since "thy years shall have no end,"[20] 
thy years are an ever-present day.  And how many of ours and our 
fathers' days have passed through this thy day and have received 
from it what measure and fashion of being they had?  And all the 
days to come shall so receive and so pass away.  "But thou art the 
same"![21]  And all the things of tomorrow and the days yet to 
come, and all of yesterday and the days that are past, thou wilt 
gather into this thy day.  What is it to me if someone does not 
understand this?  Let him still rejoice and continue to ask, "What 
is this?"  Let him also rejoice and prefer to seek thee, even if 
he fails to find an answer, rather than to seek an answer and not 
find thee!

                         CHAPTER VII

     11.  "Hear me, O God!  Woe to the sins of men!"  When a man 
cries thus, thou showest him mercy, for thou didst create the man 
but not the sin in him.  Who brings to remembrance the sins of my 
infancy?  For in thy sight there is none free from sin, not even 
the infant who has lived but a day upon this earth.  Who brings 
this to my remembrance?  Does not each little one, in whom I now 
observe what I no longer remember of myself?  In what ways, in 
that time, did I sin?  Was it that I cried for the breast?  If I 
should now so cry -- not indeed for the breast, but for food 
suitable to my condition -- I should be most justly laughed at and 
rebuked.  What I did then deserved rebuke but, since I could not 
understand those who rebuked me, neither custom nor common sense 
permitted me to be rebuked.  As we grow we root out and cast away 
from us such childish habits.  Yet I have not seen anyone who is 
wise who cast away the good when trying to purge the bad.  Nor was 
it good, even in that time, to strive to get by crying what, if it 
had been given me, would have been hurtful; or to be bitterly 
indignant at those who, because they were older -- not slaves, 
either, but free -- and wiser than I, would not indulge my 
capricious desires.  Was it a good thing for me to try, by 
struggling as hard as I could, to harm them for not obeying me, 
even when it would have done me harm to have been obeyed?  Thus, 
the infant's innocence lies in the weakness of his body and not in 
the infant mind.  I have myself observed a baby to be jealous, 
though it could not speak; it was livid as it watched another 
infant at the breast.

     Who is ignorant of this?  Mothers and nurses tell us that 
they cure these things by I know not what remedies.  But is this 
innocence, when the fountain of milk is flowing fresh and 
abundant, that another who needs it should not be allowed to share 
it, even though he requires such nourishment to sustain his life?  
Yet we look leniently on such things, not because they are not 
faults, or even small faults, but because they will vanish as the 
years pass.  For, although we allow for such things in an infant, 
the same things could not be tolerated patiently in an adult.

     12.  Therefore, O Lord my God, thou who gavest life to the 
infant, and a body which, as we see, thou hast furnished with 
senses, shaped with limbs, beautified with form, and endowed with 
all vital energies for its well-being and health -- thou dost 
command me to praise thee for these things, to give thanks unto 
the Lord, and to sing praise unto his name, O Most High.[22]  For 
thou art God, omnipotent and good, even if thou hadst done no more 
than these things, which no other but thou canst do -- thou alone 
who madest all things fair and didst order everything according to 
thy law.

     I am loath to dwell on this part of my life of which, O Lord, 
I have no remembrance, about which I must trust the word of others 
and what I can surmise from observing other infants, even if such 
guesses are trustworthy.  For it lies in the deep murk of my 
forgetfulness and thus is like the period which I passed in my 
mother's womb.  But if "I was conceived in iniquity, and in sin my 
mother nourished me in her womb,"[23] where, I pray thee, O my 
God, where, O Lord, or when was I, thy servant, ever innocent?  
But see now, I pass over that period, for what have I to do with a 
time from which I can recall no memories? 

                         CHAPTER VIII

     13.  Did I not, then, as I grew out of infancy, come next to 
boyhood, or rather did it not come to me and succeed my infancy?  
My infancy did not go away (for where would it go?).  It was 
simply no longer present; and I was no longer an infant who could 
not speak, but now a chattering boy.  I remember this, and I have 
since observed how I learned to speak.  My elders did not teach me 
words by rote, as they taught me my letters afterward.  But I 
myself, when I was unable to communicate all I wished to say to 
whomever I wished by means of whimperings and grunts and various 
gestures of my limbs (which I used to reinforce my demands), I 
myself repeated the sounds already stored in my memory by the mind 
which thou, O my God, hadst given me.  When they called some thing 
by name and pointed it out while they spoke, I saw it and realized 
that the thing they wished to indicate was called by the name they 
then uttered.  And what they meant was made plain by the gestures 
of their bodies, by a kind of natural language, common to all 
nations, which expresses itself through changes of countenance, 
glances of the eye, gestures and intonations which indicate a 
disposition and attitude -- either to seek or to possess, to 
reject or to avoid.  So it was that by frequently hearing words, 
in different phrases, I gradually identified the objects which the 
words stood for and, having formed my mouth to repeat these signs, 
I was thereby able to express my will.  Thus I exchanged with 
those about me the verbal signs by which we express our wishes and 
advanced deeper into the stormy fellowship of human life, 
depending all the while upon the authority of my parents and the 
behest of my elders.

                          CHAPTER IX

     14.  O my God!  What miseries and mockeries did I then 
experience when it was impressed on me that obedience to my 
teachers was proper to my boyhood estate if I was to flourish in 
this world and distinguish myself in those tricks of speech which 
would gain honor for me among men, and deceitful riches!  To this 
end I was sent to school to get learning, the value of which I 
knew not -- wretch that I was.  Yet if I was slow to learn, I was 
flogged.  For this was deemed praiseworthy by our forefathers and 
many had passed before us in the same course, and thus had built 
up the precedent for the sorrowful road on which we too were 
compelled to travel, multiplying labor and sorrow upon the sons of 
Adam.  About this time, O Lord, I observed men praying to thee, 
and I learned from them to conceive thee -- after my capacity for 
understanding as it was then -- to be some great Being, who, 
though not visible to our senses, was able to hear and help us.  
Thus as a boy I began to pray to thee, my Help and my Refuge, and, 
in calling on thee, broke the bands of my tongue.  Small as I was, 
I prayed with no slight earnestness that I might not be beaten at 
school.  And when thou didst not heed me -- for that would have 
been giving me over to my folly -- my elders and even my parents 
too, who wished me no ill, treated my stripes as a joke, though 
they were then a great and grievous ill to me.

     15.  Is there anyone, O Lord, with a spirit so great, who 
cleaves to thee with such steadfast affection (or is there even a 
kind of obtuseness that has the same effect) -- is there any man 
who, by cleaving devoutly to thee, is endowed with so great a 
courage that he can regard indifferently those racks and hooks and 
other torture weapons from which men throughout the world pray so 
fervently to be spared; and can they scorn those who so greatly 
fear these torments, just as my parents were amused at the 
torments with which our teachers punished us boys?  For we were no 
less afraid of our pains, nor did we beseech thee less to escape 
them.  Yet, even so, we were sinning by writing or reading or 
studying less than our assigned lessons.

     For I did not, O Lord, lack memory or capacity, for, by thy 
will, I possessed enough for my age.  However, my mind was 
absorbed only in play, and I was punished for this by those who 
were doing the same things themselves.  But the idling of our 
elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like 
it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the 
boys or the men.  For will any common sense observer agree that I 
was rightly punished as a boy for playing ball -- just because 
this hindered me from learning more quickly those lessons by means 
of which, as a man, I could play at more shameful games?  And did 
he by whom I was beaten do anything different?  When he was 
worsted in some small controversy with a fellow teacher, he was 
more tormented by anger and envy than I was when beaten by a 
playmate in the ball game.

                          CHAPTER X

     16.  And yet I sinned, O Lord my God, thou ruler and creator 
of all natural things -- but of sins only the ruler -- I sinned, O 
Lord my God, in acting against the precepts of my parents and of 
those teachers.  For this learning which they wished me to acquire 
-- no matter what their motives were -- I might have put to good 
account afterward.  I disobeyed them, not because I had chosen a 
better way, but from a sheer love of play.  I loved the vanity of 
victory, and I loved to have my ears tickled with lying fables, 
which made them itch even more ardently, and a similar curiosity 
glowed more and more in my eyes for the shows and sports of my 
elders.  Yet those who put on such shows are held in such high 
repute that almost all desire the same for their children.  They 
are therefore willing to have them beaten, if their childhood 
games keep them from the studies by which their parents desire 
them to grow up to be able to give such shows.  Look down on these 
things with mercy, O Lord, and deliver us who now call upon thee; 
deliver those also who do not call upon thee, that they may call 
upon thee, and thou mayest deliver them.

                          CHAPTER XI

     17.  Even as a boy I had heard of eternal life promised to us 
through the humility of the Lord our God, who came down to visit 
us in our pride, and I was signed with the sign of his cross, and 
was seasoned with his salt even from the womb of my mother, who 
greatly trusted in thee.  Thou didst see, O Lord, how, once, while 
I was still a child, I was suddenly seized with stomach pains and 
was at the point of death -- thou didst see, O my God, for even 
then thou wast my keeper, with what agitation and with what faith 
I solicited from the piety of my mother and from thy Church (which 
is the mother of us all) the baptism of thy Christ, my Lord and my 
God.  The mother of my flesh was much perplexed, for, with a heart 
pure in thy faith, she was always in deep travail for my eternal 
salvation.  If I had not quickly recovered, she would have 
provided forthwith for my initiation and washing by thy life-
giving sacraments, confessing thee, O Lord Jesus, for the 
forgiveness of sins.  So my cleansing was deferred, as if it were 
inevitable that, if I should live, I would be further polluted; 
and, further, because the guilt contracted by sin after baptism 
would be still greater and more perilous.

     Thus, at that time, I "believed" along with my mother and the 
whole household, except my father.  But he did not overcome the 
influence of my mother's piety in me, nor did he prevent my 
believing in Christ, although he had not yet believed in him.  For 
it was her desire, O my God, that I should acknowledge thee as my 
Father rather than him.  In this thou didst aid her to overcome 
her husband, to whom, though his superior, she yielded obedience.  
In this way she also yielded obedience to thee, who dost so 
command.

     18.  I ask thee, O my God, for I would gladly know if it be 
thy will, to what good end my baptism was deferred at that time?  
Was it indeed for my good that the reins were slackened, as it 
were, to encourage me in sin?  Or, were they not slackened?  If 
not, then why is it still dinned into our ears on all sides, "Let 
him alone, let him do as he pleases, for he is not yet baptized"?  
In the matter of bodily health, no one says, "Let him alone; let 
him be worse wounded; for he is not yet cured"!  How much better, 
then, would it have been for me to have been cured at once -- and 
if thereafter, through the diligent care of friends and myself, my 
soul's restored health had been kept safe in thy keeping, who gave 
it in the first place!  This would have been far better, in truth.  
But how many and great the waves of temptation which appeared to 
hang over me as I grew out of childhood!  These were foreseen by 
my mother, and she preferred that the unformed clay should be 
risked to them rather than the clay molded after Christ's 
image.[24]

                          CHAPTER XII

     19.  But in this time of childhood -- which was far less 
dreaded for me than my adolescence -- I had no love of learning, 
and hated to be driven to it.  Yet I was driven to it just the 
same, and good was done for me, even though I did not do it well, 
for I would not have learned if I had not been forced to it.  For 
no man does well against his will, even if what he does is a good 
thing.  Neither did they who forced me do well, but the good that 
was done me came from thee, my God.  For they did not care about 
the way in which I would use what they forced me to learn, and 
took it for granted that it was to satisfy the inordinate desires 
of a rich beggary and a shameful glory.  But thou, Lord, by whom 
the hairs of our head are numbered, didst use for my good the 
error of all who pushed me on to study: but my error in not being 
willing to learn thou didst use for my punishment.  And I -- 
though so small a boy yet so great a sinner -- was not punished 
without warrant.  Thus by the instrumentality of those who did not 
do well, thou didst well for me; and by my own sin thou didst 
justly punish me.  For it is even as thou hast ordained: that 
every inordinate affection brings on its own punishment.

                         CHAPTER XIII

     20.  But what were the causes for my strong dislike of Greek 
literature, which I studied from my boyhood?  Even to this day I 
have not fully understood them.  For Latin I loved exceedingly -- 
not just the rudiments, but what the grammarians teach. For those 
beginner's lessons in reading, writing, and reckoning, I 
considered no less a burden and pain than Greek.  Yet whence came 
this, unless from the sin and vanity of this life?  For I was "but 
flesh, a wind that passeth away and cometh not again."[25]  Those 
first lessons were better, assuredly, because they were more 
certain, and through them I acquired, and still retain, the power 
of reading what I find written and of writing for myself what I 
will.  In the other subjects, however, I was compelled to learn 
about the wanderings of a certain Aeneas, oblivious of my own 
wanderings, and to weep for Dido dead, who slew herself for love.  
And all this while I bore with dry eyes my own wretched self dying 
to thee, O God, my life, in the midst of these things.

     21.  For what can be more wretched than the wretch who has no 
pity upon himself, who sheds tears over Dido, dead for the love of 
Aeneas, but who sheds no tears for his own death in not loving 
thee, O God, light of my heart, and bread of the inner mouth of my 
soul, O power that links together my mind with my inmost thoughts?  
I did not love thee, and thus committed fornication against 
thee.[26]  Those around me, also sinning, thus cried out: "Well 
done!  Well done!"  The friendship of this world is fornication 
against thee; and "Well done!  Well done!"  is cried until one 
feels ashamed not to show himself a man in this way.  For my own 
condition I shed no tears, though I wept for Dido, who "sought 
death at the sword's point,"[27] while I myself was seeking the 
lowest rung of thy creation, having forsaken thee; earth sinking 
back to earth again.  And, if I had been forbidden to read these 
poems, I would have grieved that I was not allowed to read what 
grieved me.  This sort of madness is considered more honorable and 
more fruitful learning than the beginner's course in which I 
learned to read and write.

     22.  But now, O my God, cry unto my soul, and let thy truth 
say to me: "Not so, not so!  That first learning was far better." 
For, obviously, I would rather forget the wanderings of Aeneas, 
and all such things, than forget how to write and read.  Still, 
over the entrance of the grammar school there hangs a veil.  This 
is not so much the sign of a covering for a mystery as a curtain 
for error.  Let them exclaim against me -- those I no longer fear 
-- while I confess to thee, my God, what my soul desires, and let 
me find some rest, for in blaming my own evil ways I may come to 
love thy holy ways.  Neither let those cry out against me who buy 
and sell the baubles of literature.  For if I ask them if it is 
true, as the poet says, that Aeneas once came to Carthage, the 
unlearned will reply that they do not know and the learned will 
deny that it is true.  But if I ask with what letters the name 
Aeneas is written, all who have ever learned this will answer 
correctly, in accordance with the conventional understanding men 
have agreed upon as to these signs.  Again, if I should ask which 
would cause the greatest inconvenience in our life, if it were 
forgotten: reading and writing, or these poetical fictions, who 
does not see what everyone would answer who had not entirely lost 
his own memory?  I erred, then, when as a boy I preferred those 
vain studies to these more profitable ones, or rather loved the 
one and hated the other.  "One and one are two, two and two are 
four": this was then a truly hateful song to me.  But the wooden 
horse full of its armed soldiers, and the holocaust of Troy, and 
the spectral image of Creusa were all a most delightful -- and 
vain -- show![28]

     23.  But why, then, did I dislike Greek learning, which was 
full of such tales?  For Homer was skillful in inventing such 
poetic fictions and is most sweetly wanton; yet when I was a boy, 
he was most disagreeable to me.  I believe that Virgil would have 
the same effect on Greek boys as Homer did on me if they were 
forced to learn him.  For the tedium of learning a foreign 
language mingled gall into the sweetness of those Grecian myths.  
For I did not understand a word of the language, and yet I was 
driven with threats and cruel punishments to learn it.  There was 
also a time when, as an infant, I knew no Latin; but this I 
acquired without any fear or tormenting, but merely by being alert 
to the blandishments of my nurses, the jests of those who smiled 
on me, and the sportiveness of those who toyed with me.  I learned 
all this, indeed, without being urged by any pressure of 
punishment, for my own heart urged me to bring forth its own 
fashioning, which I could not do except by learning words: not 
from those who taught me but those who talked to me, into whose 
ears I could pour forth whatever I could fashion.  From this it is 
sufficiently clear that a free curiosity is more effective in 
learning than a discipline based on fear.  Yet, by thy ordinance, 
O God, discipline is given to restrain the excesses of freedom; 
this ranges from the ferule of the schoolmaster to the trials of 
the martyr and has the effect of mingling for us a wholesome 
bitterness, which calls us back to thee from the poisonous 
pleasures that first drew us from thee.

                          CHAPTER XV

     24.  Hear my prayer, O Lord; let not my soul faint under thy 
discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto thee thy mercies, 
whereby thou hast saved me from all my most wicked ways till thou 
shouldst become sweet to me beyond all the allurements that I used 
to follow.  Let me come to love thee wholly, and grasp thy hand 
with my whole heart that thou mayest deliver me from every 
temptation, even unto the last.  And thus, O Lord, my King and my 
God, may all things useful that I learned as a boy now be offered 
in thy service -- let it be that for thy service I now speak and 
write and reckon.  For when I was learning vain things, thou didst 
impose thy discipline upon me: and thou hast forgiven me my sin of 
delighting in those vanities.  In those studies I learned many a 
useful word, but these might have been learned in matters not so 
vain; and surely that is the safe way for youths to walk in.

                          CHAPTER XVI

     25.  But woe unto you, O torrent of human custom!  Who shall 
stay your course?  When will you ever run dry?  How long will you 
carry down the sons of Eve into that vast and hideous ocean, which 
even those who have the Tree (for an ark)[29] can scarcely pass 
over?  Do I not read in you the stories of Jove the thunderer -- 
and the adulterer?[30]  How could he be both?  But so it says, and 
the sham thunder served as a cloak for him to play at real 
adultery.  Yet which of our gowned masters will give a tempered 
hearing to a man trained in their own schools who cries out and 
says: "These were Homer's fictions; he transfers things human to 
the gods.  I could have wished that he would transfer divine 
things to us."[31]  But it would have been more true if he said, 
"These are, indeed, his fictions, but he attributed divine 
attributes to sinful men, that crimes might not be accounted 
crimes, and that whoever committed such crimes might appear to 
imitate the celestial gods and not abandoned men."

     26.  And yet, O torrent of hell, the sons of men are still 
cast into you, and they pay fees for learning all these things.  
And much is made of it when this goes on in the forum under the 
auspices of laws which give a salary over and above the fees.  And 
you beat against your rocky shore and roar: "Here words may be 
learned; here you can attain the eloquence which is so necessary 
to persuade people to your way of thinking; so helpful in 
unfolding your opinions." Verily, they seem to argue that we 
should never have understood these words, "golden shower," 
"bosom," "intrigue," "highest heavens," and other such words, if 
Terence had not introduced a good-for-nothing youth upon the 
stage, setting up a picture of Jove as his example of lewdness and 
telling the tale

          "Of Jove's descending in a golden shower 

     Into Danae's bosom...  

     With a woman to intrigue."

     See how he excites himself to lust, as if by a heavenly 
authority, when he says:

          "Great Jove, 

     Who shakes the highest heavens with his thunder; 

     Shall I, poor mortal man, not do the same?

     I've done it, and with all my heart, I'm glad."[32]

     These words are not learned one whit more easily because of 
this vileness, but through them the vileness is more boldly 
perpetrated.  I do not blame the words, for they are, as it were, 
choice and precious vessels, but I do deplore the wine of error 
which was poured out to us by teachers already drunk.  And, unless 
we also drank we were beaten, without liberty of appeal to a sober 
judge.  And yet, O my God, in whose presence I can now with 
security recall this, I learned these things willingly and with 
delight, and for it I was called a boy of good promise.

                         CHAPTER XVII

     27.  Bear with me, O my God, while I speak a little of those 
talents, thy gifts, and of the follies on which I wasted them.  
For a lesson was given me that sufficiently disturbed my soul, for 
in it there was both hope of praise and fear of shame or stripes.  
The assignment was that I should declaim the words of Juno, as she 
raged and sorrowed that she could not

          "Bar off Italy

     From all the approaches of the Teucrian king."[33]

     I had learned that Juno had never uttered these words.  Yet 
we were compelled to stray in the footsteps of these poetic 
fictions, and to turn into prose what the poet had said in verse.  
In the declamation, the boy won most applause who most strikingly 
reproduced the passions of anger and sorrow according to the 
"character" of the persons presented and who clothed it all in the 
most suitable language.  What is it now to me, O my true Life, my 
God, that my declaiming was applauded above that of many of my 
classmates and fellow students?  Actually, was not all that smoke 
and wind?  Besides, was there nothing else on which I could have 
exercised my wit and tongue?  Thy praise, O Lord, thy praises 
might have propped up the tendrils of my heart by thy Scriptures; 
and it would not have been dragged away by these empty trifles, a 
shameful prey to the spirits of the air.  For there is more than 
one way in which men sacrifice to the fallen angels.

                         CHAPTER XVIII

     28.  But it was no wonder that I was thus carried toward 
vanity and was estranged from thee, O my God, when men were held 
up as models to me who, when relating a deed of theirs -- not in 
itself evil -- were covered with confusion if found guilty of a 
barbarism or a solecism; but who could tell of their own 
licentiousness and be applauded for it, so long as they did it in 
a full and ornate oration of well-chosen words.  Thou seest all 
this, O Lord, and dost keep silence -- "long-suffering, and 
plenteous in mercy and truth"[34] as thou art.  Wilt thou keep 
silence forever?  Even now thou drawest from that vast deep the 
soul that seeks thee and thirsts after thy delight, whose "heart 
said unto thee, ÔI have sought thy face; thy face, Lord, will I 
seek.'"[35] For I was far from thy face in the dark shadows of 
passion.  For it is not by our feet, nor by change of place, that 
we either turn from thee or return to thee.  That younger son did 
not charter horses or chariots, or ships, or fly away on visible 
wings, or journey by walking so that in the far country he might 
prodigally waste all that thou didst give him when he set out.[36] 
A kind Father when thou gavest; and kinder still when he returned 
destitute!  To be wanton, that is to say, to be darkened in heart 
-- this is to be far from thy face.

     29.  Look down, O Lord God, and see patiently, as thou art 
wont to do, how diligently the sons of men observe the 
conventional rules of letters and syllables, taught them by those 
who learned their letters beforehand, while they neglect the 
eternal rules of everlasting salvation taught by thee.  They carry 
it so far that if he who practices or teaches the established 
rules of pronunciation should speak (contrary to grammatical 
usage) without aspirating the first syllable of "hominem" 
["ominem," and thus make it "a 'uman being"], he will offend men 
more than if he, a human being, were to _hate_ another human being 
contrary to thy commandments.  It is as if he should feel that 
there is an enemy who could be more destructive to himself than 
that hatred which excites him against his fellow man; or that he 
could destroy him whom he hates more completely than he destroys 
his own soul by this same hatred.  Now, obviously, there is no 
knowledge of letters more innate than the writing of conscience -- 
against doing unto another what one would not have done to 
himself.

     How mysterious thou art, who "dwellest on high"[37] in 
silence.  O thou, the only great God, who by an unwearied law 
hurlest down the penalty of blindness to unlawful desire!  When a 
man seeking the reputation of eloquence stands before a human 
judge, while a thronging multitude surrounds him, and inveighs 
against his enemy with the most fierce hatred, he takes most 
vigilant heed that his tongue does not slip in a grammatical 
error, for example, and say inter hominibus [instead of inter 
homines], but he takes no heed lest, in the fury of his spirit, he 
cut off a man from his fellow men [ex hominibus].

     30.  These were the customs in the midst of which I was cast, 
an unhappy boy.  This was the wrestling arena in which I was more 
fearful of perpetrating a barbarism than, having done so, of 
envying those who had not.  These things I declare and confess to 
thee, my God.  I was applauded by those whom I then thought it my 
whole duty to please, for I did not perceive the gulf of infamy 
wherein I was cast away from thy eyes.  

     For in thy eyes, what was more infamous than I was already, 
since I displeased even my own kind and deceived, with endless 
lies, my tutor, my masters and parents -- all from a love of play, 
a craving for frivolous spectacles, a stage-struck restlessness to 
imitate what I saw in these shows?  I pilfered from my parents' 
cellar and table, sometimes driven by gluttony, sometimes just to 
have something to give to other boys in exchange for their 
baubles, which they were prepared to sell even though they liked 
them as well as I.  Moreover, in this kind of play, I often sought 
dishonest victories, being myself conquered by the vain desire for 
pre-eminence.  And what was I so unwilling to endure, and what was 
it that I censured so violently when I caught anyone, except the 
very things I did to others?  And, when I was myself detected and 
censured, I preferred to quarrel rather than to yield.  Is this 
the innocence of childhood?  It is not, O Lord, it is not.  I 
entreat thy mercy, O my God, for these same sins as we grow older 
are transferred from tutors and masters; they pass from nuts and 
balls and sparrows, to magistrates and kings, to gold and lands 
and slaves, just as the rod is succeeded by more severe 
chastisements.  It was, then, the fact of humility in childhood 
that thou, O our King, didst approve as a symbol of humility when 
thou saidst, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."[38]

                          CHAPTER XIX

     31.  However, O Lord, to thee most excellent and most good, 
thou Architect and Governor of the universe, thanks would be due 
thee, O our God, even if thou hadst not willed that I should 
survive my boyhood.  For I existed even then; I lived and felt and 
was solicitous about my own well-being -- a trace of that most 
mysterious unity from whence I had my being.[39]  I kept watch, by 
my inner sense, over the integrity of my outer senses, and even in 
these trifles and also in my thoughts about trifles, I learned to 
take pleasure in truth.  I was averse to being deceived; I had a 
vigorous memory; I was gifted with the power of speech, was 
softened by friendship, shunned sorrow, meanness, ignorance.  Is 
not such an animated creature as this wonderful and praiseworthy?  
But all these are gifts of my God; I did not give them to myself.  
Moreover, they are good, and they all together constitute myself.  
Good, then, is he that made me, and he is my God; and before him 
will I rejoice exceedingly for every good gift which, even as a 
boy, I had.  But herein lay my sin, that it was not in him, but in 
his creatures -- myself and the rest -- that I sought for 
pleasures, honors, and truths.  And I fell thereby into sorrows, 
troubles, and errors.  Thanks be to thee, my joy, my pride, my 
confidence, my God -- thanks be to thee for thy gifts; but do thou 
preserve them in me.  For thus wilt thou preserve me; and those 
things which thou hast given me shall be developed and perfected, 
and I myself shall be with thee, for from thee is my being.

     

                          BOOK TWO

     
He concentrates here on his sixteenth year, a year of idleness, 
lust, and adolescent mischief.  The memory of stealing some pears 
prompts a deep probing of the motives and aims of sinful acts.  "I 
became to myself a wasteland." 

                           CHAPTER I

     1.  I wish now to review in memory my past wickedness and the 
carnal corruptions of my soul -- not because I still love them, 
but that I may love thee, O my God.  For love of thy love I do 
this, recalling in the bitterness of self-examination my wicked 
ways, that thou mayest grow sweet to me, thou sweetness without 
deception!  Thou sweetness happy and assured!  Thus thou mayest 
gather me up out of those fragments in which I was torn to pieces, 
while I turned away from thee, O Unity, and lost myself among "the 
many."[40]  For as I became a youth, I longed to be satisfied with 
worldly things, and I dared to grow wild in a succession of 
various and shadowy loves.  My form wasted away, and I became 
corrupt in thy eyes, yet I was still pleasing to my own eyes -- 
and eager to please the eyes of men.

                          CHAPTER II

     2.  But what was it that delighted me save to love and to be 
loved?  Still I did not keep the moderate way of the love of mind 
to mind -- the bright path of friendship.  Instead, the mists of 
passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence of the flesh, 
and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and 
overcast my heart that I was unable to distinguish pure affection 
from unholy desire.  Both boiled confusedly within me, and dragged 
my unstable youth down over the cliffs of unchaste desires and 
plunged me into a gulf of infamy.  Thy anger had come upon me, and 
I knew it not.  I had been deafened by the clanking of the chains 
of my mortality, the punishment for my soul's pride, and I 
wandered farther from thee, and thou didst permit me to do so.  I 
was tossed to and fro, and wasted, and poured out, and I boiled 
over in my fornications -- and yet thou didst hold thy peace, O my 
tardy Joy!  Thou didst still hold thy peace, and I wandered still 
farther from thee into more and yet more barren fields of sorrow, 
in proud dejection and restless lassitude.

     3.  If only there had been someone to regulate my disorder 
and turn to my profit the fleeting beauties of the things around 
me, and to fix a bound to their sweetness, so that the tides of my 
youth might have spent themselves upon the shore of marriage!  
Then they might have been tranquilized and satisfied with having 
children, as thy law prescribes, O Lord -- O thou who dost form 
the offspring of our death and art able also with a tender hand to 
blunt the thorns which were excluded from thy paradise![41]  For 
thy omnipotence is not far from us even when we are far from thee.  
Now, on the other hand, I might have given more vigilant heed to 
the voice from the clouds: "Nevertheless, such shall have trouble 
in the flesh, but I spare you,"[42] and, "It is good for a man not 
to touch a woman,"[43] and, "He that is unmarried cares for the 
things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he 
that is married cares for the things that are of the world, how he 
may please his wife."[44]  I should have listened more attentively 
to these words, and, thus having been "made a eunuch for the 
Kingdom of Heaven's sake,"[45] I would have with greater happiness 
expected thy embraces.

     4.  But, fool that I was, I foamed in my wickedness as the 
sea and, forsaking thee, followed the rushing of my own tide, and 
burst out of all thy bounds.  But I did not escape thy scourges.  
For what mortal can do so?  Thou wast always by me, mercifully 
angry and flavoring all my unlawful pleasures with bitter 
discontent, in order that I might seek pleasures free from 
discontent.  But where could I find such pleasure save in thee, O 
Lord -- save in thee, who dost teach us by sorrow, who woundest us 
to heal us, and dost kill us that we may not die apart from thee.  
Where was I, and how far was I exiled from the delights of thy 
house, in that sixteenth year of the age of my flesh, when the 
madness of lust held full sway in me -- that madness which grants 
indulgence to human shamelessness, even though it is forbidden by 
thy laws -- and I gave myself entirely to it?  Meanwhile, my 
family took no care to save me from ruin by marriage, for their 
sole care was that I should learn how to make a powerful speech 
and become a persuasive orator.

                          CHAPTER III

     5.  Now, in that year my studies were interrupted.  I had 
come back from Madaura, a neighboring city[46] where I had gone to 
study grammar and rhetoric; and the money for a further term at 
Carthage was being got together for me.  This project was more a 
matter of my father's ambition than of his means, for he was only 
a poor citizen of Tagaste.  

     To whom am I narrating all this?  Not to thee, O my God, but 
to my own kind in thy presence -- to that small part of the human 
race who may chance to come upon these writings.  And to what end?  
That I and all who read them may understand what depths there are 
from which we are to cry unto thee.[47]  For what is more surely 
heard in thy ear than a confessing heart and a faithful life?  

     Who did not extol and praise my father, because he went quite 
beyond his means to supply his son with the necessary expenses for 
a far journey in the interest of his education?  For many far 
richer citizens did not do so much for their children.  Still, 
this same father troubled himself not at all as to how I was 
progressing toward thee nor how chaste I was, just so long as I 
was skillful in speaking -- no matter how barren I was to thy 
tillage, O God, who art the one true and good Lord of my heart, 
which is thy field.[48] 

     6.  During that sixteenth year of my age, I lived with my 
parents, having a holiday from school for a time -- this idleness 
imposed upon me by my parents' straitened finances.  The 
thornbushes of lust grew rank about my head, and there was no hand 
to root them out.  Indeed, when my father saw me one day at the 
baths and perceived that I was becoming a man, and was showing the 
signs of adolescence, he joyfully told my mother about it as if 
already looking forward to grandchildren, rejoicing in that sort 
of inebriation in which the world so often forgets thee, its 
Creator, and falls in love with thy creature instead of thee -- 
the inebriation of that invisible wine of a perverted will which 
turns and bows down to infamy.  But in my mother's breast thou 
hadst already begun to build thy temple and the foundation of thy 
holy habitation -- whereas my father was only a catechumen, and 
that but recently.  She was, therefore, startled with a holy fear 
and trembling: for though I had not yet been baptized, she feared 
those crooked ways in which they walk who turn their backs to thee 
and not their faces.

     7.  Woe is me!  Do I dare affirm that thou didst hold thy 
peace, O my God, while I wandered farther away from thee?  Didst 
thou really then hold thy peace?  Then whose words were they but 
thine which by my mother, thy faithful handmaid, thou didst pour 
into my ears?  None of them, however, sank into my heart to make 
me do anything.  She deplored and, as I remember, warned me 
privately with great solicitude, "not to commit fornication; but 
above all things never to defile another man's wife." These 
appeared to me but womanish counsels, which I would have blushed 
to obey.  Yet they were from thee, and I knew it not.  I thought 
that thou wast silent and that it was only she who spoke.  Yet it 
was through her that thou didst not keep silence toward me; and in 
rejecting her counsel I was rejecting thee -- I, her son, "the son 
of thy handmaid, thy servant."[49]  But I did not realize this, 
and rushed on headlong with such blindness that, among my friends, 
I was ashamed to be less shameless than they, when I heard them 
boasting of their disgraceful exploits -- yes, and glorying all 
the more the worse their baseness was.  What is worse, I took 
pleasure in such exploits, not for the pleasure's sake only but 
mostly for praise.  What is worthy of vituperation except vice 
itself?  Yet I made myself out worse than I was, in order that I 
might not go lacking for praise.  And when in anything I had not 
sinned as the worst ones in the group, I would still say that I 
had done what I had not done, in order not to appear contemptible 
because I was more innocent than they; and not to drop in their 
esteem because I was more chaste.

     8.  Behold with what companions I walked the streets of 
Babylon!  I rolled in its mire and lolled about on it, as if on a 
bed of spices and precious ointments.  And, drawing me more 
closely to the very center of that city, my invisible enemy trod 
me down and seduced me, for I was easy to seduce.  My mother had 
already fled out of the midst of Babylon[50] and was progressing, 
albeit slowly, toward its outskirts.  For in counseling me to 
chastity, she did not bear in mind what her husband had told her 
about me.  And although she knew that my passions were destructive 
even then and dangerous for the future, she did not think they 
should be restrained by the bonds of conjugal affection -- if, 
indeed, they could not be cut away to the quick.  She took no heed 
of this, for she was afraid lest a wife should prove a hindrance 
and a burden to my hopes.  These were not her hopes of the world 
to come, which my mother had in thee, but the hope of learning, 
which both my parents were too anxious that I should acquire -- my 
father, because he had little or no thought of thee, and only vain 
thoughts for me; my mother, because she thought that the usual 
course of study would not only be no hindrance but actually a 
furtherance toward my eventual return to thee.  This much I 
conjecture, recalling as well as I can the temperaments of my 
parents.  Meantime, the reins of discipline were slackened on me, 
so that without the restraint of due severity, I might play at 
whatsoever I fancied, even to the point of dissoluteness.  And in 
all this there was that mist which shut out from my sight the 
brightness of thy truth, O my God; and my iniquity bulged out, as 
it were, with fatness![51]

                          CHAPTER IV

     9.  Theft is punished by thy law, O Lord, and by the law 
written in men's hearts, which not even ingrained wickedness can 
erase.  For what thief will tolerate another thief stealing from 
him?  Even a rich thief will not tolerate a poor thief who is 
driven to theft by want.  Yet I had a desire to commit robbery, 
and did so, compelled to it by neither hunger nor poverty, but 
through a contempt for well-doing and a strong impulse to 
iniquity.  For I pilfered something which I already had in 
sufficient measure, and of much better quality.  I did not desire 
to enjoy what I stole, but only the theft and the sin itself.

     There was a pear tree close to our own vineyard, heavily 
laden with fruit, which was not tempting either for its color or 
for its flavor.  Late one night -- having prolonged our games in 
the streets until then, as our bad habit was -- a group of young 
scoundrels, and I among them, went to shake and rob this tree.  We 
carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to 
dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves.  
Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden.  Such 
was my heart, O God, such was my heart -- which thou didst pity 
even in that bottomless pit.  Behold, now let my heart confess to 
thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously 
wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself.  It was 
foul, and I loved it.  I loved my own undoing.  I loved my error 
-- not that for which I erred but the error itself.  A depraved 
soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself, 
seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself.

                           CHAPTER V

     10.  Now there is a comeliness in all beautiful bodies, and 
in gold and silver and all things.  The sense of touch has its own 
power to please and the other senses find their proper objects in 
physical sensation.  Worldly honor also has its own glory, and so 
do the powers to command and to overcome: and from these there 
springs up the desire for revenge.  Yet, in seeking these 
pleasures, we must not depart from thee, O Lord, nor deviate from 
thy law.  The life which we live here has its own peculiar 
attractiveness because it has a certain measure of comeliness of 
its own and a harmony with all these inferior values.  The bond of 
human friendship has a sweetness of its own, binding many souls 
together as one.  Yet because of these values, sin is committed, 
because we have an inordinate preference for these goods of a 
lower order and neglect the better and the higher good -- 
neglecting thee, O our Lord God, and thy truth and thy law.  For 
these inferior values have their delights, but not at all equal to 
my God, who hath made them all.  For in him do the righteous 
delight and he is the sweetness of the upright in heart.

     11.  When, therefore, we inquire why a crime was committed, 
we do not accept the explanation unless it appears that there was 
the desire to obtain some of those values which we designate 
inferior, or else a fear of losing them.  For truly they are 
beautiful and comely, though in comparison with the superior and 
celestial goods they are abject and contemptible.  A man has 
murdered another man -- what was his motive?  Either he desired 
his wife or his property or else he would steal to support 
himself; or else he was afraid of losing something to him; or 
else, having been injured, he was burning to be revenged.  Would a 
man commit murder without a motive, taking delight simply in the 
act of murder?  Who would believe such a thing?  Even for that 
savage and brutal man [Catiline], of whom it was said that he was 
gratuitously wicked and cruel, there is still a motive assigned to 
his deeds.  "Lest through idleness," he says, "hand or heart 
should grow inactive."[52]  And to what purpose?  Why, even this: 
that, having once got possession of the city through his practice 
of his wicked ways, he might gain honors, empire, and wealth, and 
thus be exempt from the fear of the laws and from financial 
difficulties in supplying the needs of his family -- and from the 
consciousness of his own wickedness.  So it seems that even 
Catiline himself loved not his own villainies, but something else, 
and it was this that gave him the motive for his crimes.

                          CHAPTER VI

     12.  What was it in you, O theft of mine, that I, poor 
wretch, doted on -- you deed of darkness -- in that sixteenth year 
of my age?  Beautiful you were not, for you were a theft.  But are 
you anything at all, so that I could analyze the case with you?  
Those pears that we stole were fair to the sight because they were 
thy creation, O Beauty beyond compare, O Creator of all, O thou 
good God -- God the highest good and my true good.[53]  Those 
pears were truly pleasant to the sight, but it was not for them 
that my miserable soul lusted, for I had an abundance of better 
pears.  I stole those simply that I might steal, for, having 
stolen them, I threw them away.  My sole gratification in them was 
my own sin, which I was pleased to enjoy; for, if any one of these 
pears entered my mouth, the only good flavor it had was my sin in 
eating it.  And now, O Lord my God, I ask what it was in that 
theft of mine that caused me such delight; for behold it had no 
beauty of its own -- certainly not the sort of beauty that exists 
in justice and wisdom, nor such as is in the mind, memory senses, 
and the animal life of man; nor yet the kind that is the glory and 
beauty of the stars in their courses; nor the beauty of the earth, 
or the sea -- teeming with spawning life, replacing in birth that 
which dies and decays.  Indeed, it did not have that false and 
shadowy beauty which attends the deceptions of vice.

     13.  For thus we see pride wearing the mask of high-
spiritedness, although only thou, O God, art high above all.  
Ambition seeks honor and glory, whereas only thou shouldst be 
honored above all, and glorified forever.  The powerful man seeks 
to be feared, because of his cruelty; but who ought really to be 
feared but God only?  What can be forced away or withdrawn out of 
his power -- when or where or whither or by whom?  The enticements 
of the wanton claim the name of love; and yet nothing is more 
enticing than thy love, nor is anything loved more healthfully 
than thy truth, bright and beautiful above all.  Curiosity prompts 
a desire for knowledge, whereas it is only thou who knowest all 
things supremely.  Indeed, ignorance and foolishness themselves go 
masked under the names of simplicity and innocence; yet there is 
no being that has true simplicity like thine, and none is innocent 
as thou art.  Thus it is that by a sinner's own deeds he is 
himself harmed.  Human sloth pretends to long for rest, but what 
sure rest is there save in the Lord?  Luxury would fain be called 
plenty and abundance; but thou art the fullness and unfailing 
abundance of unfading joy.  Prodigality presents a show of 
liberality; but thou art the most lavish giver of all good things.  
Covetousness desires to possess much; but thou art already the 
possessor of all things.  Envy contends that its aim is for 
excellence; but what is so excellent as thou?  Anger seeks 
revenge; but who avenges more justly than thou?  Fear recoils at 
the unfamiliar and the sudden changes which threaten things 
beloved, and is wary for its own security; but what can happen 
that is unfamiliar or sudden to thee?  Or who can deprive thee of 
what thou lovest?  Where, really, is there unshaken security save 
with thee?  Grief languishes for things lost in which desire had 
taken delight, because it wills to have nothing taken from it, 
just as nothing can be taken from thee.

     14.  Thus the soul commits fornication when she is turned 
from thee,[54] and seeks apart from thee what she cannot find pure 
and untainted until she returns to thee.  All things thus imitate 
thee -- but pervertedly -- when they separate themselves far from 
thee and raise themselves up against thee.  But, even in this act 
of perverse imitation, they acknowledge thee to be the Creator of 
all nature, and recognize that there is no place whither they can 
altogether separate themselves from thee.  What was it, then, that 
I loved in that theft?  And wherein was I imitating my Lord, even 
in a corrupted and perverted way?  Did I wish, if only by gesture, 
to rebel against thy law, even though I had no power to do so 
actually -- so that, even as a captive, I might produce a sort of 
counterfeit liberty, by doing with impunity deeds that were 
forbidden, in a deluded sense of omnipotence?  Behold this servant 
of thine, fleeing from his Lord and following a shadow!  O 
rottenness!  O monstrousness of life and abyss of death!  Could I 
find pleasure only in what was unlawful, and only because it was 
unlawful? 

                          CHAPTER VII

     15.  "What shall I render unto the Lord"[55] for the fact 
that while my memory recalls these things my soul no longer fears 
them?  I will love thee, O Lord, and thank thee, and confess to 
thy name, because thou hast put away from me such wicked and evil 
deeds.  To thy grace I attribute it and to thy mercy, that thou 
hast melted away my sin as if it were ice.  To thy grace also I 
attribute whatsoever of evil I did _not_ commit -- for what might 
I not have done, loving sin as I did, just for the sake of 
sinning?  Yea, all the sins that I confess now to have been 
forgiven me, both those which I committed willfully and those 
which, by thy providence, I did not commit.  What man is there 
who, when reflecting upon his own infirmity, dares to ascribe his 
chastity and innocence to his own powers, so that he should love 
thee less -- as if he were in less need of thy mercy in which thou 
forgivest the transgressions of those that return to thee?  As for 
that man who, when called by thee, obeyed thy voice and shunned 
those things which he here reads of me as I recall and confess 
them of myself, let him not despise me -- for I, who was sick, 
have been healed by the same Physician by whose aid it was that he 
did not fall sick, or rather was less sick than I.  And for this 
let him love thee just as much -- indeed, all the more -- since he 
sees me restored from such a great weakness of sin by the selfsame 
Saviour by whom he sees himself preserved from such a weakness.

                         CHAPTER VIII

     16.  What profit did I, a wretched one, receive from those 
things which, when I remember them now, cause me shame -- above 
all, from that theft, which I loved only for the theft's sake?  
And, as the theft itself was nothing, I was all the more wretched 
in that I loved it so.  Yet by myself alone I would not have done 
it -- I still recall how I felt about this then -- I could not 
have done it alone.  I loved it then because of the companionship 
of my accomplices with whom I did it.  I did not, therefore, love 
the theft alone -- yet, indeed, it was only the theft that I 
loved, for the companionship was nothing.  What is this paradox?  
Who is it that can explain it to me but God, who illumines my 
heart and searches out the dark corners thereof?  What is it that 
has prompted my mind to inquire about it, to discuss and to 
reflect upon all this?  For had I at that time loved the pears 
that I stole and wished to enjoy them, I might have done so alone, 
if I could have been satisfied with the mere act of theft by which 
my pleasure was served.  Nor did I need to have that itching of my 
own passions inflamed by the encouragement of my accomplices.  But 
since the pleasure I got was not from the pears, it was in the 
crime itself, enhanced by the companionship of my fellow sinners.

                          CHAPTER IX

     17.  By what passion, then, was I animated?  It was 
undoubtedly depraved and a great misfortune for me to feel it.  
But still, what was it?  "Who can understand his errors?"[56]

     We laughed because our hearts were tickled at the thought of 
deceiving the owners, who had no idea of what we were doing and 
would have strenuously objected.  Yet, again, why did I find such 
delight in doing this which I would not have done alone?  Is it 
that no one readily laughs alone?  No one does so readily; but 
still sometimes, when men are by themselves and no one else is 
about, a fit of laughter will overcome them when something very 
droll presents itself to their sense or mind.  Yet alone I would 
not have done it -- alone I could not have done it at all.

     Behold, my God, the lively review of my soul's career is laid 
bare before thee.  I would not have committed that theft alone.  
My pleasure in it was not what I stole but, rather, the act of 
stealing.  Nor would I have enjoyed doing it alone -- indeed I 
would not have done it!  O friendship all unfriendly!  You strange 
seducer of the soul, who hungers for mischief from impulses of 
mirth and wantonness, who craves another's loss without any desire 
for one's own profit or revenge -- so that, when they say, "Let's 
go, let's do it," we are ashamed not to be shameless.

                           CHAPTER X

     18.  Who can unravel such a twisted and tangled knottiness?  
It is unclean.  I hate to reflect upon it.  I hate to look on it.  
But I do long for thee, O Righteousness and Innocence, so 
beautiful and comely to all virtuous eyes -- I long for thee with 
an insatiable satiety.  With thee is perfect rest, and life 
unchanging.  He who enters into thee enters into the joy of his 
Lord,[57] and shall have no fear and shall achieve excellence in 
the Excellent.  I fell away from thee, O my God, and in my youth I 
wandered too far from thee, my true support.  And I became to 
myself a wasteland.

                          BOOK THREE

     The story of his student days in Carthage, his discovery of 
Cicero's  Hortensius, the enkindling of his philosophical 
interest, his infatuation with the Manichean heresy, and his 
mother's dream which foretold his eventual return to the true 
faith and to God.  

                           CHAPTER I

     1.  I came to Carthage, where a caldron of unholy loves was 
seething and bubbling all around me.  I was not in love as yet, 
but I was in love with love; and, from a hidden hunger, I hated 
myself for not feeling more intensely a sense of hunger.  I was 
looking for something to love, for I was in love with loving, and 
I hated security and a smooth way, free from snares.  Within me I 
had a dearth of that inner food which is thyself, my God -- 
although that dearth caused me no hunger.  And I remained without 
any appetite for incorruptible food -- not because I was already 
filled with it, but because the emptier I became the more I 
loathed it.  Because of this my soul was unhealthy; and, full of 
sores, it exuded itself forth, itching to be scratched by scraping 
on the things of the senses.[58]  Yet, had these things no soul, 
they would certainly not inspire our love.

     To love and to be loved was sweet to me, and all the more 
when I gained the enjoyment of the body of the person I loved.  
Thus I polluted the spring of friendship with the filth of 
concupiscence and I dimmed its luster with the slime of lust.  
Yet, foul and unclean as I was, I still craved, in excessive 
vanity, to be thought elegant and urbane.  And I did fall 
precipitately into the love I was longing for.  My God, my mercy, 
with how much bitterness didst thou, out of thy infinite goodness, 
flavor that sweetness for me!  For I was not only beloved but also 
I secretly reached the climax of enjoyment; and yet I was joyfully 
bound with troublesome tics, so that I could be scourged with the 
burning iron rods of jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger, and strife.

                          CHAPTER II

     2.  Stage plays also captivated me, with their sights full of 
the images of my own miseries: fuel for my own fire.  Now, why 
does a man like to be made sad by viewing doleful and tragic 
scenes, which he himself could not by any means endure?  Yet, as a 
spectator, he wishes to experience from them a sense of grief, and 
in this very sense of grief his pleasure consists.  What is this 
but wretched madness?  For a man is more affected by these actions 
the more he is spuriously involved in these affections.  Now, if 
he should suffer them in his own person, it is the custom to call 
this "misery." But when he suffers with another, then it is called 
"compassion." But what kind of compassion is it that arises from 
viewing fictitious and unreal sufferings?  The spectator is not 
expected to aid the sufferer but merely to grieve for him.  And 
the more he grieves the more he applauds the actor of these 
fictions.  If the misfortunes of the characters -- whether 
historical or entirely imaginary -- are represented so as not to 
touch the feelings of the spectator, he goes away disgusted and 
complaining.  But if his feelings are deeply touched, he sits it 
out attentively, and sheds tears of joy.

     3.  Tears and sorrow, then, are loved.  Surely every man 
desires to be joyful.  And, though no one is willingly miserable, 
one may, nevertheless, be pleased to be merciful so that we love 
their sorrows because without them we should have nothing to pity.  
This also springs from that same vein of friendship.  But whither 
does it go?  Whither does it flow?  Why does it run into that 
torrent of pitch which seethes forth those huge tides of loathsome 
lusts in which it is changed and altered past recognition, being 
diverted and corrupted from its celestial purity by its own will?  
Shall, then, compassion be repudiated?  By no means!  Let us, 
however, love the sorrows of others.  But let us beware of 
uncleanness, O my soul, under the protection of my God, the God of 
our fathers, who is to be praised and exalted -- let us beware of 
uncleanness.  I have not yet ceased to have compassion.  But in 
those days in the theaters I sympathized with lovers when they 
sinfully enjoyed one another, although this was done fictitiously 
in the play.  And when they lost one another, I grieved with them, 
as if pitying them, and yet had delight in both grief and pity.  
Nowadays I feel much more pity for one who delights in his 
wickedness than for one who counts himself unfortunate because he 
fails to obtain some harmful pleasure or suffers the loss of some 
miserable felicity.  This, surely, is the truer compassion, but 
the sorrow I feel in it has no delight for me.  For although he 
that grieves with the unhappy should be commended for his work of 
love, yet he who has the power of real compassion would still 
prefer that there be nothing for him to grieve about.  For if good 
will were to be ill will -- which it cannot be -- only then could 
he who is truly and sincerely compassionate wish that there were 
some unhappy people so that he might commiserate them.  Some grief 
may then be justified, but none of it loved.  Thus it is that thou 
dost act, O Lord God, for thou lovest souls far more purely than 
we do and art more incorruptibly compassionate, although thou art 
never wounded by any sorrow.  Now "who is sufficient for these 
things?"[59]

     4.  But at that time, in my wretchedness, I loved to grieve; 
and I sought for things to grieve about.  In another man's misery, 
even though it was feigned and impersonated on the stage, that 
performance of the actor pleased me best and attracted me most 
powerfully which moved me to tears.  What marvel then was it that 
an unhappy sheep, straying from thy flock and impatient of thy 
care, I became infected with a foul disease?  This is the reason 
for my love of griefs: that they would not probe into me too 
deeply (for I did not love to suffer in myself such things as I 
loved to look at), and they were the sort of grief which came from 
hearing those fictions, which affected only the surface of my 
emotion.  Still, just as if they had been poisoned fingernails, 
their scratching was followed by inflammation, swelling, 
putrefaction, and corruption.  Such was my life!  But was it life, 
O my God? 

                          CHAPTER III

     5.  And still thy faithful mercy hovered over me from afar.  
In what unseemly iniquities did I wear myself out, following a 
sacrilegious curiosity, which, having deserted thee, then began to 
drag me down into the treacherous abyss, into the beguiling 
obedience of devils, to whom I made offerings of my wicked deeds.  
And still in all this thou didst not fail to scourge me.  I dared, 
even while thy solemn rites were being celebrated inside the walls 
of thy church, to desire and to plan a project which merited death 
as its fruit.  For this thou didst chastise me with grievous 
punishments, but nothing in comparison with my fault, O thou my 
greatest mercy, my God, my refuge from those terrible dangers in 
which I wandered with stiff neck, receding farther from thee, 
loving my own ways and not thine -- loving a vagrant liberty!

     6.  Those studies I was then pursuing, generally accounted as 
respectable, were aimed at distinction in the courts of law -- to 
excel in which, the more crafty I was, the more I should be 
praised.  Such is the blindness of men that they even glory in 
their blindness.  And by this time I had become a master in the 
School of Rhetoric, and I rejoiced proudly in this honor and 
became inflated with arrogance.  Still I was relatively sedate, O 
Lord, as thou knowest, and had no share in the wreckings of "The 
Wreckers"[60] (for this stupid and diabolical name was regarded as 
the very badge of gallantry) among whom I lived with a sort of 
ashamed embarrassment that I was not even as they were.  But I 
lived with them, and at times I was delighted with their 
friendship, even when I abhorred their acts (that is, their 
"wrecking") in which they insolently attacked the modesty of 
strangers, tormenting them by uncalled-for jeers, gratifying their 
mischievous mirth.  Nothing could more nearly resemble the actions 
of devils than these fellows.  By what name, therefore, could they 
be more aptly called than "wreckers"? -- being themselves wrecked 
first, and altogether turned upside down.  They were secretly 
mocked at and seduced by the deceiving spirits, in the very acts 
by which they amused themselves in jeering and horseplay at the 
expense of others.

                          CHAPTER IV

     7.  Among such as these, in that unstable period of my life, 
I studied the books of eloquence, for it was in eloquence that I 
was eager to be eminent, though from a reprehensible and 
vainglorious motive, and a delight in human vanity.  In the 
ordinary course of study I came upon a certain book of Cicero's, 
whose language almost all admire, though not his heart.  This 
particular book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy and 
was called Hortensius.[61]  Now it was this book which quite 
definitely changed my whole attitude and turned my prayers toward 
thee, O Lord, and gave me new hope and new desires.  Suddenly 
every vain hope became worthless to me, and with an incredible 
warmth of heart I yearned for an immortality of wisdom and began 
now to arise that I might return to thee.  It was not to sharpen 
my tongue further that I made use of that book.  I was now 
nineteen; my father had been dead two years,[62] and my mother was 
providing the money for my study of rhetoric.  What won me in it 
[i.e., the Hortensius] was not its style but its substance.

     8.  How ardent was I then, my God, how ardent to fly from 
earthly things to thee!  Nor did I know how thou wast even then 
dealing with me.  For with thee is wisdom.  In Greek the love of 
wisdom is called "philosophy," and it was with this love that that 
book inflamed me.  There are some who seduce through philosophy, 
under a great, alluring, and honorable name, using it to color and 
adorn their own errors.  And almost all who did this, in Cicero's 
own time and earlier, are censored and pointed out in his book.  
In it there is also manifest that most salutary admonition of thy 
Spirit, spoken by thy good and pious servant: "Beware lest any man 
spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition 
of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ: 
for in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily."[63]  
Since at that time, as thou knowest, O Light of my heart, the 
words of the apostle were unknown to me, I was delighted with 
Cicero's exhortation, at least enough so that I was stimulated by 
it, and enkindled and inflamed to love, to seek, to obtain, to 
hold, and to embrace, not this or that sect, but wisdom itself, 
wherever it might be.  Only this checked my ardor: that the name 
of Christ was not in it.  For this name, by thy mercy, O Lord, 
this name of my Saviour thy Son, my tender heart had piously drunk 
in, deeply treasured even with my mother's milk.  And whatsoever 
was lacking that name, no matter how erudite, polished, and 
truthful, did not quite take complete hold of me.

                           CHAPTER V

     9.  I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind to the Holy 
Scriptures, that I might see what they were.  And behold, I saw 
something not comprehended by the proud, not disclosed to 
children, something lowly in the hearing, but sublime in the 
doing, and veiled in mysteries.  Yet I was not of the number of 
those who could enter into it or bend my neck to follow its steps.  
For then it was quite different from what I now feel.  When I then 
turned toward the Scriptures, they appeared to me to be quite 
unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Tully.[64]  For my 
inflated pride was repelled by their style, nor could the 
sharpness of my wit penetrate their inner meaning.  Truly they 
were of a sort to aid the growth of little ones, but I scorned to 
be a little one and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as 
fully grown.

                          CHAPTER VI

     10.  Thus I fell among men, delirious in their pride, carnal 
and voluble, whose mouths were the snares of the devil -- a trap 
made out of a mixture of the syllables of thy name and the names 
of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Paraclete.[65]  These names 
were never out of their mouths, but only as sound and the clatter 
of tongues, for their heart was empty of truth.  Still they cried, 
"Truth, Truth," and were forever speaking the word to me.  But the 
thing itself was not in them.  Indeed, they spoke falsely not only 
of thee -- who truly art the Truth -- but also about the basic 
elements of this world, thy creation.  And, indeed, I should have 
passed by the philosophers themselves even when they were speaking 
truth concerning thy creatures, for the sake of thy love, O 
Highest Good, and my Father, O Beauty of all things beautiful.

     O Truth, Truth, how inwardly even then did the marrow of my 
soul sigh for thee when, frequently and in manifold ways, in 
numerous and vast books, [the Manicheans] sounded out thy name 
though it was only a sound!  And in these dishes -- while I 
starved for thee -- they served up to me, in thy stead, the sun 
and moon thy beauteous works -- but still only thy works and not 
thyself; indeed, not even thy first work.  For thy spiritual works 
came before these material creations, celestial and shining though 
they are.  But I was hungering and thirsting, not even after those 
first works of thine, but after thyself the Truth, "with whom is 
no variableness, neither shadow of turning."[66]  Yet they still 
served me glowing fantasies in those dishes.  And, truly, it would 
have been better to have loved this very sun -- which at least is 
true to our sight -- than those illusions of theirs which deceive 
the mind through the eye.  And yet because I supposed the 
illusions to be from thee I fed on them -- not with avidity, for 
thou didst not taste in my mouth as thou art, and thou wast not 
these empty fictions.  Neither was I nourished by them, but was 
instead exhausted.  Food in dreams appears like our food awake; 
yet the sleepers are not nourished by it, for they are asleep.  
But the fantasies of the Manicheans were not in any way like thee 
as thou hast spoken to me now.  They were simply fantastic and 
false.  In comparison to them the actual bodies which we see with 
our fleshly sight, both celestial and terrestrial, are far more 
certain.  These true bodies even the beasts and birds perceive as 
well as we do and they are more certain than the images we form 
about them.  And again, we do with more certainty form our 
conceptions about them than, from them, we go on by means of them 
to imagine of other greater and infinite bodies which have no 
existence.  With such empty husks was I then fed, and yet was not 
fed.

     But thou, my Love, for whom I longed in order that I might be 
strong, neither art those bodies that we see in heaven nor art 
thou those which we do not see there, for thou hast created them 
all and yet thou reckonest them not among thy greatest works.  How 
far, then, art thou from those fantasies of mine, fantasies of 
bodies which have no real being at all!  The images of those 
bodies which actually exist are far more certain than these 
fantasies.  The bodies themselves are more certain than the 
images, yet even these thou art not.  Thou art not even the soul, 
which is the life of bodies; and, clearly, the life of the body is 
better than the body itself.  But thou art the life of souls, life 
of lives, having life in thyself, and never changing, O Life of my 
soul.[67] 

     11.  Where, then, wast thou and how far from me?  Far, 
indeed, was I wandering away from thee, being barred even from the 
husks of those swine whom I fed with husks.[68]  For how much 
better were the fables of the grammarians and poets than these 
snares [of the Manicheans]!  For verses and poems and "the flying 
Medea"[69] are still more profitable truly than these men's "five 
elements," with their various colors, answering to "the five caves 
of darkness"[70] (none of which exist and yet in which they slay 
the one who believes in them).  For verses and poems I can turn 
into food for the mind, for though I sang about "the flying Medea" 
I never believed it, but those other things [the fantasies of the 
Manicheans] I did believe.  Woe, woe, by what steps I was dragged 
down to "the depths of hell"[71] -- toiling and fuming because of 
my lack of the truth, even when I was seeking after thee, my God!  
To thee I now confess it, for thou didst have mercy on me when I 
had not yet confessed it.  I sought after thee, but not according 
to the understanding of the mind, by means of which thou hast 
willed that I should excel the beasts, but only after the guidance 
of my physical senses.  Thou wast more inward to me than the most 
inward part of me; and higher than my highest reach. I came upon 
that brazen woman, devoid of prudence, who, in Solomon's obscure 
parable, sits at the door of the house on a seat and says, "Stolen 
waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant."[72]  
This woman seduced me, because she found my soul outside its own 
door, dwelling on the sensations of my flesh and ruminating on 
such food as I had swallowed through these physical senses.

                          CHAPTER VII

     12.  For I was ignorant of that other reality, true Being.  
And so it was that I was subtly persuaded to agree with these 
foolish deceivers when they put their questions to me: "Whence 
comes evil?"  and, "Is God limited by a bodily shape, and has he 
hairs and nails?"  and, "Are those patriarchs to be esteemed 
righteous who had many wives at one time, and who killed men and 
who sacrificed living creatures?"  In my ignorance I was much 
disturbed over these things and, though I was retreating from the 
truth, I appeared to myself to be going toward it, because I did 
not yet know that evil was nothing but a privation of good (that, 
indeed, it has no being)[73]; and how should I have seen this when 
the sight of my eyes went no farther than physical objects, and 
the sight of my mind reached no farther than to fantasms?  And I 
did not know that God is a spirit who has no parts extended in 
length and breadth, whose being has no mass -- for every mass is 
less in a part than in a whole -- and if it be an infinite mass it 
must be less in such parts as are limited by a certain space than 
in its infinity.  It cannot therefore be wholly everywhere as 
Spirit is, as God is.  And I was entirely ignorant as to what is 
that principle within us by which we are like God, and which is 
rightly said in Scripture to be made "after God's image."

     13.  Nor did I know that true inner righteousness -- which 
does not judge according to custom but by the measure of the most 
perfect law of God Almighty -- by which the mores of various 
places and times were adapted to those places and times (though 
the law itself is the same always and everywhere, not one thing in 
one place and another in another).  By this inner righteousness 
Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob and Moses and David, and all those 
commended by the mouth of God were righteous and were judged 
unrighteous only by foolish men who were judging by human judgment 
and gauging their judgment of the mores of the whole human race by 
the narrow norms of their own mores.  It is as if a man in an 
armory, not knowing what piece goes on what part of the body, 
should put a greave on his head and a helmet on his shin and then 
complain because they did not fit.  Or as if, on some holiday when 
afternoon business was forbidden, one were to grumble at not being 
allowed to go on selling as it had been lawful for him to do in 
the forenoon.  Or, again, as if, in a house, he sees a servant 
handle something that the butler is not permitted to touch, or 
when something is done behind a stable that would be prohibited in 
a dining room, and then a person should be indignant that in one 
house and one family the same things are not allowed to every 
member of the household.  Such is the case with those who cannot 
endure to hear that something was lawful for righteous men in 
former times that is not so now; or that God, for certain temporal 
reasons, commanded then one thing to them and another now to 
these: yet both would be serving the same righteous will.  These 
people should see that in one man, one day, and one house, 
different things are fit for different members; and a thing that 
was formerly lawful may become, after a time, unlawful -- and 
something allowed or commanded in one place that is justly 
prohibited and punished in another.  Is justice, then, variable 
and changeable?  No, but the times over which she presides are not 
all alike because they are different times.  But men, whose days 
upon the earth are few, cannot by their own perception harmonize 
the causes of former ages and other nations, of which they had no 
experience, and compare them with these of which they do have 
experience; although in one and the same body, or day, or family, 
they can readily see that what is suitable for each member, 
season, part, and person may differ.  To the one they take 
exception; to the other they submit.

     14.  These things I did not know then, nor had I observed 
their import.  They met my eyes on every side, and I did not see.  
I composed poems, in which I was not free to place each foot just 
anywhere, but in one meter one way, and in another meter another 
way, nor even in any one verse was the same foot allowed in all 
places.  Yet the art by which I composed did not have different 
principles for each of these different cases, but the same law 
throughout.  Still I did not see how, by that righteousness to 
which good and holy men submitted, all those things that God had 
commanded were gathered, in a far more excellent and sublime way, 
into one moral order; and it did not vary in any essential 
respect, though it did not in varying times prescribe all things 
at once but, rather, distributed and prescribed what was proper 
for each. And, being blind, I blamed those pious fathers, not only 
for making use of present things as God had commanded and inspired 
them to do, but also for foreshadowing things to come, as God 
revealed it to them.

                         CHAPTER VIII

     15.  Can it ever, at any time or place, be unrighteous for a 
man to love God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with 
all his mind; and his neighbor as himself?[74]  Similarly, 
offenses against nature are everywhere and at all times to be held 
in detestation and should be punished.  Such offenses, for 
example, were those of the Sodomites; and, even if all nations 
should commit them, they would all be judged guilty of the same 
crime by the divine law, which has not made men so that they 
should ever abuse one another in that way.  For the fellowship 
that should be between God and us is violated whenever that nature 
of which he is the author is polluted by perverted lust.  But 
these offenses against customary morality are to be avoided 
according to the variety of such customs.  Thus, what is agreed 
upon by convention, and confirmed by custom or the law of any city 
or nation, may not be violated at the lawless pleasure of any, 
whether citizen or stranger.  For any part that is not consistent 
with its whole is unseemly.  Nevertheless, when God commands 
anything contrary to the customs or compacts of any nation, even 
though it were never done by them before, it is to be done; and if 
it has been interrupted, it is to be restored; and if it has never 
been established, it is to be established.  For it is lawful for a 
king, in the state over which he reigns, to command that which 
neither he himself nor anyone before him had commanded.  And if it 
cannot be held to be inimical to the public interest to obey him 
-- and, in truth, it would be inimical if he were not obeyed, 
since obedience to princes is a general compact o