Digitized by Harry Plantinga, planting@cs.pitt.edu, 1993.
This text is in the public domain.




             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




                         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, TI 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 of human society
-- how much more, then, ought we unhesitatingly to obey God, the
Governor of all his creatures!  For, just as among the authorities
in human society, the greater authority is obeyed before the
lesser, so also must God be above all.
     16.  This applies as well to deeds of violence where there is
a real desire to harm another, either by humiliating treatment or
by injury.  Either of these may be done for reasons of revenge, as
one enemy against another, or in order to obtain some advantage
over another, as in the case of the highwayman and the traveler;
else they may be done in order to avoid some other evil, as in the
case of one who fears another; or through envy as, for example, an
unfortunate man harming a happy one just because he is happy; or
they may be done by a prosperous man against someone whom he fears
will become equal to himself or whose equality he resents.  They
may even be done for the mere pleasure in another man's pain, as
the spectators of gladiatorial shows or the people who deride and
mock at others.  These are the major forms of iniquity that spring
out of the lust of the flesh, and of the eye, and of power.[75]
Sometimes there is just one; sometimes two together; sometimes all
of them at once.  Thus we live, offending against the Three and
the Seven, that harp of ten strings, thy Decalogue, O God most
high and most sweet.[76]  But now how can offenses of vileness
harm thee who canst not be defiled; or how can deeds of violence
harm thee who canst not be harmed?  Still thou dost punish these
sins which men commit against themselves because, even when they
sin against thee, they are also committing impiety against their
own souls.  Iniquity gives itself the lie, either by corrupting or
by perverting that nature which thou hast made and ordained.  And
they do this by an immoderate use of lawful things; or by lustful
desire for things forbidden, as "against nature"; or when they are
guilty of sin by raging with heart and voice against thee,
rebelling against thee, "kicking against the pricks"[77]; or when
they cast aside respect for human society and take audacious
delight in conspiracies and feuds according to their private likes
and dislikes.
     This is what happens whenever thou art forsaken, O Fountain
of Life, who art the one and true Creator and Ruler of the
universe.  This is what happens when through self-willed pride a
part is loved under the false assumption that it is the whole.
Therefore, we must return to thee in humble piety and let thee
purge us from our evil ways, and be merciful to those who confess
their sins to thee, and hear the groanings of the prisoners and
loosen us from those fetters which we have forged for ourselves.
This thou wilt do, provided we do not raise up against thee the
arrogance of a false freedom -- for thus we lose all through
craving more, by loving our own good more than thee, the common
good of all.


                          CHAPTER IX

     17.  But among all these vices and crimes and manifold
iniquities, there are also the sins that are committed by men who
are, on the whole, making progress toward the good.  When these
are judged rightly and after the rule of perfection, the sins are
censored but the men are to be commended because they show the
hope of bearing fruit, like the green shoot of the growing corn.
And there are some deeds that resemble vice and crime and yet are
not sin because they offend neither thee, our Lord God, nor social
custom.  For example, when suitable reserves for hard times are
provided, we cannot judge that this is done merely from a hoarding
impulse.  Or, again, when acts are punished by constituted
authority for the sake of correction, we cannot judge that they
are done merely out of a desire to inflict pain.  Thus, many a
deed which is disapproved in man's sight may be approved by thy
testimony.  And many a man who is praised by men is condemned --
as thou art witness -- because frequently the deed itself, the
mind of the doer, and the hidden exigency of the situation all
vary among themselves.  But when, contrary to human expectation,
thou commandest something unusual or unthought of -- indeed,
something thou mayest formerly have forbidden, about which thou
mayest conceal the reason for thy command at that particular time;
and even though it may be contrary to the ordinance of some
society of men[78] -- who doubts but that it should be done
because only that society of men is righteous which obeys thee?
But blessed are they who know what thou dost command.  For all
things done by those who obey thee either exhibit something
necessary at that particular time or they foreshow things to come.


                           CHAPTER X

     18.  But I was ignorant of all this, and so I mocked those
holy servants and prophets of thine.  Yet what did I gain by
mocking them save to be mocked in turn by thee?  Insensibly and
little by little, I was led on to such follies as to believe that
a fig tree wept when it was plucked and that the sap of the mother
tree was tears.  Notwithstanding this, if a fig was plucked, by
not his own but another man's wickedness, some Manichean saint
might eat it, digest it in his stomach, and breathe it out again
in the form of angels.  Indeed, in his prayers he would assuredly
groan and sigh forth particles of God, although these particles of
the most high and true God would have remained bound in that fig
unless they had been set free by the teeth and belly of some
"elect saint"[79]!  And, wretch that I was, I believed that more
mercy was to be shown to the fruits of the earth than unto men,
for whom these fruits were created.  For, if a hungry man -- who
was not a Manichean -- should beg for any food, the morsel that we
gave to him would seem condemned, as it were, to capital
punishment.


                          CHAPTER XI

     19.  And now thou didst "stretch forth thy hand from
above"[80] and didst draw up my soul out of that profound darkness
[of Manicheism] because my mother, thy faithful one, wept to thee
on my behalf more than mothers are accustomed to weep for the
bodily deaths of their children.  For by the light of the faith
and spirit which she received from thee, she saw that I was dead.
And thou didst hear her, O Lord, thou didst hear her and despised
not her tears when, pouring down, they watered the earth under her
eyes in every place where she prayed.  Thou didst truly hear her.
     For what other source was there for that dream by which thou
didst console her, so that she permitted me to live with her, to
have my meals in the same house at the table which she had begun
to avoid, even while she hated and detested the blasphemies of my
error?  In her dream she saw herself standing on a sort of wooden
rule, and saw a bright youth approaching her, joyous and smiling
at her, while she was grieving and bowed down with sorrow.  But
when he inquired of her the cause of her sorrow and daily weeping
(not to learn from her, but to teach her, as is customary in
visions), and when she answered that it was my soul's doom she was
lamenting, he bade her rest content and told her to look and see
that where she was there I was also.  And when she looked she saw
me standing near her on the same rule.
     Whence came this vision unless it was that thy ears were
inclined toward her heart?  O thou Omnipotent Good, thou carest
for every one of us as if thou didst care for him only, and so for
all as if they were but one!
     20.  And what was the reason for this also, that, when she
told me of this vision, and I tried to put this construction on
it: "that she should not despair of being someday what I was," she
replied immediately, without hesitation, "No; for it was not told
me that 'where he is, there you shall be' but 'where you are,
there he will be'"?  I confess my remembrance of this to thee, O
Lord, as far as I can recall it -- and I have often mentioned it.
Thy answer, given through my watchful mother, in the fact that she
was not disturbed by the plausibility of my false interpretation
but saw immediately what should have been seen -- and which I
certainly had not seen until she spoke -- this answer moved me
more deeply than the dream itself.  Still, by that dream, the joy
that was to come to that pious woman so long after was predicted
long before, as a consolation for her present anguish.
     Nearly nine years passed in which I wallowed in the mud of
that deep pit and in the darkness of falsehood, striving often to
rise, but being all the more heavily dashed down.  But all that
time this chaste, pious, and sober widow -- such as thou dost love
-- was now more buoyed up with hope, though no less zealous in her
weeping and mourning; and she did not cease to bewail my case
before thee, in all the hours of her supplication.  Her prayers
entered thy presence, and yet thou didst allow me still to tumble
and toss around in that darkness.


                          CHAPTER XII

     21.  Meanwhile, thou gavest her yet another answer, as I
remember -- for I pass over many things, hastening on to those
things which more strongly impel me to confess to thee -- and many
things I have simply forgotten.  But thou gavest her then another
answer, by a priest of thine, a certain bishop reared in thy
Church and well versed in thy books.  When that woman had begged
him to agree to have some discussion with me, to refute my errors,
to help me to unlearn evil and to learn the good[81] -- for it was
his habit to do this when he found people ready to receive it --
he refused, very prudently, as I afterward realized.  For he
answered that I was still unteachable, being inflated with the
novelty of that heresy, and that I had already perplexed divers
inexperienced persons with vexatious questions, as she herself had
told him.  "But let him alone for a time," he said, "only pray God
for him.  He will of his own accord, by reading, come to discover
what an error it is and how great its impiety is." He went on to
tell her at the same time how he himself, as a boy, had been given
over to the Manicheans by his misguided mother and not only had
read but had even copied out almost all their books.  Yet he had
come to see, without external argument or proof from anyone else,
how much that sect was to be shunned -- and had shunned it.  When
he had said this she was not satisfied, but repeated more
earnestly her entreaties, and shed copious tears, still beseeching
him to see and talk with me.  Finally the bishop, a little vexed
at her importunity, exclaimed, "Go your way; as you live, it
cannot be that the son of these tears should perish." As she often
told me afterward, she accepted this answer as though it were a
voice from heaven.



                          BOOK FOUR


     This is the story of his years among the Manicheans.  It
includes the account of his teaching at Tagaste, his taking a
mistress, the attractions of astrology, the poignant loss of a
friend which leads to a searching analysis of grief and
transience.  He reports on his first book, De pulchro et apto, and
his introduction to Aristotle's  Categories and other books of
philosophy and theology, which he mastered with great ease and
little profit.


                           CHAPTER I

     1.  During this period of nine years, from my nineteenth year
to my twenty-eighth, I went astray and led others astray.  I was
deceived and deceived others, in varied lustful projects --
sometimes publicly, by the teaching of what men style "the liberal
arts"; sometimes secretly, under the false guise of religion.  In
the one, I was proud of myself; in the other, superstitious; in
all, vain!  In my public life I was striving after the emptiness
of popular fame, going so far as to seek theatrical applause,
entering poetic contests, striving for the straw garlands and the
vanity of theatricals and intemperate desires.  In my private life
I was seeking to be purged from these corruptions of ours by
carrying food to those who were called "elect" and "holy," which,
in the laboratory of their stomachs, they should make into angels
and gods for us, and by them we might be set free.  These projects
I followed out and practiced with my friends, who were both
deceived with me and by me.  Let the proud laugh at me, and those
who have not yet been savingly cast down and stricken by thee, O
my God.  Nevertheless, I would confess to thee my shame to thy
glory.  Bear with me, I beseech thee, and give me the grace to
retrace in my present memory the devious ways of my past errors
and thus be able to "offer to thee the sacrifice of
thanksgiving."[82]  For what am I to myself without thee but a
guide to my own downfall?  Or what am I, even at the best, but one
suckled on thy milk and feeding on thee, O Food that never
perishes?[83]  What indeed is any man, seeing that he is but a
man?  Therefore, let the strong and the mighty laugh at us, but
let us who are "poor and needy"[84] confess to thee.


                          CHAPTER II

     2.  During those years I taught the art of rhetoric.
Conquered by the desire for gain, I offered for sale speaking
skills with which to conquer others.  And yet, O Lord, thou
knowest that I really preferred to have honest scholars (or what
were esteemed as such) and, without tricks of speech, I taught
these scholars the tricks of speech -- not to be used against the
life of the innocent, but sometimes to save the life of a guilty
man.  And thou, O God, didst see me from afar, stumbling on that
slippery path and sending out some flashes of fidelity amid much
smoke -- guiding those who loved vanity and sought after
lying,[85] being myself their companion.
     In those years I had a mistress, to whom I was not joined in
lawful marriage.  She was a woman I had discovered in my wayward
passion, void as it was of understanding, yet she was the only
one; and I remained faithful to her and with her I discovered, by
my own experience, what a great difference there is between the
restraint of the marriage bond contracted with a view to having
children and the compact of a lustful love, where children are
born against the parents' will -- although once they are born they
compel our love.
     3.  I remember too that, when I decided to compete for a
theatrical prize, some magician -- I do not remember him now --
asked me what I would give him to be certain to win.  But I
detested and abominated such filthy mysteries,[86] and answered
"that, even if the garland was of imperishable gold, I would still
not permit a fly to be killed to win it for me." For he would have
slain certain living creatures in his sacrifices, and by those
honors would have invited the devils to help me.  This evil thing
I refused, but not out of a pure love of thee, O God of my heart,
for I knew not how to love thee because I knew not how to conceive
of anything beyond corporeal splendors.  And does not a soul,
sighing after such idle fictions, commit fornication against thee,
trust in false things, and "feed on the winds"[87]?  But still I
would not have sacrifices offered to devils on my behalf, though I
was myself still offering them sacrifices of a sort by my own
[Manichean] superstition.  For what else is it "to feed on the
winds" but to feed on the devils, that is, in our wanderings to
become their sport and mockery?


                          CHAPTER III

     4.  And yet, without scruple, I consulted those other
impostors, whom they call "astrologers" [mathematicos], because
they used no sacrifices and invoked the aid of no spirit for their
divinations.  Still, true Christian piety must necessarily reject
and condemn their art.
     It is good to confess to thee and to say, "Have mercy on me;
heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee"[88] -- not to abuse
thy goodness as a license to sin, but to remember the words of the
Lord, "Behold, you are made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing
befall you."[89]  All this wholesome advice [the astrologers]
labor to destroy when they say, "The cause of your sin is
inevitably fixed in the heavens," and, "This is the doing of
Venus, or of Saturn, or of Mars" -- all this in order that a man,
who is only flesh and blood and proud corruption, may regard
himself as blameless, while the Creator and Ordainer of heaven and
the stars must bear the blame of our ills and misfortunes.  But
who is this Creator but thou, our God, the sweetness and
wellspring of righteousness, who renderest to every man according
to his works and despisest not "a broken and a contrite
heart"[90]?
     5.  There was at that time a wise man, very skillful and
quite famous in medicine.[91]  He was proconsul then, and with his
own hand he placed on my distempered head the crown I had won in a
rhetorical contest.  He did not do this as a physician, however;
and for this distemper "only thou canst heal who resisteth the
proud and giveth grace to the humble."[92]  But didst thou fail me
in that old man, or forbear from healing my soul?  Actually when I
became better acquainted with him, I used to listen, rapt and
eager, to his words; for, though he spoke in simple language, his
conversation was replete with vivacity, life, and earnestness.  He
recognized from my own talk that I was given to books of the
horoscope-casters, but he, in a kind and fatherly way, advised me
to throw them away and not to spend idly on these vanities care
and labor that might otherwise go into useful things.  He said
that he himself in his earlier years had studied the astrologers'
art with a view to gaining his living by it as a profession.
Since he had already understood Hippocrates, he was fully
qualified to understand this too.  Yet, he had given it up and
followed medicine for the simple reason that he had discovered
astrology to be utterly false and, as a man of honest character,
he was unwilling to gain his living by beguiling people.  "But
you," he said, "have the profession of rhetoric to support
yourself by, so that you are following this delusion in free will
and not necessity.  All the more, therefore, you ought to believe
me, since I worked at it to learn the art perfectly because I
wished to gain my living by it." When I asked him to account for
the fact that many true things are foretold by astrology, he
answered me, reasonably enough, that the force of chance, diffused
through the whole order of nature, brought these things about.
For when a man, by accident, opens the leaves of some poet (who
sang and intended something far different) a verse oftentimes
turns out to be wondrously apposite to the reader's present
business.  "It is not to be wondered at," he continued, "if out of
the human mind, by some higher instinct which does not know what
goes on within itself, an answer should be arrived at, by chance
and not art, which would fit both the business and the action of
the inquirer."
     6.  And thus truly, either by him or through him, thou wast
looking after me.  And thou didst fix all this in my memory so
that afterward I might search it out for myself.
     But at that time, neither the proconsul nor my most dear
Nebridius -- a splendid youth and most circumspect, who scoffed at
the whole business of divination -- could persuade me to give it
up, for the authority of the astrological authors influenced me
more than they did.  And, thus far, I had come upon no certain
proof -- such as I sought -- by which it could be shown without
doubt that what had been truly foretold by those consulted came
from accident or chance, and not from the art of the stargazers.


                          CHAPTER IV

     7.  In those years, when I first began to teach rhetoric in
my native town, I had gained a very dear friend, about my own age,
who was associated with me in the same studies.  Like myself, he
was just rising up into the flower of youth.  He had grown up with
me from childhood and we had been both school fellows and
playmates.  But he was not then my friend, nor indeed ever became
my friend, in the true sense of the term; for there is no true
friendship save between those thou dost bind together and who
cleave to thee by that love which is "shed abroad in our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who is given to us."[93]  Still, it was a
sweet friendship, being ripened by the zeal of common studies.
Moreover, I had turned him away from the true faith -- which he
had not soundly and thoroughly mastered as a youth -- and turned
him toward those superstitious and harmful fables which my mother
mourned in me.  With me this man went wandering off in error and
my soul could not exist without him.  But behold thou wast close
behind thy fugitives -- at once a God of vengeance and a Fountain
of mercies, who dost turn us to thyself by ways that make us
marvel.  Thus, thou didst take that man out of this life when he
had scarcely completed one whole year of friendship with me,
sweeter to me than all the sweetness of my life thus far.
     8.  Who can show forth all thy praise[94] for that which he
has experienced in himself alone?  What was it that thou didst do
at that time, O my God; how unsearchable are the depths of thy
judgments!  For when, sore sick of a fever, he long lay
unconscious in a death sweat and everyone despaired of his
recovery, he was baptized without his knowledge.  And I myself
cared little, at the time, presuming that his soul would retain
what it had taken from me rather than what was done to his
unconscious body.  It turned out, however, far differently, for he
was revived and restored.  Immediately, as soon as I could talk to
him -- and I did this as soon as he was able, for I never left him
and we hung on each other overmuch -- I tried to jest with him,
supposing that he also would jest in return about that baptism
which he had received when his mind and senses were inactive, but
which he had since learned that he had received.  But he recoiled
from me, as if I were his enemy, and, with a remarkable and
unexpected freedom, he admonished me that, if I desired to
continue as his friend, I must cease to say such things.
Confounded and confused, I concealed my feelings till he should
get well and his health recover enough to allow me to deal with
him as I wished.  But he was snatched away from my madness, that
with thee he might be preserved for my consolation.  A few days
after, during my absence, the fever returned and he died.
     9.  My heart was utterly darkened by this sorrow and
everywhere I looked I saw death.  My native place was a torture
room to me and my father's house a strange unhappiness.  And all
the things I had done with him -- now that he was gone -- became a
frightful torment.  My eyes sought him everywhere, but they did
not see him; and I hated all places because he was not in them,
because they could not say to me, "Look, he is coming," as they
did when he was alive and absent.  I became a hard riddle to
myself, and I asked my soul why she was so downcast and why this
disquieted me so sorely.[95]  But she did not know how to answer
me.  And if I said, "Hope thou in God,"[96] she very properly
disobeyed me, because that dearest friend she had lost was as an
actual man, both truer and better than the imagined deity she was
ordered to put her hope in.  Nothing but tears were sweet to me
and they took my friend's place in my heart's desire.


                           CHAPTER V

     10.  But now, O Lord, these things are past and time has
healed my wound.  Let me learn from thee, who art Truth, and put
the ear of my heart to thy mouth, that thou mayest tell me why
weeping should be so sweet to the unhappy.  Hast thou -- though
omnipresent -- dismissed our miseries from thy concern?  Thou
abidest in thyself while we are disquieted with trial after trial.
Yet unless we wept in thy ears, there would be no hope for us
remaining.  How does it happen that such sweet fruit is plucked
from the bitterness of life, from groans, tears, sighs, and
lamentations?  Is it the hope that thou wilt hear us that sweetens
it?  This is true in the case of prayer, for in a prayer there is
a desire to approach thee.  But is it also the case in grief for a
lost love, and in the kind of sorrow that had then overwhelmed me?
For I had neither a hope of his coming back to life, nor in all my
tears did I seek this.  I simply grieved and wept, for I was
miserable and had lost my joy.  Or is weeping a bitter thing that
gives us pleasure because of our aversion to the things we once
enjoyed and this only as long as we loathe them?


                          CHAPTER VI

     11.  But why do I speak of these things?  Now is not the time
to ask such questions, but rather to confess to thee.  I was
wretched; and every soul is wretched that is fettered in the
friendship of mortal things -- it is torn to pieces when it loses
them, and then realizes the misery which it had even before it
lost them.  Thus it was at that time with me.  I wept most
bitterly, and found a rest in bitterness.  I was wretched, and yet
that wretched life I still held dearer than my friend.  For though
I would willingly have changed it, I was still more unwilling to
lose it than to have lost him.  Indeed, I doubt whether I was
willing to lose it, even for him -- as they tell (unless it be
fiction) of the friendship of Orestes and Pylades[97]; they would
have gladly died for one another, or both together, because not to
love together was worse than death to them.  But a strange kind of
feeling had come over me, quite different from this, for now it
was wearisome to live and a fearful thing to die.  I suppose that
the more I loved him the more I hated and feared, as the most
cruel enemy, that death which had robbed me of him.  I even
imagined that it would suddenly annihilate all men, since it had
had such a power over him.  This is the way I remember it was with
me.
     Look into my heart, O God!  Behold and look deep within me,
for I remember it well, O my Hope who cleansest me from the
uncleanness of such affections, directing my eyes toward thee and
plucking my feet out of the snare.  And I marveled that other
mortals went on living since he whom I had loved as if he would
never die was now dead.  And I marveled all the more that I, who
had been a second self to him, could go on living when he was
dead.  Someone spoke rightly of his friend as being "his soul's
other half"[98] -- for I felt that my soul and his soul were but
one soul in two bodies.  Consequently, my life was now a horror to
me because I did not want to live as a half self.  But it may have
been that I was afraid to die, lest he should then die wholly whom
I had so greatly loved.


                          CHAPTER VII

     12.  O madness that knows not how to love men as they should
be loved!  O foolish man that I was then, enduring with so much
rebellion the lot of every man!  Thus I fretted, sighed, wept,
tormented myself, and took neither rest nor counsel, for I was
dragging around my torn and bloody soul.  It was impatient of my
dragging it around, and yet I could not find a place to lay it
down.  Not in pleasant groves, nor in sport or song, nor in
fragrant bowers, nor in magnificent banquetings, nor in the
pleasures of the bed or the couch; not even in books or poetry did
it find rest.  All things looked gloomy, even the very light
itself.  Whatsoever was not what he was, was now repulsive and
hateful, except my groans and tears, for in those alone I found a
little rest.  But when my soul left off weeping, a heavy burden of
misery weighed me down.  It should have been raised up to thee, O
Lord, for thee to lighten and to lift.  This I knew, but I was
neither willing nor able to do; especially since, in my thoughts
of thee, thou wast not thyself but only an empty fantasm.  Thus my
error was my god.  If I tried to cast off my burden on this
fantasm, that it might find rest there, it sank through the vacuum
and came rushing down again upon me.  Thus I remained to myself an
unhappy lodging where I could neither stay nor leave.  For where
could my heart fly from my heart?  Where could I fly from my own
self?  Where would I not follow myself?  And yet I did flee from
my native place so that my eyes would look for him less in a place
where they were not accustomed to see him.  Thus I left the town
of Tagaste and returned to Carthage.


                         CHAPTER VIII

     13.  Time never lapses, nor does it glide at leisure through
our sense perceptions.  It does strange things in the mind.  Lo,
time came and went from day to day, and by coming and going it
brought to my mind other ideas and remembrances, and little by
little they patched me up again with earlier kinds of pleasure and
my sorrow yielded a bit to them.  But yet there followed after
this sorrow, not other sorrows just like it, but the causes of
other sorrows.  For why had that first sorrow so easily penetrated
to the quick except that I had poured out my soul onto the dust,
by loving a man as if he would never die who nevertheless had to
die?  What revived and refreshed me, more than anything else, was
the consolation of other friends, with whom I went on loving the
things I loved instead of thee.  This was a monstrous fable and a
tedious lie which was corrupting my soul with its "itching
ears"[99] by its adulterous rubbing.  And that fable would not die
to me as often as one of my friends died.  And there were other
things in our companionship that took strong hold of my mind: to
discourse and jest with him; to indulge in courteous exchanges; to
read pleasant books together; to trifle together; to be earnest
together; to differ at times without ill-humor, as a man might do
with himself, and even through these infrequent dissensions to
find zest in our more frequent agreements; sometimes teaching,
sometimes being taught; longing for someone absent with impatience
and welcoming the homecomer with joy.  These and similar tokens of
friendship, which spring spontaneously from the hearts of those
who love and are loved in return -- in countenance, tongue, eyes,
and a thousand ingratiating gestures -- were all so much fuel to
melt our souls together, and out of the many made us one.


                          CHAPTER IX

     14.  This is what we love in our friends, and we love it so
much that a man's conscience accuses itself if he does not love
one who loves him, or respond in love to love, seeking nothing
from the other but the evidences of his love.  This is the source
of our moaning when one dies -- the gloom of sorrow, the steeping
of the heart in tears, all sweetness turned to bitterness -- and
the feeling of death in the living, because of the loss of the
life of the dying.
     Blessed is he who loves thee, and who loves his friend in
thee, and his enemy also, for thy sake; for he alone loses none
dear to him, if all are dear in Him who cannot be lost.  And who
is this but our God: the God that created heaven and earth, and
filled them because he created them by filling them up?  None
loses thee but he who leaves thee; and he who leaves thee, where
does he go, or where can he flee but from thee well-pleased to
thee offended?  For where does he not find thy law fulfilled in
his own punishment?  "Thy law is the truth"[100] and thou art
Truth.


                           CHAPTER X

     15.  "Turn us again, O Lord God of Hosts, cause thy face to
shine; and we shall be saved."[101]  For wherever the soul of man
turns itself, unless toward thee, it is enmeshed in sorrows, even
though it is surrounded by beautiful things outside thee and
outside itself.  For lovely things would simply not be unless they
were from thee.  They come to be and they pass away, and by coming
they begin to be, and they grow toward perfection.  Then, when
perfect, they begin to wax old and perish, and, if all do not wax
old, still all perish.  Therefore, when they rise and grow toward
being, the more rapidly they grow to maturity, so also the more
rapidly they hasten back toward nonbeing.  This is the way of
things.  This is the lot thou hast given them, because they are
part of things which do not all exist at the same time, but by
passing away and succeeding each other they all make up the
universe, of which they are all parts.  For example, our speech is
accomplished by sounds which signify meanings, but a meaning is
not complete unless one word passes away, when it has sounded its
part, so that the next may follow after it.  Let my soul praise
thee, in all these things, O God, the Creator of all; but let not
my soul be stuck to these things by the glue of love, through the
senses of the body.  For they go where they were meant to go, that
they may exist no longer.  And they rend the soul with pestilent
desires because she longs to be and yet loves to rest secure in
the created things she loves.  But in these things there is no
resting place to be found.  They do not abide.  They flee away;
and who is he who can follow them with his physical senses?  Or
who can grasp them, even when they are present?  For our physical
sense is slow because it is a physical sense and bears its own
limitations in itself.  The physical sense is quite sufficient for
what it was made to do; but it is not sufficient to stay things
from running their courses from the beginning appointed to the end
appointed.  For in thy word, by which they were created, they hear
their appointed bound: "From there -- to here!"


                          CHAPTER XI

     16.  Be not foolish, O my soul, and do not let the tumult of
your vanity deafen the ear of your heart.  Be attentive.  The Word
itself calls you to return, and with him is a place of unperturbed
rest, where love is not forsaken unless it first forsakes.
Behold, these things pass away that others may come to be in their
place.  Thus even this lowest level of unity[102] may be made
complete in all its parts.  "But do I ever pass away?"  asks the
Word of God.  Fix your habitation in him.  O my soul, commit
whatsoever you have to him.  For at long last you are now becoming
tired of deceit.  Commit to truth whatever you have received from
the truth, and you will lose nothing.  What is decayed will
flourish again; your diseases will be healed; your perishable
parts shall be reshaped and renovated, and made whole again in
you.  And these perishable things will not carry you with them
down to where they go when they perish, but shall stand and abide,
and you with them, before God, who abides and continues forever.
     17.  Why then, my perverse soul, do you go on following your
flesh?  Instead, let it be converted so as to follow you.
Whatever you feel through it is but partial.  You do not know the
whole, of which sensations are but parts; and yet the parts
delight you.  But if my physical senses had been able to
comprehend the whole -- and had not as a part of their punishment
received only a portion of the whole as their own province -- you
would then desire that whatever exists in the present time should
also pass away so that the whole might please you more.  For what
we speak, you also hear through physical sensation, and yet you
would not wish that the syllables should remain.  Instead, you
wish them to fly past so that others may follow them, and the
whole be heard.  Thus it is always that when any single thing is
composed of many parts which do not coexist simultaneously, the
whole gives more delight than the parts could ever do perceived
separately.  But far better than all this is He who made it all.
He is our God and he does not pass away, for there is nothing to
take his place.


                          CHAPTER XII

     18.  If physical objects please you, praise God for them, but
turn back your love to their Creator, lest, in those things which
please you, you displease him.  If souls please you, let them be
loved in God; for in themselves they are mutable, but in him
firmly established -- without him they would simply cease to
exist.  In him, then, let them be loved; and bring along to him
with yourself as many souls as you can, and say to them: "Let us
love him, for he himself created all these, and he is not far away
from them.  For he did not create them, and then go away.  They
are of him and in him.  Behold, there he is, wherever truth is
known.  He is within the inmost heart, yet the heart has wandered
away from him.  Return to your heart, O you transgressors, and
hold fast to him who made you.  Stand with him and you shall stand
fast.  Rest in him and you shall be at rest.  Where do you go
along these rugged paths?  Where are you going?  The good that you
love is from him, and insofar as it is also for him, it is both
good and pleasant.  But it will rightly be turned to bitterness if
whatever comes from him is not rightly loved and if he is deserted
for the love of the creature.  Why then will you wander farther
and farther in these difficult and toilsome ways?  There is no
rest where you seek it.  Seek what you seek; but remember that it
is not where you seek it.  You seek for a blessed life in the land
of death.  It is not there.  For how can there be a blessed life
where life itself is not?"
     19.  But our very Life came down to earth and bore our death,
and slew it with the very abundance of his own life.  And,
thundering, he called us to return to him into that secret place
from which he came forth to us -- coming first into the virginal
womb, where the human creature, our mortal flesh, was joined to
him that it might not be forever mortal -- and came "as a
bridegroom coming out his chamber, rejoicing as a strong man to
run a race."[103]  For he did not delay, but ran through the
world, crying out by words, deeds, death, life, descent, ascension
-- crying aloud to us to return to him.  And he departed from our
sight that we might return to our hearts and find him there.  For
he left us, and behold, he is here.  He could not be with us long,
yet he did not leave us.  He went back to the place that he had
never left, for "the world was made by him."[104]  In this world
he was, and into this world he came, to save sinners.  To him my
soul confesses, and he heals it, because it had sinned against
him.  O sons of men, how long will you be so slow of heart?  Even
now after Life itself has come down to you, will you not ascend
and live?  But where will you climb if you are already on a
pinnacle and have set your mouth against the heavens?  First come
down that you may climb up, climb up to God.  For you have fallen
by trying to climb against him.  Tell this to the souls you love
that they may weep in the valley of tears, and so bring them along
with you to God, because it is by his spirit that you speak thus
to them, if, as you speak, you burn with the fire of love.


                         CHAPTER XIII

     20.  These things I did not understand at that time, and I
loved those inferior beauties, and I was sinking down to the very
depths.  And I said to my friends: "Do we love anything but the
beautiful?  What then is the beautiful?  And what is beauty?  What
is it that allures and unites us to the things we love; for unless
there were a grace and beauty in them, they could not possibly
attract us to them?"  And I reflected on this and saw that in the
objects themselves there is a kind of beauty which comes from
their forming a whole and another kind of beauty that comes from
mutual fitness -- as the harmony of one part of the body with its
whole, or a shoe with a foot, and so on.  And this idea sprang up
in my mind out of my inmost heart, and I wrote some books -- two
or three, I think -- On the Beautiful and the Fitting.[105]  Thou
knowest them, O Lord; they have escaped my memory.  I no longer
have them; somehow they have been mislaid.


                          CHAPTER XIV

     21.  What was it, O Lord my God, that prompted me to dedicate
these books to Hierius, an orator of Rome, a man I did not know by
sight but whom I loved for his reputation of learning, in which he
was famous -- and also for some words of his that I had heard
which had pleased me?  But he pleased me more because he pleased
others, who gave him high praise and expressed amazement that a
Syrian, who had first studied Greek eloquence, should thereafter
become so wonderful a Latin orator and also so well versed in
philosophy.  Thus a man we have never seen is commended and loved.
Does a love like this come into the heart of the hearer from the
mouth of him who sings the other's praise?  Not so.  Instead, one
catches the spark of love from one who loves.  This is why we love
one who is praised when the eulogist is believed to give his
praise from an unfeigned heart; that is, when he who loves him
praises him.
     22.  Thus it was that I loved men on the basis of other men's
judgment, and not thine, O my God, in whom no man is deceived.
But why is it that the feeling I had for such men was not like my
feeling toward the renowned charioteer, or the great gladiatorial
hunter, famed far and wide and popular with the mob?  Actually, I
admired the orator in a different and more serious fashion, as I
would myself desire to be admired.  For I did not want them to
praise and love me as actors were praised and loved -- although I
myself praise and love them too.  I would prefer being unknown
than known in that way, or even being hated than loved that way.
How are these various influences and divers sorts of loves
distributed within one soul?  What is it that I am in love with in
another which, if I did not hate, I should neither detest nor
repel from myself, seeing that we are equally men?  For it does
not follow that because the good horse is admired by a man who
would not be that horse -- even if he could -- the same kind of
admiration should be given to an actor, who shares our nature.  Do
I then love that in a man, which I also, a man, would hate to be?
Man is himself a great deep.  Thou dost number his very hairs, O
Lord, and they do not fall to the ground without thee, and yet the
hairs of his head are more readily numbered than are his
affections and the movements of his heart.
     23.  But that orator whom I admired so much was the kind of
man I wished myself to be.  Thus I erred through a swelling pride
and "was carried about with every wind,"[106] but through it all I
was being piloted by thee, though most secretly.  And how is it
that I know -- whence comes my confident confession to thee --
that I loved him more because of the love of those who praised him
than for the things they praised in him?  Because if he had gone
unpraised, and these same people had criticized him and had spoken
the same things of him in a tone of scorn and disapproval, I
should never have been kindled and provoked to love him.  And yet
his qualities would not have been different, nor would he have
been different himself; only the appraisals of the spectators.
See where the helpless soul lies prostrate that is not yet
sustained by the stability of truth!  Just as the breezes of
speech blow from the breast of the opinionated, so also the soul
is tossed this way and that, driven forward and backward, and the
light is obscured to it and the truth not seen.  And yet, there it
is in front of us.  And to me it was a great matter that both my
literary work and my zest for learning should be known by that
man.  For if he approved them, I would be even more fond of him;
but if he disapproved, this vain heart of mine, devoid of thy
steadfastness, would have been offended.  And so I meditated on
the problem "of the beautiful and the fitting" and dedicated my
essay on it to him.  I regarded it admiringly, though no one else
joined me in doing so.


                          CHAPTER XV

     24.  But I had not seen how the main point in these great
issues [concerning the nature of beauty] lay really in thy
craftsmanship, O Omnipotent One, "who alone doest great
wonders."[107]  And so my mind ranged through the corporeal forms,
and I defined and distinguished as "beautiful" that which is so in
itself and as "fit" that which is beautiful in relation to some
other thing.  This argument I supported by corporeal examples.
And I turned my attention to the nature of the mind, but the false
opinions which I held concerning spiritual things prevented me
from seeing the truth.  Still, the very power of truth forced
itself on my gaze, and I turned my throbbing soul away from
incorporeal substance to qualities of line and color and shape,
and, because I could not perceive these with my mind, I concluded
that I could not perceive my mind.  And since I loved the peace
which is in virtue, and hated the discord which is in vice, I
distinguished between the unity there is in virtue and the discord
there is in vice.  I conceived that unity consisted of the
rational soul and the nature of truth and the highest good.  But I
imagined that in the disunity there was some kind of substance of
irrational life and some kind of entity in the supreme evil.  This
evil I thought was not only a substance but real life as well, and
yet I believed that it did not come from thee, O my God, from whom
are all things.  And the first I called a Monad, as if it were a
soul without sex.  The other I called a Dyad, which showed itself
in anger in deeds of violence, in deeds of passion and lust -- but
I did not know what I was talking about.  For I had not understood
nor had I been taught that evil is not a substance at all and that
our soul is not that supreme and unchangeable good.
     25.  For just as in violent acts, if the emotion of the soul
from whence the violent impulse springs is depraved and asserts
itself insolently and mutinously -- and just as in the acts of
passion, if the affection of the soul which gives rise to carnal
desires is unrestrained -- so also, in the same way, errors and
false opinions contaminate life if the rational soul itself is
depraved.  Thus it was then with me, for I was ignorant that my
soul had to be enlightened by another light, if it was to be
partaker of the truth, since it is not itself the essence of
truth.  "For thou wilt light my lamp; the Lord my God will lighten
my darkness"[108]; and "of his fullness have we all
received,"[109] for "that was the true Light that lighteth every
man that cometh into the world"[110]; for "in thee there is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning."[111]
     26.  But I pushed on toward thee, and was pressed back by
thee that I might know the taste of death, for "thou resistest the
proud."[112]  And what greater pride could there be for me than,
with a marvelous madness, to assert myself to be that nature which
thou art?  I was mutable -- this much was clear enough to me
because my very longing to become wise arose out of a wish to
change from worse to better -- yet I chose rather to think thee
mutable than to think that I was not as thou art.  For this reason
I was thrust back; thou didst resist my fickle pride.  Thus I went
on imagining corporeal forms, and, since I was flesh I accused the
flesh, and, since I was "a wind that passes away,"[113] I did not
return to thee but went wandering and wandering on toward those
things that have no being -- neither in thee nor in me, nor in the
body.  These fancies were not created for me by thy truth but
conceived by my own vain conceit out of sensory notions.  And I
used to ask thy faithful children -- my own fellow citizens, from
whom I stood unconsciously exiled -- I used flippantly and
foolishly to ask them, "Why, then, does the soul, which God
created, err?"  But I would not allow anyone to ask me, "Why,
then, does God err?"  I preferred to contend that thy immutable
substance was involved in error through necessity rather than
admit that my own mutable substance had gone astray of its own
free will and had fallen into error as its punishment.
     27.  I was about twenty-six or twenty-seven when I wrote
those books, analyzing and reflecting upon those sensory images
which clamored in the ears of my heart.  I was straining those
ears to hear thy inward melody, O sweet Truth, pondering on "the
beautiful and the fitting" and longing to stay and hear thee, and
to rejoice greatly at "the Bridegroom's voice."[114]  Yet I could
not, for by the clamor of my own errors I was hurried outside
myself, and by the weight of my own pride I was sinking ever
lower.  You did not "make me to hear joy and gladness," nor did
the bones rejoice which were not yet humbled.[115]
     28.  And what did it profit me that, when I was scarcely
twenty years old, a book of Aristotle's entitled The Ten
Categories[116] fell into my hands?  On the very title of this I
hung as on something great and divine, since my rhetoric master at
Carthage and others who had reputations for learning were always
referring to it with such swelling pride.  I read it by myself and
understood it.  And what did it mean that when I discussed it with
others they said that even with the assistance of tutors -- who
not only explained it orally, but drew many diagrams in the sand
-- they scarcely understood it and could tell me no more about it
than I had acquired in the reading of it by myself alone?  For the
book appeared to me to speak plainly enough about substances, such
as a man; and of their qualities, such as the shape of a man, his
kind, his stature, how many feet high, and his family
relationship, his status, when born, whether he is sitting or
standing, is shod or armed, or is doing something or having
something done to him -- and all the innumerable things that are
classified under these nine categories (of which I have given some
examples) or under the chief category of substance.
     29.  What did all this profit me, since it actually hindered
me when I imagined that whatever existed was comprehended within
those ten categories?  I tried to interpret them, O my God, so
that even thy wonderful and unchangeable unity could be understood
as subjected to thy own magnitude or beauty, as if they existed in
thee as their Subject -- as they do in corporeal bodies -- whereas
thou art thyself thy own magnitude and beauty.  A body is not
great or fair because it is a body, because, even if it were less
great or less beautiful, it would still be a body.  But my
conception of thee was falsity, not truth.  It was a figment of my
own misery, not the stable ground of thy blessedness.  For thou
hadst commanded, and it was carried out in me, that the earth
should bring forth briars and thorns for me, and that with heavy
labor I should gain my bread.[117]
     30.  And what did it profit me that I could read and
understand for myself all the books I could get in the so-called
"liberal arts," when I was actually a worthless slave of wicked
lust?  I took delight in them, not knowing the real source of what
it was in them that was true and certain.  For I had my back
toward the light, and my face toward the things on which the light
falls, so that my face, which looked toward the illuminated
things, was not itself illuminated.  Whatever was written in any
of the fields of rhetoric or logic, geometry, music, or
arithmetic, I could understand without any great difficulty and
without the instruction of another man.  All this thou knowest, O
Lord my God, because both quickness in understanding and acuteness
in insight are thy gifts.  Yet for such gifts I made no thank
offering to thee.  Therefore, my abilities served not my profit
but rather my loss, since I went about trying to bring so large a
part of my substance into my own power.  And I did not store up my
strength for thee, but went away from thee into the far country to
prostitute my gifts in disordered appetite.[118]  And what did
these abilities profit me, if I did not put them to good use?  I
did not realize that those arts were understood with great
difficulty, even by the studious and the intelligent, until I
tried to explain them to others and discovered that even the most
proficient in them followed my explanations all too slowly.
     31.  And yet what did this profit me, since I still supposed
that thou, O Lord God, the Truth, wert a bright and vast body and
that I was a particle of that body?  O perversity gone too far!
But so it was with me.  And I do not blush, O my God, to confess
thy mercies to me in thy presence, or to call upon thee -- any
more than I did not blush when I openly avowed my blasphemies
before men, and bayed, houndlike, against thee.  What good was it
for me that my nimble wit could run through those studies and
disentangle all those knotty volumes, without help from a human
teacher, since all the while I was erring so hatefully and with
such sacrilege as far as the right substance of pious faith was
concerned?  And what kind of burden was it for thy little ones to
have a far slower wit, since they did not use it to depart from
thee, and since they remained in the nest of thy Church to become
safely fledged and to nourish the wings of love by the food of a
sound faith.
     O Lord our God, under the shadow of thy wings let us hope --
defend us and support us.[119]  Thou wilt bear us up when we are
little and even down to our gray hairs thou wilt carry us.  For
our stability, when it is in thee, is stability indeed; but when
it is in ourselves, then it is all unstable.  Our good lives
forever with thee, and when we turn from thee with aversion, we
fall into our own perversion.  Let us now, O Lord, return that we
be not overturned, because with thee our good lives without
blemish -- for our good is thee thyself.  And we need not fear
that we shall find no place to return to because we fell away from
it.  For, in our absence, our home -- which is thy eternity --
does not fall away.



                          BOOK FIVE


     A year of decision.  Faustus comes to Carthage and Augustine
is disenchanted in his hope for solid demonstration of the truth
of Manichean doctrine.  He decides to flee from his known troubles
at Carthage to troubles yet unknown at Rome.  His experiences at
Rome prove disappointing and he applies for a teaching post at
Milan.  Here he meets Ambrose, who confronts him as an impressive
witness for Catholic Christianity and opens out the possibilities
of the allegorical interpretation of Scripture.  Augustine decides
to become a Christian catechumen.


                           CHAPTER I

     1.  Accept this sacrifice of my confessions from the hand of
my tongue.  Thou didst form it and hast prompted it to praise thy
name.  Heal all my bones and let them say, "O Lord, who is like
unto thee?"[120]  It is not that one who confesses to thee
instructs thee as to what goes on within him.  For the closed
heart does not bar thy sight into it, nor does the hardness of our
heart hold back thy hands, for thou canst soften it at will,
either by mercy or in vengeance, "and there is no one who can hide
himself from thy heat."[121]  But let my soul praise thee, that it
may love thee, and let it confess thy mercies to thee, that it may
praise thee.  Thy whole creation praises thee without ceasing: the
spirit of man, by his own lips, by his own voice, lifted up to
thee; animals and lifeless matter by the mouths of those who
meditate upon them.  Thus our souls may climb out of their
weariness toward thee and lean on those things which thou hast
created and pass through them to thee, who didst create them in a
marvelous way.  With thee, there is refreshment and true strength.


                          CHAPTER II

     2.  Let the restless and the unrighteous depart, and flee
away from thee.  Even so, thou seest them and thy eye pierces
through the shadows in which they run.  For lo, they live in a
world of beauty and yet are themselves most foul.  And how have
they harmed thee?  Or in what way have they discredited thy power,
which is just and perfect in its rule even to the last item in
creation?  Indeed, where would they fly when they fled from thy
presence?  Wouldst thou be unable to find them?  But they fled
that they might not see thee, who sawest them; that they might be
blinded and stumble into thee.  But thou forsakest nothing that
thou hast made.  The unrighteous stumble against thee that they
may be justly plagued, fleeing from thy gentleness and colliding
with thy justice, and falling on their own rough paths.  For in
truth they do not know that thou art everywhere; that no place
contains thee, and that only thou art near even to those who go
farthest from thee.  Let them, therefore, turn back and seek thee,
because even if they have abandoned thee, their Creator, thou hast
not abandoned thy creatures.  Let them turn back and seek thee --
and lo, thou art there in their hearts, there in the hearts of
those who confess to thee.  Let them cast themselves upon thee,
and weep on thy bosom, after all their weary wanderings; and thou
wilt gently wipe away their tears.[122]  And they weep the more
and rejoice in their weeping, since thou, O Lord, art not a man of
flesh and blood.  Thou art the Lord, who canst remake what thou
didst make and canst comfort them.  And where was I when I was
seeking thee?  There thou wast, before me; but I had gone away,
even from myself, and I could not find myself, much less thee.


                          CHAPTER III

     3.  Let me now lay bare in the sight of God the twenty-ninth
year of my age.  There had just come to Carthage a certain bishop
of the Manicheans, Faustus by name, a great snare of the devil;
and many were entangled by him through the charm of his eloquence.
Now, even though I found this eloquence admirable, I was beginning
to distinguish the charm of words from the truth of things, which
I was eager to learn.  Nor did I consider the dish as much as I
did the kind of meat that their famous Faustus served up to me in
it.  His fame had run before him, as one very skilled in an
honorable learning and pre-eminently skilled in the liberal arts.
     And as I had already read and stored up in memory many of the
injunctions of the philosophers, I began to compare some of their
doctrines with the tedious fables of the Manicheans; and it struck
me that the probability was on the side of the philosophers, whose
power reached far enough to enable them to form a fair judgment of
the world, even though they had not discovered the sovereign Lord
of it all.  For thou art great, O Lord, and thou hast respect unto
the lowly, but the proud thou knowest afar off.[123]  Thou drawest
near to none but the contrite in heart, and canst not be found by
the proud, even if in their inquisitive skill they may number the
stars and the sands, and map out the constellations, and trace the
courses of the planets.
     4.  For it is by the mind and the intelligence which thou
gavest them that they investigate these things.  They have
discovered much; and have foretold, many years in advance, the
day, the hour, and the extent of the eclipses of those luminaries,
the sun and the moon.  Their calculations did not fail, and it
came to pass as they predicted.  And they wrote down the rules
they had discovered, so that to this day they may be read and from
them may be calculated in what year and month and day and hour of
the day, and at what quarter of its light, either the moon or the
sun will be eclipsed, and it will come to pass just as predicted.
And men who are ignorant in these matters marvel and are amazed;
and those who understand them exult and are exalted.  Both, by an
impious pride, withdraw from thee and forsake thy light.  They
foretell an eclipse of the sun before it happens, but they do not
see their own eclipse which is even now occurring.  For they do
not ask, as religious men should, what is the source of the
intelligence by which they investigate these matters.  Moreover,
when they discover that thou didst make them, they do not give
themselves up to thee that thou mightest preserve what thou hast
made.  Nor do they offer, as sacrifice to thee, what they have
made of themselves.  For they do not slaughter their own pride --
as they do the sacrificial fowls -- nor their own curiosities by
which, like the fishes of the sea, they wander through the unknown
paths of the deep.  Nor do they curb their own extravagances as
they do those of "the beasts of the field,"[124] so that thou, O
Lord, "a consuming fire,"[125] mayest burn up their mortal cares
and renew them unto immortality.
     5.  They do not know the way which is thy word, by which thou
didst create all the things that are and also the men who measure
them, and the senses by which they perceive what they measure, and
the intelligence whereby they discern the patterns of measure.
Thus they know not that thy wisdom is not a matter of
measure.[126]  But the Only Begotten hath been "made unto us
wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification"[127] and hath been
numbered among us and paid tribute to Caesar.[128]  And they do
not know this "Way" by which they could descend from themselves to
him in order to ascend through him to him.  They did not know this
"Way," and so they fancied themselves exalted to the stars and the
shining heavens.  And lo, they fell upon the earth, and "their
foolish heart was darkened."[129]  They saw many true things about
the creature but they do not seek with true piety for the Truth,
the Architect of Creation, and hence they do not find him.  Or, if
they do find him, and know that he is God, they do not glorify him
as God; neither are they thankful but become vain in their
imagination, and say that they themselves are wise, and attribute
to themselves what is thine.  At the same time, with the most
perverse blindness, they wish to attribute to thee their own
quality -- so that they load their lies on thee who art the Truth,
"changing the glory of the incorruptible God for an image of
corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping
things."[130]  "They exchanged thy truth for a lie, and worshiped
and served the creature rather than the Creator."[131]
     6.  Yet I remembered many a true saying of the philosophers
about the creation, and I saw the confirmation of their
calculations in the orderly sequence of seasons and in the visible
evidence of the stars.  And I compared this with the doctrines of
Mani, who in his voluminous folly wrote many books on these
subjects.  But I could not discover there any account, of either
the solstices or the equinoxes, or the eclipses of the sun and
moon, or anything of the sort that I had learned in the books of
secular philosophy.  But still I was ordered to believe, even
where the ideas did not correspond with -- even when they
contradicted -- the rational theories established by mathematics
and my own eyes, but were very different.


                          CHAPTER IV

     7.  Yet, O Lord God of Truth, is any man pleasing to thee
because he knows these things?  No, for surely that man is unhappy
who knows these things and does not know thee.  And that man is
happy who knows thee, even though he does not know these things.
He who knows both thee and these things is not the more blessed
for his learning, for thou only art his blessing, if knowing thee
as God he glorifies thee and gives thanks and does not become vain
in his thoughts.
     For just as that man who knows how to possess a tree, and
give thanks to thee for the use of it -- although he may not know
how many feet high it is or how wide it spreads -- is better than
the man who can measure it and count all its branches, but neither
owns it nor knows or loves its Creator: just so is a faithful man
who possesses the world's wealth as though he had nothing, and
possesses all things through his union through thee, whom all
things serve, even though he does not know the circlings of the
Great Bear.  Just so it is foolish to doubt that this faithful man
may truly be better than the one who can measure the heavens and
number the stars and weigh the elements, but who is forgetful of
thee "who hast set in order all things in number, weight, and
measure."[132]


                           CHAPTER V

     8.  And who ordered this Mani to write about these things,
knowledge of which is not necessary to piety?  For thou hast said
to man, "Behold, godliness is wisdom"[133] -- and of this he might
have been ignorant, however perfectly he may have known these
other things.  Yet, since he did not know even these other things,
and most impudently dared to teach them, it is clear that he had
no knowledge of piety.  For, even when we have a knowledge of this
worldly lore, it is folly to make a _profession_ of it, when piety
comes from _confession_ to thee.  From piety, therefore, Mani had
gone astray, and all his show of learning only enabled the truly
learned to perceive, from his ignorance of what they knew, how
little he was to be trusted to make plain these more really
difficult matters.  For he did not aim to be lightly esteemed, but
went around trying to persuade men that the Holy Spirit, the
Comforter and Enricher of thy faithful ones, was personally
resident in him with full authority.  And, therefore, when he was
detected in manifest errors about the sky, the stars, the
movements of the sun and moon, even though these things do not
relate to religious doctrine, the impious presumption of the man
became clearly evident; for he not only taught things about which
he was ignorant but also perverted them, and this with pride so
foolish and mad that he sought to claim that his own utterances
were as if they had been those of a divine person.
     9.  When I hear of a Christian brother, ignorant of these
things, or in error concerning them, I can tolerate his uninformed
opinion; and I do not see that any lack of knowledge as to the
form or nature of this material creation can do him much harm, as
long as he does not hold a belief in anything which is unworthy of
thee, O Lord, the Creator of all.  But if he thinks that his
secular knowledge pertains to the essence of the doctrine of
piety, or ventures to assert dogmatic opinions in matters in which
he is ignorant -- there lies the injury.  And yet even a weakness
such as this, in the infancy of our faith, is tolerated by our
Mother Charity until the new man can grow up "unto a perfect man,"
and not be "carried away with every wind of doctrine."[134]
     But Mani had presumed to be at once the teacher, author,
guide, and leader of all whom he could persuade to believe this,
so that all who followed him believed that they were following not
an ordinary man but thy Holy Spirit.  And who would not judge that
such great madness, when it once stood convicted of false
teaching, should then be abhorred and utterly rejected?  But I had
not yet clearly decided whether the alternation of day and night,
and of longer and shorter days and nights, and the eclipses of sun
and moon, and whatever else I read about in other books could be
explained consistently with his theories.  If they could have been
so explained, there would still have remained a doubt in my mind
whether the theories were right or wrong.  Yet I was prepared, on
the strength of his reputed godliness, to rest my faith on his
authority.


                           CHAPTER VI

     10.  For almost the whole of the nine years that I listened
with unsettled mind to the Manichean teaching I had been looking
forward with unbounded eagerness to the arrival of this Faustus.
For all the other members of the sect that I happened to meet,
when they were unable to answer the questions I raised, always
referred me to his coming.  They promised that, in discussion with
him, these and even greater difficulties, if I had them, would be
quite easily and amply cleared away.  When at last he did come, I
found him to be a man of pleasant speech, who spoke of the very
same things they themselves did, although more fluently and in a
more agreeable style.  But what profit was there to me in the
elegance of my cupbearer, since he could not offer me the more
precious draught for which I thirsted?  My ears had already had
their fill of such stuff, and now it did not seem any better
because it was better expressed nor more true because it was
dressed up in rhetoric; nor could I think the man's soul
necessarily wise because his face was comely and his language
eloquent.  But they who extolled him to me were not competent
judges.  They thought him able and wise because his eloquence
delighted them.  At the same time I realized that there is another
kind of man who is suspicious even of truth itself, if it is
expressed in smooth and flowing language.  But thou, O my God,
hadst already taught me in wonderful and marvelous ways, and
therefore I believed -- because it is true -- that thou didst
teach me and that beside thee there is no other teacher of truth,
wherever truth shines forth.  Already I had learned from thee that
because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to
be as necessarily true; nor because it is uttered with stammering
lips should it be supposed false.  Nor, again, is it necessarily
true because rudely uttered, nor untrue because the language is
brilliant.  Wisdom and folly both are like meats that are
wholesome and unwholesome, and courtly or simple words are like
town-made or rustic vessels -- both kinds of food may be served in
either kind of dish.
     11.  That eagerness, therefore, with which I had so long
awaited this man, was in truth delighted with his action and
feeling in a disputation, and with the fluent and apt words with
which he clothed his ideas.  I was delighted, therefore, and I
joined with others -- and even exceeded them -- in exalting and
praising him.  Yet it was a source of annoyance to me that, in his
lecture room, I was not allowed to introduce and raise any of
those questions that troubled me, in a familiar exchange of
discussion with him.  As soon as I found an opportunity for this,
and gained his ear at a time when it was not inconvenient for him
to enter into a discussion with me and my friends, I laid before
him some of my doubts.  I discovered at once that he knew nothing
of the liberal arts except grammar, and that only in an ordinary
way.  He had, however, read some of Tully's orations, a very few
books of Seneca, and some of the poets, and such few books of his
own sect as were written in good Latin.  With this meager learning
and his daily practice in speaking, he had acquired a sort of
eloquence which proved the more delightful and enticing because it
was under the direction of a ready wit and a sort of native grace.
Was this not even as I now recall it, O Lord my God, Judge of my
conscience?  My heart and my memory are laid open before thee, who
wast even then guiding me by the secret impulse of thy providence
and wast setting my shameful errors before my face so that I might
see and hate them.


                         CHAPTER VII

     12.  For as soon as it became plain to me that Faustus was
ignorant in those arts in which I had believed him eminent, I
began to despair of his being able to clarify and explain all
these perplexities that troubled me -- though I realized that such
ignorance need not have affected the authenticity of his piety, if
he had not been a Manichean.  For their books are full of long
fables about the sky and the stars, the sun and the moon; and I
had ceased to believe him able to show me in any satisfactory
fashion what I so ardently desired: whether the explanations
contained in the Manichean books were better or at least as good
as the mathematical explanations I had read elsewhere.  But when I
proposed that these subjects should be considered and discussed,
he quite modestly did not dare to undertake the task, for he was
aware that he had no knowledge of these things and was not ashamed
to confess it.  For he was not one of those talkative people --
from whom I had endured so much -- who undertook to teach me what
I wanted to know, and then said nothing.  Faustus had a heart
which, if not right toward thee, was at least not altogether false
toward himself; for he was not ignorant of his own ignorance, and
he did not choose to be entangled in a controversy from which he
could not draw back or retire gracefully.  For this I liked him
all the more.  For the modesty of an ingenious mind is a finer
thing than the acquisition of that knowledge I desired; and this I
found to be his attitude toward all abstruse and difficult
questions.
     13.  Thus the zeal with which I had plunged into the
Manichean system was checked, and I despaired even more of their
other teachers, because Faustus who was so famous among them had
turned out so poorly in the various matters that puzzled me.  And
so I began to occupy myself with him in the study of his own
favorite pursuit, that of literature, in which I was already
teaching a class as a professor of rhetoric among the young
Carthaginian students.  With Faustus then I read whatever he
himself wished to read, or what I judged suitable to his bent of
mind.  But all my endeavors to make further progress in Manicheism
came completely to an end through my acquaintance with that man.
I did not wholly separate myself from them, but as one who had not
yet found anything better I decided to content myself, for the
time being, with what I had stumbled upon one way or another,
until by chance something more desirable should present itself.
Thus that Faustus who had entrapped so many to their death --
though neither willing nor witting it -- now began to loosen the
snare in which I had been caught.  For thy hands, O my God, in the
hidden design of thy providence did not desert my soul; and out of
the blood of my mother's heart, through the tears that she poured
out by day and by night, there was a sacrifice offered to thee for
me, and by marvelous ways thou didst deal with me.  For it was
thou, O my God, who didst it: for "the steps of a man are ordered
by the Lord, and he shall choose his way."[135]  How shall we
attain salvation without thy hand remaking what it had already
made?


                         CHAPTER VIII

     14.  Thou didst so deal with me, therefore, that I was
persuaded to go to Rome and teach there what I had been teaching
at Carthage.  And how I was persuaded to do this I will not omit
to confess to thee, for in this also the profoundest workings of
thy wisdom and thy constant mercy toward us must be pondered and
acknowledged.  I did not wish to go to Rome because of the richer
fees and the higher dignity which my friends promised me there --
though these considerations did affect my decision.  My principal
and almost sole motive was that I had been informed that the
students there studied more quietly and were better kept under the
control of stern discipline, so that they did not capriciously and
impudently rush into the classroom of a teacher not their own --
indeed, they were not admitted at all without the permission of
the teacher.  At Carthage, on the contrary, there was a shameful
and intemperate license among the students.  They burst in rudely
and, with furious gestures, would disrupt the discipline which the
teacher had established for the good of his pupils.  Many outrages
they perpetrated with astounding effrontery, things that would be
punishable by law if they were not sustained by custom.  Thus
custom makes plain that such behavior is all the more worthless
because it allows men to do what thy eternal law never will allow.
They think that they act thus with impunity, though the very
blindness with which they act is their punishment, and they suffer
far greater harm than they inflict.
     The manners that I would not adopt as a student I was
compelled as a teacher to endure in others.  And so I was glad to
go where all who knew the situation assured me that such conduct
was not allowed.  But thou, "O my refuge and my portion in the
land of the living,"[136] didst goad me thus at Carthage so that I
might thereby be pulled away from it and change my worldly
habitation for the preservation of my soul.  At the same time,
thou didst offer me at Rome an enticement, through the agency of
men enchanted with this death-in-life -- by their insane conduct
in the one place and their empty promises in the other.  To
correct my wandering footsteps, thou didst secretly employ their
perversity and my own.  For those who disturbed my tranquillity
were blinded by shameful madness and also those who allured me
elsewhere had nothing better than the earth's cunning.  And I who
hated actual misery in the one place sought fictitious happiness
in the other.
     15.  Thou knewest the cause of my going from one country to
the other, O God, but thou didst not disclose it either to me or
to my mother, who grieved deeply over my departure and followed me
down to the sea.  She clasped me tight in her embrace, willing
either to keep me back or to go with me, but I deceived her,
pretending that I had a friend whom I could not leave until he had
a favorable wind to set sail.  Thus I lied to my mother -- and
such a mother! -- and escaped.  For this too thou didst mercifully
pardon me -- fool that I was -- and didst preserve me from the
waters of the sea for the water of thy grace; so that, when I was
purified by that, the fountain of my mother's eyes, from which she
had daily watered the ground for me as she prayed to thee, should
be dried.  And, since she refused to return without me, I
persuaded her, with some difficulty, to remain that night in a
place quite close to our ship, where there was a shrine in memory
of the blessed Cyprian.  That night I slipped away secretly, and
she remained to pray and weep.  And what was it, O Lord, that she
was asking of thee in such a flood of tears but that thou wouldst
not allow me to sail?  But thou, taking thy own secret counsel and
noting the real point to her desire, didst not grant what she was
then asking in order to grant to her the thing that she had always
been asking.
     The wind blew and filled our sails, and the shore dropped out
of sight.  Wild with grief, she was there the next morning and
filled thy ears with complaints and groans which thou didst
disregard, although, at the very same time, thou wast using my
longings as a means and wast hastening me on to the fulfillment of
all longing.  Thus the earthly part of her love to me was justly
purged by the scourge of sorrow.  Still, like all mothers --
though even more than others -- she loved to have me with her, and
did not know what joy thou wast preparing for her through my going
away.  Not knowing this secret end, she wept and mourned and saw
in her agony the inheritance of Eve -- seeking in sorrow what she
had brought forth in sorrow.  And yet, after accusing me of
perfidy and cruelty, she still continued her intercessions for me
to thee.  She returned to her own home, and I went on to Rome.


                          CHAPTER IX

     16.  And lo, I was received in Rome by the scourge of bodily
sickness; and I was very near to falling into hell, burdened with
all the many and grievous sins I had committed against thee,
myself, and others -- all over and above that fetter of original
sin whereby we all die in Adam.  For thou hadst forgiven me none
of these things in Christ, neither had he abolished by his cross
the enmity[137] that I had incurred from thee through my sins.
For how could he do so by the crucifixion of a phantom, which was
all I supposed him to be?  The death of my soul was as real then
as the death of his flesh appeared to me unreal.  And the life of
my soul was as false, because it was as unreal as the death of his
flesh was real, though I believed it not.
     My fever increased, and I was on the verge of passing away
and perishing; for, if I had passed away then, where should I have
gone but into the fiery torment which my misdeeds deserved,
measured by the truth of thy rule?  My mother knew nothing of
this; yet, far away, she went on praying for me.  And thou,
present everywhere, didst hear her where she was and had pity on
me where I was, so that I regained my bodily health, although I
was still disordered in my sacrilegious heart.  For that peril of
death did not make me wish to be baptized.  I was even better
when, as a lad, I entreated baptism of my mother's devotion, as I
have already related and confessed.[138]  But now I had since
increased in dishonor, and I madly scoffed at all the purposes of
thy medicine which would not have allowed me, though a sinner such
as I was, to die a double death.  Had my mother's heart been
pierced with this wound, it never could have been cured, for I
cannot adequately tell of the love she had for me, or how she
still travailed for me in the spirit with a far keener anguish
than when she bore me in the flesh.
     17.  I cannot conceive, therefore, how she could have been
healed if my death (still in my sins) had pierced her inmost love.
Where, then, would have been all her earnest, frequent, and
ceaseless prayers to thee?  Nowhere but with thee.  But couldst
thou, O most merciful God, despise the "contrite and humble
heart"[139] of that pure and prudent widow, who was so constant in
her alms, so gracious and attentive to thy saints, never missing a
visit to church twice a day, morning and evening -- and this not
for vain gossiping, nor old wives' fables, but in order that she
might listen to thee in thy sermons, and thou to her in her
prayers?  Couldst thou, by whose gifts she was so inspired,
despise and disregard the tears of such a one without coming to
her aid -- those tears by which she entreated thee, not for gold
or silver, and not for any changing or fleeting good, but for the
salvation of the soul of her son?  By no means, O Lord.  It is
certain that thou wast near and wast hearing and wast carrying out
the plan by which thou hadst predetermined it should be done.  Far
be it from thee that thou shouldst have deluded her in those
visions and the answers she had received from thee -- some of
which I have mentioned, and others not -- which she kept in her
faithful heart, and, forever beseeching, urged them on thee as if
they had thy own signature.  For thou, "because thy mercy endureth
forever,"[140] hast so condescended to those whose debts thou hast
pardoned that thou likewise dost become a debtor by thy promises.


                           CHAPTER X

     18.  Thou didst restore me then from that illness, and didst
heal the son of thy handmaid in his body, that he might live for
thee and that thou mightest endow him with a better and more
certain health.  After this, at Rome, I again joined those
deluding and deluded "saints"; and not their "hearers" only, such
as the man was in whose house I had fallen sick, but also with
those whom they called "the elect." For it still seemed to me
"that it is not we who sin, but some other nature sinned in us."
And it gratified my pride to be beyond blame, and when _I_ did
anything wrong not to have to confess that _I_ had done wrong --
"that thou mightest heal my soul because it had sinned against
thee"[141] -- and I loved to excuse my soul and to accuse
something else inside me (I knew not what) but which was not I.
But, assuredly, it was I, and it was my impiety that had divided
me against myself.  That sin then was all the more incurable
because I did not deem myself a sinner.  It was an execrable
iniquity, O God Omnipotent, that I would have preferred to have
thee defeated in me, to my destruction, than to be defeated by
thee to my salvation.  Not yet, therefore, hadst thou set a watch
upon my mouth and a door around my lips that my heart might not
incline to evil speech, to make excuse for sin with men that work
iniquity.[142]  And, therefore, I continued still in the company
of their "elect."
     19.  But now, hopeless of gaining any profit from that false
doctrine, I began to hold more loosely and negligently even to
those points which I had decided to rest content with, if I could
find nothing better.  I was now half inclined to believe that
those philosophers whom they call "The Academics"[143] were wiser
than the rest in holding that we ought to doubt everything, and in
maintaining that man does not have the power of comprehending any
certain truth, for, although I had not yet understood their
meaning, I was fully persuaded that they thought just as they are
commonly reputed to do.  And I did not fail openly to dissuade my
host from his confidence which I observed that he had in those
fictions of which the works of Mani are full.  For all this, I was
still on terms of more intimate friendship with these people than
with others who were not of their heresy.  I did not indeed defend
it with my former ardor; but my familiarity with that group -- and
there were many of them concealed in Rome at that time[144] --
made me slower to seek any other way.  This was particularly easy
since I had no hope of finding in thy Church the truth from which
they had turned me aside, O Lord of heaven and earth, Creator of
all things visible and invisible.  And it still seemed to me most
unseemly to believe that thou couldst have the form of human flesh
and be bounded by the bodily shape of our limbs.  And when I
desired to meditate on my God, I did not know what to think of but
a huge extended body -- for what did not have bodily extension did
not seem to me to exist -- and this was the greatest and almost
the sole cause of my unavoidable errors.
     20.  And thus I also believed that evil was a similar kind of
substance, and that it had its own hideous and deformed extended
body -- either in a dense form which they called the earth or in a
thin and subtle form as, for example, the substance of the air,
which they imagined as some malignant spirit penetrating that
earth.  And because my piety -- such as it was -- still compelled
me to believe that the good God never created any evil substance,
I formed the idea of two masses, one opposed to the other, both
infinite but with the evil more contracted and the good more
expansive.  And from this diseased beginning, the other sacrileges
followed after.
     For when my mind tried to turn back to the Catholic faith, I
was cast down, since the Catholic faith was not what I judged it
to be.  And it seemed to me a greater piety to regard thee, my God
-- to whom I make confession of thy mercies -- as infinite in all
respects save that one: where the extended mass of evil stood
opposed to thee, where I was compelled to confess that thou art
finite -- than if I should think that thou couldst be confined by
the form of a human body on every side.  And it seemed better to
me to believe that no evil had been created by thee -- for in my
ignorance evil appeared not only to be some kind of substance but
a corporeal one at that.  This was because I had, thus far, no
conception of mind, except as a subtle body diffused throughout
local spaces.  This seemed better than to believe that anything
could emanate from thee which had the character that I considered
evil to be in its nature.  And I believed that our Saviour himself
also -- thy Only Begotten -- had been brought forth, as it were,
for our salvation out of the mass of thy bright shining substance.
So that I could believe nothing about him except what I was able
to harmonize with these vain imaginations.  I thought, therefore,
that such a nature could not be born of the Virgin Mary without
being mingled with the flesh, and I could not see how the divine
substance, as I had conceived it, could be mingled thus without
being contaminated.  I was afraid, therefore, to believe that he
had been born in the flesh, lest I should also be compelled to
believe that he had been contaminated by the flesh.  Now will thy
spiritual ones smile blandly and lovingly at me if they read these
confessions.  Yet such was I.


                          CHAPTER XI

     21.  Furthermore, the things they censured in thy Scriptures
I thought impossible to be defended.  And yet, occasionally, I
desired to confer on various matters with someone well learned in
those books, to test what he thought of them.  For already the
words of one Elpidius, who spoke and disputed face to face against
these same Manicheans, had begun to impress me, even when I was at
Carthage; because he brought forth things out of the Scriptures
that were not easily withstood, to which their answers appeared to
me feeble.  One of their answers they did not give forth publicly,
but only to us in private -- when they said that the writings of
the New Testament had been tampered with by unknown persons who
desired to ingraft the Jewish law into the Christian faith.  But
they themselves never brought forward any uncorrupted copies.
Still thinking in corporeal categories and very much ensnared and
to some extent stifled, I was borne down by those conceptions of
bodily substance.  I panted under this load for the air of thy
truth, but I was not able to breathe it pure and undefiled.


                          CHAPTER XII

     22.  I set about diligently to practice what I came to Rome
to do -- the teaching of rhetoric.  The first task was to bring
together in my home a few people to whom and through whom I had
begun to be known.  And lo, I then began to learn that other
offenses were committed in Rome which I had not had to bear in
Africa.  Just as I had been told, those riotous disruptions by
young blackguards were not practiced here.  Yet, now, my friends
told me, many of the Roman students -- breakers of faith, who, for
the love of money, set a small value on justice -- would conspire
together and suddenly transfer to another teacher, to evade paying
their master's fees.  My heart hated such people, though not with
a "perfect hatred"[145]; for doubtless I hated them more because I
was to suffer from them than on account of their own illicit acts.
Still, such people are base indeed; they fornicate against thee,
for they love the transitory mockeries of temporal things and the
filthy gain which begrimes the hand that grabs it; they embrace
the fleeting world and scorn thee, who abidest and invitest us to
return to thee and who pardonest the prostituted human soul when
it does return to thee.  Now I hate such crooked and perverse men,
although I love them if they will be corrected and come to prefer
the learning they obtain to money and, above all, to prefer thee
to such learning, O God, the truth and fullness of our positive
good, and our most pure peace.  But then the wish was stronger in
me for my own sake not to suffer evil from them than was my desire
that they should become good for thy sake.


                         CHAPTER XIII

     23.  When, therefore, the officials of Milan sent to Rome, to
the prefect of the city, to ask that he provide them with a
teacher of rhetoric for their city and to send him at the public
expense, I applied for the job through those same persons, drunk
with the Manichean vanities, to be freed from whom I was going
away -- though neither they nor I were aware of it at the time.
They recommended that Symmachus, who was then prefect, after he
had proved me by audition, should appoint me.
     And to Milan I came, to Ambrose the bishop, famed through the
whole world as one of the best of men, thy devoted servant.  His
eloquent discourse in those times abundantly provided thy people
with the flour of thy wheat, the gladness of thy oil, and the
sober intoxication of thy wine.[146]  To him I was led by thee
without my knowledge, that by him I might be led to thee in full
knowledge.  That man of God received me as a father would, and
welcomed my coming as a good bishop should.  And I began to love
him, of course, not at the first as a teacher of the truth, for I
had entirely despaired of finding that in thy Church -- but as a
friendly man.  And I studiously listened to him -- though not with
the right motive -- as he preached to the people.  I was trying to
discover whether his eloquence came up to his reputation, and
whether it flowed fuller or thinner than others said it did.  And
thus I hung on his words intently, but, as to his subject matter,
I was only a careless and contemptuous listener.  I was delighted
with the charm of his speech, which was more erudite, though less
cheerful and soothing, than Faustus' style.  As for subject
matter, however, there could be no comparison, for the latter was
wandering around in Manichean deceptions, while the former was
teaching salvation most soundly.  But "salvation is far from the
wicked,"[147] such as I was then when I stood before him.  Yet I
was drawing nearer, gradually and unconsciously.


                          CHAPTER XIV

     24.  For, although I took no trouble to learn what he said,,
but only to hear how he said it -- for this empty concern remained
foremost with me as long as I despaired of finding a clear path
from man to thee -- yet, along with the eloquence I prized, there
also came into my mind the ideas which I ignored; for I could not
separate them.  And, while I opened my heart to acknowledge how
skillfully he spoke, there also came an awareness of how _truly_
he spoke -- but only gradually.  First of all, his ideas had
already begun to appear to me defensible; and the Catholic faith,
for which I supposed that nothing could be said against the
onslaught of the Manicheans, I now realized could be maintained
without presumption.  This was especially clear after I had heard
one or two parts of the Old Testament explained allegorically --
whereas before this, when I had interpreted them literally, they
had "killed" me spiritually.[148]  However, when many of these
passages in those books were expounded to me thus, I came to blame
my own despair for having believed that no reply could be given to
those who hated and scoffed at the Law and the Prophets.  Yet I
did not see that this was reason enough to follow the Catholic
way, just because it had learned advocates who could answer
objections adequately and without absurdity.  Nor could I see that
what I had held to heretofore should now be condemned, because
both sides were equally defensible.  For that way did not appear
to me yet vanquished; but neither did it seem yet victorious.
     25.  But now I earnestly bent my mind to require if there was
possible any way to prove the Manicheans guilty of falsehood.  If
I could have conceived of a spiritual substance, all their
strongholds would have collapsed and been cast out of my mind.
But I could not.  Still, concerning the body of this world, nature
as a whole -- now that I was able to consider and compare such
things more and more -- I now decided that the majority of the
philosophers held the more probable views.  So, in what I thought
was the method of the Academics -- doubting everything and
fluctuating between all the options -- I came to the conclusion
that the Manicheans were to be abandoned.  For I judged, even in
that period of doubt, that I could not remain in a sect to which I
preferred some of the philosophers.  But I refused to commit the
cure of my fainting soul to the philosophers, because they were
without the saving name of Christ.  I resolved, therefore, to
become a catechumen in the Catholic Church -- which my parents had
so much urged upon me -- until something certain shone forth by
which I might guide my course.



                          BOOK SIX


     Turmoil in the twenties.  Monica follows Augustine to Milan
and finds him a catechumen in the Catholic Church. Both admire
Ambrose but Augustine gets no help from him on his personal
problems.  Ambition spurs and Alypius and Nebridius join him in a
confused quest for the happy life.  Augustine becomes engaged,
dismisses his first mistress, takes another, and continues his
fruitless search for truth.


                           CHAPTER I

     1.  O Hope from my youth,[149] where wast thou to me and
where hadst thou gone away?[150]  For hadst thou not created me
and differentiated me from the beasts of the field and the birds
of the air, making me wiser than they?  And yet I was wandering
about in a dark and slippery way, seeking thee outside myself and
thus not finding the God of my heart.  I had gone down into the
depths of the sea and had lost faith, and had despaired of ever
finding the truth.
     By this time my mother had come to me, having mustered the
courage of piety, following over sea and land, secure in thee
through all the perils of the journey.  For in the dangers of the
voyage she comforted the sailors -- to whom the inexperienced
voyagers, when alarmed, were accustomed to go for comfort -- and
assured them of a safe arrival because she had been so assured by
thee in a vision.
     She found me in deadly peril through my despair of ever
finding the truth.  But when I told her that I was now no longer a
Manichean, though not yet a Catholic Christian, she did not leap
for joy as if this were unexpected; for she had already been
reassured about that part of my misery for which she had mourned
me as one dead, but also as one who would be raised to thee.  She
had carried me out on the bier of her thoughts, that thou mightest
say to the widow's son, "Young man, I say unto you, arise!"[151]
and then he would revive and begin to speak, and thou wouldst
deliver him to his mother.  Therefore, her heart was not agitated
with any violent exultation when she heard that so great a part of
what she daily entreated thee to do had actually already been done
-- that, though I had not yet grasped the truth, I was rescued
from falsehood.  Instead, she was fully confident that thou who
hadst promised the whole would give her the rest, and thus most
calmly, and with a fully confident heart, she replied to me that
she believed, in Christ, that before she died she would see me a
faithful Catholic.  And she said no more than this to me.  But to
thee, O Fountain of mercy, she poured out still more frequent
prayers and tears that thou wouldst hasten thy aid and enlighten
my darkness, and she hurried all the more zealously to the church
and hung upon the words of Ambrose, praying for the fountain of
water that springs up into everlasting life.[152]  For she loved
that man as an angel of God, since she knew that it was by him
that I had been brought thus far to that wavering state of
agitation I was now in, through which she was fully persuaded I
should pass from sickness to health, even though it would be after
a still sharper convulsion which physicians call "the crisis."


                          CHAPTER II

     2.  So also my mother brought to certain oratories, erected
in the memory of the saints, offerings of porridge, bread, and
wine -- as had been her custom in Africa -- and she was forbidden
to do so by the doorkeeper [ostiarius].  And as soon as she
learned that it was the bishop who had forbidden it, she
acquiesced so devoutly and obediently that I myself marveled how
readily she could bring herself to turn critic of her own customs,
rather than question his prohibition.  For winebibbing had not
taken possession of her spirit, nor did the love of wine stimulate
her to hate the truth, as it does too many, both male and female,
who turn as sick at a hymn to sobriety as drunkards do at a
draught of water.  When she had brought her basket with the
festive gifts, which she would taste first herself and give the
rest away, she would never allow herself more than one little cup
of wine, diluted according to her own temperate palate, which she
would taste out of courtesy.  And, if there were many oratories of
departed saints that ought to be honored in the same way, she
still carried around with her the same little cup, to be used
everywhere.  This became not only very much watered but also quite
tepid with carrying it about.  She would distribute it by small
sips to those around, for she sought to stimulate their devotion,
not pleasure.
     But as soon as she found that this custom was forbidden by
that famous preacher and most pious prelate, even to those who
would use it in moderation, lest thereby it might be an occasion
of gluttony for those who were already drunken (and also because
these funereal memorials were very much like some of the
superstitious practices of the pagans), she most willingly
abstained from it.  And, in place of a basket filled with fruits
of the earth, she had learned to bring to the oratories of the
martyrs a heart full of purer petitions, and to give all that she
could to the poor -- so that the Communion of the Lord's body
might be rightly celebrated in those places where, after the
example of his Passion, the martyrs had been sacrificed and
crowned.  But yet it seems to me, O Lord my God -- and my heart
thinks of it this way in thy sight -- that my mother would
probably not have given way so easily to the rejection of this
custom if it had been forbidden by another, whom she did not love
as she did Ambrose.  For, out of her concern for my salvation, she
loved him most dearly; and he loved her truly, on account of her
faithful religious life, in which she frequented the church with
good works, "fervent in spirit."[153]  Thus he would, when he saw
me, often burst forth into praise of her, congratulating me that I
had such a mother -- little knowing what a son she had in me, who
was still a skeptic in all these matters and who could not
conceive that the way of life could be found out.


                          CHAPTER III

     3.  Nor had I come yet to groan in my prayers that thou
wouldst help me.  My mind was wholly intent on knowledge and eager
for disputation.  Ambrose himself I esteemed a happy man, as the
world counted happiness, because great personages held him in
honor.  Only his celibacy appeared to me a painful burden.  But
what hope he cherished, what struggles he had against the
temptations that beset his high station, what solace in adversity,
and what savory joys thy bread possessed for the hidden mouth of
his heart when feeding on it, I could neither
     conjecture nor experience.
     Nor did he know my own frustrations, nor the pit of my
danger.  For I could not request of him what I wanted as I wanted
it, because I was debarred from hearing and speaking to him by
crowds of busy people to whose infirmities he devoted himself.
And when he was not engaged with them -- which was never for long
at a time -- he was either refreshing his body with necessary food
or his mind with reading.
     Now, as he read, his eyes glanced over the pages and his
heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were
silent.  Often when we came to his room -- for no one was
forbidden to enter, nor was it his custom that the arrival of
visitors should be announced to him -- we would see him thus
reading to himself.  After we had sat for a long time in silence
-- for who would dare interrupt one so intent? -- we would then
depart, realizing that he was unwilling to be distracted in the
little time he could gain for the recruiting of his mind, free
from the clamor of other men's business.  Perhaps he was fearful
lest, if the author he was studying should express himself
vaguely, some doubtful and attentive hearer would ask him to
expound it or discuss some of the more abstruse questions, so that
he could not get over as much material as he wished, if his time
was occupied with others.  And even a truer reason for his reading
to himself might have been the care for preserving his voice,
which was very easily weakened.  Whatever his motive was in so
doing, it was doubtless, in such a man, a good one.
     4.  But actually I could find no opportunity of putting the
questions I desired to that holy oracle of thine in his heart,
unless it was a matter which could be dealt with briefly.
However, those surgings in me required that he should give me his
full leisure so that I might pour them out to him; but I never
found him so.  I heard him, indeed, every Lord's Day, "rightly
dividing the word of truth"[154] among the people.  And I became
all the more convinced that all those knots of crafty calumnies
which those deceivers of ours had knit together against the divine
books could be unraveled.
     I soon understood that the statement that man was made after
the image of Him that created him[155] was not understood by thy
spiritual sons -- whom thou hadst regenerated through the Catholic
Mother[156] through grace -- as if they believed and imagined that
thou wert bounded by a human form, although what was the nature of
a spiritual substance I had not the faintest or vaguest notion.
Still rejoicing, I blushed that for so many years I had bayed, not
against the Catholic faith, but against the fables of fleshly
imagination.  For I had been both impious and rash in this, that I
had condemned by pronouncement what I ought to have learned by
inquiry.  For thou, O Most High, and most near, most secret, yet
most present, who dost not have limbs, some of which are larger
and some smaller, but who art wholly everywhere and nowhere in
space, and art not shaped by some corporeal form: thou didst
create man after thy own image and, see, he dwells in space, both
head and feet.


                          CHAPTER IV

     5.  Since I could not then understand how this image of thine
could subsist, I should have knocked on the door and propounded
the doubt as to how it was to be believed, and not have
insultingly opposed it as if it were actually believed.
Therefore, my anxiety as to what I could retain as certain gnawed
all the more sharply into my soul, and I felt quite ashamed
because during the long time I had been deluded and deceived by
the [Manichean] promises of certainties, I had, with childish
petulance, prated of so many uncertainties as if they were
certain.  That they were falsehoods became apparent to me only
afterward.  However, I was certain that they were uncertain and
since I had held them as certainly uncertain I had accused thy
Catholic Church with a blind contentiousness.  I had not yet
discovered that it taught the truth, but I now knew that it did
not teach what I had so vehemently accused it of.  In this
respect, at least, I was confounded and converted; and I rejoiced,
O my God, that the one Church, the body of thy only Son -- in
which the name of Christ had been sealed upon me as an infant --
did not relish these childish trifles and did not maintain in its
sound doctrine any tenet that would involve pressing thee, the
Creator of all, into space, which, however extended and immense,
would still be bounded on all sides -- like the shape of a human
body.
     6.  I was also glad that the old Scriptures of the Law and
the Prophets were laid before me to be read, not now with an eye
to what had seemed absurd in them when formerly I censured thy
holy ones for thinking thus, when they actually did not think in
that way.  And I listened with delight to Ambrose, in his sermons
to the people, often recommending this text most diligently as a
rule: "The letter kills, but the spirit gives life,"[157] while at
the same time he drew aside the mystic veil and opened to view the
spiritual meaning of what seemed to teach perverse doctrine if it
were taken according to the letter.  I found nothing in his
teachings that offended me, though I could not yet know for
certain whether what he taught was true.  For all this time I
restrained my heart from assenting to anything, fearing to fall
headlong into error.  Instead, by this hanging in suspense, I was
being strangled.[158]  For my desire was to be as certain of
invisible things as I was that seven and three are ten.  I was not
so deranged as to believe that _this_ could not be comprehended,
but my desire was to have other things as clear as this, whether
they were physical objects, which were not present to my senses,
or spiritual objects, which I did not know how to conceive of
except in physical terms.
     If I could have believed, I might have been cured, and, with
the sight of my soul cleared up, it might in some way have been
directed toward thy truth, which always abides and fails in
nothing.  But, just as it happens that a man who has tried a bad
physician fears to trust himself with a good one, so it was with
the health of my soul, which could not be healed except by
believing.  But lest it should believe falsehoods, it refused to
be cured, resisting thy hand, who hast prepared for us the
medicines of faith and applied them to the maladies of the whole
world, and endowed them with such great efficacy.


                           CHAPTER V

     7.  Still, from this time forward, I began to prefer the
Catholic doctrine.  I felt that it was with moderation and honesty
that it commanded things to be believed that were not demonstrated
-- whether they could be demonstrated, but not to everyone, or
whether they could not be demonstrated at all.  This was far
better than the method of the Manicheans, in which our credulity
was mocked by an audacious promise of knowledge and then many
fabulous and absurd things were forced upon believers _because_
they were incapable of demonstration.  After that, O Lord, little
by little, with a gentle and most merciful hand, drawing and
calming my heart, thou didst persuade me that, if I took into
account the multitude of things I had never seen, nor been present
when they were enacted -- such as many of the events of secular
history; and the numerous reports of places and cities which I had
not seen; or such as my relations with many friends, or
physicians, or with these men and those -- that unless we should
believe, we should do nothing at all in this life.[159]  Finally,
I was impressed with what an unalterable assurance I believed
which two people were my parents, though this was impossible for
me to know otherwise than by hearsay.  By bringing all this into
my consideration, thou didst persuade me that it was not the ones
who believed thy books -- which with so great authority thou hast
established among nearly all nations -- but those who did not
believe them who were to be blamed.  Moreover, those men were not
to be listened to who would say to me, "How do you know that those
Scriptures were imparted to mankind by the Spirit of the one and
most true God?"  For this was the point that was most of all to be
believed, since no wranglings of blasphemous questions such as I
had read in the books of the self-contradicting philosophers could
once snatch from me the belief that thou dost exist -- although
_what_ thou art I did not know -- and that to thee belongs the
governance of human affairs.
     8.  This much I believed, some times more strongly than other
times.  But I always believed both that thou art and that thou
hast a care for us,[160] although I was ignorant both as to what
should be thought about thy substance and as to which way led, or
led back, to thee.  Thus, since we are too weak by unaided reason
to find out truth, and since, because of this, we need the
authority of the Holy Writings, I had now begun to believe that
thou wouldst not, under any circumstances, have given such eminent
authority to those Scriptures throughout all lands if it had not
been that through them thy will may be believed in and that thou
mightest be sought.  For, as to those passages in the Scripture
which had heretofore appeared incongruous and offensive to me, now
that I had heard several of them expounded reasonably, I could see
that they were to be resolved by the mysteries of spiritual
interpretation.  The authority of Scripture seemed to me all the
more revered and worthy of devout belief because, although it was
visible for all to read, it reserved the full majesty of its
secret wisdom within its spiritual profundity.  While it stooped
to all in the great plainness of its language and simplicity of
style, it yet required the closest attention of the most serious-
minded -- so that it might receive all into its common bosom, and
direct some few through its narrow passages toward thee, yet many
more than would have been the case had there not been in it such a
lofty authority, which nevertheless allured multitudes to its
bosom by its holy humility.  I continued to reflect upon these
things, and thou wast with me.  I sighed, and thou didst hear me.
I vacillated, and thou guidedst me.  I roamed the broad way of the
world, and thou didst not desert me.


                          CHAPTER VI

     9.  I was still eagerly aspiring to honors, money, and
matrimony; and thou didst mock me.  In pursuit of these ambitions
I endured the most bitter hardships, in which thou wast being the
more gracious the less thou wouldst allow anything that was not
thee to grow sweet to me.  Look into my heart, O Lord, whose
prompting it is that I should recall all this, and confess it to
thee.  Now let my soul cleave to thee, now that thou hast freed
her from that fast-sticking glue of death.
     How wretched she was!  And thou didst irritate her sore wound
so that she might forsake all else and turn to thee -- who art
above all and without whom all things would be nothing at all --
so that she should be converted and healed.  How wretched I was at
that time, and how thou didst deal with me so as to make me aware
of my wretchedness, I recall from the incident of the day on which
I was preparing to recite a panegyric on the emperor.  In it I was
to deliver many a lie, and the lying was to be applauded by those
who knew I was lying.  My heart was agitated with this sense of
guilt and it seethed with the fever of my uneasiness.  For, while
walking along one of the streets of Milan, I saw a poor beggar --
with what I believe was a full belly -- joking and hilarious.  And
I sighed and spoke to the friends around me of the many sorrows
that flowed from our madness, because in spite of all our
exertions -- such as those I was then laboring in, dragging the
burden of my unhappiness under the spur of ambition, and, by
dragging it, increasing it at the same time -- still and all we
aimed only to attain that very happiness which this beggar had
reached before us; and there was a grim chance that we should
never attain it!  For what he had obtained through a few coins,
got by his begging, I was still scheming for by many a wretched
and tortuous turning -- namely, the joy of a passing felicity.  He
had not, indeed, gained true joy, but, at the same time, with all
my ambitions, I was seeking one still more untrue.  Anyhow, he was
now joyous and I was anxious.  He was free from care, and I was
full of alarms.  Now, if anyone should inquire of me whether I
should prefer to be merry or anxious, I would reply, "Merry."
Again, if I had been asked whether I should prefer to be as he was
or as I myself then was, I would have chosen to be myself; though
I was beset with cares and alarms.  But would not this have been a
false choice?  Was the contrast valid?  Actually, I ought not to
prefer myself to him because I happened to be more learned than he
was; for I got no great pleasure from my learning, but sought,
rather, to please men by its exhibition -- and this not to
instruct, but only to please.  Thus thou didst break my bones with
the rod of thy correction.
     10.  Let my soul take its leave of those who say: "It makes a
difference as to the object from which a man derives his joy.  The
beggar rejoiced in drunkenness; you longed to rejoice in glory."
What glory, O Lord?  The kind that is not in thee, for, just as
his was no true joy, so was mine no true glory; but it turned my
head all the more.  He would get over his drunkenness that same
night, but I had slept with mine many a night and risen again with
it, and was to sleep again and rise again with it, I know not how
many times.  It does indeed make a difference as to the object
from which a man's joy is gained.  I know this is so, and I know
that the joy of a faithful hope is incomparably beyond such
vanity.  Yet, at the same time, this beggar was beyond me, for he
truly was the happier man -- not only because he was thoroughly
steeped in his mirth while I was torn to pieces with my cares, but
because he had gotten his wine by giving good wishes to the
passers-by while I was following after the ambition of my pride by
lying.  Much to this effect I said to my good companions, and I
saw how readily they reacted pretty much as I did.  Thus I found
that it went ill with me; and I fretted, and doubled that very
ill.  And if any prosperity smiled upon me, I loathed to seize it,
for almost before I could grasp it, it would fly away.


                          CHAPTER VII

     11.  Those of us who were living like friends together used
to bemoan our lot in our common talk; but I discussed it with
Alypius and Nebridius more especially and in very familiar terms.
Alypius had been born in the same town as I; his parents were of
the highest rank there, but he was a bit younger than I.  He had
studied under me when I first taught in our town, and then
afterward at Carthage.  He esteemed me highly because I appeared
to him good and learned, and I esteemed him for his inborn love of
virtue, which was uncommonly marked in a man so young.  But in the
whirlpool of Carthaginian fashion -- where frivolous spectacles
are hotly followed -- he had been inveigled into the madness of
the gladiatorial games.  While he was miserably tossed about in
this fad, I was teaching rhetoric there in a public school.  At
that time he was not attending my classes because of some ill
feeling that had arisen between me and his father.  I then came to
discover how fatally he doted upon the circus, and I was deeply
grieved, for he seemed likely to cast away his very great promise
-- if, indeed, he had not already done so.  Yet I had no means of
advising him, or any way of reclaiming him through restraint,
either by the kindness of a friend or by the authority of a
teacher.  For I imagined that his feelings toward me were the same
as his father's.  But this turned out not to be the case.  Indeed,
disregarding his father's will in the matter, he began to be
friendly and to visit my lecture room, to listen for a while and
then depart.
     12.  But it slipped my memory to try to deal with his
problem, to prevent him from ruining his excellent mind in his
blind and headstrong passion for frivolous sport.  But thou, O
Lord, who holdest the helm of all that thou hast created,[161]
thou hadst not forgotten him who was one day to be numbered among
thy sons, a chief minister of thy sacrament.[162]  And in order
that his amendment might plainly be attributed to thee, thou
broughtest it about through me while I knew nothing of it.
     One day, when I was sitting in my accustomed place with my
scholars before me, he came in, greeted me, sat himself down, and
fixed his attention on the subject I was then discussing.  It so
happened that I had a passage in hand and, while I was
interpreting it, a simile occurred to me, taken from the
gladiatorial games.  It struck me as relevant to make more
pleasant and plain the point I wanted to convey by adding a biting
gibe at those whom that madness had enthralled.  Thou knowest, O
our God, that I had no thought at that time of curing Alypius of
that plague.  But he took it to himself and thought that I would
not have said it but for his sake.  And what any other man would
have taken as an occasion of offense against me, this worthy young
man took as a reason for being offended at himself, and for loving
me the more fervently.  Thou hast said it long ago and written in
thy Book, "Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you."[163]  Now I
had not rebuked him; but thou who canst make use of everything,
both witting and unwitting, and in the order which thou thyself
knowest to be best -- and that order is right -- thou madest my
heart and tongue into burning coals with which thou mightest
cauterize and cure the hopeful mind thus languishing.  Let him be
silent in thy praise who does not meditate on thy mercy, which
rises up in my inmost parts to confess to thee.  For after that
speech Alypius rushed up out of that deep pit into which he had
willfully plunged and in which he had been blinded by its
miserable pleasures.  And he roused his mind with a resolve to
moderation.  When he had done this, all the filth of the
gladiatorial pleasures dropped away from him, and he went to them
no more.  Then he also prevailed upon his reluctant father to let
him be my pupil.  And, at the son's urging, the father at last
consented.  Thus Alypius began again to hear my lectures and
became involved with me in the same superstition, loving in the
Manicheans that outward display of ascetic discipline which he
believed was true and unfeigned.  It was, however, a senseless and
seducing continence, which ensnared precious souls who were not
able as yet to reach the height of true virtue, and who were
easily beguiled with the veneer of what was only a shadowy and
feigned virtue.


                         CHAPTER VIII

     13.  He had gone on to Rome before me to study law -- which
was the worldly way which his parents were forever urging him to
pursue -- and there he was carried away again with an incredible
passion for the gladiatorial shows.  For, although he had been
utterly opposed to such spectacles and detested them, one day he
met by chance a company of his acquaintances and fellow students
returning from dinner; and, with a friendly violence, they drew
him, resisting and objecting vehemently, into the amphitheater, on
a day of those cruel and murderous shows.  He protested to them:
"Though you drag my body to that place and set me down there, you
cannot force me to give my mind or lend my eyes to these shows.
Thus I will be absent while present, and so overcome both you and
them." When they heard this, they dragged him on in, probably
interested to see whether he could do as he said.  When they got
to the arena, and had taken what seats they could get, the whole
place became a tumult of inhuman frenzy.  But Alypius kept his
eyes closed and forbade his mind to roam abroad after such
wickedness.  Would that he had shut his ears also!  For when one
of the combatants fell in the fight, a mighty cry from the whole
audience stirred him so strongly that, overcome by curiosity and
still prepared (as he thought) to despise and rise superior to it
no matter what it was, he opened his eyes and was struck with a
deeper wound in his soul than the victim whom he desired to see
had been in his body.  Thus he fell more miserably than the one
whose fall had raised that mighty clamor which had entered through
his ears and unlocked his eyes to make way for the wounding and
beating down of his soul, which was more audacious than truly
valiant -- also it was weaker because it presumed on its own
strength when it ought to have depended on Thee.  For, as soon as
he saw the blood, he drank in with it a savage temper, and he did
not turn away, but fixed his eyes on the bloody pastime,
unwittingly drinking in the madness -- delighted with the wicked
contest and drunk with blood lust.  He was now no longer the same
man who came in, but was one of the mob he came into, a true
companion of those who had brought him thither.  Why need I say
more?  He looked, he shouted, he was excited, and he took away
with him the madness that would stimulate him to come again: not
only with those who first enticed him, but even without them;
indeed, dragging in others besides.  And yet from all this, with a
most powerful and most merciful hand, thou didst pluck him and
taught him not to rest his confidence in himself but in thee --
but not till long after.


                          CHAPTER IX

     14.  But this was all being stored up in his memory as
medicine for the future.  So also was that other incident when he
was still studying under me at Carthage and was meditating at
noonday in the market place on what he had to recite -- as
scholars usually have to do for practice -- and thou didst allow
him to be arrested by the police officers in the market place as a
thief.  I believe, O my God, that thou didst allow this for no
other reason than that this man who was in the future to prove so
great should now begin to learn that, in making just decisions, a
man should not readily be condemned by other men with reckless
credulity.
     For as he was walking up and down alone before the judgment
seat with his tablets and pen, lo, a young man -- another one of
the scholars, who was the real thief -- secretly brought a hatchet
and, without Alypius seeing him, got in as far as the leaden bars
which protected the silversmith shop and began to hack away at the
lead gratings.  But when the noise of the hatchet was heard the
silversmiths below began to call to each other in whispers and
sent men to arrest whomsoever they should find.  The thief heard
their voices and ran away, leaving his hatchet because he was
afraid to be caught with it.  Now Alypius, who had not seen him
come in, got a glimpse of him as he went out and noticed that he
went off in great haste.  Being curious to know the reasons, he
went up to the place, where he found the hatchet, and stood
wondering and pondering when, behold, those that were sent caught
him alone, holding the hatchet which had made the noise which had
startled them and brought them there.  They seized him and dragged
him away, gathering the tenants of the market place about them and
boasting that they had caught a notorious thief.  Thereupon he was
led away to appear before the judge.
     15.  But this is as far as his lesson was to go.  For
immediately, O Lord, thou didst come to the rescue of his
innocence, of which thou wast the sole witness.  As he was being
led off to prison or punishment, they were met by the master
builder who had charge of the public buildings.  The captors were
especially glad to meet him because he had more than once
suspected them of stealing the goods that had been lost out of the
market place.  Now, at last, they thought they could convince him
who it was that had committed the thefts.  But the custodian had
often met Alypius at the house of a certain senator, whose
receptions he used to attend.  He recognized him at once and,
taking his hand, led him apart from the throng, inquired the cause
of all the trouble, and learned what had occurred.  He then
commanded all the rabble still around -- and very uproarious and
full of threatenings they were -- to come along with him, and they
came to the house of the young man who had committed the deed.
There, before the door, was a slave boy so young that he was not
restrained from telling the whole story by fear of harming his
master.  And he had followed his master to the market place.
Alypius recognized him, and whispered to the architect, who showed
the boy the hatchet and asked whose it was.  "Ours," he answered
directly.  And, being further questioned, he disclosed the whole
affair.  Thus the guilt was shifted to that household and the
rabble, who had begun to triumph over Alypius, were shamed.  And
so he went away home, this man who was to be the future steward of
thy Word and judge of so many causes in thy Church -- a wiser and
more experienced man.


                           CHAPTER X

     16.  I found him at Rome, and he was bound to me with the
strongest possible ties, and he went with me to Milan, in order
that he might not be separated from me, and also that he might
obtain some law practice, for which he had qualified with a view
to pleasing his parents more than himself.  He had already sat
three times as assessor, showing an integrity that seemed strange
to many others, though he thought them strange who could prefer
gold to integrity.  His character had also been tested, not only
by the bait of covetousness, but by the spur of fear.  At Rome he
was assessor to the secretary of the Italian Treasury.  There was
at that time a very powerful senator to whose favors many were
indebted, and of whom many stood in fear.  In his usual highhanded
way he demanded to have a favor granted him that was forbidden by
the laws.  This Alypius resisted.  A bribe was promised, but he
scorned it with all his heart.  Threats were employed, but he
trampled them underfoot -- so that all men marveled at so rare a
spirit, which neither coveted the friendship nor feared the enmity
of a man at once so powerful and so widely known for his great
resources of helping his friends and doing harm to his enemies.
Even the official whose counselor Alypius was -- although he was
unwilling that the favor should be granted -- would not openly
refuse the request, but passed the responsibility on to Alypius,
alleging that he would not permit him to give his assent.  And the
truth was that even if the judge had agreed, Alypius would have
simply left the court.
     There was one matter, however, which appealed to his love of
learning, in which he was very nearly led astray.  He found out
that he might have books copied for himself at praetorian rates
[i.e., at public expense].  But his sense of justice prevailed,
and he changed his mind for the better, thinking that the rule
that forbade him was still more profitable than the privilege that
his office would have allowed him.  These are little things, but
"he that is faithful in a little matter is faithful also in a
great one."[164]  Nor can that possibly be void which was uttered
by the mouth of Thy truth: "If, therefore, you have not been
faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust
the true riches?  And if you have not been faithful in that which
is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?"[165]
Such a man was Alypius, who clung to me at that time and who
wavered in his purpose, just as I did, as to what course of life
to follow.
     17.  Nebridius also had come to Milan for no other reason
than that he might live with me in a most ardent search after
truth and wisdom.  He had left his native place near Carthage --
and Carthage itself, where he usually lived -- leaving behind his
fine family estate, his house, and his mother, who would not
follow him.  Like me, he sighed; like me, he wavered; an ardent
seeker after the true life and a most acute analyst of the most
abstruse questions.  So there were three begging mouths, sighing
out their wants one to the other, and waiting upon thee, that thou
mightest give them their meat in due season.[166]  And in all the
vexations with which thy mercy followed our worldly pursuits, we
sought for the reason why we suffered so -- and all was darkness!
We turned away groaning and exclaiming, "How long shall these
things be?"  And this we often asked, yet for all our asking we
did not relinquish them; for as yet we had not discovered anything
certain which, when we gave those others up, we might grasp in
their stead.


                          CHAPTER XI

     18.  And I especially puzzled and wondered when I remembered
how long a time had passed since my nineteenth year, in which I
had first fallen in love with wisdom and had determined as soon as
I could find her to abandon the empty hopes and mad delusions of
vain desires.  Behold, I was now getting close to thirty, still
stuck fast in the same mire, still greedy of enjoying present
goods which fly away and distract me; and I was still saying,
"Tomorrow I shall discover it; behold, it will become plain, and I
shall see it; behold, Faustus will come and explain everything."
Or I would say[167]:"O you mighty Academics, is there no certainty
that man can grasp for the guidance of his life?  No, let us
search the more diligently, and let us not despair.  See, the
things in the Church's books that appeared so absurd to us before
do not appear so now, and may be otherwise and honestly
interpreted.  I will set my feet upon that step where, as a child,
my parents placed me, until the clear truth is discovered.  But
where and when shall it be sought?  Ambrose has no leisure -- we
have no leisure to read.  Where are we to find the books?  How or
where could I get hold of them?  From whom could I borrow them?
Let me set a schedule for my days and set apart certain hours for
the health of the soul.  A great hope has risen up in us, because
the Catholic faith does not teach what we thought it did, and
vainly accused it of.  Its teachers hold it as an abomination to
believe that God is limited by the form of a human body.  And do I
doubt that I should 'knock' in order for the rest also to be
'opened' unto me?  My pupils take up the morning hours; what am I
doing with the rest of the day?  Why not do this?  But, then, when
am I to visit my influential friends, whose favors I need?  When
am I to prepare the orations that I sell to the class?  When would
I get some recreation and relax my mind from the strain of work?
     19.  "Perish everything and let us dismiss these idle
triflings.  Let me devote myself solely to the search for truth.
This life is unhappy, death uncertain.  If it comes upon me
suddenly, in what state shall I go hence and where shall I learn
what here I have neglected?  Should I not indeed suffer the
punishment of my negligence here?  But suppose death cuts off and
finishes all care and feeling.  This too is a question that calls
for inquiry.  God forbid that it should be so.  It is not without
reason, it is not in vain, that the stately authority of the
Christian faith has spread over the entire world, and God would
never have done such great things for us if the life of the soul
perished with the death of the body.  Why, therefore, do I delay
in abandoning my hopes of this world and giving myself wholly to
seek after God and the blessed life?
     "But wait a moment.  This life also is pleasant, and it has a
sweetness of its own, not at all negligible.  We must not abandon
it lightly, for it would be shameful to lapse back into it again.
See now, it is important to gain some post of honor.  And what
more should I desire?  I have crowds of influential friends, if
nothing else; and, if I push my claims, a governorship may be
offered me, and a wife with some money, so that she would not be
an added expense.  This would be the height of my desire.  Many
men, who are great and worthy of imitation, have combined the
pursuit of wisdom with a marriage life."
     20.  While I talked about these things, and the winds of
opinions veered about and tossed my heart hither and thither, time
was slipping away.  I delayed my conversion to the Lord; I
postponed from day to day the life in thee, but I could not
postpone the daily death in myself.  I was enamored of a happy
life, but I still feared to seek it in its own abode, and so I
fled from it while I sought it.  I thought I should be miserable
if I were deprived of the embraces of a woman, and I never gave a
thought to the medicine that thy mercy has provided for the
healing of that infirmity, for I had never tried it.  As for
continence, I imagined that it depended on one's own strength,
though I found no such strength in myself, for in my folly I knew
not what is written, "None can be continent unless thou dost grant
it."[168]  Certainly thou wouldst have given it, if I had
beseeched thy ears with heartfelt groaning, and if I had cast my
care upon thee with firm faith.


                          CHAPTER XII

     21.  Actually, it was Alypius who prevented me from marrying,
urging that if I did so it would not be possible for us to live
together and to have as much undistracted leisure in the love of
wisdom as we had long desired.  For he himself was so chaste that
it was wonderful, all the more because in his early youth he had
entered upon the path of promiscuity, but had not continued in it.
Instead, feeling sorrow and disgust at it, he had lived from that
time down to the present most continently.  I quoted against him
the examples of men who had been married and still lovers of
wisdom, who had pleased God and had been loyal and affectionate to
their friends.  I fell far short of them in greatness of soul,
and, enthralled with the disease of my carnality and its deadly
sweetness, I dragged my chain along, fearing to be loosed of it.
Thus I rejected the words of him who counseled me wisely, as if
the hand that would have loosed the chain only hurt my wound.
Moreover, the serpent spoke to Alypius himself by me, weaving and
lying in his path, by my tongue to catch him with pleasant snares
in which his honorable and free feet might be entangled.
     22.  For he wondered that I, for whom he had such a great
esteem, should be stuck so fast in the gluepot of pleasure as to
maintain, whenever we discussed the subject, that I could not
possibly live a celibate life.  And when I urged in my defense
against his accusing questions that the hasty and stolen delight,
which he had tasted and now hardly remembered, and therefore too
easily disparaged, was not to be compared with a settled
acquaintance with it; and that, if to this stable acquaintance
were added the honorable name of marriage, he would not then be
astonished at my inability to give it up -- when I spoke thus,
then he also began to wish to be married, not because he was
overcome by the lust for such pleasures, but out of curiosity.
For, he said, he longed to know what that could be without which
my life, which he thought was so happy, seemed to me to be no life
at all, but a punishment.  For he who wore no chain was amazed at
my slavery, and his amazement awoke the desire for experience, and
from that he would have gone on to the experiment itself, and then
perhaps he would have fallen into the very slavery that amazed him
in me, since he was ready to enter into "a covenant with
death,"[169] for "he that loves danger shall fall into it."[170]
     Now, the question of conjugal honor in the ordering of a good
married life and the bringing up of children interested us but
slightly.  What afflicted me most and what had made me already a
slave to it was the habit of satisfying an insatiable lust; but
Alypius was about to be enslaved by a merely curious wonder.  This
is the state we were in until thou, O Most High, who never
forsakest our lowliness, didst take pity on our misery and didst
come to our rescue in wonderful and secret ways.


                         CHAPTER XIII

     23.  Active efforts were made to get me a wife.  I wooed; I
was engaged; and my mother took the greatest pains in the matter.
For her hope was that, when I was once married, I might be washed
clean in health-giving baptism for which I was being daily
prepared, as she joyfully saw, taking note that her desires and
promises were being fulfilled in my faith.  Yet, when, at my
request and her own impulse, she called upon thee daily with
strong, heartfelt cries, that thou wouldst, by a vision, disclose
unto her a leading about my future marriage, thou wouldst not.
She did, indeed, see certain vain and fantastic things, such as
are conjured up by the strong preoccupation of the human spirit,
and these she supposed had some reference to me.  And she told me
about them, but not with the confidence she usually had when thou
hadst shown her anything.  For she always said that she could
distinguish, by a certain feeling impossible to describe, between
thy revelations and the dreams of her own soul.  Yet the matter
was pressed forward, and proposals were made for a girl who was as
yet some two years too young to marry.[171]  And because she
pleased me, I agreed to wait for her.


                          CHAPTER XIV

     24.  Many in my band of friends, consulting about and
abhorring the turbulent vexations of human life, had often
considered and were now almost determined to undertake a peaceful
life, away from the turmoil of men.  This we thought could be
obtained by bringing together what we severally owned and thus
making of it a common household, so that in the sincerity of our
friendship nothing should belong more to one than to the other;
but all were to have one purse and the whole was to belong to each
and to all.  We thought that this group might consist of ten
persons, some of whom were very rich -- especially Romanianus, my
fellow townsman, an intimate friend from childhood days.  He had
been brought up to the court on grave business matters and he was
the most earnest of us all about the project and his voice was of
great weight in commending it because his estate was far more
ample than that of the others.  We had resolved, also, that each
year two of us should be managers and provide all that was
needful, while the rest were left undisturbed.  But when we began
to reflect whether this would be permitted by our wives, which
some of us had already and others hoped to have, the whole plan,
so excellently framed, collapsed in our hands and was utterly
wrecked and cast aside.  From this we fell again into sighs and
groans, and our steps followed the broad and beaten ways of the
world; for many thoughts were in our hearts, but "Thy counsel
standeth fast forever."[172]  In thy counsel thou didst mock ours,
and didst prepare thy own plan, for it was thy purpose "to give us
meat in due season, to open thy hand, and to fill our souls with
blessing."[173]


                          CHAPTER XV

     25.  Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied.  My mistress
was torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, and my
heart which clung to her was torn and wounded till it bled.  And
she went back to Africa, vowing to thee never to know any other
man and leaving with me my natural son by her.  But I, unhappy as
I was, and weaker than a woman, could not bear the delay of the
two years that should elapse before I could obtain the bride I
sought.  And so, since I was not a lover of wedlock so much as a
slave of lust, I procured another mistress -- not a wife, of
course.  Thus in bondage to a lasting habit, the disease of my
soul might be nursed up and kept in its vigor or even increased
until it reached the realm of matrimony.  Nor indeed was the wound
healed that had been caused by cutting away my former mistress;
only it ceased to burn and throb, and began to fester, and was
more dangerous because it was less painful.


                          CHAPTER XVI

     26.  Thine be the praise; unto thee be the glory, O Fountain
of mercies.  I became more wretched and thou didst come nearer.
Thy right hand was ever ready to pluck me out of the mire and to
cleanse me, but I did not know it.  Nor did anything call me back
from a still deeper plunge into carnal pleasure except the fear of
death and of thy future judgment, which, amid all the waverings of
my opinions, never faded from my breast.  And I discussed with my
friends, Alypius and Nebridius, the nature of good and evil,
maintaining that, in my judgment, Epicurus would have carried off
the palm if I had not believed what Epicurus would not believe:
that after death there remains a life for the soul, and places of
recompense.  And I demanded of them: "Suppose we are immortal and
live in the enjoyment of perpetual bodily pleasure, and that
without any fear of losing it -- why, then, should we not be
happy, or why should we search for anything else?"  I did not know
that this was in fact the root of my misery: that I was so fallen
and blinded that I could not discern the light of virtue and of
beauty which must be embraced for its own sake, which the eye of
flesh cannot see, and only the inner vision can see.  Nor did I,
alas, consider the reason why I found delight in discussing these
very perplexities, shameful as they were, with my friends.  For I
could not be happy without friends, even according to the notions
of happiness I had then, and no matter how rich the store of my
carnal pleasures might be.  Yet of a truth I loved my friends for
their own sakes, and felt that they in turn loved me for my own
sake.
     O crooked ways!  Woe to the audacious soul which hoped that
by forsaking thee it would find some better thing!  It tossed and
turned, upon back and side and belly -- but the bed is hard, and
thou alone givest it rest.[174]  And lo, thou art near, and thou
deliverest us from our wretched wanderings and establishest us in
thy way, and thou comfortest us and sayest, "Run, I will carry
you; yea, I will lead you home and then I will set you free."[175]




                         BOOK SEVEN


     The conversion to Neoplatonism.  Augustine traces his growing
disenchantment with the Manichean conceptions of God and evil and
the dawning understanding of God's incorruptibility.  But his
thought is still bound by his materialistic notions of reality.
He rejects astrology and turns to the stud of Neoplatonism.  There
follows an analysis of the differences between Platonism and
Christianity and a remarkable account of his appropriation of
Plotinian wisdom and his experience of a Plotinian ecstasy.  From
this, he comes finally to the diligent study of the Bible,
especially the writings of the apostle Paul.  His pilgrimage is
drawing toward its goal, as he begins to know Jesus Christ and to
be drawn to him in hesitant faith.


                           CHAPTER I

     1.  Dead now was that evil and shameful youth of mine, and I
was passing into full manhood.[176]  As I increased in years, the
worse was my vanity.  For I could not conceive of any substance
but the sort I could see with my own eyes.  I no longer thought of
thee, O God, by the analogy of a human body.  Ever since I
inclined my ear to philosophy I had avoided this error -- and the
truth on this point I rejoiced to find in the faith of our
spiritual mother, thy Catholic Church. Yet I could not see how
else to conceive thee.  And I, a man -- and such a man! -- sought
to conceive thee, the sovereign and only true God.  In my inmost
heart, I believed that thou art incorruptible and inviolable and
unchangeable, because -- though I knew not how or why -- I could
still see plainly and without doubt that the corruptible is
inferior to the incorruptible, the inviolable obviously superior
to its opposite, and the unchangeable better than the changeable.
     My heart cried out violently against all fantasms,[177] and
with this one clear certainty I endeavored to brush away the swarm
of unclean flies that swarmed around the eyes of my mind.  But
behold they were scarcely scattered before they gathered again,
buzzed against my face, and beclouded my vision.  I no longer
thought of God in the analogy of a human body, yet I was
constrained to conceive thee to be some kind of body in space,
either infused into the world, or infinitely diffused beyond the
world -- and this was the incorruptible, inviolable, unchangeable
substance, which I thought was better than the corruptible, the
violable, and the changeable.[178]  For whatever I conceived to be
deprived of the dimensions of space appeared to me to be nothing,
absolutely nothing; not even a void, for if a body is taken out of
space, or if space is emptied of all its contents (of earth,
water, air, or heaven), yet it remains an empty space -- a
spacious nothing, as it were.
     2.  Being thus gross-hearted and not clear even to myself, I
then held that whatever had neither length nor breadth nor density
nor solidity, and did not or could not receive such dimensions,
was absolutely nothing.  For at that time my mind dwelt only with
ideas, which resembled the forms with which my eyes are still
familiar, nor could I see that the act of thought, by which I
formed those ideas, was itself immaterial, and yet it could not
have formed them if it were not itself a measurable entity.
     So also I thought about thee, O Life of my life, as stretched
out through infinite space, interpenetrating the whole mass of the
world, reaching out beyond in all directions, to immensity without
end; so that the earth should have thee, the heaven have thee, all
things have thee, and all of them be limited in thee, while thou
art placed nowhere at all.  As the body of the air above the earth
does not bar the passage of the light of the sun, so that the
light penetrates it, not by bursting nor dividing, but filling it
entirely, so I imagined that the body of heaven and air and sea,
and even of the earth, was all open to thee and, in all its
greatest parts as well as the smallest, was ready to receive thy
presence by a secret inspiration which, from within or without
all, orders all things thou hast created.  This was my conjecture,
because I was unable to think of anything else; yet it was untrue.
For in this way a greater part of the earth would contain a
greater part of thee; a smaller part, a smaller fraction of thee.
All things would be full of thee in such a sense that there would
be more of thee in an elephant than in a sparrow, because one is
larger than the other and fills a larger space.  And this would
make the portions of thyself present in the several portions of
the world in fragments, great to the great, small to the small.
But thou art not such a one.  But as yet thou hadst not
enlightened my darkness.


                          CHAPTER II

     3.  But it was not sufficient for me, O Lord, to be able to
oppose those deceived deceivers and those dumb orators -- dumb
because thy Word did not sound forth from them -- to oppose them
with the answer which, in the old Carthaginian days, Nebridius
used to propound, shaking all of us who heard it: "What could this
imaginary people of darkness, which the Manicheans usually set up
as an army opposed to thee, have done to thee if thou hadst
declined the combat?"  If they replied that it could have hurt
thee, they would then have made thee violable and corruptible.
If, on the other hand, the dark could have done thee no harm, then
there was no cause for any battle at all; there was less cause for
a battle in which a part of thee, one of thy members, a child of
thy own substance, should be mixed up with opposing powers, not of
thy creation; and should be corrupted and deteriorated and changed
by them from happiness into misery, so that it could not be
delivered and cleansed without thy help.  This offspring of thy
substance was supposed to be the human soul to which thy Word --
free, pure, and entire -- could bring help when it was being
enslaved, contaminated, and corrupted.  But on their hypothesis
that Word was itself corruptible because it is one and the same
substance as the soul.
     And therefore if they admitted that thy nature -- whatsoever
thou art -- is incorruptible, then all these assertions of theirs
are false and should be rejected with horror.  But if thy
substance is corruptible, then this is self-evidently false and
should be abhorred at first utterance.  This line of argument,
then, was enough against those deceivers who ought to be cast
forth from a surfeited stomach -- for out of this dilemma they
could find no way of escape without dreadful sacrilege of mind and
tongue, when they think and speak such things about thee.


                          CHAPTER III

     4.  But as yet, although I said and was firmly persuaded that
thou our Lord, the true God, who madest not only our souls but our
bodies as well -- and not only our souls and bodies but all
creatures and all things -- wast free from stain and alteration
and in no way mutable, yet I could not readily and clearly
understand what was the cause of evil.  Whatever it was, I
realized that the question must be so analyzed as not to constrain
me by any answer to believe that the immutable God was mutable,
lest I should myself become the thing that I was seeking out.  And
so I pursued the search with a quiet mind, now in a confident
feeling that what had been said by the Manicheans -- and I shrank
from them with my whole heart -- could not be true.  I now
realized that when they asked what was the origin of evil their
answer was dictated by a wicked pride, which would rather affirm
that thy nature is capable of suffering evil than that their own
nature is capable of doing it.
     5.  And I directed my attention to understand what I now was
told, that free will is the cause of our doing evil and that thy
just judgment is the cause of our having to suffer from its
consequences.  But I could not see this clearly.  So then, trying
to draw the eye of my mind up out of that pit, I was plunged back
into it again, and trying often was just as often plunged back
down.  But one thing lifted me up toward thy light: it was that I
had come to know that I had a will as certainly as I knew that I
had life.  When, therefore, I willed or was unwilling to do
something, I was utterly certain that it was none but myself who
willed or was unwilling -- and immediately I realized that there
was the cause of my sin.  I could see that what I did against my
will I suffered rather than did; and I did not regard such actions
as faults, but rather as punishments in which I might quickly
confess that I was not unjustly punished, since I believed thee to
be most just.  Who was it that put this in me, and implanted in me
the root of bitterness, in spite of the fact that I was altogether
the handiwork of my most sweet God?  If the devil is to blame, who
made the devil himself?  And if he was a good angel who by his own
wicked will became the devil, how did there happen to be in him
that wicked will by which he became a devil, since a good Creator
made him wholly a good angel?  By these reflections was I again
cast down and stultified.  Yet I was not plunged into that hell of
error -- where no man confesses to thee -- where I thought that
thou didst suffer evil, rather than that men do it.


                          CHAPTER IV

     6.  For in my struggle to solve the rest of my difficulties,
I now assumed henceforth as settled truth that the incorruptible
must be superior to the corruptible, and I did acknowledge that
thou, whatever thou art, art incorruptible.  For there never yet
was, nor will be, a soul able to conceive of anything better than
thee, who art the highest and best good.[179]  And since most
truly and certainly the incorruptible is to be placed above the
corruptible -- as I now admit it -- it followed that I could rise
in my thoughts to something better than my God, if thou wert not
incorruptible.  When, therefore, I saw that the incorruptible was
to be preferred to the corruptible, I saw then where I ought to
seek thee, and where I should look for the source of evil: that
is, the corruption by which thy substance can in no way be
profaned.  For it is obvious that corruption in no way injures our
God, by no inclination, by no necessity, by no unforeseen chance
-- because he is our God, and what he wills is good, and he
himself is that good.  But to be corrupted is not good.  Nor art
thou compelled to do anything against thy will, since thy will is
not greater than thy power.  But it would have to be greater if
thou thyself wert greater than thyself -- for the will and power
of God are God himself.  And what can take thee by surprise, since
thou knowest all, and there is no sort of nature but thou knowest
it?  And what more should we say about why that substance which
God is cannot be corrupted; because if this were so it could not
be God?


                           CHAPTER V

     7.  And I kept seeking for an answer to the question, Whence
is evil?  And I sought it in an evil way, and I did not see the
evil in my very search. I marshaled before the sight of my spirit
all creation: all that we see of earth and sea and air and stars
and trees and animals; and all that we do not see, the firmament
of the sky above and all the angels and all spiritual things, for
my imagination arranged these also, as if they were bodies, in
this place or that.  And I pictured to myself thy creation as one
vast mass, composed of various kinds of bodies -- some of which
were actually bodies, some of those which I imagined spirits were
like.  I pictured this mass as vast -- of course not in its full
dimensions, for these I could not know -- but as large as I could
possibly think, still only finite on every side.  But thou, O
Lord, I imagined as environing the mass on every side and
penetrating it, still infinite in every direction -- as if there
were a sea everywhere, and everywhere through measureless space
nothing but an infinite sea; and it contained within itself some
sort of sponge, huge but still finite, so that the sponge would in
all its parts be filled from the immeasurable sea.[180]
     Thus I conceived thy creation itself to be finite, and filled
by thee, the infinite.  And I said, "Behold God, and behold what
God hath created!"  God is good, yea, most mightily and
incomparably better than all his works.  But yet he who is good
has created them good; behold how he encircles and fills them.
Where, then, is evil, and whence does it come and how has it crept
in?  What is its root and what its seed?  Has it no being at all?
Why, then, do we fear and shun what has no being?  Or if we fear
it needlessly, then surely that fear is evil by which the heart is
unnecessarily stabbed and tortured -- and indeed a greater evil
since we have nothing real to fear, and yet do fear.  Therefore,
either that is evil which we fear, or the act of fearing is in
itself evil.  But, then, whence does it come, since God who is
good has made all these things good?  Indeed, he is the greatest
and chiefest Good, and hath created these lesser goods; but both
Creator and created are all good.  Whence, then, is evil?  Or,
again, was there some evil matter out of which he made and formed
and ordered it, but left something in his creation that he did not
convert into good?  But why should this be?  Was he powerless to
change the whole lump so that no evil would remain in it, if he is
the Omnipotent?  Finally, why would he make anything at all out of
such stuff?  Why did he not, rather, annihilate it by his same
almighty power?  Could evil exist contrary to his will?  And if it
were from eternity, why did he permit it to be nonexistent for
unmeasured intervals of time in the past, and why, then, was he
pleased to make something out of it after so long a time?  Or, if
he wished now all of a sudden to create something, would not an
almighty being have chosen to annihilate this evil matter and live
by himself -- the perfect, true, sovereign, and infinite Good?
Or, if it were not good that he who was good should not also be
the framer and creator of what was good, then why was that evil
matter not removed and brought to nothing, so that he might form
good matter, out of which he might then create all things?  For he
would not be omnipotent if he were not able to create something
good without being assisted by that matter which had not been
created by himself.
     Such perplexities I revolved in my wretched breast,
overwhelmed with gnawing cares lest I die before I discovered the
truth.  And still the faith of thy Christ, our Lord and Saviour,
as it was taught me by the Catholic Church, stuck fast in my
heart.  As yet it was unformed on many points and diverged from
the rule of right doctrine, but my mind did not utterly lose it,
and every day drank in more and more of it.


                           CHAPTER VI

     8.  By now I had also repudiated the lying divinations and
impious absurdities of the astrologers.  Let thy mercies, out of
the depth of my soul, confess this to thee also, O my God.  For
thou, thou only (for who else is it who calls us back from the
death of all errors except the Life which does not know how to die
and the Wisdom which gives light to minds that need it, although
it itself has no need of light -- by which the whole universe is
governed, even to the fluttering leaves of the trees?) -- thou
alone providedst also for my obstinacy with which I struggled
against Vindicianus, a sagacious old man, and Nebridius, that
remarkably talented young man.  The former declared vehemently and
the latter frequently -- though with some reservation -- that no
art existed by which we foresee future things.  But men's surmises
have oftentimes the help of chance, and out of many things which
they foretold some came to pass unawares to the predictors, who
lighted on the truth by making so many guesses.
     And thou also providedst a friend for me, who was not a
negligent consulter of the astrologers even though he was not
thoroughly skilled in the art either -- as I said, one who
consulted them out of curiosity.  He knew a good, deal about it,
which, he said, he had heard from his father, and he never
realized how far his ideas would help to overthrow my estimation
of that art.  His name was Firminus and he had received a liberal
education and was a cultivated rhetorician.  It so happened that
he consulted me, as one very dear to him, as to what I thought
about some affairs of his in which his worldly hopes had risen,
viewed in the light of his so-called horoscope.  Although I had
now begun to learn in this matter toward Nebridius' opinion, I did
not quite decline to speculate about the matter or to tell him
what thoughts still came into my irresolute mind, although I did
add that I was almost persuaded now that these were but empty and
ridiculous follies.  He then told me that his father had been very
much interested in such books, and that he had a friend who was as
much interested in them as he was himself.  They, in combined
study and consultation, fanned the flame of their affection for
this folly, going so far as to observe the moment when the dumb
animals which belonged to their household gave birth to young, and
then observed the position of the heavens with regard to them, so
as to gather fresh evidence for this so-called art.  Moreover, he
reported that his father had told him that, at the same time his
mother was about to give birth to him [Firminus], a female slave
of a friend of his father's was also pregnant.  This could not be
hidden from her master, who kept records with the most diligent
exactness of the birth dates even of his dogs.  And so it happened
to pass that -- under the most careful observations, one for his
wife and the other for his servant, with exact calculations of the
days, hours, and minutes -- both women were delivered at the same
moment, so that both were compelled to cast the selfsame
horoscope, down to the minute: the one for his son, the other for
his young slave.  For as soon as the women began to be in labor,
they each sent word to the other as to what was happening in their
respective houses and had messengers ready to dispatch to one
another as soon as they had information of the actual birth -- and
each, of course, knew instantly the exact time.  It turned out,
Firminus said, that the messengers from the respective houses met
one another at a point equidistant from either house, so that
neither of them could discern any difference either in the
position of the stars or any other of the most minute points.  And
yet Firminus, born in a high estate in his parents' house, ran his
course through the prosperous paths of this world, was increased
in wealth, and elevated to honors.  At the same time, the slave,
the yoke of his condition being still unrelaxed, continued to
serve his masters as Firminus, who knew him, was able to report.
     9.  Upon hearing and believing these things related by so
reliable a person all my resistance melted away.  First, I
endeavored to reclaim Firminus himself from his superstition by
telling him that after inspecting his horoscope, I ought, if I
could foretell truly, to have seen in it parents eminent among
their neighbors, a noble family in its own city, a good birth, a
proper education, and liberal learning.  But if that servant had
consulted me with the same horoscope, since he had the same one, I
ought again to tell him likewise truly that I saw in it the
lowliness of his origin, the abjectness of his condition, and
everything else different and contrary to the former prediction.
If, then, by casting up the same horoscopes I should, in order to
speak the truth, make contrary analyses, or else speak falsely if
I made identical readings, then surely it followed that whatever
was truly foretold by the analysis of the horoscopes was not by
art, but by chance.  And whatever was said falsely was not from
incompetence in the art, but from the error of chance.
     10.  An opening being thus made in my darkness, I began to
consider other implications involved here.  Suppose that one of
the fools -- who followed such an occupation and whom I longed to
assail, and to reduce to confusion -- should urge against me that
Firminus had given me false information, or that his father had
informed him falsely.  I then turned my thoughts to those that are
born twins, who generally come out of the womb so near the one to
the other that the short interval between them -- whatever
importance they may ascribe to it in the nature of things --
cannot be noted by human observation or expressed in those tables
which the astrologer uses to examine when he undertakes to
pronounce the truth.  But such pronouncements cannot be true.  For
looking into the same horoscopes, he must have foretold the same
future for Esau and Jacob,[181] whereas the same future did not
turn out for them.  He must therefore speak falsely.  If he is to
speak truly, then he must read contrary predictions into the same
horoscopes.  But this would mean that it was not by art, but by
chance, that he would speak truly.
     For thou, O Lord, most righteous ruler of the universe, dost
work by a secret impulse -- whether those who inquire or those
inquired of know it or not -- so that the inquirer may hear what,
according to the secret merit of his soul, he ought to hear from
the deeps of thy righteous judgment.  Therefore let no man say to
thee, "What is this?" or, "Why is that?" Let him not speak thus,
for he is only a man.


                          CHAPTER VII

     11.  By now, O my Helper, thou hadst freed me from those
fetters.  But still I inquired, "Whence is evil?" -- and found no
answer.  But thou didst not allow me to be carried away from the
faith by these fluctuations of thought.  I still believed both
that thou dost exist and that thy substance is immutable, and that
thou dost care for and wilt judge all men, and that in Christ, thy
Son our Lord, and the Holy Scriptures, which the authority of thy
Catholic Church pressed on me, thou hast planned the way of man's
salvation to that life which is to come after this death.
     With these convictions safe and immovably settled in my mind,
I eagerly inquired, "Whence is evil?"  What torments did my
travailing heart then endure!  What sighs, O my God!  Yet even
then thy ears were open and I knew it not, and when in stillness I
sought earnestly, those silent contritions of my soul were loud
cries to thy mercy.  No man knew, but thou knewest what I endured.
How little of it could I express in words to the ears of my
dearest friends!  How could the whole tumult of my soul, for which
neither time nor speech was sufficient, come to them?  Yet the
whole of it went into thy ears, all of which I bellowed out in the
anguish of my heart.  My desire was before thee, and the light of
my eyes was not with me; for it was within and I was without.  Nor
was that light in any place; but I still kept thinking only of
things that are contained in a place, and could find among them no
place to rest in.  They did not receive me in such a way that I
could say, "It is sufficient; it is well." Nor did they allow me
to turn back to where it might be well enough with me.  For I was
higher than they, though lower than thou.  Thou art my true joy if
I depend upon thee, and thou hadst subjected to me what thou didst
create lower than I.  And this was the true mean and middle way of
salvation for me, to continue in thy image and by serving thee
have dominion over the body.  But when I lifted myself proudly
against thee, and "ran against the Lord, even against his neck,
with the thick bosses of my buckler,"[182] even the lower things
were placed above me and pressed down on me, so that there was no
respite or breathing space.  They thrust on my sight on every
side, in crowds and masses, and when I tried to think, the images
of bodies obtruded themselves into my way back to thee, as if they
would say to me, "Where are you going, unworthy and unclean one?"
And all these had sprung out of my wound, for thou hadst humbled
the haughty as one that is wounded.  By my swelling pride I was
separated from thee, and my bloated cheeks blinded my eyes.


                         CHAPTER VIII

     12.  But thou, O Lord, art forever the same, yet thou art not
forever angry with us, for thou hast compassion on our dust and
ashes.[183]  It was pleasing in thy sight to reform my deformity,
and by inward stings thou didst disturb me so that I was impatient
until thou wert made clear to my inward sight.  By the secret hand
of thy healing my swelling was lessened, the disordered and
darkened eyesight of my mind was from day to day made whole by the
stinging salve of wholesome grief.


                          CHAPTER IX

     13.  And first of all, willing to show me how thou dost
"resist the proud, but give grace to the humble,"[184] and how
mercifully thou hast made known to men the way of humility in that
thy Word "was made flesh and dwelt among men,"[185] thou didst
procure for me, through one inflated with the most monstrous
pride, certain books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into
Latin.[186]  And therein I found, not indeed in the same words,
but to the selfsame effect, enforced by many and various reasons
that "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made
that was made." That which was made by him is "life, and the life
was the light of men.  And the light shined in darkness; and the
darkness comprehended it not." Furthermore, I read that the soul
of man, though it "bears witness to the light," yet itself "is not
the light; but the Word of God, being God, is that true light that
lights every man who comes into the world." And further, that "he
was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world
knew him not."[187]  But that "he came unto his own, and his own
received him not.  And as many as received him, to them gave he
power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on his
name"[188] -- this I did not find there.
     14.  Similarly, I read there that God the Word was born "not
of flesh nor of blood, nor of the will of man, nor the will of the
flesh, but of God."[189]  But, that "the Word was made flesh, and
dwelt among us"[190] -- I found this nowhere there.  And I
discovered in those books, expressed in many and various ways,
that "the Son was in the form of God and thought it not robbery to
be equal in God,"[191] for he was naturally of the same substance.
But, that "he emptied himself and took upon himself the form of a
servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in
fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross.  Wherefore God also hath
highly exalted him" from the dead, "and given him a name above
every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of
things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God the Father"[192] -- this those books have not.  I
read further in them that before all times and beyond all times,
thy only Son remaineth unchangeably coeternal with thee, and that
of his fullness all souls receive that they may be blessed, and
that by participation in that wisdom which abides in them, they
are renewed that they may be wise.  But, that "in due time, Christ
died for the ungodly" and that thou "sparedst not thy only Son,
but deliveredst him up for us all"[193] -- this is not there.
"For thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and
hast revealed them unto babes"[194]; that they "that labor and are
heavy laden" might "come unto him and he might refresh them"
because he is "meek and lowly in heart."[195]  "The meek will he
guide in judgment; and the meek will he teach his way; beholding
our lowliness and our trouble and forgiving all our sins."[196]
But those who strut in the high boots of what they deem to be
superior knowledge will not hear Him who says, "Learn of me, for I
am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your
souls."[197]  Thus, though they know God, yet they do not glorify
him as God, nor are they thankful.  Therefore, they "become vain
in their imaginations; their foolish heart is darkened, and
professing themselves to be wise they become fools."[198]
     15.  And, moreover, I also read there how "they changed the
glory of thy incorruptible nature into idols and various images --
into an image made like corruptible man and to birds and four-
footed beasts, and creeping things"[199]: namely, into that
Egyptian food[200] for which Esau lost his birthright; so that thy
first-born people worshiped the head of a four-footed beast
instead of thee, turning back in their hearts toward Egypt and
prostrating thy image (their own soul) before the image of an ox
that eats grass.  These things I found there, but I fed not on
them.  For it pleased thee, O Lord, to take away the reproach of
his minority from Jacob, that the elder should serve the younger
and thou mightest call the Gentiles, and I had sought strenuously
after that gold which thou didst allow thy people to take from
Egypt, since wherever it was it was thine.[201]  And thou saidst
unto the Athenians by the mouth of thy apostle that in thee "we
live and move and have our being," as one of their own poets had
said.[202]  And truly these books came from there.  But I did not
set my mind on the idols of Egypt which they fashioned of gold,
"changing the truth of God into a lie and worshiping and serving
the creature more than the Creator."[203]


                           CHAPTER X

     16.  And being admonished by these books to return into
myself, I entered into my inward soul, guided by thee.  This I
could do because thou wast my helper.  And I entered, and with the
eye of my soul -- such as it was -- saw above the same eye of my
soul and above my mind the Immutable Light.  It was not the common
light, which all flesh can see; nor was it simply a greater one of
the same sort, as if the light of day were to grow brighter and
brighter, and flood all space.  It was not like that light, but
different, yea, very different from all earthly light whatever.
Nor was it above my mind in the same way as oil is above water, or
heaven above earth, but it was higher, because it made me, and I
was below it, because I was made by it.  He who knows the Truth
knows that Light, and he who knows it knows eternity.  Love knows
it, O Eternal Truth and True Love and Beloved Eternity!  Thou art
my God, to whom I sigh both night and day.  When I first knew
thee, thou didst lift me up, that I might see that there was
something to be seen, though I was not yet fit to see it.  And
thou didst beat back the weakness of my sight, shining forth upon
me thy dazzling beams of light, and I trembled with love and fear.
I realized that I was far away from thee in the land of
unlikeness, as if I heard thy voice from on high: "I am the food
of strong men; grow and you shall feed on me; nor shall you change
me, like the food of your flesh into yourself, but you shall be
changed into my likeness." And I understood that thou chastenest
man for his iniquity, and makest my soul to be eaten away as
though by a spider.[204]  And I said, "Is Truth, therefore,
nothing, because it is not diffused through space -- neither
finite nor infinite?"  And thou didst cry to me from afar, "I am
that I am."[205]  And I heard this, as things are heard in the
heart, and there was no room for doubt.  I should have more
readily doubted that I am alive than that the Truth exists -- the
Truth which is "clearly seen, being understood by the things that
are made."[206]


                          CHAPTER XI

     17.  And I viewed all the other things that are beneath thee,
and I realized that they are neither wholly real nor wholly
unreal.  They are real in so far as they come from thee; but they
are unreal in so far as they are not what thou art.  For that is
truly real which remains immutable.  It is good, then, for me to
hold fast to God, for if I do not remain in him, neither shall I
abide in myself; but he, remaining in himself, renews all things.
And thou art the Lord my God, since thou standest in no need of my
goodness.


                          CHAPTER XII

     18.  And it was made clear to me that all things are good
even if they are corrupted.  They could not be corrupted if they
were supremely good; but unless they were good they could not be
corrupted.  If they were supremely good, they would be
incorruptible; if they were not good at all, there would be
nothing in them to be corrupted.  For corruption harms; but unless
it could diminish goodness, it could not harm.  Either, then,
corruption does not harm -- which cannot be -- or, as is certain,
all that is corrupted is thereby deprived of good.  But if they
are deprived of all good, they will cease to be.  For if they are
at all and cannot be at all corrupted, they will become better,
because they will remain incorruptible.  Now what can be more
monstrous than to maintain that by losing all good they have
become better?  If, then, they are deprived of all good, they will
cease to exist.  So long as they are, therefore, they are good.
Therefore, whatsoever is, is good.  Evil, then, the origin of
which I had been seeking, has no substance at all; for if it were
a substance, it would be good.  For either it would be an
incorruptible substance and so a supreme good, or a corruptible
substance, which could not be corrupted unless it were good.  I
understood, therefore, and it was made clear to me that thou
madest all things good, nor is there any substance at all not made
by thee.  And because all that thou madest is not equal, each by
itself is good, and the sum of all of them is very good, for our
God made all things very good.[207]


                         CHAPTER XIII

     19.  To thee there is no such thing as evil, and even in thy
whole creation taken as a whole, there is not; because there is
nothing from beyond it that can burst in and destroy the order
which thou hast appointed for it.  But in the parts of creation,
some things, because they do not harmonize with others, are
considered evil.  Yet those same things harmonize with others and
are good, and in themselves are good.  And all these things which
do not harmonize with each other still harmonize with the inferior
part of creation which we call the earth, having its own cloudy
and windy sky of like nature with itself.  Far be it from me,
then, to say, "These things should not be." For if I could see
nothing but these, I should indeed desire something better -- but
still I ought to praise thee, if only for these created things.
For that thou art to be praised is shown from the fact that
"earth, dragons, and all deeps; fire, and hail, snow and vapors,
stormy winds fulfilling thy word; mountains, and all hills,
fruitful trees, and all cedars; beasts and all cattle; creeping
things, and flying fowl; things of the earth, and all people;
princes, and all judges of the earth; both young men and maidens,
old men and children,"[208] praise thy name!  But seeing also that
in heaven all thy angels praise thee, O God, praise thee in the
heights, "and all thy hosts, sun and moon, all stars and light,
the heavens of heavens, and the waters that are above the
heavens,"[209] praise thy name -- seeing this, I say, I no longer
desire a better world, because my thought ranged over all, and
with a sounder judgment I reflected that the things above were
better than those below, yet that all creation together was better
than the higher things alone.


                          CHAPTER XIV

     20.  There is no health in those who find fault with any part
of thy creation; as there was no health in me when I found fault
with so many of thy works.  And, because my soul dared not be
displeased with my God, it would not allow that the things which
displeased me were from thee.  Hence it had wandered into the
notion of two substances, and could find no rest, but talked
foolishly, And turning from that error, it had then made for
itself a god extended through infinite space; and it thought this
was thou and set it up in its heart, and it became once more the
temple of its own idol, an abomination to thee.  But thou didst
soothe my brain, though I was unaware of it, and closed my eyes
lest they should behold vanity; and thus I ceased from
preoccupation with self by a little and my madness was lulled to
sleep; and I awoke in thee, and beheld thee as the Infinite, but
not in the way I had thought -- and this vision was not derived
from the flesh.


                          CHAPTER XV

     21.  And I looked around at other things, and I saw that it
was to thee that all of them owed their being, and that they were
all finite in thee; yet they are in thee not as in a space, but
because thou holdest all things in the hand of thy truth, and
because all things are true in so far as they are; and because
falsehood is nothing except the existence in thought of what does
not exist in fact.  And I saw that all things harmonize, not only
in their places but also in their seasons.  And I saw that thou,
who alone art eternal, didst not _begin_ to work after unnumbered
periods of time -- because all ages, both those which are past and
those which shall pass, neither go nor come except through thy
working and abiding.


                          CHAPTER XVI

     22.  And I saw and found it no marvel that bread which is
distasteful to an unhealthy palate is pleasant to a healthy one;
or that the light, which is painful to sore eyes, is a delight to
sound ones.  Thy righteousness displeases the wicked, and they
find even more fault with the viper and the little worm, which
thou hast created good, fitting in as they do with the inferior
parts of creation.  The wicked themselves also fit in here, and
proportionately more so as they become unlike thee -- but they
harmonize with the higher creation proportionately as they become
like thee.  And I asked what wickedness was, and I found that it
was no substance, but a perversion of the will bent aside from
thee, O God, the supreme substance, toward these lower things,
casting away its inmost treasure and becoming bloated with
external good.[210]


                         CHAPTER XVII

     23.  And I marveled that I now loved thee, and no fantasm in
thy stead, and yet I was not stable enough to enjoy my God
steadily.  Instead I was transported to thee by thy beauty, and
then presently torn away from thee by my own weight, sinking with
grief into these lower things.  This weight was carnal habit.  But
thy memory dwelt with me, and I never doubted in the least that
there was One for me to cleave to; but I was not yet ready to
cleave to thee firmly.  For the body which is corrupted presses
down the soul, and the earthly dwelling weighs down the mind,
which muses upon many things.[211]  My greatest certainty was that
"the invisible things of thine from the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even
thy eternal power and Godhead."[212]  For when I inquired how it
was that I could appreciate the beauty of bodies, both celestial
and terrestrial; and what it was that supported me in making
correct judgments about things mutable; and when I concluded,
"This ought to be thus; this ought not" -- _then_ when I inquired
how it was that I could make such judgments (since I did, in fact,
make them), I realized that I had found the unchangeable and true
eternity of truth above my changeable mind.
     And thus by degrees I was led upward from bodies to the soul
which perceives them by means of the bodily senses, and from there
on to the soul's inward faculty, to which the bodily senses report
outward things -- and this belongs even to the capacities of the
beasts -- and thence on up to the reasoning power, to whose
judgment is referred the experience received from the bodily
sense.  And when this power of reason within me also found that it
was changeable, it raised itself up to its own intellectual
principle,[213] and withdrew its thoughts from experience,
abstracting itself from the contradictory throng of fantasms in
order to seek for that light in which it was bathed.  Then,
without any doubting, it cried out that the unchangeable was
better than the changeable.  From this it follows that the mind
somehow knew the unchangeable, for, unless it had known it in some
fashion, it could have had no sure ground for preferring it to the
changeable.  And thus with the flash of a trembling glance, it
arrived at _that which is_.[214]  And I saw thy invisibility
[invisibilia tua] understood by means of the things that are made.
But I was not able to sustain my gaze.  My weakness was dashed
back, and I lapsed again into my accustomed ways, carrying along
with me nothing but a loving memory of my vision, and an appetite
for what I had, as it were, smelled the odor of, but was not yet
able to eat.


                         CHAPTER XVIII

     24.  I sought, therefore, some way to acquire the strength
sufficient to enjoy thee; but I did not find it until I embraced
that "Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,"[215]
"who is over all, God blessed forever,"[216] who came calling and
saying, "I am the way, the truth, and the life,"[217] and mingling
with our fleshly humanity the heavenly food I was unable to
receive.  For "the Word was made flesh" in order that thy wisdom,
by which thou didst create all things, might become milk for our
infancy.  And, as yet, I was not humble enough to hold the humble
Jesus; nor did I understand what lesson his weakness was meant to
teach us.  For thy Word, the eternal Truth, far exalted above even
the higher parts of thy creation, lifts his subjects up toward
himself.  But in this lower world, he built for himself a humble
habitation of our own clay, so that he might pull down from
themselves and win over to himself those whom he is to bring
subject to him; lowering their pride and heightening their love,
to the end that they might go on no farther in self-confidence --
but rather should become weak, seeing at their feet the Deity made
weak by sharing our coats of skin -- so that they might cast
themselves, exhausted, upon him and be uplifted by his rising.


                          CHAPTER XIX

     25.  But I thought otherwise.  I saw in our Lord Christ only
a man of eminent wisdom to whom no other man could be compared --
especially because he was miraculously born of a virgin -- sent to
set us an example of despising worldly things for the attainment
of immortality, and thus exhibiting his divine care for us.
Because of this, I held that he had merited his great authority as
leader.  But concerning the mystery contained in "the Word was
made flesh," I could not even form a notion.  From what I learned
from what has been handed down to us in the books about him --
that he ate, drank, slept, walked, rejoiced in spirit, was sad,
and discoursed with his fellows -- I realized that his flesh alone
was not bound unto thy Word, but also that there was a bond with
the human soul and body.  Everyone knows this who knows the
unchangeableness of thy Word, and this I knew by now, as far as I
was able, and I had no doubts at all about it.  For at one time to
move the limbs by an act of will, at another time not; at one time
to feel some emotion, at another time not; at one time to speak
intelligibly through verbal signs, at another, not -- these are
all properties of a soul and mind subject to change.  And if these
things were falsely written about him, all the rest would risk the
imputation of falsehood, and there would remain in those books no
saving faith for the human race.
     Therefore, because they were written truthfully, I
acknowledged a perfect man to be in Christ -- not the body of a
man only, nor, in the body, an animal soul without a rational one
as well, but a true man.  And this man I held to be superior to
all others, not only because he was a form of the Truth, but also
because of the great excellence and perfection of his human
nature, due to his participation in wisdom.
     Alypius, on the other hand, supposed the Catholics to believe
that God was so clothed with flesh that besides God and the flesh
there was no soul in Christ, and he did not think that a human
mind was ascribed to him.[218]  And because he was fully persuaded
that the actions recorded of him could not have been performed
except by a living rational creature, he moved the more slowly
toward Christian faith.[219]  But when he later learned that this
was the error of the Apollinarian heretics, he rejoiced in the
Catholic faith and accepted it.  For myself, I must confess that
it was even later that I learned how in the sentence, "The Word
was made flesh," the Catholic truth can be distinguished from the
falsehood of Photinus.  For the refutation of heretics[220] makes
the tenets of thy Church and sound doctrine to stand out boldly.
"For there must also be heresies [factions] that those who are
approved may be made manifest among the weak."[221]


                          CHAPTER XX

     26.  By having thus read the books of the Platonists, and
having been taught by them to search for the incorporeal Truth, I
saw how thy invisible things are understood through the things
that are made.  And, even when I was thrown back, I still sensed
what it was that the dullness of my soul would not allow me to
contemplate.  I was assured that thou wast, and wast infinite,
though not diffused in finite space or infinity; that thou truly
art, who art ever the same, varying neither in part nor motion;
and that all things are from thee, as is proved by this sure cause
alone: that they exist.
     Of all this I was convinced, yet I was too weak to enjoy
thee.  I chattered away as if I were an expert; but if I had not
sought thy Way in Christ our Saviour, my knowledge would have
turned out to be not instruction but destruction.[222]  For now
full of what was in fact my punishment, I had begun to desire to
seem wise.  I did not mourn my ignorance, but rather was puffed up
with knowledge.  For where was that love which builds upon the
foundation of humility, which is Jesus Christ?[223]  Or, when
would these books teach me this?  I now believe that it was thy
pleasure that I should fall upon these books before I studied thy
Scriptures, that it might be impressed on my memory how I was
affected by them; and then afterward, when I was subdued by thy
Scriptures and when my wounds were touched by thy healing fingers,
I might discern and distinguish what a difference there is between
presumption and confession -- between those who saw where they
were to go even if they did not see the way, and the Way which
leads, not only to the observing, but also the inhabiting of the
blessed country.  For had I first been molded in thy Holy
Scriptures, and if thou hadst grown sweet to me through my
familiar use of them, and if then I had afterward fallen on those
volumes, they might have pushed me off the solid ground of
godliness -- or if I had stood firm in that wholesome disposition
which I had there acquired, I might have thought that wisdom could
be attained by the study of those [Platonist] books alone.


                          CHAPTER XXI

     27.  With great eagerness, then, I fastened upon the
venerable writings of thy Spirit and principally upon the apostle
Paul.  I had thought that he sometimes contradicted himself and
that the text of his teaching did not agree with the testimonies
of the Law and the Prophets; but now all these doubts vanished
away.  And I saw that those pure words had but one face, and I
learned to rejoice with trembling.  So I began, and I found that
whatever truth I had read [in the Platonists] was here combined
with the exaltation of thy grace.  Thus, he who sees must not
glory as if he had not received, not only the things that he sees,
but the very power of sight -- for what does he have that he has
not received as a gift?  By this he is not only exhorted to see,
but also to be cleansed, that he may grasp thee, who art ever the
same; and thus he who cannot see thee afar off may yet enter upon
the road that leads to reaching, seeing, and possessing thee.  For
although a man may "delight in the law of God after the inward
man," what shall he do with that other "law in his members which
wars against the law of his mind, and brings him into captivity
under the law of sin, which is in his members"?[224]  Thou art
righteous, O Lord; but we have sinned and committed iniquities,
and have done wickedly.  Thy hand has grown heavy upon us, and we
are justly delivered over to that ancient sinner, the lord of
death.  For he persuaded our wills to become like his will, by
which he remained not in thy truth.  What shall "wretched man" do?
"Who shall deliver him from the body of this death,"[225] except
thy grace through Jesus Christ our Lord; whom thou hast begotten,
coeternal with thyself, and didst create in the beginning of thy
ways[226] -- in whom the prince of this world found nothing worthy
of death, yet he killed him -- and so the handwriting which was
all against us was blotted out?
     The books of the Platonists tell nothing of this.  Their
pages do not contain the expression of this kind of godliness --
the tears of confession, thy sacrifice, a troubled spirit, a
broken and a contrite heart, the salvation of thy people, the
espoused City, the earnest of the Holy Spirit, the cup of our
redemption.  In them, no man sings: "Shall not my soul be subject
unto God, for from him comes my salvation?  He is my God and my
salvation, my defender; I shall no more be moved."[227]  In them,
no one hears him calling, "Come unto me all you who labor." They
scorn to learn of him because he is "meek and lowly of heart"; for
"thou hast hidden those things from the wise and prudent, and hast
revealed them unto babes." For it is one thing to see the land of
peace from a wooded mountaintop: and fail to find the way thither
-- to attempt impassable ways in vain, opposed and waylaid by
fugitives and deserters under their captain, the "lion" and
"dragon"[228]; but it is quite another thing to keep to the
highway that leads thither, guarded by the hosts of the heavenly
Emperor, on which there are no deserters from the heavenly army to
rob the passers-by, for they shun it as a torment.[229]  These
thoughts sank wondrously into my heart, when I read that "least of
thy apostles"[230] and when I had considered all thy works and
trembled.



                         BOOK EIGHT


     Conversion to Christ.  Augustine is deeply impressed by
Simplicianus' story of the conversion to Christ of the famous
orator and philosopher, Marius Victorinus.  He is stirred to
emulate him, but finds himself still enchained by his incontinence
and preoccupation with worldly affairs.  He is then visited by a
court official, Ponticianus, who tells him and Alypius the stories
of the conversion of Anthony and also of two imperial "secret
service agents." These stories throw him into a violent turmoil,
in which his divided will struggles against himself.  He almost
succeeds in making the decision for continence, but is still held
back.  Finally, a child's song, overheard by chance, sends him to
the Bible; a text from Paul resolves the crisis; the conversion is
a fact.  Alypius also makes his decision, and the two inform the
rejoicing Monica.


                           CHAPTER I

     1.  O my God, let me remember with gratitude and confess to
thee thy mercies toward me.  Let my bones be bathed in thy love,
and let them say: "Lord, who is like unto thee?[231]  Thou hast
broken my bonds in sunder, I will offer unto thee the sacrifice of
thanksgiving."[232]  And how thou didst break them I will declare,
and all who worship thee shall say, when they hear these things:
"Blessed be the Lord in heaven and earth, great and wonderful is
his name."[233]
     Thy words had stuck fast in my breast, and I was hedged round
about by thee on every side.  Of thy eternal life I was now
certain, although I had seen it "through a glass darkly."[234]
And I had been relieved of all doubt that there is an
incorruptible substance and that it is the source of every other
substance.  Nor did I any longer crave greater certainty about
thee, but rather greater steadfastness in thee.
     But as for my temporal life, everything was uncertain, and my
heart had to be purged of the old leaven.  "The Way" -- the
Saviour himself -- pleased me well, but as yet I was reluctant to
pass through the strait gate.
     And thou didst put it into my mind, and it seemed good in my
own sight, to go to Simplicianus, who appeared to me a faithful
servant of thine, and thy grace shone forth in him.  I had also
been told that from his youth up he had lived in entire devotion
to thee.  He was already an old man, and because of his great age,
which he had passed in such a zealous discipleship in thy way, he
appeared to me likely to have gained much wisdom -- and, indeed,
he had.  From all his experience, I desired him to tell me --
setting before him all my agitations -- which would be the most
fitting way for one who felt as I did to walk in thy way.
     2.  For I saw the Church full; and one man was going this way
and another that.  Still, I could not be satisfied with the life I
was living in the world.  Now, indeed, my passions had ceased to
excite me as of old with hopes of honor and wealth, and it was a
grievous burden to go on in such servitude.  For, compared with
thy sweetness and the beauty of thy house -- which I loved --
those things delighted me no longer.  But I was still tightly
bound by the love of women; nor did the apostle forbid me to
marry, although he exhorted me to something better, wishing
earnestly that all men were as he himself was.
     But I was weak and chose the easier way, and for this single
reason my whole life was one of inner turbulence and listless
indecision, because from so many influences I was compelled --
even though unwilling -- to agree to a married life which bound me
hand and foot.  I had heard from the mouth of Truth that "there
are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of
Heaven's sake"[235] but, said he, "He that is able to receive it,
let him receive it." Of a certainty, all men are vain who do not
have the knowledge of God, or have not been able, from the good
things that are seen, to find him who is good.  But I was no
longer fettered in that vanity.  I had surmounted it, and from the
united testimony of thy whole creation had found thee, our
Creator, and thy Word -- God with thee, and together with thee and
the Holy Spirit, one God -- by whom thou hast created all things.
There is still another sort of wicked men, who "when they knew
God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful."[236]
Into this also I had fallen, but thy right hand held me up and
bore me away, and thou didst place me where I might recover.  For
thou hast said to men, "Behold the fear of the Lord, this is
wisdom,"[237] and, "Be not wise in your own eyes,"[238] because
"they that profess themselves to be wise become fools."[239]  But
I had now found the goodly pearl; and I ought to have sold all
that I had and bought it -- yet I hesitated.


                          CHAPTER II

     3.  I went, therefore, to Simplicianus, the spiritual father
of Ambrose (then a bishop), whom Ambrose truly loved as a father.
I recounted to him all the mazes of my wanderings, but when I
mentioned to him that I had read certain books of the Platonists
which Victorinus -- formerly professor of rhetoric at Rome, who
died a Christian, as I had been told -- had translated into Latin,
Simplicianus congratulated me that I had not fallen upon the
writings of other philosophers, which were full of fallacies and
deceit, "after the beggarly elements of this world,"[240] whereas
in the Platonists, at every turn, the pathway led to belief in God
and his Word.
     Then, to encourage me to copy the humility of Christ, which
is hidden from the wise and revealed to babes, he told me about
Victorinus himself, whom he had known intimately at Rome.  And I
cannot refrain from repeating what he told me about him.  For it
contains a glorious proof of thy grace, which ought to be
confessed to thee: how that old man, most learned, most skilled in
all the liberal arts; who had read, criticized, and explained so
many of the writings of the philosophers; the teacher of so many
noble senators; one who, as a mark of his distinguished service in
office had both merited and obtained a statue in the Roman Forum
-- which men of this world esteem a great honor -- this man who,
up to an advanced age, had been a worshiper of idols, a
communicant in the sacrilegious rites to which almost all the
nobility of Rome were wedded; and who had inspired the people with
the love of Osiris and
     "The dog Anubis, and a medley crew
     Of monster gods who 'gainst Neptune stand in arms
     'Gainst Venus and Minerva, steel-clad Mars,"[241]
     whom Rome once conquered, and now worshiped; all of which old
Victorinus had with thundering eloquence defended for so many
years -- despite all this, he did not blush to become a child of
thy Christ, a babe at thy font, bowing his neck to the yoke of
humility and submitting his forehead to the ignominy of the cross.
     4.  O Lord, Lord, "who didst bow the heavens and didst
descend, who didst touch the mountains and they smoked,"[242] by
what means didst thou find thy way into that breast?  He used to
read the Holy Scriptures, as Simplicianus said, and thought out
and studied all the Christian writings most studiously.  He said
to Simplicianus -- not openly but secretly as a friend -- "You
must know that I am a Christian." To which Simplicianus replied,
"I shall not believe it, nor shall I count you among the
Christians, until I see you in the Church of Christ." Victorinus
then asked, with mild mockery, "Is it then the walls that make
Christians?"  Thus he often would affirm that he was already a
Christian, and as often Simplicianus made the same answer; and
just as often his jest about the walls was repeated.  He was
fearful of offending his friends, proud demon worshipers, from the
height of whose Babylonian dignity, as from the tops of the cedars
of Lebanon which the Lord had not yet broken down, he feared that
a storm of enmity would descend upon him.
     But he steadily gained strength from reading and inquiry, and
came to fear lest he should be denied by Christ before the holy
angels if he now was afraid to confess him before men.  Thus he
came to appear to himself guilty of a great fault, in being
ashamed of the sacraments of the humility of thy Word, when he was
not ashamed of the sacrilegious rites of those proud demons, whose
pride he had imitated and whose rites he had shared.  From this he
became bold-faced against vanity and shamefaced toward the truth.
Thus, suddenly and unexpectedly, he said to Simplicianus -- as he
himself told me -- "Let us go to the church; I wish to become a
Christian." Simplicianus went with him, scarcely able to contain
himself for joy.  He was admitted to the first sacraments of
instruction, and not long afterward gave in his name that he might
receive the baptism of regeneration.  At this Rome marveled and
the Church rejoiced.  The proud saw and were enraged; they gnashed
their teeth and melted away!  But the Lord God was thy servant's
hope and he paid no attention to their vanity and lying madness.
     5.  Finally, when the hour arrived for him to make a public
profession of his faith -- which at Rome those who are about to
enter into thy grace make from a platform in the full sight of the
faithful people, in a set form of words learned by heart -- the
presbyters offered Victorinus the chance to make his profession
more privately, for this was the custom for some who were likely
to be afraid through bashfulness.  But Victorinus chose rather to
profess his salvation in the presence of the holy congregation.
For there was no salvation in the rhetoric which he taught: yet he
had professed that openly.  Why, then, should he shrink from
naming thy Word before the sheep of thy flock, when he had not
shrunk from uttering his own words before the mad multitude?
     So, then, when he ascended the platform to make his
profession, everyone, as they recognized him, whispered his name
one to the other, in tones of jubilation.  Who was there among
them that did not know him?  And a low murmur ran through the
mouths of all the rejoicing multitude: "Victorinus!  Victorinus!"
There was a sudden burst of exaltation at the sight of him, and
suddenly they were hushed that they might hear him.  He pronounced
the true faith with an excellent boldness, and all desired to take
him to their very heart -- indeed, by their love and joy they did
take him to their heart.  And they received him with loving and
joyful hands.


                          CHAPTER III

     6.  O good God, what happens in a man to make him rejoice
more at the salvation of a soul that has been despaired of and
then delivered from greater danger than over one who has never
lost hope, or never been in such imminent danger?  For thou also,
O most merciful Father, "dost rejoice more over one that repents
than over ninety and nine just persons that need no
repentance."[243]  And we listen with much delight whenever we
hear how the lost sheep is brought home again on the shepherd's
shoulders while the angels rejoice; or when the piece of money is
restored to its place in the treasury and the neighbors rejoice
with the woman who found it.[244]  And the joy of the solemn
festival of thy house constrains us to tears when it is read in
thy house: about the younger son who "was dead and is alive again,
was lost and is found." For it is thou who rejoicest both in us
and in thy angels, who are holy through holy love.  For thou art
ever the same because thou knowest unchangeably all things which
remain neither the same nor forever.
     7.  What, then, happens in the soul when it takes more
delight at finding or having restored to it the things it loves
than if it had always possessed them?  Indeed, many other things
bear witness that this is so -- all things are full of witnesses,
crying out, "So it is." The commander triumphs in victory; yet he
could not have conquered if he had not fought; and the greater the
peril of the battle, the more the joy of the triumph.  The storm
tosses the voyagers, threatens shipwreck, and everyone turns pale
in the presence of death.  Then the sky and sea grow calm, and
they rejoice as much as they had feared.  A loved one is sick and
his pulse indicates danger; all who desire his safety are
themselves sick at heart; he recovers, though not able as yet to
walk with his former strength; and there is more joy now than
there was before when he walked sound and strong.  Indeed, the
very pleasures of human life -- not only those which rush upon us
unexpectedly and involuntarily, but also those which are voluntary
and planned -- men obtain by difficulties.  There is no pleasure
in caring and drinking unless the pains of hunger and thirst have
preceded.  Drunkards even eat certain salt meats in order to
create a painful thirst -- and when the drink allays this, it
causes pleasure.  It is also the custom that the affianced bride
should not be immediately given in marriage so that the husband
may not esteem her any less, whom as his betrothed he longed for.
     8.  This can be seen in the case of base and dishonorable
pleasure.  But it is also apparent in pleasures that are permitted
and lawful: in the sincerity of honest friendship; and in him who
was dead and lived again, who had been lost and was found.  The
greater joy is everywhere preceded by the greater pain.  What does
this mean, O Lord my God, when thou art an everlasting joy to
thyself, and some creatures about thee are ever rejoicing in thee?
What does it mean that this portion of creation thus ebbs and
flows, alternately in want and satiety?  Is this their mode of
being and is this all thou hast allotted to them: that, from the
highest heaven to the lowest earth, from the beginning of the
world to the end, from the angels to the worm, from the first
movement to the last, thou wast assigning to all their proper
places and their proper seasons -- to all the kinds of good things
and to all thy just works?  Alas, how high thou art in the highest
and how deep in the deepest!  Thou never departest from us, and
yet only with difficulty do we return to thee.


                          CHAPTER IV

     9.  Go on, O Lord, and act: stir us up and call us back;
inflame us and draw us to thee; stir us up and grow sweet to us;
let us now love thee, let us run to thee.  Are there not many men
who, out of a deeper pit of darkness than that of Victorinus,
return to thee -- who draw near to thee and are illuminated by
that light which gives those who receive it power from thee to
become thy sons?  But if they are less well-known, even those who
know them rejoice less for them.  For when many rejoice together
the joy of each one is fuller, in that they warm one another,
catch fire from each other; moreover, those who are well-known
influence many toward salvation and take the lead with many to
follow them.  Therefore, even those who took the way before them
rejoice over them greatly, because they do not rejoice over them
alone.  But it ought never to be that in thy tabernacle the
persons of the rich should be welcome before the poor, or the
nobly born before the rest -- since "thou hast rather chosen the
weak things of the world to confound the strong; and hast chosen
the base things of the world and things that are despised, and the
things that are not, in order to bring to nought the things that
are."[245]  It was even "the least of the apostles" by whose
tongue thou didst sound forth these words.  And when Paulus the
proconsul had his pride overcome by the onslaught of the apostle
and he was made to pass under the easy yoke of thy Christ and
became an officer of the great King, he also desired to be called
Paul instead of Saul, his former name, in testimony to such a
great victory.[246]  For the enemy is more overcome in one on whom
he has a greater hold, and whom he has hold of more completely.
But the proud he controls more readily through their concern about
their rank and, through them, he controls more by means of their
influence.  The more, therefore, the world prized the heart of
Victorinus (which the devil had held in an impregnable stronghold)
and the tongue of Victorinus (that sharp, strong weapon with which
the devil had slain so many), all the more exultingly should Thy
sons rejoice because our King hath bound the strong man, and they
saw his vessels taken from him and cleansed, and made fit for thy
honor and "profitable to the Lord for every good work."[247]


                           CHAPTER V

     10.  Now when this man of thine, Simplicianus, told me the
story of Victorinus, I was eager to imitate him.  Indeed, this was
Simplicianus' purpose in telling it to me.  But when he went on to
tell how, in the reign of the Emperor Julian, there was a law
passed by which Christians were forbidden to teach literature and
rhetoric; and how Victorinus, in ready obedience to the law, chose
to abandon his "school of words" rather than thy Word, by which
thou makest eloquent the tongues of the dumb -- he appeared to me
not so much brave as happy, because he had found a reason for
giving his time wholly to thee.  For this was what I was longing
to do; but as yet I was bound by the iron chain of my own will.
The enemy held fast my will, and had made of it a chain, and had
bound me tight with it.  For out of the perverse will came lust,
and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted,
became necessity.  By these links, as it were, forged together --
which is why I called it "a chain" -- a hard bondage held me in
slavery.  But that new will which had begun to spring up in me
freely to worship thee and to enjoy thee, O my God, the only
certain Joy, was not able as yet to overcome my former
willfulness, made strong by long indulgence.  Thus my two wills --
the old and the new, the carnal and the spiritual -- were in
conflict within me; and by their discord they tore my soul apart.
     11.  Thus I came to understand from my own experience what I
had read, how "the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh."[248]  I truly lusted both ways, yet more in
that which I approved in myself than in that which I disapproved
in myself.  For in the latter it was not now really I that was
involved, because here I was rather an unwilling sufferer than a
willing actor.  And yet it was through me that habit had become an
armed enemy against me, because I had willingly come to be what I
unwillingly found myself to be.
     Who, then, can with any justice speak against it, when just
punishment follows the sinner?  I had now no longer my accustomed
excuse that, as yet, I hesitated to forsake the world and serve
thee because my perception of the truth was uncertain.  For now it
was certain.  But, still bound to the earth, I refused to be thy
soldier; and was as much afraid of being freed from all
entanglements as we ought to fear to be entangled.
     12.  Thus with the baggage of the world I was sweetly
burdened, as one in slumber, and my musings on thee were like the
efforts of those who desire to awake, but who are still
overpowered with drowsiness and fall back into deep slumber.  And
as no one wishes to sleep forever (for all men rightly count
waking better) -- yet a man will usually defer shaking off his
drowsiness when there is a heavy lethargy in his limbs; and he is
glad to sleep on even when his reason disapproves, and the hour
for rising has struck -- so was I assured that it was much better
for me to give myself up to thy love than to go on yielding myself
to my own lust.  Thy love satisfied and vanquished me; my lust
pleased and fettered me.[249]  I had no answer to thy calling to
me, "Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ
shall give you light."[250]  On all sides, thou didst show me that
thy words are true, and I, convicted by the truth, had nothing at
all to reply but the drawling and drowsy words: "Presently; see,
presently.  Leave me alone a little while." But "presently,
presently," had no present; and my "leave me alone a little while"
went on for a long while.  In vain did I "delight in thy law in
the inner man" while "another law in my members warred against the
law of my mind and brought me into captivity to the law of sin
which is in my members." For the law of sin is the tyranny of
habit, by which the mind is drawn and held, even against its will.
Yet it deserves to be so held because it so willingly falls into
the habit.  "O wretched man that I am!  Who shall deliver me from
the body of this death" but thy grace alone, through Jesus Christ
our Lord?[251]


                          CHAPTER VI

     13.  And now I will tell and confess unto thy name, O Lord,
my helper and my redeemer, how thou didst deliver me from the
chain of sexual desire by which I was so tightly held, and from
the slavery of worldly business.[252]  With increasing anxiety I
was going about my usual affairs, and daily sighing to thee.  I
attended thy church as frequently as my business, under the burden
of which I groaned, left me free to do so.  Alypius was with me,
disengaged at last from his legal post, after a third term as
assessor, and now waiting for private clients to whom he might
sell his legal advice as I sold the power of speaking (as if it
could be supplied by teaching).  But Nebridius had consented, for
the sake of our friendship, to teach under Verecundus -- a citizen
of Milan and professor of grammar, and a very intimate friend of
us all -- who ardently desired, and by right of friendship
demanded from us, the faithful aid he greatly needed.  Nebridius
was not drawn to this by any desire of gain -- for he could have
made much more out of his learning had he been so inclined -- but
as he was a most sweet and kindly friend, he was unwilling, out of
respect for the duties of friendship, to slight our request.  But
in this he acted very discreetly, taking care not to become known
to those persons who had great reputations in the world.  Thus he
avoided all distractions of mind, and reserved as many hours as
possible to pursue or read or listen to discussions about wisdom.
     14.  On a certain day, then, when Nebridius was away -- for
some reason I cannot remember -- there came to visit Alypius and
me at our house one Ponticianus, a fellow countryman of ours from
Africa, who held high office in the emperor's court.  What he
wanted with us I do not know; but we sat down to talk together,
and it chanced that he noticed a book on a game table before us.
He took it up, opened it, and, contrary to his expectation, found
it to be the apostle Paul, for he imagined that it was one of my
wearisome rhetoric textbooks.  At this, he looked up at me with a
smile and expressed his delight and wonder that he had so
unexpectedly found this book and only this one, lying before my
eyes; for he was indeed a Christian and a faithful one at that,
and often he prostrated himself before thee, our God, in the
church in constant daily prayer.  When I had told him that I had
given much attention to these writings, a conversation followed in
which he spoke of Anthony, the Egyptian monk, whose name was in
high repute among thy servants, although up to that time not
familiar to me.  When he learned this, he lingered on the topic,
giving us an account of this eminent man, and marveling at our
ignorance.  We in turn were amazed to hear of thy wonderful works
so fully manifested in recent times -- almost in our own --
occurring in the true faith and the Catholic Church. We all
wondered -- we, that these things were so great, and he, that we
had never heard of them.
     15.  From this, his conversation turned to the multitudes in
the monasteries and their manners so fragrant to thee, and to the
teeming solitudes of the wilderness, of which we knew nothing at
all.  There was even a monastery at Milan, outside the city's
walls, full of good brothers under the fostering care of Ambrose
-- and we were ignorant of it.  He went on with his story, and we
listened intently and in silence.  He then told us how, on a
certain afternoon, at Trier,[253] when the emperor was occupied
watching the gladiatorial games, he and three comrades went out
for a walk in the gardens close to the city walls.  There, as they
chanced to walk two by two, one strolled away with him, while the
other two went on by themselves.  As they rambled, these first two
came upon a certain cottage where lived some of thy servants, some
of the "poor in spirit" ("of such is the Kingdom of Heaven"),
where they found the book in which was written the life of
Anthony!  One of them began to read it, to marvel and to be
inflamed by it.  While reading, he meditated on embracing just
such a life, giving up his worldly employment to seek thee alone.
These two belonged to the group of officials called "secret
service agents."[254]  Then, suddenly being overwhelmed with a
holy love and a sober shame and as if in anger with himself, he
fixed his eyes on his friend, exclaiming: "Tell me, I beg you,
what goal are we seeking in all these toils of ours?  What is it
that we desire?  What is our motive in public service?  Can our
hopes in the court rise higher than to be 'friends of the
emperor'[255]?  But how frail, how beset with peril, is that
pride!  Through what dangers must we climb to a greater danger?
And when shall we succeed?  But if I chose to become a friend of
God, see, I can become one now." Thus he spoke, and in the pangs
of the travail of the new life he turned his eyes again onto the
page and continued reading; he was inwardly changed, as thou didst
see, and the world dropped away from his mind, as soon became
plain to others.  For as he read with a heart like a stormy sea,
more than once he groaned.  Finally he saw the better course, and
resolved on it.  Then, having become thy servant, he said to his
friend: "Now I have broken loose from those hopes we had, and I am
determined to serve God; and I enter into that service from this
hour in this place.  If you are reluctant to imitate me, do not
oppose me." The other replied that he would continue bound in his
friendship, to share in so great a service for so great a prize.
So both became thine, and began to "build a tower", counting the
cost -- namely, of forsaking all that they had and following
thee.[256]  Shortly after, Ponticianus and his companion, who had
walked with him in the other part of the garden, came in search of
them to the same place, and having found them reminded them to
return, as the day was declining.  But the first two, making known
to Ponticianus their resolution and purpose, and how a resolve had
sprung up and become confirmed in them, entreated them not to take
it ill if they refused to join themselves with them.  But
Ponticianus and his friend, although not changed from their former
course, did nevertheless (as he told us) bewail themselves and
congratulated their friends on their godliness, recommending
themselves to their prayers.  And with hearts inclining again
toward earthly things, they returned to the palace.  But the other
two, setting their affections on heavenly things, remained in the
cottage.  Both of them had affianced brides who, when they heard
of this, likewise dedicated their virginity to thee.


                          CHAPTER VII

     16.  Such was the story Ponticianus told.  But while he was
speaking, thou, O Lord, turned me toward myself, taking me from
behind my back, where I had put myself while unwilling to exercise
self-scrutiny.  And now thou didst set me face to face with
myself, that I might see how ugly I was, and how crooked and
sordid, bespotted and ulcerous.  And I looked and I loathed
myself; but whither to fly from myself I could not discover.  And
if I sought to turn my gaze away from myself, he would continue
his narrative, and thou wouldst oppose me to myself and thrust me
before my own eyes that I might discover my iniquity and hate it.
I had known it, but acted as though I knew it not -- I winked at
it and forgot it.
     17.  But now, the more ardently I loved those whose wholesome
affections I heard reported -- that they had given themselves up
wholly to thee to be cured -- the more did I abhor myself when
compared with them.  For many of my years -- perhaps twelve -- had
passed away since my nineteenth, when, upon the reading of
Cicero's Hortensius, I was roused to a desire for wisdom.  And
here I was, still postponing the abandonment of this world's
happiness to devote myself to the search. For not just the finding
alone, but also the bare search for it, ought to have been
preferred above the treasures and kingdoms of this world; better
than all bodily pleasures, though they were to be had for the
taking.  But, wretched youth that I was -- supremely wretched even
in the very outset of my youth -- I had entreated chastity of thee
and had prayed, "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."
For I was afraid lest thou shouldst hear me too soon, and too soon
cure me of my disease of lust which I desired to have satisfied
rather than extinguished.  And I had wandered through perverse
ways of godless superstition -- not really sure of it, either, but
preferring it to the other, which I did not seek in piety, but
opposed in malice.
     18.  And I had thought that I delayed from day to day in
rejecting those worldly hopes and following thee alone because
there did not appear anything certain by which I could direct my
course.  And now the day had arrived in which I was laid bare to
myself and my conscience was to chide me: "Where are you, O my
tongue?  You said indeed that you were not willing to cast off the
baggage of vanity for uncertain truth.  But behold now it is
certain, and still that burden oppresses you.  At the same time
those who have not worn themselves out with searching for it as
you have, nor spent ten years and more in thinking about it, have
had their shoulders unburdened and have received wings to fly
away." Thus was I inwardly confused, and mightily confounded with
a horrible shame, while Ponticianus went ahead speaking such
things.  And when he had finished his story and the business he
came for, he went his way.  And then what did I not say to myself,
within myself?  With what scourges of rebuke did I not lash my
soul to make it follow me, as I was struggling to go after thee?
Yet it drew back.  It refused.  It would not make an effort.  All
its arguments were exhausted and confuted.  Yet it resisted in
sullen disquiet, fearing the cutting off of that habit by which it
was being wasted to death, as if that were death itself.


                         CHAPTER VIII

     19.  Then, as this vehement quarrel, which I waged with my
soul in the chamber of my heart, was raging inside my inner
dwelling, agitated both in mind and countenance, I seized upon
Alypius and exclaimed: "What is the matter with us?  What is this?
What did you hear?  The uninstructed start up and take heaven, and
we -- with all our learning but so little heart -- see where we
wallow in flesh and blood!  Because others have gone before us,
are we ashamed to follow, and not rather ashamed at our not
following?"  I scarcely knew what I said, and in my excitement I
flung away from him, while he gazed at me in silent astonishment.
For I did not sound like myself: my face, eyes, color, tone
expressed my meaning more clearly than my words.
     There was a little garden belonging to our lodging, of which
we had the use -- as of the whole house -- for the master, our
landlord, did not live there.  The tempest in my breast hurried me
out into this garden, where no one might interrupt the fiery
struggle in which I was engaged with myself, until it came to the
outcome that thou knewest though I did not.  But I was mad for
health, and dying for life; knowing what evil thing I was, but not
knowing what good thing I was so shortly to become.
     I fled into the garden, with Alypius following step by step;
for I had no secret in which he did not share, and how could he
leave me in such distress?  We sat down, as far from the house as
possible.  I was greatly disturbed in spirit, angry at myself with
a turbulent indignation because I had not entered thy will and
covenant, O my God, while all my bones cried out to me to enter,
extolling it to the skies.  The way therein is not by ships or
chariots or feet -- indeed it was not as far as I had come from
the house to the place where we were seated.  For to go along that
road and indeed to reach the goal is nothing else but the will to
go.  But it must be a strong and single will, not staggering and
swaying about this way and that -- a changeable, twisting,
fluctuating will, wrestling with itself while one part falls as
another rises.
     20.  Finally, in the very fever of my indecision, I made many
motions with my body; like men do when they will to act but
cannot, either because they do not have the limbs or because their
limbs are bound or weakened by disease, or incapacitated in some
other way.  Thus if I tore my hair, struck my forehead, or,
entwining my fingers, clasped my knee, these I did because I
willed it.  But I might have willed it and still not have done it,
if the nerves had not obeyed my will.  Many things then I did, in
which the will and power to do were not the same.  Yet I did not
do that one thing which seemed to me infinitely more desirable,
which before long I should have power to will because shortly when
I willed, I would will with a single will.  For in this, the power
of willing is the power of doing; and as yet I could not do it.
Thus my body more readily obeyed the slightest wish of the soul in
moving its limbs at the order of my mind than my soul obeyed
itself to accomplish in the will alone its great resolve.


                          CHAPTER IX

     21.  How can there be such a strange anomaly?  And why is it?
Let thy mercy shine on me, that I may inquire and find an answer,
amid the dark labyrinth of human punishment and in the darkest
contritions of the sons of Adam.  Whence such an anomaly?  And why
should it be?  The mind commands the body, and the body obeys.
The mind commands itself and is resisted.  The mind commands the
hand to be moved and there is such readiness that the command is
scarcely distinguished from the obedience in act.  Yet the mind is
mind, and the hand is body.  The mind commands the mind to will,
and yet though it be itself it does not obey itself.  Whence this
strange anomaly and why should it be?  I repeat: The will commands
itself to will, and could not give the command unless it wills;
yet what is commanded is not done.  But actually the will does not
will entirely; therefore it does not command entirely.  For as far
as it wills, it commands.  And as far as it does not will, the
thing commanded is not done.  For the will commands that there be
an act of will -- not another, but itself.  But it does not
command entirely.  Therefore, what is commanded does not happen;
for if the will were whole and entire, it would not even command
it to be, because it would already be.  It is, therefore, no
strange anomaly partly to will and partly to be unwilling.  This
is actually an infirmity of mind, which cannot wholly rise, while
pressed down by habit, even though it is supported by the truth.
And so there are two wills, because one of them is not whole, and
what is present in this one is lacking in the other.


                           CHAPTER X

     22.  Let them perish from thy presence, O God, as vain
talkers, and deceivers of the soul perish, who, when they observe
that there are two wills in the act of deliberation, go on to
affirm that there are two kinds of minds in us: one good, the
other evil.  They are indeed themselves evil when they hold these
evil opinions -- and they shall become good only when they come to
hold the truth and consent to the truth that thy apostle may say
to them: "You were formerly in darkness, but now are you in the
light in the Lord."[257]  But they desired to be light, not "in
the Lord," but in themselves.  They conceived the nature of the
soul to be the same as what God is, and thus have become a thicker
darkness than they were; for in their dread arrogance they have
gone farther away from thee, from thee "the true Light, that
lights every man that comes into the world." Mark what you say and
blush for shame; draw near to him and be enlightened, and your
faces shall not be ashamed.[258]
     While I was deliberating whether I would serve the Lord my
God now, as I had long purposed to do, it was I who willed and it
was also I who was unwilling.  In either case, it was I.  I
neither willed with my whole will nor was I wholly unwilling.  And
so I was at war with myself and torn apart by myself.  And this
strife was against my will; yet it did not show the presence of
another mind, but the punishment of my own.  Thus it was no more I
who did it, but the sin that dwelt in me -- the punishment of a
sin freely committed by Adam, and I was a son of Adam.
     23.  For if there are as many opposing natures as there are
opposing wills, there will not be two but many more.  If any man
is trying to decide whether he should go to their conventicle or
to the theater, the Manicheans at once cry out, "See, here are two
natures -- one good, drawing this way, another bad, drawing back
that way; for how else can you explain this indecision between
conflicting wills?"  But I reply that both impulses are bad --
that which draws to them and that which draws back to the theater.
But they do not believe that the will which draws to them can be
anything but good.  Suppose, then, that one of us should try to
decide, and through the conflict of his two wills should waver
whether he should go to the theater or to our Church. Would not
those also waver about the answer here?  For either they must
confess, which they are unwilling to do, that the will that leads
to our church is as good as that which carries their own adherents
and those captivated by their mysteries; or else they must imagine
that there are two evil natures and two evil minds in one man,
both at war with each other, and then it will not be true what
they say, that there is one good and another bad.  Else they must
be converted to the truth, and no longer deny that when anyone
deliberates there is one soul fluctuating between conflicting
wills.
     24.  Let them no longer maintain that when they perceive two
wills to be contending with each other in the same man the contest
is between two opposing minds, of two opposing substances, from
two opposing principles, the one good and the other bad.  Thus, O
true God, thou dost reprove and confute and convict them.  For
both wills may be bad: as when a man tries to decide whether he
should kill a man by poison or by the sword; whether he should
take possession of this field or that one belonging to someone
else, when he cannot get both; whether he should squander his
money to buy pleasure or hold onto his money through the motive of
covetousness; whether he should go to the circus or to the
theater, if both are open on the same day; or, whether he should
take a third course, open at the same time, and rob another man's
house; or, a fourth option, whether he should commit adultery, if
he has the opportunity -- all these things concurring in the same
space of time and all being equally longed for, although
impossible to do at one time.  For the mind is pulled four ways by
four antagonistic wills -- or even more, in view of the vast range
of human desires -- but even the Manicheans do not affirm that
there are these many different substances.  The same principle
applies as in the action of good wills.  For I ask them, "Is it a
good thing to have delight in reading the apostle, or is it a good
thing to delight in a sober psalm, or is it a good thing to
discourse on the gospel?"  To each of these, they will answer, "It
is good." But what, then, if all delight us equally and all at the
same time?  Do not different wills distract the mind when a man is
trying to decide what he should choose?  Yet they are all good,
and are at variance with each other until one is chosen.  When
this is done the whole united will may go forward on a single
track instead of remaining as it was before, divided in many ways.
So also, when eternity attracts us from above, and the pleasure of
earthly delight pulls us down from below, the soul does not will
either the one or the other with all its force, but still it is
the same soul that does not will this or that with a united will,
and is therefore pulled apart with grievous perplexities, because
for truth's sake it prefers this, but for custom's sake it does
not lay that aside.


                          CHAPTER XI

     25.  Thus I was sick and tormented, reproaching myself more
bitterly than ever, rolling and writhing in my chain till it
should be utterly broken.  By now I was held but slightly, but
still was held.  And thou, O Lord, didst press upon me in my
inmost heart with a severe mercy, redoubling the lashes of fear
and shame; lest I should again give way and that same slender
remaining tie not be broken off, but recover strength and enchain
me yet more securely.
     I kept saying to myself, "See, let it be done now; let it be
done now." And as I said this I all but came to a firm decision.
I all but did it -- yet I did not quite.  Still I did not fall
back to my old condition, but stood aside for a moment and drew
breath.  And I tried again, and lacked only a very little of
reaching the resolve -- and then somewhat less, and then all but
touched and grasped it.  Yet I still did not quite reach or touch
or grasp the goal, because I hesitated to die to death and to live
to life.  And the worse way, to which I was habituated, was
stronger in me than the better, which I had not tried.  And up to
the very moment in which I was to become another man, the nearer
the moment approached, the greater horror did it strike in me.
But it did not strike me back, nor turn me aside, but held me in
suspense.
     26.  It was, in fact, my old mistresses, trifles of trifles
and vanities of vanities, who still enthralled me.  They tugged at
my fleshly garments and softly whispered: "Are you going to part
with us?  And from that moment will we never be with you any more?
And from that moment will not this and that be forbidden you
forever?"  What were they suggesting to me in those words "this or
that"?  What is it they suggested, O my God? Let thy mercy guard
the soul of thy servant from the vileness and the shame they did
suggest!  And now I scarcely heard them, for they were not openly
showing themselves and opposing me face to face; but muttering, as
it were, behind my back; and furtively plucking at me as I was
leaving, trying to make me look back at them.  Still they delayed
me, so that I hesitated to break loose and shake myself free of
them and leap over to the place to which I was being called -- for
unruly habit kept saying to me, "Do you think you can live without
them?"
     27.  But now it said this very faintly; for in the direction
I had set my face, and yet toward which I still trembled to go,
the chaste dignity of continence appeared to me -- cheerful but
not wanton, modestly alluring me to come and doubt nothing,
extending her holy hands, full of a multitude of good examples --
to receive and embrace me.  There were there so many young men and
maidens, a multitude of youth and every age, grave widows and
ancient virgins; and continence herself in their midst: not
barren, but a fruitful mother of children -- her joys -- by thee,
O Lord, her husband.  And she smiled on me with a challenging
smile as if to say: "Can you not do what these young men and
maidens can?  Or can any of them do it of themselves, and not
rather in the Lord their God?  The Lord their God gave me to them.
Why do you stand in your own strength, and so stand not?  Cast
yourself on him; fear not.  He will not flinch and you will not
fall.  Cast yourself on him without fear, for he will receive and
heal you." And I blushed violently, for I still heard the
muttering of those "trifles" and hung suspended.  Again she seemed
to speak: "Stop your ears against those unclean members of yours,
that they may be mortified.  They tell you of delights, but not
according to the law of the Lord thy God." This struggle raging in
my heart was nothing but the contest of self against self.  And
Alypius kept close beside me, and awaited in silence the outcome
of my extraordinary agitation.


                          CHAPTER XII

     28.  Now when deep reflection had drawn up out of the secret
depths of my soul all my misery and had heaped it up before the
sight of my heart, there arose a mighty storm, accompanied by a
mighty rain of tears.  That I might give way fully to my tears and
lamentations, I stole away from Alypius, for it seemed to me that
solitude was more appropriate for the business of weeping.  I went
far enough away that I could feel that even his presence was no
restraint upon me.  This was the way I felt at the time, and he
realized it.  I suppose I had said something before I started up
and he noticed that the sound of my voice was choked with weeping.
And so he stayed alone, where we had been sitting together,
greatly astonished.  I flung myself down under a fig tree -- how I
know not -- and gave free course to my tears.  The streams of my
eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to thee.  And, not indeed
in these words, but to this effect, I cried to thee: "And thou, O
Lord, how long?  How long, O Lord?  Wilt thou be angry forever?
Oh, remember not against us our former iniquities."[259]  For I
felt that I was still enthralled by them.  I sent up these
sorrowful cries: "How long, how long?  Tomorrow and tomorrow?  Why
not now?  Why not this very hour make an end to my uncleanness?"
     29.  I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter
contrition of my heart, when suddenly I heard the voice of a boy
or a girl I know not which -- coming from the neighboring house,
chanting over and over again, "Pick it up, read it; pick it up,
read it."[260]  Immediately I ceased weeping and began most
earnestly to think whether it was usual for children in some kind
of game to sing such a song, but I could not remember ever having
heard the like.  So, damming the torrent of my tears, I got to my
feet, for I could not but think that this was a divine command to
open the Bible and read the first passage I should light upon.
For I had heard[261] how Anthony, accidentally coming into church
while the gospel was being read, received the admonition as if
what was read had been addressed to him: "Go and sell what you
have and give it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in
heaven; and come and follow me."[262]  By such an oracle he was
forthwith converted to thee.
     So I quickly returned to the bench where Alypius was sitting,
for there I had put down the apostle's book when I had left there.
I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on
which my eyes first fell: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in
chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to
fulfill the lusts thereof."[263]  I wanted to read no further, nor
did I need to.  For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was
infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and
all the gloom of doubt vanished away.[264]
     30.  Closing the book, then, and putting my finger or
something else for a mark I began -- now with a tranquil
countenance -- to tell it all to Alypius.  And he in turn
disclosed to me what had been going on in himself, of which I knew
nothing.  He asked to see what I had read.  I showed him, and he
looked on even further than I had read.  I had not known what
followed.  But indeed it was this, "Him that is weak in the faith,
receive."[265]  This he applied to himself, and told me so.  By
these words of warning he was strengthened, and by exercising his
good resolution and purpose -- all very much in keeping with his
character, in which, in these respects, he was always far
different from and better than I -- he joined me in full
commitment without any restless hesitation.
     Then we went in to my mother, and told her what happened, to
her great joy.  We explained to her how it had occurred -- and she
leaped for joy triumphant; and she blessed thee, who art "able to
do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think."[266]
For she saw that thou hadst granted her far more than she had ever
asked for in all her pitiful and doleful lamentations.  For thou
didst so convert me to thee that I sought neither a wife nor any
other of this world's hopes, but set my feet on that rule of faith
which so many years before thou hadst showed her in her dream
about me.  And so thou didst turn her grief into gladness more
plentiful than she had ventured to desire, and dearer and purer
than the desire she used to cherish of having grandchildren of my
flesh.



                          BOOK NINE


     The end of the autobiography.  Augustine tells of his
resigning from his professorship and of the days at Cassiciacum in
preparation for baptism.  He is baptized together with Adeodatus
and Alypius.  Shortly thereafter, they start back for Africa.
Augustine recalls the ecstasy he and his mother shared in Ostia
and then reports her death and burial and his grief.  The book
closes with a moving prayer for the souls of Monica, Patricius,
and all his fellow citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem.


                           CHAPTER I

     1.  "O Lord, I am thy servant; I am thy servant and the son
of thy handmaid.  Thou hast loosed my bonds.  I will offer to thee
the sacrifice of thanksgiving."[267]  Let my heart and my tongue
praise thee, and let all my bones say, "Lord, who is like unto
thee?"  Let them say so, and answer thou me and say unto my soul,
"I am your salvation."
     Who am I, and what is my nature?  What evil is there not in
me and my deeds; or if not in my deeds, my words; or if not in my
words, my will?  But thou, O Lord, art good and merciful, and thy
right hand didst reach into the depth of my death and didst empty
out the abyss of corruption from the bottom of my heart.  And this
was the result: now I did not will to do what I willed, and began
to will to do what thou didst will.
     But where was my free will during all those years and from
what deep and secret retreat was it called forth in a single
moment, whereby I gave my neck to thy "easy yoke" and my shoulders
to thy "light burden," O Christ Jesus, "my Strength and my
Redeemer"?  How sweet did it suddenly become to me to be without
the sweetness of trifles!  And it was now a joy to put away what I
formerly feared to lose.  For thou didst cast them away from me, O
true and highest Sweetness.  Thou didst cast them away, and in
their place thou didst enter in thyself -- sweeter than all
pleasure, though not to flesh and blood; brighter than all light,
but more veiled than all mystery; more exalted than all honor,
though not to them that are exalted in their own eyes.  Now was my
soul free from the gnawing cares of seeking and getting, of
wallowing in the mire and scratching the itch of lust.  And I
prattled like a child to thee, O Lord my God -- my light, my
riches, and my salvation.


                          CHAPTER II

     2.  And it seemed right to me, in thy sight, not to snatch my
tongue's service abruptly out of the speech market, but to
withdraw quietly, so that the young men who were not concerned
about thy law or thy peace, but with mendacious follies and
forensic strifes, might no longer purchase from my mouth weapons
for their frenzy.  Fortunately, there were only a few days before
the "vintage vacation"[268]; and I determined to endure them, so
that I might resign in due form and, now bought by thee, return
for sale no more.
     My plan was known to thee, but, save for my own friends, it
was not known to other men.  For we had agreed that it should not
be made public; although, in our ascent from the "valley of tears"
and our singing of "the song of degrees," thou hadst given us
sharp arrows and hot burning coals to stop that deceitful tongue
which opposes under the guise of good counsel, and devours what it
loves as though it were food.
     3.  Thou hadst pierced our heart with thy love, and we
carried thy words, as it were, thrust through our vitals.  The
examples of thy servants whom thou hadst changed from black to
shining white, and from death to life, crowded into the bosom of
our thoughts and burned and consumed our sluggish temper, that we
might not topple back into the abyss.  And they fired us
exceedingly, so that every breath of the deceitful tongue of our
detractors might fan the flame and not blow it out.
     Though this vow and purpose of ours should find those who
would loudly praise it -- for the sake of thy name, which thou
hast sanctified throughout the earth -- it nevertheless looked
like a self-vaunting not to wait until the vacation time now so
near.  For if I had left such a public office ahead of time, and
had made the break in the eye of the general public, all who took
notice of this act of mine and observed how near was the vintage
time that I wished to anticipate would have talked about me a
great deal, as if I were trying to appear a great person.  And
what purpose would it serve that people should consider and
dispute about my conversion so that my good should be evil spoken
of?
     4.  Furthermore, this same summer my lungs had begun to be
weak from too much literary labor.  Breathing was difficult; the
pains in my chest showed that the lungs were affected and were
soon fatigued by too loud or prolonged speaking.  This had at
first been a trial to me, for it would have compelled me almost of
necessity to lay down that burden of teaching; or, if I was to be
cured and become strong again, at least to take a leave for a
while.  But as soon as the full desire to be still that I might
know that thou art the Lord[269] arose and was confirmed in me,
thou knowest, my God, that I began to rejoice that I had this
excuse ready -- and not a feigned one, either -- which might
somewhat temper the displeasure of those who for their sons'
freedom wished me never to have any freedom of my own.
     Full of joy, then, I bore it until my time ran out -- it was
perhaps some twenty days -- yet it was some strain to go through
with it, for the greediness which helped to support the drudgery
had gone, and I would have been overwhelmed had not its place been
taken by patience.  Some of thy servants, my brethren, may say
that I sinned in this, since having once fully and from my heart
enlisted in thy service, I permitted myself to sit a single hour
in the chair of falsehood.  I will not dispute it.  But hast thou
not, O most merciful Lord, pardoned and forgiven this sin in the
holy water[270] also, along with all the others, horrible and
deadly as they were?


                          CHAPTER III

     5.  Verecundus was severely disturbed by this new happiness
of mine, since he was still firmly held by his bonds and saw that
he would lose my companionship.  For he was not yet a Christian,
though his wife was; and, indeed, he was more firmly enchained by
her than by anything else, and held back from that journey on
which we had set out.  Furthermore, he declared he did not wish to
be a Christian on any terms except those that were impossible.
However, he invited us most courteously to make use of his country
house so long as we would stay there.  O Lord, thou wilt
recompense him for this "in the resurrection of the just,"[271]
seeing that thou hast already given him "the lot of the
righteous."[272]  For while we were absent at Rome, he was
overtaken with bodily sickness, and during it he was made a
Christian and departed this life as one of the faithful.  Thus
thou hadst mercy on him, and not on him only, but on us as well;
lest, remembering the exceeding kindness of our friend to us and
not able to count him in thy flock, we should be tortured with
intolerable grief.  Thanks be unto thee, our God; we are thine.
Thy exhortations, consolations, and faithful promises assure us
that thou wilt repay Verecundus for that country house at
Cassiciacum -- where we found rest in thee from the fever of the
world -- with the perpetual freshness of thy paradise in which
thou hast forgiven him his earthly sins, in that mountain flowing
with milk, that fruitful mountain -- thy own.
     6.  Thus Verecundus was full of grief; but Nebridius was
joyous.  For he was not yet a Christian, and had fallen into the
pit of deadly error, believing that the flesh of thy Son, the
Truth, was a phantom.[273]  Yet he had come up out of that pit and
now held the same belief that we did.  And though he was not as
yet initiated in any of the sacraments of thy Church, he was a
most earnest inquirer after truth.  Not long after our conversion
and regeneration by thy baptism, he also became a faithful member
of the Catholic Church, serving thee in perfect chastity and
continence among his own people in Africa, and bringing his whole
household with him to Christianity.  Then thou didst release him
from the flesh, and now he lives in Abraham's bosom.  Whatever is
signified by that term "bosom," there lives my Nebridius, my sweet
friend, thy son by adoption, O Lord, and not a freedman any
longer.  There he lives; for what other place could there be for
such a soul?  There he lives in that abode about which he used to
ask me so many questions -- poor ignorant one that I was.  Now he
does not put his ear up to my mouth, but his spiritual mouth to
thy fountain, and drinks wisdom as he desires and as he is able --
happy without end.  But I do not believe that he is so inebriated
by that draught as to forget me; since thou, O Lord, who art the
draught, art mindful of us.
     Thus, then, we were comforting the unhappy Verecundus -- our
friendship untouched -- reconciling him to our conversion and
exhorting him to a faith fit for his condition (that is, to his
being married).  We tarried for Nebridius to follow us, since he
was so close, and this he was just about to do when at last the
interim ended.  The days had seemed long and many because of my
eagerness for leisure and liberty in which I might sing to thee
from my inmost part, "My heart has said to thee, I have sought thy
face; thy face, O Lord, will I seek."[274]


                          CHAPTER IV

     7.  Finally the day came on which I was actually to be
relieved from the professorship of rhetoric, from which I had
already been released in intention.  And it was done.  And thou
didst deliver my tongue as thou hadst already delivered my heart;
and I blessed thee for it with great joy, and retired with my
friends to the villa.[275]  My books testify to what I got done
there in writing, which was now hopefully devoted to thy service;
though in this pause it was still as if I were panting from my
exertions in the school of pride.[276]  These were the books in
which I engaged in dialogue with my friends, and also those in
soliloquy before thee alone.[277]  And there are my letters to
Nebridius, who was still absent.[278]
     When would there be enough time to recount all thy great
blessings which thou didst bestow on us in that time, especially
as I am hastening on to still greater mercies?  For my memory
recalls them to me and it is pleasant to confess them to thee, O
Lord: the inward goads by which thou didst subdue me and how thou
broughtest me low, leveling the mountains and hills of my
thoughts, straightening my crookedness, and smoothing my rough
ways.  And I remember by what means thou also didst subdue
Alypius, my heart's brother, to the name of thy only Son, our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ -- which he at first refused to have
inserted in our writings.  For at first he preferred that they
should smell of the cedars of the schools[279] which the Lord hath
now broken down, rather than of the wholesome herbs of the Church,
hostile to serpents.[280]
     8.  O my God, how did I cry to thee when I read the psalms of
David, those hymns of faith, those paeans of devotion which leave
no room for swelling pride!  I was still a novice in thy true
love, a catechumen keeping holiday at the villa, with Alypius, a
catechumen like myself.  My mother was also with us -- in woman's
garb, but with a man's faith, with the peacefulness of age and the
fullness of motherly love and Christian piety.  What cries I used
to send up to thee in those songs, and how I was enkindled toward
thee by them!  I burned to sing them if possible, throughout the
whole world, against the pride of the human race.  And yet,
indeed, they are sung throughout the whole world, and none can
hide himself from thy heat.  With what strong and bitter regret
was I indignant at the Manicheans!  Yet I also pitied them; for
they were ignorant of those sacraments, those medicines[281] --
and raved insanely against the cure that might have made them
sane!  I wished they could have been somewhere close by, and --
without my knowledge -- could have seen my face and heard my words
when, in that time of leisure, I pored over the Fourth Psalm.  And
I wish they could have seen how that psalm affected me.[282]
"When I called upon thee, O God of my righteousness, thou didst
hear me; thou didst enlarge me when I was in distress.  Have mercy
upon me and hear my prayer." I wish they might have heard what I
said in comment on those words -- without my knowing that they
heard, lest they should think that I was speaking it just on their
account.  For, indeed, I should not have said quite the same
things, nor quite in the same way, if I had known that I was heard
and seen by them.  And if I had so spoken, they would not have
meant the same things to them as they did to me when I spoke by
and for myself before thee, out of the private affections of my
soul.
     9.  By turns I trembled with fear and warmed with hope and
rejoiced in thy mercy, O Father.  And all these feelings showed
forth in my eyes and voice when thy good Spirit turned to us and
said, "O sons of men, how long will you be slow of heart, how long
will you love vanity, and seek after falsehood?"  For I had loved
vanity and sought after falsehood.  And thou, O Lord, had already
magnified thy Holy One, raising him from the dead and setting him
at thy right hand, that thence he should send forth from on high
his promised "Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth." Already he had sent
him, and I knew it not.  He had sent him because he was now
magnified, rising from the dead and ascending into heaven.  For
till then "the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was
not yet glorified."[283]  And the prophet cried out: "How long
will you be slow of heart?  How long will you love vanity, and
seek after falsehood?  Know this, that the Lord hath magnified his
Holy One." He cries, "How long?"  He cries, "Know this," and I --
so long "loving vanity, and seeking after falsehood" -- heard and
trembled, because these words were spoken to such a one as I
remembered that I myself had been.  For in those phantoms which I
once held for truth there was vanity and falsehood.  And I spoke
many things loudly and earnestly -- in the contrition of my memory
-- which I wish they had heard, who still "love vanity and seek
after falsehood." Perhaps they would have been troubled, and have
vomited up their error, and thou wouldst have heard them when they
cried to thee; for by a real death in the flesh He died for us who
now maketh intercession for us with thee.
     10.  I read on further, "Be angry, and sin not." And how
deeply was I touched, O my God; for I had now learned to be angry
with myself for the things past, so that in the future I might not
sin.  Yes, to be angry with good cause, for it was not another
nature out of the race of darkness that had sinned for me -- as
they affirm who are not angry with themselves, and who store up
for themselves dire wrath against the day of wrath and the
revelation of thy righteous judgment.  Nor were the good things I
saw now outside me, nor were they to be seen with the eyes of
flesh in the light of the earthly sun.  For they that have their
joys from without sink easily into emptiness and are spilled out
on those things that are visible and temporal, and in their
starving thoughts they lick their very shadows.  If only they
would grow weary with their hunger and would say, "Who will show
us any good?"  And we would answer, and they would hear, "O Lord,
the light of thy countenance shines bright upon us." For we are
not that Light that enlightens every man, but we are enlightened
by thee, so that we who were formerly in darkness may now be
alight in thee.  If only they could behold the inner Light Eternal
which, now that I had tasted it, I gnashed my teeth because I
could not show it to them unless they brought me their heart in
their eyes -- their roving eyes -- and said, "Who will show us any
good?"  But even there, in the inner chamber of my soul -- where I
was angry with myself; where I was inwardly pricked, where I had
offered my sacrifice, slaying my old man, and hoping in thee with
the new resolve of a new life with my trust laid in thee -- even
there thou hadst begun to grow sweet to me and to "put gladness in
my heart." And thus as I read all this, I cried aloud and felt its
inward meaning.  Nor did I wish to be increased in worldly goods
which are wasted by time, for now I possessed, in thy eternal
simplicity, other corn and wine and oil.
     11.  And with a loud cry from my heart, I read the following
verse: "Oh, in peace!  Oh, in the Selfsame!"[284]  See how he says
it: "I will lay me down and take my rest."[285]  For who shall
withstand us when the truth of this saying that is written is made
manifest: "Death is swallowed up in victory"[286]?  For surely
thou, who dost not change, art the Selfsame, and in thee is rest
and oblivion to all distress.  There is none other beside thee,
nor are we to toil for those many things which are not thee, for
only thou, O Lord, makest me to dwell in hope."
     These things I read and was enkindled -- but still I could
not discover what to do with those deaf and dead Manicheans to
whom I myself had belonged; for I had been a bitter and blind
reviler against these writings, honeyed with the honey of heaven
and luminous with thy light.  And I was sorely grieved at these
enemies of this Scripture.
     12.  When shall I call to mind all that happened during those
holidays?  I have not forgotten them; nor will I be silent about
the severity of thy scourge, and the amazing quickness of thy
mercy.  During that time thou didst torture me with a toothache;
and when it had become so acute that I was not able to speak, it
came into my heart to urge all my friends who were present to pray
for me to thee, the God of all health.  And I wrote it down on the
tablet and gave it to them to read.  Presently, as we bowed our
knees in supplication, the pain was gone.  But what pain?  How did
it go?  I confess that I was terrified, O Lord my God, because
from my earliest years I had never experienced such pain.  And thy
purposes were profoundly impressed upon me; and rejoicing in
faith, I praised thy name.  But that faith allowed me no rest in
respect of my past sins, which were not yet forgiven me through
thy baptism.


                           CHAPTER V

     13.  Now that the vintage vacation was ended, I gave notice
to the citizens of Milan that they might provide their scholars
with another word-merchant.  I gave as my reasons my determination
to serve thee and also my insufficiency for the task, because of
the difficulty in breathing and the pain in my chest.
     And by letters I notified thy bishop, the holy man Ambrose,
of my former errors and my present resolution.  And I asked his
advice as to which of thy books it was best for me to read so that
I might be the more ready and fit for the reception of so great a
grace.  He recommended Isaiah the prophet; and I believe it was
because Isaiah foreshows more clearly than others the gospel, and
the calling of the Gentiles.  But because I could not understand
the first part and because I imagined the rest to be like it, I
laid it aside with the intention of taking it up again later, when
better practiced in our Lord's words.


                          CHAPTER VI

     14.  When the time arrived for me to give in my name, we left
the country and returned to Milan.  Alypius also resolved to be
born again in thee at the same time.  He was already clothed with
the humility that befits thy sacraments, and was so brave a tamer
of his body that he would walk the frozen Italian soil with his
naked feet, which called for unusual fortitude.  We took with us
the boy Adeodatus, my son after the flesh, the offspring of my
sin.  Thou hadst made of him a noble lad.  He was barely fifteen
years old, but his intelligence excelled that of many grave and
learned men.  I confess to thee thy gifts, O Lord my God, creator
of all, who hast power to reform our deformities -- for there was
nothing of me in that boy but the sin.  For it was thou who didst
inspire us to foster him in thy discipline, and none other -- thy
gifts I confess to thee.  There is a book of mine, entitled De
Magistro.[287]  It is a dialogue between Adeodatus and me, and
thou knowest that all things there put into the mouth of my
interlocutor are his, though he was then only in his sixteenth
year.  Many other gifts even more wonderful I found in him.  His
talent was a source of awe to me.  And who but thou couldst be the
worker of such marvels?  And thou didst quickly remove his life
from the earth, and even now I recall him to mind with a sense of
security, because I fear nothing for his childhood or youth, nor
for his whole career.  We took him for our companion, as if he
were the same age in grace with ourselves, to be trained with
ourselves in thy discipline.  And so we were baptized and the
anxiety about our past life left us.
     Nor did I ever have enough in those days of the wondrous
sweetness of meditating on the depth of thy counsels concerning
the salvation of the human race.  How freely did I weep in thy
hymns and canticles; how deeply was I moved by the voices of thy
sweet-speaking Church!  The voices flowed into my ears; and the
truth was poured forth into my heart, where the tide of my
devotion overflowed, and my tears ran down, and I was happy in all
these things.


                          CHAPTER VII

     15.  The church of Milan had only recently begun to employ
this mode of consolation and exaltation with all the brethren
singing together with great earnestness of voice and heart.  For
it was only about a year -- not much more -- since Justina, the
mother of the boy-emperor Valentinian, had persecuted thy servant
Ambrose on behalf of her heresy, in which she had been seduced by
the Arians.  The devoted people kept guard in the church, prepared
to die with their bishop, thy servant.  Among them my mother, thy
handmaid, taking a leading part in those anxieties and vigils,
lived there in prayer.  And even though we were still not wholly
melted by the heat of thy Spirit, we were nevertheless excited by
the alarmed and disturbed city.
     This was the time that the custom began, after the manner of
the Eastern Church, that hymns and psalms should be sung, so that
the people would not be worn out with the tedium of lamentation.
This custom, retained from then till now, has been imitated by
many, indeed, by almost all thy congregations throughout the rest
of the world.[288]
     16.  Then by a vision thou madest known to thy renowned
bishop the spot where lay the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius,
the martyrs, whom thou hadst preserved uncorrupted for so many
years in thy secret storehouse, so that thou mightest produce them
at a fit time to check a woman's fury -- a woman indeed, but also
a queen!  When they were discovered and dug up and brought with
due honor to the basilica of Ambrose, as they were borne along the
road many who were troubled by unclean spirits -- the devils
confessing themselves -- were healed.  And there was also a
certain man, a well-known citizen of the city, blind many years,
who, when he had asked and learned the reason for the people's
tumultuous joy, rushed out and begged his guide to lead him to the
place.  When he arrived there, he begged to be permitted to touch
with his handkerchief the bier of thy saints, whose death is
precious in thy sight.  When he had done this, and put it to his
eyes, they were immediately opened.  The fame of all this spread
abroad; from this thy glory shone more brightly.  And also from
this the mind of that angry woman, though not enlarged to the
sanity of a full faith, was nevertheless restrained from the fury
of persecution.
     Thanks to thee, O my God.  Whence and whither hast thou led
my memory, that I should confess such things as these to thee --
for great as they were, I had forgetfully passed them over?  And
yet at that time, when the sweet savor of thy ointment was so
fragrant, I did not run after thee.[289]  Therefore, I wept more
bitterly as I listened to thy hymns, having so long panted after
thee.  And now at length I could breathe as much as the space
allows in this our straw house.[290]


                         CHAPTER VIII

     17.  Thou, O Lord, who makest men of one mind to dwell in a
single house, also broughtest Evodius to join our company.  He was
a young man of our city, who, while serving as a secret service
agent, was converted to thee and baptized before us.  He had
relinquished his secular service, and prepared himself for thine.
We were together, and we were resolved to live together in our
devout purpose.
     We cast about for some place where we might be most useful in
our service to thee, and had planned on going back together to
Africa.  And when we had got as far as Ostia on the Tiber, my
mother died.
     I am passing over many things, for I must hasten.  Receive, O
my God, my confessions and thanksgiving for the unnumbered things
about which I am silent.  But I will not omit anything my mind has
brought back concerning thy handmaid who brought me forth -- in
her flesh, that I might be born into this world's light, and in
her heart, that I might be born to life eternal.  I will not speak
of her gifts, but of thy gift in her; for she neither made herself
nor trainedd herself.  Thou didst create her, and neither her
father nor her mother knew what kind of being was to come forth
from them.  And it was the rod of thy Christ, the discipline of
thy only Son, that trained her in thy fear, in the house of one of
thy faithful ones who was a sound member of thy Church. Yet my
mother did not attribute this good training of hers as much to the
diligence of her own mother as to that of a certain elderly
maidservant who had nursed her father, carrying him around on her
back, as big girls carried babies.  Because of her long-time
service and also because of her extreme age and excellent
character, she was much respected by the heads of that Christian
household.  The care of her master's daughters was also committed
to her, and she performed her task with diligence.  She was quite
earnest in restraining them with a holy severity when necessary
and instructing them with a sober sagacity.  Thus, except at
mealtimes at their parents' table -- when they were fed very
temperately -- she would not allow them to drink even water,
however parched they were with thirst.  In this way she took
precautions against an evil custom and added the wholesome advice:
"You drink water now only because you don't control the wine; but
when you are married and mistresses of pantry and cellar, you may
not care for water, but the habit of drinking will be fixed." By
such a method of instruction, and her authority, she restrained
the longing of their tender age, and regulated even the thirst of
the girls to such a decorous control that they no longer wanted
what they ought not to have.
     18.  And yet, as thy handmaid related to me, her son, there
had stolen upon her a love of wine.  For, in the ordinary course
of things, when her parents sent her as a sober maiden to draw
wine from the cask, she would hold a cup under the tap; and then,
before she poured the wine into the bottle, she would wet the tips
of her lips with a little of it, for more than this her taste
refused.  She did not do this out of any craving for drink, but
out of the overflowing buoyancy of her time of life, which bubbles
up with sportiveness and youthful spirits, but is usually borne
down by the gravity of the old folks.  And so, adding daily a
little to that little -- for "he that contemns small things shall
fall by a little here and a little there"[291] -- she slipped into
such a habit as to drink off eagerly her little cup nearly full of
wine.
     Where now was that wise old woman and her strict prohibition?
Could anything prevail against our secret disease if thy medicine,
O Lord, did not watch over us?  Though father and mother and
nurturers are absent, thou art present, who dost create, who
callest, and who also workest some good for our salvation, through
those who are set over us.  What didst thou do at that time, O my
God?  How didst thou heal her?  How didst thou make her whole?
Didst thou not bring forth from another woman's soul a hard and
bitter insult, like a surgeon's knife from thy secret store, and
with one thrust drain off all that putrefaction?  For the slave
girl who used to accompany her to the cellar fell to quarreling
with her little mistress, as it sometimes happened when she was
alone with her, and cast in her teeth this vice of hers, along
with a very bitter insult: calling her "a drunkard." Stung by this
taunt, my mother saw her own vileness and immediately condemned
and renounced it.
     As the flattery of friends corrupts, so often do the taunts
of enemies instruct.  Yet thou repayest them, not for the good
thou workest through their means, but for the malice they
intended.  That angry slave girl wanted to infuriate her young
mistress, not to cure her; and that is why she spoke up when they
were alone.  Or perhaps it was because their quarrel just happened
to break out at that time and place; or perhaps she was afraid of
punishment for having told of it so late.
     But thou, O Lord, ruler of heaven and earth, who changest to
thy purposes the deepest floods and controls the turbulent tide of
the ages, thou healest one soul by the unsoundness of another; so
that no man, when he hears of such a happening, should attribute
it to his own power if another person whom he wishes to reform is
reformed through a word of his.


                          CHAPTER IX

     19.  Thus modestly and soberly brought up, she was made
subject to her parents by thee, rather more than by her parents to
thee.  She arrived at a marriageable age, and she was given to a
husband whom she served as her lord.  And she busied herself to
gain him to thee, preaching thee to him by her behavior, in which
thou madest her fair and reverently amiable, and admirable to her
husband.  For she endured with patience his infidelity and never
had any dissension with her husband on this account.  For she
waited for thy mercy upon him until, by believing in thee, he
might become chaste.
     Moreover, even though he was earnest in friendship, he was
also violent in anger; but she had learned that an angry husband
should not be resisted, either in deed or in word.  But as soon as
he had grown calm and was tranquil, and she saw a fitting moment,
she would give him a reason for her conduct, if he had been
excited unreasonably.  As a result, while many matrons whose
husbands were more gentle than hers bore the marks of blows on
their disfigured faces, and would in private talk blame the
behavior of their husbands, she would blame their tongues,
admonishing them seriously -- though in a jesting manner -- that
from the hour they heard what are called the matrimonial tablets
read to them, they should think of them as instruments by which
they were made servants.  So, always being mindful of their
condition, they ought not to set themselves up in opposition to
their lords.  And, knowing what a furious, bad-tempered husband
she endured, they marveled that it had never been rumored, nor was
there any mark to show, that Patricius had ever beaten his wife,
or that there had been any domestic strife between them, even for
a day.  And when they asked her confidentially the reason for
this, she taught them the rule I have mentioned.  Those who
observed it confirmed the wisdom of it and rejoiced; those who did
not observe it were bullied and vexed.
     20.  Even her mother-in-law, who was at first prejudiced
against her by the whisperings of malicious servants, she
conquered by submission, persevering in it with patience and
meekness; with the result that the mother-in-law told her son of
the tales of the meddling servants which had disturbed the
domestic peace between herself and her daughter-in-law and begged
him to punish them for it.  In conformity with his mother's wish,
and in the interest of family discipline to insure the future
harmony of its members, he had those servants beaten who were
pointed out by her who had discovered them; and she promised a
similar reward to anyone else who, thinking to please her, should
say anything evil of her daughter-in-law.  After this no one dared
to do so, and they lived together with a wonderful sweetness of
mutual good will.
     21.  This other great gift thou also didst bestow, O my God,
my Mercy, upon that good handmaid of thine, in whose womb thou
didst create me.  It was that whenever she could she acted as a
peacemaker between any differing and discordant spirits, and when
she heard very bitter things on either side of a controversy --
the kind of bloated and undigested discord which often belches
forth bitter words, when crude malice is breathed out by sharp
tongues to a present friend against an absent enemy -- she would
disclose nothing about the one to the other except what might
serve toward their reconciliation.  This might seem a small good
to me if I did not know to my sorrow countless persons who,
through the horrid and far-spreading infection of sin, not only
repeat to enemies mutually enraged things said in passion against
each other, but also add some things that were never said at all.
It ought not to be enough in a truly humane man merely not to
incite or increase the enmities of men by evil-speaking; he ought
likewise to endeavor by kind words to extinguish them.  Such a one
was she -- and thou, her most intimate instructor, didst teach her
in the school of her heart.
     22.  Finally, her own husband, now toward the end of his
earthly existence, she won over to thee.  Henceforth, she had no
cause to complain of unfaithfulness in him, which she had endured
before he became one of the faithful.  She was also the servant of
thy servants.  All those who knew her greatly praised, honored,
and loved thee in her because, through the witness of the fruits
of a holy life, they recognized thee present in her heart.  For
she had "been the wife of one man,"[292] had honored her parents,
had guided her house in piety, was highly reputed for good works,
and brought up her children, travailing in labor with them as
often as she saw them swerving from thee.  Lastly, to all of us, O
Lord -- since of thy favor thou allowest thy servants to speak --
to all of us who lived together in that association before her
death in thee she devoted such care as she might have if she had
been mother of us all; she served us as if she had been the
daughter of us all.


                           CHAPTER X

     23.  As the day now approached on which she was to depart
this life -- a day which thou knewest, but which we did not -- it
happened (though I believe it was by thy secret ways arranged)
that she and I stood alone, leaning in a certain window from which
the garden of the house we occupied at Ostia could be seen.  Here
in this place, removed from the crowd, we were resting ourselves
for the voyage after the fatigues of a long journey.
     We were conversing alone very pleasantly and "forgetting
those things which are past, and reaching forward toward those
things which are future."[293]  We were in the present -- and in
the presence of Truth (which thou art) -- discussing together what
is the nature of the eternal life of the saints: which eye has not
seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of
man.[294]  We opened wide the mouth of our heart, thirsting for
those supernal streams of thy fountain, "the fountain of life"
which is with thee,[295] that we might be sprinkled with its
waters according to our capacity and might in some measure weigh
the truth of so profound a mystery.
     24.  And when our conversation had brought us to the point
where the very highest of physical sense and the most intense
illumination of physical light seemed, in comparison with the
sweetness of that life to come, not worthy of comparison, nor even
of mention, we lifted ourselves with a more ardent love toward the
Selfsame,[296] and we gradually passed through all the levels of
bodily objects, and even through the heaven itself, where the sun
and moon and stars shine on the earth.  Indeed, we soared higher
yet by an inner musing, speaking and marveling at thy works.
     And we came at last to our own minds and went beyond them,
that we might climb as high as that region of unfailing plenty
where thou feedest Israel forever with the food of truth, where
life is that Wisdom by whom all things are made, both which have
been and which are to be.  Wisdom is not made, but is as she has
been and forever shall be; for "to have been" and "to be
hereafter" do not apply to her, but only "to be," because she is
eternal and "to have been" and "to be hereafter" are not eternal.
     And while we were thus speaking and straining after her, we
just barely touched her with the whole effort of our hearts.  Then
with a sigh, leaving the first fruits of the Spirit bound to that
ecstasy, we returned to the sounds of our own tongue, where the
spoken word had both beginning and end.[297]  But what is like to
thy Word, our Lord, who remaineth in himself without becoming old,
and "makes all things new"[298]?
     25.  What we said went something like this: "If to any man
the tumult of the flesh were silenced; and the phantoms of earth
and waters and air were silenced; and the poles were silent as
well; indeed, if the very soul grew silent to herself, and went
beyond herself by not thinking of herself; if fancies and
imaginary revelations were silenced; if every tongue and every
sign and every transient thing -- for actually if any man could
hear them, all these would say, 'We did not create ourselves, but
were created by Him who abides forever' -- and if, having uttered
this, they too should be silent, having stirred our ears to hear
him who created them; and if then he alone spoke, not through them
but by himself, that we might hear his word, not in fleshly tongue
or angelic voice, nor sound of thunder, nor the obscurity of a
parable, but might hear him -- him for whose sake we love these
things -- if we could hear him without these, as we two now
strained ourselves to do, we then with rapid thought might touch
on that Eternal Wisdom which abides over all.  And if this could
be sustained, and other visions of a far different kind be taken
away, and this one should so ravish and absorb and envelop its
beholder in these inward joys that his life might be eternally
like that one moment of knowledge which we now sighed after --
would not _this_ be the reality of the saying, 'Enter into the joy
of thy Lord'[299]?  But when shall such a thing be?  Shall it not
be 'when we all shall rise again,' and shall it not be that 'all
things will be changed'[300]?"
     26.  Such a thought I was expressing, and if not in this
manner and in these words, still, O Lord, thou knowest that on
that day we were talking thus and that this world, with all its
joys, seemed cheap to us even as we spoke.  Then my mother said:
"Son, for myself I have no longer any pleasure in anything in this
life.  Now that my hopes in this world are satisfied, I do not
know what more I want here or why I am here.  There was indeed one
thing for which I wished to tarry a little in this life, and that
was that I might see you a Catholic Christian before I died.  My
God hath answered this more than abundantly, so that I see you now
made his servant and spurning all earthly happiness.  What more am
I to do here?"


                          CHAPTER XI

     27.  I do not well remember what reply I made to her about
this.  However, it was scarcely five days later -- certainly not
much more -- that she was prostrated by fever.  While she was
sick, she fainted one day and was for a short time quite
unconscious.  We hurried to her, and when she soon regained her
senses, she looked at me and my brother[301] as we stood by her,
and said, in inquiry, "Where was I?"  Then looking intently at us,
dumb in our grief, she said, "Here in this place shall you bury
your mother." I was silent and held back my tears; but my brother
said something, wishing her the happier lot of dying in her own
country and not abroad.  When she heard this, she fixed him with
her eye and an anxious countenance, because he savored of such
earthly concerns, and then gazing at me she said, "See how he
speaks." Soon after, she said to us both: "Lay this body anywhere,
and do not let the care of it be a trouble to you at all.  Only
this I ask: that you will remember me at the Lord's altar,
wherever you are." And when she had expressed her wish in such
words as she could, she fell silent, in heavy pain with her
increasing sickness.
     28.  But as I thought about thy gifts, O invisible God, which
thou plantest in the heart of thy faithful ones, from which such
marvelous fruits spring up, I rejoiced and gave thanks to thee,
remembering what I had known of how she had always been much
concerned about her burial place, which she had provided and
prepared for herself by the body of her husband.  For as they had
lived very peacefully together, her desire had always been -- so
little is the human mind capable of grasping things divine -- that
this last should be added to all that happiness, and commented on
by others: that, after her pilgrimage beyond the sea, it would be
granted her that the two of them, so united on earth, should lie
in the same grave.
     When this vanity, through the bounty of thy goodness, had
begun to be no longer in her heart, I do not know; but I joyfully
marveled at what she had thus disclosed to me -- though indeed in
our conversation in the window, when she said, "What is there here
for me to do any more?"  she appeared not to desire to die in her
own country.  I heard later on that, during our stay in Ostia, she
had been talking in maternal confidence to some of my friends
about her contempt of this life and the blessing of death.  When
they were amazed at the courage which was given her, a woman, and
had asked her whether she did not dread having her body buried so
far from her own city, she replied: "Nothing is far from God.  I
do not fear that, at the end of time, he should not know the place
whence he is to resurrect me." And so on the ninth day of her
sickness, in the fifty-sixth year of her life and the thirty-third
of mine,[302] that religious and devout soul was set loose from
the body.


                          CHAPTER XII

     29.  I closed her eyes; and there flowed in a great sadness
on my heart and it was passing into tears, when at the strong
behest of my mind my eyes sucked back the fountain dry, and sorrow
was in me like a convulsion.  As soon as she breathed her last,
the boy Adeodatus burst out wailing; but he was checked by us all,
and became quiet.  Likewise, my own childish feeling which was,
through the youthful voice of my heart, seeking escape in tears,
was held back and silenced.  For we did not consider it fitting to
celebrate that death with tearful wails and groanings.  This is
the way those who die unhappy or are altogether dead are usually
mourned.  But she neither died unhappy nor did she altogether
die.[303]  For of this we were assured by the witness of her good
life, her "faith unfeigned,"[304] and other manifest evidence.
     30.  What was it, then, that hurt me so grievously in my
heart except the newly made wound, caused from having the sweet
and dear habit of living together with her suddenly broken?  I was
full of joy because of her testimony in her last illness, when she
praised my dutiful attention and called me kind, and recalled with
great affection of love that she had never heard any harsh or
reproachful sound from my mouth against her.  But yet, O my God
who made us, how can that honor I paid her be compared with her
service to me?  I was then left destitute of a great comfort in
her, and my soul was stricken; and that life was torn apart, as it
were, which had been made but one out of hers and mine
together.[305]
     31.  When the boy was restrained from weeping, Evodius took
up the Psalter and began to sing, with the whole household
responding, the psalm, "I will sing of mercy and judgment unto
thee, O Lord."[306]  And when they heard what we were doing, many
of the brethren and religious women came together.  And while
those whose office it was to prepare for the funeral went about
their task according to custom, I discoursed in another part of
the house, with those who thought I should not be left alone, on
what was appropriate to the occasion.  By this balm of truth, I
softened the anguish known to thee.  They were unconscious of it
and listened intently and thought me free of any sense of sorrow.
But in thy ears, where none of them heard, I reproached myself for
the mildness of my feelings, and restrained the flow of my grief
which bowed a little to my will.  The paroxysm returned again, and
I knew what I repressed in my heart, even though it did not make
me burst forth into tears or even change my countenance; and I was
greatly annoyed that these human things had such power over me,
which in the due order and destiny of our natural condition must
of necessity happen.  And so with a new sorrow I sorrowed for my
sorrow and was wasted with a twofold sadness.
     32.  So, when the body was carried forth, we both went and
returned without tears.  For neither in those prayers which we
poured forth to thee, when the sacrifice of our redemption was
offered up to thee for her -- with the body placed by the side of
the grave as the custom is there, before it is lowered down into
it -- neither in those prayers did I weep.  But I was most
grievously sad in secret all the day, and with a troubled mind
entreated thee, as I could, to heal my sorrow; but thou didst not.
I now believe that thou wast fixing in my memory, by this one
lesson, the power of the bonds of all habit, even on a mind which
now no longer feeds upon deception.  It then occurred to me that
it would be a good thing to go and bathe, for I had heard that the
word for bath [balneum] took its name from the Greek balaneion,
because it washes anxiety from the mind.  Now see, this also I
confess to thy mercy, "O Father of the fatherless"[307]: I bathed
and felt the same as I had done before.  For the bitterness of my
grief was not sweated from my heart.
     Then I slept, and when I awoke I found my grief not a little
assuaged.  And as I lay there on my bed, those true verses of
Ambrose came to my mind, for thou art truly,

          "Deus, creator omnium,
     Polique rector, vestiens
     Diem decoro lumine,
     Noctem sopora gratia;
          Artus solutos ut quies
     Reddat laboris usui
     Mentesque fessas allevet,
     Luctusque solvat anxios."

     "O God, Creator of us all,
     Guiding the orbs celestial,
     Clothing the day with lovely light,
     Appointing gracious sleep by night:
     Thy grace our wearied limbs restore

     To strengthened labor, as before,
     And ease the grief of tired minds
     From that deep torment which it finds."[308]

     33.  And then, little by little, there came back to me my
former memories of thy handmaid: her devout life toward thee, her
holy tenderness and attentiveness toward us, which had suddenly
been taken away from me -- and it was a solace for me to weep in
thy sight, for her and for myself, about her and about myself.
Thus I set free the tears which before I repressed, that they
might flow at will, spreading them out as a pillow beneath my
heart.  And it rested on them, for thy ears were near me -- not
those of a man, who would have made a scornful comment about my
weeping.  But now in writing I confess it to thee, O Lord!  Read
it who will, and comment how he will, and if he finds me to have
sinned in weeping for my mother for part of an hour -- that mother
who was for a while dead to my eyes, who had for many years wept
for me that I might live in thy eyes -- let him not laugh at me;
but if he be a man of generous love, let him weep for my sins
against thee, the Father of all the brethren of thy Christ.


                         CHAPTER XIII

     34.  Now that my heart is healed of that wound -- so far as
it can be charged against me as a carnal affection -- I pour out
to thee, O our God, on behalf of thy handmaid, tears of a very
different sort: those which flow from a spirit broken by the
thoughts of the dangers of every soul that dies in Adam.  And
while she had been "made alive" in Christ[309] even before she was
freed from the flesh, and had so lived as to praise thy name both
by her faith and by her life, yet I would not dare say that from
the time thou didst regenerate her by baptism no word came out of
her mouth against thy precepts.  But it has been declared by thy
Son, the Truth, that "whosoever shall say to his brother, You
fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire."[310]  And there would be
doom even for the life of a praiseworthy man if thou judgedst it
with thy mercy set aside.  But since thou dost not so stringently
inquire after our sins, we hope with confidence to find some place
in thy presence.  But whoever recounts his actual and true merits
to thee, what is he doing but recounting to thee thy own gifts?
Oh, if only men would know themselves as men, then "he that
glories" would "glory in the Lord"[311]!
     35.  Thus now, O my Praise and my Life, O God of my heart,
forgetting for a little her good deeds for which I give joyful
thanks to thee, I now beseech thee for the sins of my mother.
Hearken unto me, through that Medicine of our wounds, who didst
hang upon the tree and who sittest at thy right hand "making
intercession for us."[312]  I know that she acted in mercy, and
from the heart forgave her debtors their debts.[313]  I beseech
thee also to forgive her debts, whatever she contracted during so
many years since the water of salvation.  Forgive her, O Lord,
forgive her, I beseech thee; "enter not into judgment" with
her.[314]  Let thy mercy be exalted above thy justice, for thy
words are true and thou hast promised mercy to the merciful, that
the merciful shall obtain mercy.[315]  This is thy gift, who hast
mercy on whom thou wilt and who wilt have compassion on whom thou
dost have compassion on.[316]
     36.  Indeed, I believe thou hast already done what I ask of
thee, but "accept the freewill offerings of my mouth, O
Lord."[317]  For when the day of her dissolution was so close, she
took no thought to have her body sumptuously wrapped or embalmed
with spices.  Nor did she covet a handsome monument, or even care
to be buried in her own country.  About these things she gave no
commands at all, but only desired to have her name remembered at
thy altar, where she had served without the omission of a single
day, and where she knew that the holy sacrifice was dispensed by
which that handwriting that was against us is blotted out; and
that enemy vanquished who, when he summed up our offenses and
searched for something to bring against us, could find nothing in
Him, in whom we conquer.
     Who will restore to him the innocent blood?  Who will repay
him the price with which he bought us, so as to take us from him?
Thus to the sacrament of our redemption did thy hand maid bind her
soul by the bond of faith.  Let none separate her from thy
protection.  Let not the "lion" and "dragon" bar her way by force
or fraud.  For she will not reply that she owes nothing, lest she
be convicted and duped by that cunning deceiver.  Rather, she will
answer that her sins are forgiven by Him to whom no one is able to
repay the price which he, who owed us nothing, laid down for us
all.
     37.  Therefore, let her rest in peace with her husband,
before and after whom she was married to no other man; whom she
obeyed with patience, bringing fruit to thee that she might also
win him for thee.  And inspire, O my Lord my God, inspire thy
servants, my brothers; thy sons, my masters, who with voice and
heart and writings I serve, that as many of them as shall read
these confessions may also at thy altar remember Monica, thy
handmaid, together with Patricius, once her husband; by whose
flesh thou didst bring me into this life, in a manner I know not.
May they with pious affection remember my parents in this
transitory life, and remember my brothers under thee our Father in
our Catholic mother; and remember my fellow citizens in the
eternal Jerusalem, for which thy people sigh in their pilgrimage
from birth until their return.  So be fulfilled what my mother
desired of me -- more richly in the prayers of so many gained for
her through these confessions of mine than by my prayers alone.



                          BOOK TEN


     From autobiography to self-analysis.  Augustine turns from
his memories of the past to the inner mysteries of memory itself.
In doing so, he reviews his motives for these written
"confessions," and seeks to chart the path by which men come to
God.  But this brings him into the intricate analysis of memory
and its relation to the self and its powers.  This done, he
explores the meaning and mode of true prayer.  In conclusion, he
undertakes a detailed analysis of appetite and the temptations to
which the flesh and the soul are heirs, and comes finally to see
how necessary and right it was for the Mediator between God and
man to have been the God-Man.


                           CHAPTER I

     1.  Let me know thee, O my Knower; let me know thee even as I
am known.[318]  O Strength of my soul, enter it and prepare it for
thyself that thou mayest have and hold it, without "spot or
blemish."[319]  This is my hope, therefore have I spoken; and in
this hope I rejoice whenever I rejoice aright.  But as for the
other things of this life, they deserve our lamentations less, the
more we lament them; and some should be lamented all the more, the
less men care for them.  For see, "Thou desirest truth"[320] and
"he who does the truth comes to the light."[321]  This is what I
wish to do through confession in my heart before thee, and in my
writings before many witnesses.


                          CHAPTER II

     2.  And what is there in me that could be hidden from thee,
Lord, to whose eyes the abysses of man's conscience are naked,
even if I were unwilling to confess it to thee?  In doing so I
would only hide thee from myself, not myself from thee.  But now
that my groaning is witness to the fact that I am dissatisfied
with myself, thou shinest forth and satisfiest.  Thou art beloved
and desired; so that I blush for myself, and renounce myself and
choose thee, for I can neither please thee nor myself except in
thee.  To thee, then, O Lord, I am laid bare, whatever I am, and I
have already said with what profit I may confess to thee.  I do
not do it with words and sounds of the flesh but with the words of
the soul, and with the sound of my thoughts, which thy ear knows.
For when I am wicked, to confess to thee means nothing less than
to be dissatisfied with myself; but when I am truly devout, it
means nothing less than not to attribute my virtue to myself;
because thou, O Lord, blessest the righteous, but first thou
justifiest him while he is yet ungodly.  My confession therefore,
O my God, is made unto thee silently in thy sight -- and yet not
silently.  As far as sound is concerned, it is silent.  But in
strong affection it cries aloud.  For neither do I give voice to
something that sounds right to men, which thou hast not heard from
me before, nor dost thou hear anything of the kind from me which
thou didst not first say to me.


                          CHAPTER III

     3.  What is it to me that men should hear my confessions as
if it were they who were going to cure all my infirmities?  People
are curious to know the lives of others, but slow to correct their
own.  Why are they anxious to hear from me what I am, when they
are unwilling to hear from thee what they are?  And how can they
tell when they hear what I say about myself whether I speak the
truth, since no man knows what is in a man "save the spirit of man
which is in him"[322]?  But if they were to hear from thee
something concerning themselves, they would not be able to say,
"The Lord is lying." For what does it mean to hear from thee about
themselves but to know themselves?  And who is he that knows
himself and says, "This is false," unless he himself is lying?
But, because "love believes all things"[323] -- at least among
those who are bound together in love by its bonds -- I confess to
thee, O Lord, so that men may also hear; for if I cannot prove to
them that I confess the truth, yet those whose ears love opens to
me will believe me.
     4.  But wilt thou, O my inner Physician, make clear to me
what profit I am to gain in doing this?  For the confessions of my
past sins (which thou hast "forgiven and covered"[324] that thou
mightest make me blessed in thee, transforming my soul by faith
and thy sacrament), when _they_ are read and heard, may stir up
the heart so that it will stop dozing along in despair, saying, "I
cannot"; but will instead awake in the love of thy mercy and the
sweetness of thy grace, by which he that is weak is strong,
provided he is made conscious of his own weakness.  And it will
please those who are good to hear about the past errors of those
who are now freed from them.  And they will take delight, not
because they are errors, but because they were and are so no
longer.  What profit, then, O Lord my God -- to whom my conscience
makes her daily confession, far more confident in the hope of thy
mercy than in her own innocence -- what profit is there, I ask
thee, in confessing to men in thy presence, through this book,
both what I am now as well as what I have been?  For I have seen
and spoken of my harvest of things past.  But what am I _now_, at
this very moment of making my confessions?  Many different people
desire to know, both those who know me and those who do not know
me.  Some have heard about me or from me, but their ear is not
close to my heart, where I am whatever it is that I am.  They have
the desire to hear me confess what I am within, where they can
neither extend eye nor ear nor mind.  They desire as those willing
to believe -- but will they understand?  For the love by which
they are good tells them that I am not lying in my confessions,
and the love in them believes me.


                          CHAPTER IV

     5.  But for what profit do they desire this?  Will they wish
me happiness when they learn how near I have approached thee, by
thy gifts?  And will they pray for me when they learn how much I
am still kept back by my own weight?  To such as these I will
declare myself.  For it is no small profit, O Lord my God, that
many people should give thanks to thee on my account and that many
should entreat thee for my sake.  Let the brotherly soul love in
me what thou teachest him should be loved, and let him lament in
me what thou teachest him should be lamented.  Let it be the soul
of a brother that does this, and not a stranger -- not one of
those "strange children, whose mouth speaks vanity, and whose
right hand is the right hand of falsehood."[325]  But let my
brother do it who, when he approves of me, rejoices for me, but
when he disapproves of me is sorry for me; because whether he
approves or disapproves, he loves me.  To such I will declare
myself.  Let them be refreshed by my good deeds and sigh over my
evil ones.  My good deeds are thy acts and thy gifts; my evil ones
are my own faults and thy judgment.  Let them breathe expansively
at the one and sigh over the other.  And let hymns and tears
ascend in thy sight out of their brotherly hearts -- which are thy
censers.[326]  And, O Lord, who takest delight in the incense of
thy holy temple, have mercy upon me according to thy great mercy,
for thy name's sake.  And do not, on any account whatever, abandon
what thou hast begun in me.  Go on, rather, to complete what is
yet imperfect in me.
     6.  This, then, is the fruit of my confessions (not of what I
was, but of what I am), that I may not confess this before thee
alone, in a secret exultation with trembling and a secret sorrow
with hope, but also in the ears of the believing sons of men --
who are the companions of my joy and sharers of my mortality, my
fellow citizens and fellow pilgrims -- those who have gone before
and those who are to follow after, as well as the comrades of my
present way.  These are thy servants, my brothers, whom thou
desirest to be thy sons.  They are my masters, whom thou hast
commanded me to serve if I desire to live with and in thee.  But
this thy Word would mean little to me if it commanded in words
alone, without thy prevenient action.  I do this, then, both in
act and word.  I do this under thy wings, in a danger too great to
risk if it were not that under thy wings my soul is subject to
thee, and my weakness known to thee.  I am insufficient, but my
Father liveth forever, and my Defender is sufficient for me.  For
he is the Selfsame who didst beget me and who watcheth over me;
thou art the Selfsame who art all my good.  Thou art the
Omnipotent, who art with me, even before I am with thee.  To
those, therefore, whom thou commandest me to serve, I will
declare, not what I was, but what I now am and what I will
continue to be.  But I do not judge myself.  Thus, therefore, let
me be heard.


                           CHAPTER V

     7.  For it is thou, O Lord, who judgest me.  For although no
man "knows the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which
is in him,"[327] yet there is something of man which "the spirit
of the man which is in him" does not know itself.  But thou, O
Lord, who madest him, knowest him completely.  And even I --
though in thy sight I despise myself and count myself but dust and
ashes -- even I know something about thee which I do not know
about myself.  And it is certain that "now we see through a glass
darkly," not yet "face to face."[328]  Therefore, as long as I
journey away from thee, I am more present with myself than with
thee.  I know that thou canst not suffer violence, but I myself do
not know what temptations I can resist, and what I cannot.  But
there is hope, because thou art faithful and thou wilt not allow
us to be tempted beyond our ability to resist, but wilt with the
temptation also make a way of escape that we may be able to bear
it.  I would therefore confess what I know about myself; I will
also confess what I do not know about myself.  What I do know of
myself, I know from thy enlightening of me; and what I do not know
of myself, I will continue not to know until the time when my
"darkness is as the noonday"[329] in thy sight.


                          CHAPTER VI

     8.  It is not with a doubtful consciousness, but one fully
certain that I love thee, O Lord.  Thou hast smitten my heart with
thy Word, and I have loved thee.  And see also the heaven, and
earth, and all that is in them -- on every side they tell me to
love thee, and they do not cease to tell this to all men, "so that
they are without excuse."[330]  Wherefore, still more deeply wilt
thou have mercy on whom thou wilt have mercy, and compassion on
whom thou wilt have compassion.[331]  For otherwise, both heaven
and earth would tell abroad thy praises to deaf ears.
     But what is it that I love in loving thee?  Not physical
beauty, nor the splendor of time, nor the radiance of the light --
so pleasant to our eyes -- nor the sweet melodies of the various
kinds of songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers and ointments
and spices; not manna and honey, not the limbs embraced in
physical love -- it is not these I love when I love my God.  Yet
it is true that I love a certain kind of light and sound and
fragrance and food and embrace in loving my God, who is the light
and sound and fragrance and food and embracement of my inner man
-- where that light shines into my soul which no place can
contain, where time does not snatch away the lovely sound, where
no breeze disperses the sweet fragrance, where no eating
diminishes the food there provided, and where there is an embrace
that no satiety comes to sunder.  This is what I love when I love
my God.
     9.  And what is this God?  I asked the earth, and it
answered, "I am not he"; and everything in the earth made the same
confession.  I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping
things, and they replied, "We are not your God; seek above us." I
asked the fleeting winds, and the whole air with its inhabitants
answered, "Anaximenes[332] was deceived; I am not God." I asked
the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars; and they answered, "Neither
are we the God whom you seek." And I replied to all these things
which stand around the door of my flesh: "You have told me about
my God, that you are not he.  Tell me something about him." And
with a loud voice they all cried out, "He made us." My question
had come from my observation of them, and their reply came from
their beauty of order.  And I turned my thoughts into myself and
said, "Who are you?"  And I answered, "A man." For see, there is
in me both a body and a soul; the one without, the other within.
In which of these should I have sought my God, whom I had already
sought with my body from earth to heaven, as far as I was able to
send those messengers -- the beams of my eyes?  But the inner part
is the better part; for to it, as both ruler and judge, all these
messengers of the senses report the answers of heaven and earth
and all the things therein, who said, "We are not God, but he made
us." My inner man knew these things through the ministry of the
outer man, and I, the inner man, knew all this -- I, the soul,
through the senses of my body.[333]  I asked the whole frame of
earth about my God, and it answered, "I am not he, but he made
me."
     10.  Is not this beauty of form visible to all whose senses
are unimpaired?  Why, then, does it not say the same things to
all?  Animals, both small and great, see it but they are unable to
interrogate its meaning, because their senses are not endowed with
the reason that would enable them to judge the evidence which the
senses report.  But man can interrogate it, so that "the invisible
things of him . . . are clearly seen, being understood by the
things that are made."[334]  But men love these created things too
much; they are brought into subjection to them -- and, as
subjects, are not able to judge.  None of these created things
reply to their questioners unless they can make rational
judgments.  The creatures will not alter their voice -- that is,
their beauty of form -- if one man simply sees what another both
sees and questions, so that the world appears one way to this man
and another to that.  It appears the same way to both; but it is
mute to this one and it speaks to that one.  Indeed, it actually
speaks to all, but only they understand it who compare the voice
received from without with the truth within.  For the truth says
to me, "Neither heaven nor earth nor anybody is your God." Their
very nature tells this to the one who beholds[335] them.  "They
are a mass, less in part than the whole." Now, O my soul, you are
my better part, and to you I speak; since you animate the whole
mass of your body, giving it life, whereas no body furnishes life
to a body.  But your God is the life of your life.


                          CHAPTER VII

     11.  What is it, then, that I love when I love my God?  Who
is he that is beyond the topmost point of my soul?  Yet by this
very soul will I mount up to him.  I will soar beyond that power
of mine by which I am united to the body, and by which the whole
structure of it is filled with life.  Yet it is not by that vital
power that I find my God.  For then "the horse and the mule, that
have no understanding,"[336] also might find him, since they have
the same vital power, by which their bodies also live.  But there
is, besides the power by which I animate my body, another by which
I endow my flesh with sense -- a power that the Lord hath provided
for me; commanding that the eye is not to hear and the ear is not
to see, but that I am to see by the eye and to hear by the ear;
and giving to each of the other senses its own proper place and
function, through the diversity of which I, the single mind, act.
I will soar also beyond this power of mine, for the horse and mule
have this too, for they also perceive through their bodily senses.


                         CHAPTER VIII

     12.  I will soar, then, beyond this power of my nature also,
still rising by degrees toward him who made me.  And I enter the
fields and spacious halls of memory, where are stored as treasures
the countless images that have been brought into them from all
manner of things by the senses.  There, in the memory, is likewise
stored what we cogitate, either by enlarging or reducing our
perceptions, or by altering one way or another those things which
the senses have made contact with; and everything else that has
been entrusted to it and stored up in it, which oblivion has not
yet swallowed up and buried.
     When I go into this storehouse, I ask that what I want should
be brought forth.  Some things appear immediately, but others
require to be searched for longer, and then dragged out, as it
were, from some hidden recess.  Other things hurry forth in
crowds, on the other hand, and while something else is sought and
inquired for, they leap into view as if to say, "Is it not we,
perhaps?"  These I brush away with the hand of my heart from the
face of my memory, until finally the thing I want makes its
appearance out of its secret cell.  Some things suggest themselves
without effort, and in continuous order, just as they are called
for -- the things that come first give place to those that follow,
and in so doing are treasured up again to be forthcoming when I
want them.  All of this happens when I repeat a thing from memory.
     13.  All these things, each one of which came into memory in
its own particular way, are stored up separately and under the
general categories of understanding.  For example, light and all
colors and forms of bodies came in through the eyes; sounds of all
kinds by the ears; all smells by the passages of the nostrils; all
flavors by the gate of the mouth; by the sensation of the whole
body, there is brought in what is hard or soft, hot or cold,
smooth or rough, heavy or light, whether external or internal to
the body.  The vast cave of memory, with its numerous and
mysterious recesses, receives all these things and stores them up,
to be recalled and brought forth when required.  Each experience
enters by its own door, and is stored up in the memory.  And yet
the things themselves do not enter it, but only the images of the
things perceived are there for thought to remember.  And who can
tell how these images are formed, even if it is evident which of
the senses brought which perception in and stored it up?  For even
when I am in darkness and silence I can bring out colors in my
memory if I wish, and discern between black and white and the
other shades as I wish; and at the same time, sounds do not break
in and disturb what is drawn in by my eyes, and which I am
considering, because the sounds which are also there are stored
up, as it were, apart.  And these too I can summon if I please and
they are immediately present in memory.  And though my tongue is
at rest and my throat silent, yet I can sing as I will; and those
images of color, which are as truly present as before, do not
interpose themselves or interrupt while another treasure which had
flowed in through the ears is being thought about.  Similarly all
the other things that were brought in and heaped up by all the
other senses, I can recall at my pleasure.  And I distinguish the
scent of lilies from that of violets while actually smelling
nothing; and I prefer honey to mead, a smooth thing to a rough,
even though I am neither tasting nor handling them, but only
remembering them.
     14.  All this I do within myself, in that huge hall of my
memory.  For in it, heaven, earth, and sea are present to me, and
whatever I can cogitate about them -- except what I have
forgotten.  There also I meet myself and recall myself[337] --
what, when, or where I did a thing, and how I felt when I did it.
There are all the things that I remember, either having
experienced them myself or been told about them by others.  Out of
the same storehouse, with these past impressions, I can construct
now this, now that, image of things that I either have experienced
or have believed on the basis of experience -- and from these I
can further construct future actions, events, and hopes; and I can
meditate on all these things as if they were present.  "I will do
this or that" -- I say to myself in that vast recess of my mind,
with its full store of so many and such great images -- "and this
or that will follow upon it." "O that this or that could happen!"
"God prevent this or that." I speak to myself in this way; and
when I speak, the images of what I am speaking about are present
out of the same store of memory; and if the images were absent I
could say nothing at all about them.
     15.  Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, O my
God -- a large and boundless inner hall!  Who has plumbed the
depths of it?  Yet it is a power of my mind, and it belongs to my
nature.  But I do not myself grasp all that I am.  Thus the mind
is far too narrow to contain itself.  But where can that part of
it be which it does not contain?  Is it outside and not in itself?
How can it be, then, that the mind cannot grasp itself?  A great
marvel rises in me; astonishment seizes me.  Men go forth to
marvel at the heights of mountains and the huge waves of the sea,
the broad flow of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the
orbits of the stars, and yet they neglect to marvel at themselves.
Nor do they wonder how it is that, when I spoke of all these
things, I was not looking at them with my eyes -- and yet I could
not have spoken about them had it not been that I was actually
seeing within, in my memory, those mountains and waves and rivers
and stars which I have seen, and that ocean which I believe in --
and with the same vast spaces between them as when I saw them
outside me.  But when I saw them outside me, I did not take them
into me by seeing them; and the things themselves are not inside
me, but only their images.  And yet I knew through which physical
sense each experience had made an impression on me.


                          CHAPTER IX

     16.  And yet this is not all that the unlimited capacity of
my memory stores up.  In memory, there are also all that one has
learned of the liberal sciences, and has not forgotten -- removed
still further, so to say, into an inner place which is not a
place.  Of these things it is not the images that are retained,
but the things themselves.  For what literature and logic are, and
what I know about how many different kinds of questions there are
-- all these are stored in my memory as they are, so that I have
not taken in the image and left the thing outside.  It is not as
though a sound had sounded and passed away like a voice heard by
the ear which leaves a trace by which it can be called into memory
again, as if it were still sounding in mind while it did so no
longer outside.  Nor is it the same as an odor which, even after
it has passed and vanished into the wind, affects the sense of
smell -- which then conveys into the memory the _image_ of the
smell which is what we recall and re-create; or like food which,
once in the belly, surely now has no taste and yet does have a
kind of taste in the memory; or like anything that is felt by the
body through the sense of touch, which still remains as an image
in the memory after the external object is removed.  For these
things themselves are not put into the memory.  Only the images of
them are gathered with a marvelous quickness and stored, as it
were, in the most wonderful filing system, and are thence produced
in a marvelous way by the act of remembering.


                           CHAPTER X

     17.  But now when I hear that there are three kinds of
questions -- "Whether a thing is?  What it is?  Of what kind it
is?" -- I do indeed retain the images of the sounds of which these
words are composed and I know that those sounds pass through the
air with a noise and now no longer exist.  But the things
themselves which were signified by those sounds I never could
reach by any sense of the body nor see them at all except by my
mind.  And what I have stored in my memory was not their signs,
but the things signified.
     How they got into me, let them tell who can.  For I examine
all the gates of my flesh, but I cannot find the door by which any
of them entered.  FFor the eyes say, "If they were colored, we
reported that." The ears say, "If they gave any sound, we gave
notice of that." The nostrils say, "If they smell, they passed in
by us." The sense of taste says, "If they have no flavor, don't
ask me about them." The sense of touch says, "If it had no bodily
mass, I did not touch it, and if I never touched it, I gave no
report about it."
     Whence and how did these things enter into my memory?  I do
not know.  For when I first learned them, it was not that I
believed them on the credit of another man's mind, but I
recognized them in my own; and I saw them as true, took them into
my mind and laid them up, so to say, where I could get at them
again whenever I willed.  There they were, then, even before I
learned them, but they were not in my memory.  Where were they,
then?  How does it come about that when they were spoken of, I
could acknowledge them and say, "So it is, it is true," unless
they were already in the memory, though far back and hidden, as it
were, in the more secret caves, so that unless they had been drawn
out by the teaching of another person, I should perhaps never have
been able to think of them at all?


                          CHAPTER XI

     18.  Thus we find that learning those things whose images we
do not take in by our senses, but which we intuit within ourselves
without images and as they actually are, is nothing else except
the gathering together of those same things which the memory
already contains -- but in an indiscriminate and confused manner
-- and putting them together by careful observation as they are at
hand in the memory; so that whereas they formerly lay hidden,
scattered, or neglected, they now come easily to present
themselves to the mind which is now familiar with them.  And how
many things of this sort my memory has stored up, which have
already been discovered and, as I said, laid up for ready
reference.  These are the things we may be said to have learned
and to know.  Yet, if I cease to recall them even for short
intervals of time, they are again so submerged -- and slide back,
as it were, into the further reaches of the memory -- that they
must be drawn out again as if new from the same place (for there
is nowhere else for them to have gone) and must be collected
[cogenda] so that they can become known.  In other words, they
must be gathered up [colligenda] from their dispersion.  This is
where we get the word cogitate [cogitare].  For cogo [collect] and
cogito [to go on collecting] have the same relation to each other
as ago [do] and agito [do frequently], and facio [make] and
factito [make frequently].  But the mind has properly laid claim
to this word [cogitate] so that not everything that is gathered
together anywhere, but only what is collected and gathered
together in the mind, is properly said to be "cogitated."


                          CHAPTER XII

     19.  The memory also contains the principles and the
unnumbered laws of numbers and dimensions.  None of these has been
impressed on the memory by a physical sense, because they have
neither color nor sound, nor taste, nor sense of touch. I have
heard the sound of the words by which these things are signified
when they are discussed: but the sounds are one thing, the things
another.  For the sounds are one thing in Greek, another in Latin;
but the things themselves are neither Greek nor Latin nor any
other language.  I have seen the lines of the craftsmen, the
finest of which are like a spider's web, but mathematical lines
are different.  They are not the images of such things as the eye
of my body has showed me.  The man who knows them does so without
any cogitation of physical objects whatever, but intuits them
within himself.  I have perceived with all the senses of my body
the numbers we use in counting; but the numbers by which we count
are far different from these.  They are not the images of these;
they simply are.  Let the man who does not see these things mock
me for saying them; and I will pity him while he laughs at me.


                         CHAPTER XIII

     20.  All these things I hold in my memory, and I remember how
I learned them.  I also remember many things that I have heard
quite falsely urged against them, which, even if they are false,
yet it is not false that I have remembered them.  And I also
remember that I have distinguished between the truths and the
false objections, and now I see that it is one thing to
distinguish these things and another to remember that I did
distinguish them when I have cogitated on them.  I remember, then,
both that I have often understood these things and also that I am
now storing away in my memory what I distinguish and comprehend of
them so that later on I may remember just as I understand them
now.  Therefore, I remember that I remembered, so that if
afterward I call to mind that I once was able to remember these
things it will be through the power of memory that I recall it.


                          CHAPTER XIV

     21.  This same memory also contains the feelings of my mind;
not in the manner in which the mind itself experienced them, but
very differently according to a power peculiar to memory.  For
without being joyous now, I can remember that I once was joyous,
and without being sad, I can recall my past sadness.  I can
remember past fears without fear, and former desires without
desire.  Again, the contrary happens.  Sometimes when I am joyous
I remember my past sadness, and when sad, remember past joy.
     This is not to be marveled at as far as the body is
concerned; for the mind is one thing and the body another.[338]
If, therefore, when I am happy, I recall some past bodily pain, it
is not so strange.  But even as this memory is experienced, it is
identical with the mind -- as when we tell someone to remember
something we say, "See that you bear this in mind"; and when we
forget a thing, we say, "It did not enter my mind" or "It slipped
my mind." Thus we call memory itself mind.
     Since this is so, how does it happen that when I am joyful I
can still remember past sorrow?  Thus the mind has joy, and the
memory has sorrow; and the mind is joyful from the joy that is in
it, yet the memory is not sad from the sadness that is in it.  Is
it possible that the memory does not belong to the mind?  Who will
say so?  The memory doubtless is, so to say, the belly of the
mind: and joy and sadness are like sweet and bitter food, which
when they are committed to the memory are, so to say, passed into
the belly where they can be stored but no longer tasted.  It is
ridiculous to consider this an analogy; yet they are not utterly
unlike.
     22.  But look, it is from my memory that I produce it when I
say that there are four basic emotions of the mind: desire, joy,
fear, sadness.  Whatever kind of analysis I may be able to make of
these, by dividing each into its particular species, and by
defining it, I still find what to say in my memory and it is from
my memory that I draw it out.  Yet I am not moved by any of these
emotions when I call them to mind by remembering them.  Moreover,
before I recalled them and thought about them, they were there in
the memory; and this is how they could be brought forth in
remembrance.  Perhaps, therefore, just as food is brought up out
of the belly by rumination, so also these things are drawn up out
of the memory by recall.  But why, then, does not the man who is
thinking about the emotions, and is thus recalling them, feel in
the mouth of his reflection the sweetness of joy or the bitterness
of sadness?  Is the comparison unlike in this because it is not
complete at every point?  For who would willingly speak on these
subjects, if as often as we used the term sadness or fear, we
should thereby be compelled to be sad or fearful?  And yet we
could never speak of them if we did not find them in our memories,
not merely as the sounds of the names, as their images are
impressed on it by the physical senses, but also the notions of
the things themselves -- which we did not receive by any gate of
the flesh, but which the mind itself recognizes by the experience
of its own passions, and has entrusted to the memory; or else
which the memory itself has retained without their being entrusted
to it.


                          CHAPTER XV

     23.  Now whether all this is by means of images or not, who
can rightly affirm?  For I name a stone, I name the sun, and those
things themselves are not present to my senses, but their images
are present in my memory.  I name some pain of the body, yet it is
not present when there is no pain; yet if there were not some such
image of it in my memory, I could not even speak of it, nor should
I be able to distinguish it from pleasure.  I name bodily health
when I am sound in body, and the thing itself is indeed present in
me.  At the same time, unless there were some image of it in my
memory, I could not possibly call to mind what the sound of this
name signified.  Nor would sick people know what was meant when
health was named, unless the same image were preserved by the
power of memory, even though the thing itself is absent from the
body.  I can name the numbers we use in counting, and it is not
their images but themselves that are in my memory.  I name the
image of the sun, and this too is in my memory.  For I do not
recall the image of that image, but that image itself, for the
image itself is present when I remember it.  I name memory and I
know what I name.  But where do I know it, except in the memory
itself?  Is it also present to itself by its image, and not by
itself?


                          CHAPTER XVI

     24.  When I name forgetfulness, and understand what I mean by
the name, how could I understand it if I did not remember it?  And
if I refer not to the sound of the name, but to the thing which
the term signifies, how could I know what that sound signified if
I had forgotten what the name means?  When, therefore, I remember
memory, then memory is present to itself by itself, but when I
remember forgetfulness then both memory and forgetfulness are
present together -- the memory by which I remember the
forgetfulness which I remember.  But what is forgetfulness except
the privation of memory?  How, then, is that present to my memory
which, when it controls my mind, I cannot remember?  But if what
we remember we store up in our memory; and if, unless we
remembered forgetfulness, we could never know the thing signified
by the term when we heard it -- then, forgetfulness is contained
in the memory.  It is present so that we do not forget it, but
since it is present, we do forget.
     From this it is to be inferred that when we remember
forgetfulness, it is not present to the memory through itself, but
through its image; because if forgetfulness were present through
itself, it would not lead us to remember, but only to forget.  Now
who will someday work this out?  Who can understand how it is?
     25.  Truly, O Lord, I toil with this and labor in myself.  I
have become a troublesome field that requires hard labor and heavy
sweat.  For we are not now searching out the tracts of heaven, or
measuring the distances of the stars or inquiring about the weight
of the earth.  It is I myself -- I, the mind -- who remember.
This is not much to marvel at, if what I myself am is not far from
me.  And what is nearer to me than myself?  For see, I am not able
to comprehend the force of my own memory, though I could not even
call my own name without it.  But what shall I say, when it is
clear to me that I remember forgetfulness?  Should I affirm that
what I remember is not in my memory?  Or should I say that
forgetfulness is in my memory to the end that I should not forget?
Both of these views are most absurd.  But what third view is
there?  How can I say that the image of forgetfulness is retained
by my memory, and not forgetfulness itself, when I remember it?
How can I say this, since for the image of anything to be
imprinted on the memory the thing itself must necessarily have
been present first by which the image could have been imprinted?
Thus I remember Carthage; thus, also, I remember all the other
places where I have been.  And I remember the faces of men whom I
have seen and things reported by the other senses.  I remember the
health or sickness of the body.  And when these objects were
present, my memory received images from them so that they remain
present in order for me to see them and reflect upon them in my
mind, if I choose to remember them in their absence.  If,
therefore, forgetfulness is retained in the memory through its
image and not through itself, then this means that it itself was
once present, so that its image might have been imprinted.  But
when it was present, how did it write its image on the memory,
since forgetfulness, by its presence, blots out even what it finds
already written there?  And yet in some way or other, even though
it is incomprehensible and inexplicable, I am still quite certain
that I also remember forgetfulness, by which we remember that
something is blotted out.


                         CHAPTER XVII

     26.  Great is the power of memory.  It is a true marvel, O my
God, a profound and infinite multiplicity!  And this is the mind,
and this I myself am.  What, then, am I, O my God?  Of what nature
am I?  A life various, and manifold, and exceedingly vast.  Behold
in the numberless halls and caves, in the innumerable fields and
dens and caverns of my memory, full without measure of numberless
kinds of things -- present there either through images as all
bodies are; or present in the things themselves as are our
thoughts; or by some notion or observation as our emotions are,
which the memory retains even though the mind feels them no
longer, as long as whatever is in the memory is also in the mind
-- through all these I run and fly to and fro.  I penetrate into
them on this side and that as far as I can and yet there is
nowhere any end.
     So great is the power of memory, so great the power of life
in man whose life is mortal!  What, then, shall I do, O thou my
true life, my God?  I will pass even beyond this power of mine
that is called memory -- I will pass beyond it, that I may come to
thee, O lovely Light.  And what art thou saying to me?  See, I
soar by my mind toward thee, who remainest above me.  I will also
pass beyond this power of mine that is called memory, desiring to
reach thee where thou canst be reached, and wishing to cleave to
thee where it is possible to cleave to thee.  For even beasts and
birds possess memory, or else they could never find their lairs
and nests again, nor display many other things they know and do by
habit.  Indeed, they could not even form their habits except by
their memories.  I will therefore pass even beyond memory that I
may reach Him who has differentiated me from the four-footed
beasts and the fowls of the air by making me a wiser creature.
Thus I will pass beyond memory; but where shall I find thee, who
art the true Good and the steadfast Sweetness?  But where shall I
find thee?  If I find thee without memory, then I shall have no
memory of thee; and how could I find thee at all, if I do not
remember thee?


                         CHAPTER XVIII

     27.  For the woman who lost her small coin[339] and searched
for it with a light would never have found it unless she had
remembered it.  For when it was found, how could she have known
whether it was the same coin, if she had not remembered it?  I
remember having lost and found many things, and I have learned
this from that experience: that when I was searching for any of
them and was asked: "Is this it? Is that it?"  I answered, "No,"
until finally what I was seeking was shown to me.  But if I had
not remembered it -- whatever it was -- even though it was shown
to me, I still would not have found it because I could not have
recognized it.  And this is the way it always is when we search
for and find anything that is lost.  Still, if anything is
accidentally lost from sight -- not from memory, as a visible body
might be -- its image is retained within, and the thing is
searched for until it is restored to sight.  And when the thing is
found, it is recognized by the image of it which is within.  And
we do not say that we have found what we have lost unless we can
recognize it, and we cannot recognize it unless we remember it.
But all the while the thing lost to the sight was retained in the
memory.


                          CHAPTER XIX

     28.  But what happens when the memory itself loses something,
as when we forget anything and try to recall it?  Where, finally,
do we search, but in the memory itself?  And there, if by chance
one thing is offered for another, we refuse it until we meet with
what we are looking for; and when we do, we recognize that this is
it.  But we could not do this unless we recognized it, nor could
we have recognized it unless we remembered it.  Yet we had indeed
forgotten it.
     Perhaps the whole of it had not slipped out of our memory;
but a part was retained by which the other lost part was sought
for, because the memory realized that it was not operating as
smoothly as usual and was being held up by the crippling of its
habitual working; hence, it demanded the restoration of what was
lacking.
     For example, if we see or think of some man we know, and,
having forgotten his name, try to recall it -- if some other thing
presents itself, we cannot tie it into the effort to remember,
because it was not habitually thought of in association with him.
It is consequently rejected, until something comes into the mind
on which our knowledge can rightly rest as the familiar and
sought-for object.  And where does this name come back from, save
from the memory itself?  For even when we recognize it by
another's reminding us of it, still it is from the memory that
this comes, for we do not believe it as something new; but when we
recall it, we admit that what was said was correct.  But if the
name had been entirely blotted out of the mind, we should not be
able to recollect it even when reminded of it.  For we have not
entirely forgotten anything if we can remember that we have
forgotten it.  For a lost notion, one that we have entirely
forgotten, we cannot even search for.


                           CHAPTER XX

     29.  How, then, do I seek thee, O Lord?  For when I seek
thee, my God, I seek a happy life.  I will seek thee that my soul
may live.[340]  For my body lives by my soul, and my soul lives by
thee.  How, then, do I seek a happy life, since happiness is not
mine till I can rightly say: "It is enough.  This is it." How do I
seek it?  Is it by remembering, as though I had forgotten it and
still knew that I had forgotten it?  Do I seek it in longing to
learn of it as though it were something unknown, which either I
had never known or had so completely forgotten as not even to
remember that I had forgotten it?  Is not the happy life the thing
that all desire, and is there anyone who does not desire it at
all?[341]  But where would they have gotten the knowledge of it,
that they should so desire it?  Where have they seen it that they
should so love it?  It is somehow true that we have it, but how I
do not know.
     There is, indeed, a sense in which when anyone has his desire
he is happy.  And then there are some who are happy in hope.
These are happy in an inferior degree to those that are actually
happy; yet they are better off than those who are happy neither in
actuality nor in hope.  But even these, if they had not known
happiness in some degree, would not then desire to be happy.  And
yet it is most certain that they do so desire.  How they come to
know happiness, I cannot tell, but they have it by some kind of
knowledge unknown to me, for I am very much in doubt as to whether
it is in the memory.  For if it is in there, then we have been
happy once on a time -- either each of us individually or all of
us in that man who first sinned and in whom also we all died and
from whom we are all born in misery.  How this is, I do not now
ask; but I do ask whether the happy life is in the memory.  For if
we did not know it, we should not love it.  We hear the name of
it, and we all acknowledge that we desire the thing, for we are
not delighted with the name only.  For when a Greek hears it
spoken in Latin, he does not feel delighted, for he does not know
what has been spoken.  But we are as delighted as he would be in
turn if he heard it in Greek, because the thing itself is neither
Greek nor Latin, this happiness which Greeks and Latins and men of
all the other tongues long so earnestly to obtain.  It is, then,
known to all; and if all could with one voice be asked whether
they wished to be happy, there is no doubt they would all answer
that they would.  And this would not be possible unless the thing
itself, which we name "happiness," were held in the memory.


                          CHAPTER XXI

     30.  But is it the same kind of memory as one who having seen
Carthage remembers it?  No, for the happy life is not visible to
the eye, since it is not a physical object.  Is it the sort of
memory we have for numbers?  No, for the man who has these in his
understanding does not keep striving to attain more.  Now we know
something about the happy life and therefore we love it, but still
we wish to go on striving for it that we may be happy.  Is the
memory of happiness, then, something like the memory of eloquence?
No, for although some, when they hear the term eloquence, call the
thing to mind, even if they are not themselves eloquent -- and
further, there are many people who would like to be eloquent, from
which it follows that they must know something about it --
nevertheless, these people have noticed through their senses that
others are eloquent and have been delighted to observe this and
long to be this way themselves.  But they would not be delighted
if it were not some interior knowledge; and they would not desire
to be delighted unless they had been delighted.  But as for a
happy life, there is no physical perception by which we experience
it in others.
     Do we remember happiness, then, as we remember joy?  It may
be so, for I remember my joy even when I am sad, just as I
remember a happy life when I am miserable.  And I have never,
through physical perception, either seen, heard, smelled, tasted,
or touched my joy.  But I have experienced it in my mind when I
rejoiced; and the knowledge of it clung to my memory so that I can
call it to mind, sometimes with disdain and at other times with
longing, depending on the different kinds of things I now remember
that I rejoiced in.  For I have been bathed with a certain joy
even by unclean things, which I now detest and execrate as I call
them to mind.  At other times, I call to mind with longing good
and honest things, which are not any longer near at hand, and I am
therefore saddened when I recall my former joy.
     31.  Where and when did I ever experience my happy life that
I can call it to mind and love it and long for it?  It is not I
alone or even a few others who wish to be happy, but absolutely
everybody.  Unless we knew happiness by a knowledge that is
certain, we should not wish for it with a will which is so
certain.  Take this example: If two men were asked whether they
wished to serve as soldiers, one of them might reply that he
would, and the other that he would not; but if they were asked
whether they wished to be happy, both of them would unhesitatingly
say that they would.  But the first one would wish to serve as a
soldier and the other would not wish to serve, both from no other
motive than to be happy.  Is it, perhaps, that one finds his joy
in this and another in that?  Thus they agree in their wish for
happiness just as they would also agree, if asked, in wishing for
joy.  Is this joy what they call a happy life?  Although one could
choose his joy in this way and another in that, all have one goal
which they strive to attain, namely, to have joy.  This joy, then,
being something that no one can say he has not experienced, is
therefore found in the memory and it is recognized whenever the
phrase "a happy life" is heard.


                         CHAPTER XXII

     32.  Forbid it, O Lord, put it far from the heart of thy
servant, who confesses to thee -- far be it from me to think I am
happy because of any and all the joy I have.  For there is a joy
not granted to the wicked but only to those who worship thee
thankfully -- and this joy thou thyself art.  The happy life is
this -- to rejoice to thee, in thee, and for thee.  This it is and
there is no other.  But those who think there is another follow
after other joys, and not the true one.  But their will is still
not moved except by some image or shadow of joy.


                         CHAPTER XXIII

     33.  Is it, then, uncertain that all men wish to be happy,
since those who do not wish to find their joy in thee -- which is
alone the happy life -- do not actually desire the happy life?
Or, is it rather that all desire this, but because "the flesh
lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh," so
that they "prevent you from doing what you would,"[342] you fall
to doing what you are able to do and are content with that.  For
you do not want to do what you cannot do urgently enough to make
you able to do it.
     Now I ask all men whether they would rather rejoice in truth
or in falsehood.  They will no more hesitate to answer, "In
truth," than to say that they wish to be happy.  For a happy life
is joy in the truth.  Yet this is joy in thee, who art the Truth,
O God my Light, "the health of my countenance and my God."[343]
All wish for this happy life; all wish for this life which is the
only happy one: joy in the truth is what all men wish.
     I have had experience with many who wished to deceive, but
not one who wished to be deceived.[344]  Where, then, did they
ever know about this happy life, except where they knew also what
the truth is?  For they love it, too, since they are not willing
to be deceived.  And when they love the happy life, which is
nothing else but joy in the truth, then certainly they also love
the truth.  And yet they would not love it if there were not some
knowledge of it in the memory.
     Why, then, do they not rejoice in it?  Why are they not
happy?  Because they are so fully preoccupied with other things
which do more to make them miserable than those which would make
them happy, which they remember so little about.  Yet there is a
little light in men.  Let them walk -- let them walk in it, lest
the darkness overtake them.
     34.  Why, then, does truth generate hatred, and why does thy
servant who preaches the truth come to be an enemy to them who
also love the happy life, which is nothing else than joy in the
truth -- unless it be that truth is loved in such a way that those
who love something else besides her wish that to be the truth
which they do love.  Since they are unwilling to be deceived, they
are unwilling to be convinced that they have been deceived.
Therefore, they hate the truth for the sake of whatever it is that
they love in place of the truth.  They love truth when she shines
on them; and hate her when she rebukes them.  And since they are
not willing to be deceived, but do wish to deceive, they love
truth when she reveals herself and hate her when she reveals them.
On this account, she will so repay them that those who are
unwilling to be exposed by her she will indeed expose against
their will, and yet will not disclose herself to them.
     Thus, thus, truly thus: the human mind so blind and sick, so
base and ill-mannered, desires to lie hidden, but does not wish
that anything should be hidden from it.  And yet the opposite is
what happens -- the mind itself is not hidden from the truth, but
the truth is hidden from it.  Yet even so, for all its
wretchedness, it still prefers to rejoice in truth rather than in
known falsehoods.  It will, then, be happy only when without other
distractions it comes to rejoice in that single Truth through
which all things else are true.


                         CHAPTER XXIV

     35.  Behold how great a territory I have explored in my
memory seeking thee, O Lord!  And in it all I have still not found
thee.  Nor have I found anything about thee, except what I had
already retained in my memory from the time I learned of thee.
For where I found Truth, there found I my God, who is the Truth.
>From the time I learned this I have not forgotten.  And thus since
the time I learned of thee, thou hast dwelt in my memory, and it
is there that I find thee whenever I call thee to remembrance, and
delight in thee.  These are my holy delights, which thou hast
bestowed on me in thy mercy, mindful of my poverty.


                          CHAPTER XXV

     36.  But where in my memory dost thou abide, O Lord?  Where
dost thou dwell there?  What sort of lodging hast thou made for
thyself there?  What kind of sanctuary hast thou built for
thyself?  Thou hast done this honor to my memory to take up thy
abode in it, but I must consider further in what part of it thou
dost abide.  For in calling thee to mind, I soared beyond those
parts of memory which the beasts also possess, because I did not
find thee there among the images of corporeal things.  From there
I went on to those parts where I had stored the remembered
affections of my mind, and I did not find thee there.  And I
entered into the inmost seat of my mind, which is in my memory,
since the mind remembers itself also -- and thou wast not there.
For just as thou art not a bodily image, nor the emotion of a
living creature (such as we feel when we rejoice or are grief-
stricken, when we desire, or fear, or remember, or forget, or
anything of that kind), so neither art thou the mind itself.  For
thou art the Lord God of the mind and of all these things that are
mutable; but thou abidest immutable over all.  Yet thou hast
elected to dwell in my memory from the time I learned of thee.
But why do I now inquire about the part of my memory thou dost
dwell in, as if indeed there were separate parts in it?
Assuredly, thou dwellest in it, since I have remembered thee from
the time I learned of thee, and I find thee in my memory when I
call thee to mind.


                         CHAPTER XXVI

     37.  Where, then, did I find thee so as to be able to learn
of thee?  For thou wast not in my memory before I learned of thee.
Where, then, did I find thee so as to be able to learn of thee --
save in thyself beyond me.[345]  Place there is none.  We go
"backward" and "forward" and there is no place.  Everywhere and at
once, O Truth, thou guidest all who consult thee, and
simultaneously answerest all even though they consult thee on
quite different things.  Thou answerest clearly, though all do not
hear in clarity.  All take counsel of thee on whatever point they
wish, though they do not always hear what they wish.  He is thy
best servant who does not look to hear from thee what he himself
wills, but who wills rather to will what he hears from thee.


                         CHAPTER XXVII

     38.  Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new,
belatedly I loved thee.  For see, thou wast within and I was
without, and I sought thee out there.  Unlovely, I rushed
heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made.  Thou wast with
me, but I was not with thee.  These things kept me far from thee;
even though they were not at all unless they were in thee.  Thou
didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness.  Thou
didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness.  Thou
didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I
pant for thee.  I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst.  Thou didst
touch me, and I burned for thy peace.


                        CHAPTER XXVIII

     39.  When I come to be united to thee with all my being, then
there will be no more pain and toil for me, and my life shall be a
real life, being wholly filled by thee.  But since he whom thou
fillest is the one thou liftest up, I am still a burden to myself
because I am not yet filled by thee.  Joys of sorrow contend with
sorrows of joy, and on which side the victory lies I do not know.
     Woe is me!  Lord, have pity on me; my evil sorrows contend
with my good joys, and on which side the victory lies I do not
know.  Woe is me!  Lord, have pity on me.  Woe is me!  Behold, I
do not hide my wounds.  Thou art the Physician, I am the sick man;
thou art merciful, I need mercy.  Is not the life of man on earth
an ordeal?  Who is he that wishes for vexations and difficulties?
Thou commandest them to be endured, not to be loved.  For no man
loves what he endures, though he may love to endure.  Yet even if
he rejoices to endure, he would prefer that there were nothing for
him to endure.  In adversity, I desire prosperity; in prosperity,
I fear adversity.  What middle place is there, then, between these
two, where human life is not an ordeal?  There is woe in the
prosperity of this world; there is woe in the fear of misfortune;
there is woe in the distortion of joy.  There is woe in the
adversities of this world -- a second woe, and a third, from the
desire of prosperity -- because adversity itself is a hard thing
to bear and makes shipwreck of endurance.  Is not the life of man
upon the earth an ordeal, and that without surcease?


                         CHAPTER XXIX

     40.  My whole hope is in thy exceeding great mercy and that
alone.  Give what thou commandest and command what thou wilt.
Thou commandest continence from us, and when I knew, as it is
said, that no one could be continent unless God gave it to him,
even this was a point of wisdom to know whose gift it was.[346]
For by continence we are bound up and brought back together in the
One, whereas before we were scattered abroad among the many.[347]
For he loves thee too little who loves along with thee anything
else that he does not love for thy sake, O Love, who dost burn
forever and art never quenched.  O Love, O my God, enkindle me!
Thou commandest continence; give what thou commandest, and command
what thou wilt.


                          CHAPTER XXX

     41.  Obviously thou commandest that I should be continent
from "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the
pride of life."[348]  Thou commandest me to abstain from
fornication, and as for marriage itself, thou hast counseled
something better than what thou dost allow.  And since thou gavest
it, it was done -- even before I became a minister of thy
sacrament.  But there still exist in my memory -- of which I have
spoken so much -- the images of such things as my habits had fixed
there.  These things rush into my thoughts with no power when I am
awake; but in sleep they rush in not only so as to give pleasure,
but even to obtain consent and what very closely resembles the
deed itself.  Indeed, the illusion of the image prevails to such
an extent, in both my soul and my flesh, that the illusion
persuades me when sleeping to what the reality cannot do when I am
awake.  Am I not myself at such a time, O Lord my God?  And is
there so much of a difference between myself awake and myself in
the moment when I pass from waking to sleeping, or return from
sleeping to waking?
     Where, then, is the power of reason which resists such
suggestions when I am awake -- for even if the things themselves
be forced upon it I remain unmoved?  Does reason cease when the
eyes close?  Is it put to sleep with the bodily senses?  But in
that case how does it come to pass that even in slumber we often
resist, and with our conscious purposes in mind, continue most
chastely in them, and yield no assent to such allurements?  Yet
there is at least this much difference: that when it happens
otherwise in dreams, when we wake up, we return to peace of
conscience.  And it is by this difference between sleeping and
waking that we discover that it was not we who did it, while we
still feel sorry that in some way it was done in us.
     42.  Is not thy hand, O Almighty God, able to heal all the
diseases of my soul and, by thy more and more abundant grace, to
quench even the lascivious motions of my sleep?  Thou wilt
increase thy gifts in me more and more, O Lord, that my soul may
follow me to thee, wrenched free from the sticky glue of lust so
that it is no longer in rebellion against itself, even in dreams;
that it neither commits nor consents to these debasing corruptions
which come through sensual images and which result in the
pollution of the flesh.  For it is no great thing for the
Almighty, who is "able to do . . . more than we can ask or
think,"[349] to bring it about that no such influence -- not even
one so slight that a nod might restrain it -- should afford
gratification to the feelings of a chaste person even when
sleeping.  This could come to pass not only in this life but even
at my present age.  But what I am still in this way of wickedness
I have confessed unto my good Lord, rejoicing with trembling in
what thou hast given me and grieving in myself for that in which I
am still imperfect.  I am trusting that thou wilt perfect thy
mercies in me, to the fullness of that peace which both my inner
and outward being shall have with thee when death is swallowed up
in victory.[350]


                         CHAPTER XXXI

     43.  There is yet another "evil of the day"[351] to which I
wish I were sufficient.  By eating and drinking we restore the
daily losses of the body until that day when thou destroyest both
food and stomach, when thou wilt destroy this emptiness with an
amazing fullness and wilt clothe this corruptible with an eternal
incorruption.  But now the necessity of habit is sweet to me, and
against this sweetness must I fight, lest I be enthralled by it.
Thus I carry on a daily war by fasting, constantly "bringing my
body into subjection,"[352] after which my pains are banished by
pleasure.  For hunger and thirst are actual pain.  They consume
and destroy like fever does, unless the medicine of food is at
hand to relieve us.  And since this medicine at hand comes from
the comfort we receive in thy gifts (by means of which land and
water and air serve our infirmity), even our calamity is called
pleasure.
     44.  This much thou hast taught me: that I should learn to
take food as medicine.  But during that time when I pass from the
pinch of emptiness to the contentment of fullness, it is in that
very moment that the snare of appetite lies baited for me.  For
the passage itself is pleasant; there is no other way of passing
thither, and necessity compels us to pass.  And while health is
the reason for our eating and drinking, yet a perilous delight
joins itself to them as a handmaid; and indeed, she tries to take
precedence in order that I may want to do for her sake what I say
I want to do for health's sake.  They do not both have the same
limit either.  What is sufficient for health is not enough for
pleasure.  And it is often a matter of doubt whether it is the
needful care of the body that still calls for food or whether it
is the sensual snare of desire still wanting to be served.  In
this uncertainty my unhappy soul rejoices, and uses it to prepare
an excuse as a defense.  It is glad that it is not clear as to
what is sufficient for the moderation of health, so that under the
pretense of health it may conceal its projects for pleasure.
These temptations I daily endeavor to resist and I summon thy
right hand to my help and cast my perplexities onto thee, for I
have not yet reached a firm conclusion in this matter.
     45.  I hear the voice of my God commanding: "Let not your
heart be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness."[353]
Drunkenness is far from me.  Thou wilt have mercy that it does not
come near me.  But "surfeiting" sometimes creeps upon thy servant.
Thou wilt have mercy that it may be put far from me.  For no man
can be continent unless thou give it.[354]  Many things that we
pray for thou givest us, and whatever good we receive before we
prayed for it, we receive it from thee, so that we might afterward
know that we did receive it from thee.  I never was a drunkard,
but I have known drunkards made into sober men by thee.  It was
also thy doing that those who never were drunkards have not been
-- and likewise, it was from thee that those who have been might
not remain so always.  And it was likewise from thee that both
might know from whom all this came.
     I heard another voice of thine: "Do not follow your lusts and
refrain yourself from your pleasures."[355]  And by thy favor I
have also heard this saying in which I have taken much delight:
"Neither if we eat are we the better; nor if we eat not are we the
worse."[356]  This is to say that neither shall the one make me to
abound, nor the other to be wretched.  I heard still another
voice: "For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to
be content.  I know how to be abased and I know how to abound. . .
.  I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me."[357]
See here a soldier of the heavenly army; not the sort of dust we
are.  But remember, O Lord, "that we are dust"[358] and that thou
didst create man out of the dust,[359] and that he "was lost, and
is found."[360]  Of course, he [the apostle Paul] could not do all
this by his own power.  He was of the same dust -- he whom I loved
so much and who spoke of these things through the afflatus of thy
inspiration: "I can," he said, "do all things through him who
strengtheneth me." Strengthen me, that I too may be able.  Give
what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.  This man [Paul]
confesses that he received the gift of grace and that, when he
glories, he glories in the Lord.  I have heard yet another voice
praying that he might receive.  "Take from me," he said, "the
greediness of the belly."[361]  And from this it appears, O my
holy God, that thou dost give it, when what thou commandest to be
done is done.
     46.  Thou hast taught me, good Father, that "to the pure all
things are pure"[362]; but "it is evil for that man who gives
offense in eating"[363]; and that "every creature of thine is
good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with
thanksgiving"[364]; and that "meat does not commend us to
God"[365]; and that "no man should judge us in meat or in
drink."[366]  "Let not him who eats despise him who eats not, and
let him that does not eat judge not him who does eat."[367]  These
things I have learned, thanks and praise be to thee, O my God and
Master, who knockest at my ears and enlightenest my heart.
Deliver me from all temptation!
     It is not the uncleanness of meat that I fear, but the
uncleanness of an incontinent appetite.  I know that permission
was granted Noah to eat every kind of flesh that was good for
food; that Elijah was fed with flesh; that John, blessed with a
wonderful abstinence, was not polluted by the living creatures
(that is, the locusts) on which he fed.  And I also know that Esau
was deceived by his hungering after lentils and that David blamed
himself for desiring water, and that our King was tempted not by
flesh but by bread.  And, thus, the people in the wilderness truly
deserved their reproof, not because they desired meat, but because
in their desire for food they murmured against the Lord.
     47.  Set down, then, in the midst of these temptations, I
strive daily against my appetite for food and drink.  For it is
not the kind of appetite I am able to deal with by cutting it off
once for all, and thereafter not touching it, as I was able to do
with fornication.  The bridle of the throat, therefore, must be
held in the mean between slackness and tightness.  And who, O
Lord, is he who is not in some degree carried away beyond the
bounds of necessity?  Whoever he is, he is great; let him magnify
thy name.  But I am not such a one, "for I am a sinful man."[368]
Yet I too magnify thy name, for he who hath "overcome the
world"[369] intercedeth with thee for my sins, numbering me among
the weak members of his body; for thy eyes did see what was
imperfect in him, and in thy book all shall be written down.[370]


                         CHAPTER XXXII

     48.  I am not much troubled by the allurement of odors.  When
they are absent, I do not seek them; when they are present, I do
not refuse them; and I am always prepared to go without them.  At
any rate, I appear thus to myself; it is quite possible that I am
deceived.  For there is a lamentable darkness in which my
capabilities are concealed, so that when my mind inquires into
itself concerning its own powers, it does not readily venture to
believe itself, because what already is in it is largely concealed
unless experience brings it to light.  Thus no man ought to feel
secure in this life, the whole of which is called an ordeal,
ordered so that the man who could be made better from having been
worse may not also from having been better become worse.  Our sole
hope, our sole confidence, our only assured promise, is thy mercy.


                        CHAPTER XXXIII

     49.  The delights of the ear drew and held me much more
powerfully, but thou didst unbind and liberate me.  In those
melodies which thy words inspire when sung with a sweet and
trained voice, I still find repose; yet not so as to cling to
them, but always so as to be able to free myself as I wish.  But
it is because of the words which are their life that they gain
entry into me and strive for a place of proper honor in my heart;
and I can hardly assign them a fitting one.  Sometimes, I seem to
myself to give them more respect than is fitting, when I see that
our minds are more devoutly and earnestly inflamed in piety by the
holy words when they are sung than when they are not.  And I
recognize that all the diverse affections of our spirits have
their appropriate measures in the voice and song, to which they
are stimulated by I know not what secret correlation.  But the
pleasures of my flesh -- to which the mind ought never to be
surrendered nor by them enervated -- often beguile me while
physical sense does not attend on reason, to follow her patiently,
but having once gained entry to help the reason, it strives to run
on before her and be her leader.  Thus in these things I sin
unknowingly, but I come to know it afterward.
     50.  On the other hand, when I avoid very earnestly this kind
of deception, I err out of too great austerity.  Sometimes I go to
the point of wishing that all the melodies of the pleasant songs
to which David's Psalter is adapted should be banished both from
my ears and from those of the Church itself.  In this mood, the
safer way seemed to me the one I remember was once related to me
concerning Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who required the
readers of the psalm to use so slight an inflection of the voice
that it was more like speaking than singing.
     However, when I call to mind the tears I shed at the songs of
thy Church at the outset of my recovered faith, and how even now I
am moved, not by the singing but by what is sung (when they are
sung with a clear and skillfully modulated voice), I then come to
acknowledge the great utility of this custom.  Thus I vacillate
between dangerous pleasure and healthful exercise.  I am inclined
-- though I pronounce no irrevocable opinion on the subject -- to
approve of the use of singing in the church, so that by the
delights of the ear the weaker minds may be stimulated to a
devotional mood.[371]  Yet when it happens that I am more moved by
the singing than by what is sung, I confess myself to have sinned
wickedly, and then I would rather not have heard the singing.  See
now what a condition I am in!  Weep with me, and weep for me,
those of you who can so control your inward feelings that good
results always come forth.  As for you who do not act this way at
all, such things do not concern you.  But do thou, O Lord, my God,
give ear; look and see, and have mercy upon me; and heal me --
thou, in whose sight I am become an enigma to myself; this itself
is my weakness.


                        CHAPTER XXXIV

     51.  There remain the delights of these eyes of my flesh,
about which I must make my confession in the hearing of the ears
of thy temple, brotherly and pious ears.  Thus I will finish the
list of the temptations of carnal appetite which still assail me
-- groaning and desiring as I am to be clothed upon with my house
from heaven.[372]
     The eyes delight in fair and varied forms, and bright and
pleasing colors.  Let these not take possession of my soul!
Rather let God possess it, he who didst make all these things very
good indeed.  He is still my good, and not these.  The pleasures
of sight affect me all the time I am awake.  There is no rest from
them given me, as there is from the voices of melody, which I can
occasionally find in silence.  For daylight, that queen of the
colors, floods all that we look upon everywhere I go during the
day.  It flits about me in manifold forms and soothes me even when
I am busy about other things, not noticing it.  And it presents
itself so forcibly that if it is suddenly withdrawn it is looked
for with longing, and if it is long absent the mind is saddened.
     52.  O Light, which Tobit saw even with his eyes closed in
blindness, when he taught his son the way of life -- and went
before him himself in the steps of love and never went
astray[373]; or that Light which Isaac saw when his fleshly "eyes
were dim, so that he could not see"[374] because of old age, and
it was permitted him unknowingly to bless his sons, but in the
blessing of them to know them; or that Light which Jacob saw, when
he too, blind in old age yet with an enlightened heart, threw
light on the nation of men yet to come -- presignified in the
persons of his own sons -- and laid his hands mystically crossed
upon his grandchildren by Joseph (not as their father, who saw
them from without, but as though he were within them), and
distinguished them aright[375]: this is the true Light; it is one,
and all are one who see and love it.
     But that corporeal light, of which I was speaking, seasons
the life of the world for her blind lovers with a tempting and
fatal sweetness.  Those who know how to praise thee for it, "O
God, Creator of Us All," take it up in thy hymn,[376] and are not
taken over by it in their sleep.  Such a man I desire to be.  I
resist the seductions of my eyes, lest my feet be entangled as I
go forward in thy way; and I raise my invisible eyes to thee, that
thou wouldst be pleased to "pluck my feet out of the net."[377]
Thou dost continually pluck them out, for they are easily
ensnared.  Thou ceasest not to pluck them out, but I constantly
remain fast in the snares set all around me.  However, thou who
"keepest Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep."[378]
     53.  What numberless things there are: products of the
various arts and manufactures in our clothes, shoes, vessels, and
all such things; besides such things as pictures and statuary --
and all these far beyond the necessary and moderate use of them or
their significance for the life of piety -- which men have added
for the delight of the eye, copying the outward forms of the
things they make; but inwardly forsaking Him by whom they were
made and destroying what they themselves have been made to be!
     And I, O my God and my Joy, I also raise a hymn to thee for
all these things, and offer a sacrifice of praise to my
Sanctifier, because those beautiful forms which pass through the
medium of the human soul into the artist's hands come from that
beauty which is above our minds, which my soul sighs for day and
night.  But the craftsmen and devotees of these outward beauties
discover the norm by which they judge them from that higher
beauty, but not the measure of their use.  Still, even if they do
not see it, it is there nevertheless, to guard them from wandering
astray, and to keep their strength for thee, and not dissipate it
in delights that pass into boredom.  And for myself, though I can
see and understand this, I am still entangled in my own course
with such beauty, but thou wilt rescue me, O Lord, thou wilt
rescue me, "for thy loving-kindness is before my eyes."[379]  For
I am captivated in my weakness but thou in thy mercy dost rescue
me: sometimes without my knowing it, because I had only lightly
fallen; at other times, the rescue is painful because I was stuck
fast.


                         CHAPTER XXXV

     54.  Besides this there is yet another form of temptation
still more complex in its peril.  For in addition to the fleshly
appetite which strives for the gratification of all senses and
pleasures -- in which its slaves perish because they separate
themselves from thee -- there is also a certain vain and curious
longing in the soul, rooted in the same bodily senses, which is
cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning; not having
pleasure in the flesh, but striving for new experiences through
the flesh.  This longing -- since its origin is our appetite for
learning, and since the sight is the chief of our senses in the
acquisition of knowledge -- is called in the divine language "the
lust of the eyes."[380]  For seeing is a function of the eyes; yet
we also use this word for the other senses as well, when we
exercise them in the search for knowledge.  We do not say, "Listen
how it glows," "Smell how it glistens," "Taste how it shines," or
"Feel how it flashes," since all of these are said to be _seen_.
And we do not simply say, "See how it shines," which only the eyes
can perceive; but we also say, "See how it sounds, see how it
smells, see how it tastes, see how hard it is." Thus, as we said
before, the whole round of sensory experience is called "the lust
of the eyes" because the function of seeing, in which the eyes
have the principal role, is applied by analogy to the other senses
when they are seeking after any kind of knowledge.
     55.  From this, then, one can the more clearly distinguish
whether it is pleasure or curiosity that is being pursued by the
senses.  For pleasure pursues objects that are beautiful,
melodious, fragrant, savory, soft.  But curiosity, seeking new
experiences, will even seek out the contrary of these, not with
the purpose of experiencing the discomfort that often accompanies
them, but out of a passion for experimenting and knowledge.
     For what pleasure is there in the sight of a lacerated
corpse, which makes you shudder?  And yet if there is one lying
close by we flock to it, as if to be made sad and pale.  People
fear lest they should see such a thing even in sleep, just as they
would if, when awake, someone compelled them to go and see it or
if some rumor of its beauty had attracted them.
     This is also the case with the other senses; it would be
tedious to pursue a complete analysis of it.  This malady of
curiosity is the reason for all those strange sights exhibited in
the theater.  It is also the reason why we proceed to search out
the secret powers of nature -- those which have nothing to do with
our destiny -- which do not profit us to know about, and
concerning which men desire to know only for the sake of knowing.
And it is with this same motive of perverted curiosity for
knowledge that we consult the magical arts.  Even in religion
itself, this prompting drives us to make trial of God when signs
and wonders are eagerly asked of him -- not desired for any saving
end, but only to make trial of him.
     56.  In such a wilderness so vast, crammed with snares and
dangers, behold how many of them I have lopped off and cast from
my heart, as thou, O God of my salvation, hast enabled me to do.
And yet, when would I dare to say, since so many things of this
sort still buzz around our daily lives -- when would I dare to say
that no such motive prompts my seeing or creates a vain curiosity
in me?  It is true that now the theaters never attract me, nor do
I now care to inquire about the courses of the stars, and my soul
has never sought answers from the departed spirits.  All
sacrilegious oaths I abhor.  And yet, O Lord my God, to whom I owe
all humble and singlehearted service, with what subtle suggestion
the enemy still influences me to require some sign from thee!  But
by our King, and by Jerusalem, our pure and chaste homeland, I
beseech thee that where any consenting to such thoughts is now far
from me, so may it always be farther and farther.  And when I
entreat thee for the salvation of any man, the end I aim at is
something more than the entreating: let it be that as thou dost
what thou wilt, thou dost also give me the grace willingly to
follow thy lead.
     57.  Now, really, in how many of the most minute and trivial
things my curiosity is still daily tempted, and who can keep the
tally on how often I succumb?  How often, when people are telling
idle tales, we begin by tolerating them lest we should give
offense to the sensitive; and then gradually we come to listen
willingly!  I do not nowadays go to the circus to see a dog chase
a rabbit, but if by chance I pass such a race in the fields, it
quite easily distracts me even from some serious thought and draws
me after it -- not that I turn aside with my horse, but with the
inclination of my mind.  And unless, by showing me my weakness,
thou dost speedily warn me to rise above such a sight to thee by a
deliberate act of thought -- or else to despise the whole thing
and pass it by -- then I become absorbed in the sight, vain
creature that I am.
     How is it that when I am sitting at home a lizard catching
flies, or a spider entangling them as they fly into her webs,
oftentimes arrests me?  Is the feeling of curiosity not the same
just because these are such tiny creatures?  From them I proceed
to praise thee, the wonderful Creator and Disposer of all things;
but it is not this that first attracts my attention.  It is one
thing to get up quickly and another thing not to fall -- and of
both such things my life is full and my only hope is in thy
exceeding great mercy.  For when this heart of ours is made the
depot of such things and is overrun by the throng of these
abounding vanities, then our prayers are often interrupted and
disturbed by them.  Even while we are in thy presence and direct
the voice of our hearts to thy ears, such a great business as this
is broken off by the inroads of I know not what idle thoughts.


                        CHAPTER XXXVI

     58.  Shall we, then, also reckon this vain curiosity among
the things that are to be but lightly esteemed?  Shall anything
restore us to hope except thy complete mercy since thou hast begun
to change us?  Thou knowest to what extent thou hast already
changed me, for first of all thou didst heal me of the lust for
vindicating myself, so that thou mightest then forgive all my
remaining iniquities and heal all my diseases, and "redeem my life
from corruption and crown me with loving-kindness and tender
mercies, and satisfy my desires with good things."[381]  It was
thou who didst restrain my pride with thy fear, and bowed my neck
to thy "yoke."[382]  And now I bear the yoke and it is "light" to
me, because thou didst promise it to be so, and hast made it to be
so.  And so in truth it was, though I knew it not when I feared to
take it up.
     59.  But, O Lord -- thou who alone reignest without pride,
because thou alone art the true Lord, who hast no Lord -- has this
third kind of temptation left me, or can it leave me during this
life: the desire to be feared and loved of men, with no other view
than that I may find in it a joy that is no joy?  It is, rather, a
wretched life and an unseemly ostentation.  It is a special reason
why we do not love thee, nor devotedly fear thee.  Therefore "thou
resistest the proud but givest grace to the humble."[383]  Thou
thunderest down on the ambitious designs of the world, and "the
foundations of the hills" tremble.[384]
     And yet certain offices in human society require the
officeholder to be loved and feared of men, and through this the
adversary of our true blessedness presses hard upon us, scattering
everywhere his snares of "well done, well done"; so that while we
are eagerly picking them up, we may be caught unawares and split
off our joy from thy truth and fix it on the deceits of men.  In
this way we come to take pleasure in being loved and feared, not
for thy sake but in thy stead.  By such means as this, the
adversary makes men like himself, that he may have them as his
own, not in the harmony of love, but in the fellowship of
punishment -- the one who aspired to exalt his throne in the
north,[385] that in the darkness and the cold men might have to
serve him, mimicking thee in perverse and distorted ways.
     But see, O Lord, we are thy little flock.  Possess us,
stretch thy wings above us, and let us take refuge under them.  Be
thou our glory; let us be loved for thy sake, and let thy word be
feared in us.  Those who desire to be commended by the men whom
thou condemnest will not be defended by men when thou judgest, nor
will they be delivered when thou dost condemn them.  But when --
not as a sinner is praised in the wicked desires of his soul nor
when the unrighteous man is blessed in his unrighteousness -- a
man is praised for some gift that thou hast given him, and he is
more gratified at the praise for himself than because he possesses
the gift for which he is praised, such a one is praised while thou
dost condemn him.  In such a case the one who praised is truly
better than the one who was praised.  For the gift of God in man
was pleasing to the one, while the other was better pleased with
the gift of man than with the gift of God.


                        CHAPTER XXXVII

     60.  By these temptations we are daily tried, O Lord; we are
tried unceasingly.  Our daily "furnace" is the human tongue.[386]
And also in this respect thou commandest us to be continent.  Give
what thou commandest and command what thou wilt.  In this matter,
thou knowest the groans of my heart and the rivers of my eyes, for
I am not able to know for certain how far I am clean of this
plague; and I stand in great fear of my "secret faults,"[387]
which thy eyes perceive, though mine do not.  For in respect of
the pleasures of my flesh and of idle curiosity, I see how far I
have been able to hold my mind in check when I abstain from them
either by voluntary act of the will or because they simply are not
at hand; for then I can inquire of myself how much more or less
frustrating it is to me not to have them.  This is also true about
riches, which are sought for in order that they may minister to
one of these three "lusts," or two, or the whole complex of them.
The mind is able to see clearly if, when it has them, it despises
them so that they may be cast aside and it may prove itself.
     But if we desire to test our power of doing without praise,
must we then live wickedly or lead a life so atrocious and
abandoned that everyone who knows us will detest us?  What greater
madness than this can be either said or conceived?  And yet if
praise, both by custom and right, is the companion of a good life
and of good works, we should as little forgo its companionship as
the good life itself.  But unless a thing is absent I do not know
whether I should be contented or troubled at having to do without
it.
     61.  What is it, then, that I am confessing to thee, O Lord,
concerning this sort of temptation?  What else, than that I am
delighted with praise, but more with the truth itself than with
praise.  For if I were to have any choice whether, if I were mad
or utterly in the wrong, I would prefer to be praised by all men
or, if I were steadily and fully confident in the truth, would
prefer to be blamed by all, I see which I should choose.  Yet I
wish I were unwilling that the approval of others should add
anything to my joy for any good I have.  Yet I admit that it does
increase it; and, more than that, dispraise diminishes it.  Then,
when I am disturbed over this wretchedness of mine, an excuse
presents itself to me, the value of which thou knowest, O God, for
it renders me uncertain.  For since it is not only continence that
thou hast enjoined on us -- that is, what things to hold back our
love from -- but righteousness as well -- that is, what to bestow
our love upon -- and hast wished us to love not only thee, but
also our neighbor, it often turns out that when I am gratified by
intelligent praise I seem to myself to be gratified by the
competence or insight of my neighbor; or, on the other hand, I am
sorry for the defect in him when I hear him dispraise either what
he does not understand or what is good.  For I am sometimes
grieved at the praise I get, either when those things that
displease me in myself are praised in me, or when lesser and
trifling goods are valued more highly than they should be.  But,
again, how do I know whether I feel this way because I am
unwilling that he who praises me should differ from me concerning
myself not because I am moved with any consideration for him, but
because the good things that please me in myself are more pleasing
to me when they also please another?  For in a way, I am not
praised when my judgment of myself is not praised, since either
those things which are displeasing to me are praised, or those
things which are less pleasing to me are more praised.  Am I not,
then, quite uncertain of myself in this respect?
     62.  Behold, O Truth, it is in thee that I see that I ought
not to be moved at my own praises for my own sake, but for the
sake of my neighbor's good.  And whether this is actually my way,
I truly do not know.  On this score I know less of myself than
thou dost.  I beseech thee now, O my God, to reveal myself to me
also, that I may confess to my brethren, who are to pray for me in
those matters where I find myself weak.
     Let me once again examine myself the more diligently.  If, in
my own praise, I am moved with concern for my neighbor, why am I
less moved if some other man is unjustly dispraised than when it
happens to me?  Why am I more irritated at that reproach which is
cast on me than at one which is, with equal injustice, cast upon
another in my presence?  Am I ignorant of this also?  Or is it
still true that I am deceiving myself, and do not keep the truth
before thee in my heart and tongue?  Put such madness far from me,
O Lord, lest my mouth be to me "the oil of sinners, to anoint my
head."[388]


                        CHAPTER XXXVIII

     63.  "I am needy and poor."[389]  Still, I am better when in
secret groanings I displease myself and seek thy mercy until what
is lacking in me is renewed and made complete for that peace which
the eye of the proud does not know.  The reports that come from
the mouth and from actions known to men have in them a most
perilous temptation to the love of praise.  This love builds up a
certain complacency in one's own excellency, and then goes around
collecting solicited compliments.  It tempts me, even when I
inwardly reprove myself for it, and this precisely because it is
reproved.  For a man may often glory vainly in the very scorn of
vainglory -- and in this case it is not any longer the scorn of
vainglory in which he glories, for he does not truly despise it
when he inwardly glories in it.


                        CHAPTER XXXIX

     64.  Within us there is yet another evil arising from the
same sort of temptation.  By it they become empty who please
themselves in themselves, although they do not please or displease
or aim at pleasing others.  But in pleasing themselves they
displease thee very much, not merely taking pleasure in things
that are not good as if they were good, but taking pleasure in thy
good things as if they were their own; or even as if they were
thine but still as if they had received them through their own
merit; or even as if they had them through thy grace, still
without this grace with their friends, but as if they envied that
grace to others.  In all these and similar perils and labors, thou
perceivest the agitation of my heart, and I would rather feel my
wounds being cured by thee than not inflicted by me on myself.


                          CHAPTER XL

     65.  Where hast thou not accompanied me, O Truth, teaching me
both what to avoid and what to desire, when I have submitted to
thee what I could understand about matters here below, and have
sought thy counsel about them?
     With my external senses I have viewed the world as I was able
and have noticed the life which my body derives from me and from
these senses of mine.  From that stage I advanced inwardly into
the recesses of my memory -- the manifold chambers of my mind,
marvelously full of unmeasured wealth.  And I reflected on this
and was afraid, and could understand none of these things without
thee and found thee to be none of them.  Nor did I myself discover
these things -- I who went over them all and labored to
distinguish and to value everything according to its dignity,
accepting some things upon the report of my senses and questioning
about others which I thought to be related to my inner self,
distinguishing and numbering the reporters themselves; and in that
vast storehouse of my memory, investigating some things,
depositing other things, taking out still others.  Neither was I
myself when I did this -- that is, that ability of mine by which I
did it -- nor was it thou, for thou art that never-failing light
from which I took counsel about them all; whether they were what
they were, and what was their real value.  In all this I heard
thee teaching and commanding me.  And this I often do -- and this
is a delight to me -- and as far as I can get relief from my
necessary duties, I resort to this kind of pleasure.  But in all
these things which I review when I consult thee, I still do not
find a secure place for my soul save in thee, in whom my scattered
members may be gathered together and nothing of me escape from
thee.  And sometimes thou introducest me to a most rare and inward
feeling, an inexplicable sweetness.  If this were to come to
perfection in me I do not know to what point life might not then
arrive.  But still, by these wretched weights of mine, I relapse
into these common things, and am sucked in by my old customs and
am held.  I sorrow much, yet I am still closely held.  To this
extent, then, the burden of habit presses us down.  I can exist in
this fashion but I do not wish to do so.  In that other way I wish
I were, but cannot be -- in both ways I am wretched.


                          CHAPTER XLI

     66.  And now I have thus considered the infirmities of my
sins, under the headings of the three major "lusts," and I have
called thy right hand to my aid.  For with a wounded heart I have
seen thy brightness, and having been beaten back I cried: "Who can
attain to it?  I am cut off from before thy eyes."[390]  Thou art
the Truth, who presidest over all things, but I, because of my
greed, did not wish to lose thee.  But still, along with thee, I
wished also to possess a lie -- just as no one wishes to lie in
such a way as to be ignorant of what is true.  By this I lost
thee, for thou wilt not condescend to be enjoyed along with a lie.


                         CHAPTER XLII

     67.  Whom could I find to reconcile me to thee?  Should I
have approached the angels?  What kind of prayer?  What kind of
rites?  Many who were striving to return to thee and were not able
of themselves have, I am told, tried this and have fallen into a
longing for curious visions and deserved to be deceived.  Being
exalted, they sought thee in their pride of learning, and they
thrust themselves forward rather than beating their breasts.[391]
And so by a likeness of heart, they drew to themselves the princes
of the air,[392] their conspirators and companions in pride, by
whom they were deceived by the power of magic.  Thus they sought a
mediator by whom they might be cleansed, but there was none.  For
the mediator they sought was the devil, disguising himself as an
angel of light.[393]  And he allured their proud flesh the more
because he had no fleshly body.
     They were mortal and sinful, but thou, O Lord, to whom they
arrogantly sought to be reconciled, art immortal and sinless.  But
a mediator between God and man ought to have something in him like
God and something in him like man, lest in being like man he
should be far from God, or if only like God he should be far from
man, and so should not be a mediator.  That deceitful mediator,
then, by whom, by thy secret judgment, human pride deserves to be
deceived, had one thing in common with man, that is, his sin.  In
another respect, he would seem to have something in common with
God, for not being clothed with the mortality of the flesh, he
could boast that he was immortal.  But since "the wages of sin is
death,"[394] what he really has in common with men is that,
together with them, he is condemned to death.


                         CHAPTER XLIII

     68.  But the true Mediator, whom thou in thy secret mercy
hast revealed to the humble, and hast sent to them so that through
his example they also might learn the same humility -- that
"Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,"[395]
appeared between mortal sinners and the immortal Just One.  He was
mortal as men are mortal; he was righteous as God is righteous;
and because the reward of righteousness is life and peace, he
could, through his righteousness united with God, cancel the death
of justified sinners, which he was willing to have in common with
them.  Hence he was manifested to holy men of old, to the end that
they might be saved through faith in his Passion to come, even as
we through faith in his Passion which is past.  As man he was
Mediator, but as the Word he was not something in between the two;
because he was equal to God, and God with God, and, with the Holy
Spirit, one God.
     69.  How hast thou loved us, O good Father, who didst not
spare thy only Son, but didst deliver him up for us wicked
ones![396]  How hast thou loved us, for whom he who did not count
it robbery to be equal with thee "became obedient unto death, even
the death of the cross"[397]!  He alone was "free among the
dead."[398]  He alone had power to lay down his life and power to
take it up again, and for us he became to thee both Victor and
Victim; and Victor because he was the Victim.  For us, he was to
thee both Priest and Sacrifice, and Priest because he was the
Sacrifice.  Out of slaves, he maketh us thy sons, because he was
born of thee and did serve us.  Rightly, then, is my hope fixed
strongly on him, that thou wilt "heal all my diseases"[399]
through him, who sitteth at thy right hand and maketh intercession
for us.[400]  Otherwise I should utterly despair.  For my
infirmities are many and great; indeed, they are very many and
very great.  But thy medicine is still greater.  Otherwise, we
might think that thy word was removed from union with man, and
despair of ourselves, if it had not been that he was "made flesh
and dwelt among us."[401]
     70.  Terrified by my sins and the load of my misery, I had
resolved in my heart and considered flight into the wilderness.
But thou didst forbid me, and thou didst strengthen me, saying
that "since Christ died for all, they who live should not
henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him who died for
them."[402]  Behold, O Lord, I cast all my care on thee, that I
may live and "behold wondrous things out of thy law."[403]  Thou
knowest my incompetence and my infirmities; teach me and heal me.
Thy only Son -- he "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge"[404] -- hath redeemed me with his blood.  Let not
the proud speak evil of me, because I keep my ransom before my
mind, and eat and drink and share my food and drink.  For, being
poor, I desire to be satisfied from him, together with those who
eat and are satisfied: "and they shall praise the Lord that seek
Him."[405]




                         BOOK ELEVEN


     The eternal Creator and the Creation in time.  Augustine ties
together his memory of his past life, his present experience, and
his ardent desire to comprehend the mystery of creation.  This
leads him to the questions of the mode and time of creation.  He
ponders the mode of creation and shows that it was  de nihilo and
involved no alteration in the being of God.  He then considers the
question of the beginning of the world and time and shows that
time and creation are cotemporal.  But what is time?  To this
Augustine devotes a brilliant analysis of the subjectivity of time
and the relation of all temporal process to the abiding eternity
of God.  From this, he prepares to turn to a detailed
interpretation of Gen. 1:1, 2.


                           CHAPTER I

     1.  Is it possible, O Lord, that, since thou art in eternity,
thou art ignorant of what I am saying to thee?  Or, dost thou see
in time an event at the time it occurs?  If not, then why am I
recounting such a tale of things to thee?  Certainly not in order
to acquaint thee with them through me; but, instead, that through
them I may stir up my own love and the love of my readers toward
thee, so that all may say, "Great is the Lord and greatly to be
praised." I have said this before[406] and will say it again: "For
love of thy love I do it." So also we pray -- and yet Truth tells
us, "Your Father knoweth what things you need before you ask
him."[407]  Consequently, we lay bare our feelings before thee,
that, through our confessing to thee our plight and thy mercies
toward us, thou mayest go on to free us altogether, as thou hast
already begun; and that we may cease to be wretched in ourselves
and blessed in thee -- since thou hast called us to be poor in
spirit, meek, mourners, hungering and athirst for righteousness,
merciful and pure in heart.[408]  Thus I have told thee many
things, as I could find ability and will to do so, since it was
thy will in the first place that I should confess to thee, O Lord
my God -- for "Thou art good and thy mercy endureth forever."[409]


                          CHAPTER II

     2.  But how long would it take for the voice of my pen to
tell enough of thy exhortations and of all thy terrors and
comforts and leadings by which thou didst bring me to preach thy
Word and to administer thy sacraments to thy people?  And even if
I could do this sufficiently, the drops of time[410] are very
precious to me and I have for a long time been burning with the
desire to meditate on thy law, and to confess in thy presence my
knowledge and ignorance of it -- from the first streaks of thy
light in my mind and the remaining darkness, until my weakness
shall be swallowed up in thy strength.  And I do not wish to see
those hours drained into anything else which I can find free from
the necessary care of the body, the exercise of the mind, and the
service we owe to our fellow men -- and what we give even if we do
not owe it.
     3.  O Lord my God, hear my prayer and let thy mercy attend my
longing.  It does not burn for itself alone but longs as well to
serve the cause of fraternal love.  Thou seest in my heart that
this is so.  Let me offer the service of my mind and my tongue --
and give me what I may in turn offer back to thee.  For "I am
needy and poor"; thou art rich to all who call upon thee -- thou
who, in thy freedom from care, carest for us.  Trim away from my
lips, inwardly and outwardly, all rashness and lying.  Let thy
Scriptures be my chaste delight.  Let me not be deceived in them,
nor deceive others from them.  O Lord, hear and pity!  O Lord my
God, light of the blind, strength of the weak -- and also the
light of those who see and the strength of the strong -- hearken
to my soul and hear it crying from the depths.[411]  Unless thy
ears attend us even in the depths, where should we go?  To whom
should we cry?
     "Thine is the day and the night is thine as well."[412]  At
thy bidding the moments fly by.  Grant me in them, then, an
interval for my meditations on the hidden things of thy law, nor
close the door of thy law against us who knock.  Thou hast not
willed that the deep secrets of all those pages should have been
written in vain.  Those forests are not without their stags which
keep retired within them, ranging and walking and feeding, lying
down and ruminating.[413]  Perfect me, O Lord, and reveal their
secrets to me.  Behold, thy voice is my joy; thy voice surpasses
in abundance of delights.  Give me what I love, for I do love it.
And this too is thy gift.  Abandon not thy gifts and despise not
thy "grass" which thirsts for thee.[414]  Let me confess to thee
everything that I shall have found in thy books and "let me hear
the voice of thy praise."[415]  Let me drink from thee and
"consider the wondrous things out of thy law"[416] -- from the
very beginning, when thou madest heaven and earth, and
thenceforward to the everlasting reign of thy Holy City with thee.
     4.  O Lord, have mercy on me and hear my petition.  For my
prayer is not for earthly things, neither gold nor silver and
precious stones, nor gorgeous apparel, nor honors and power, nor
fleshly pleasures, nor of bodily necessities in this life of our
pilgrimage: all of these things are "added" to those who seek thy
Kingdom and thy righteousness.[417]
     Observe, O God, from whence comes my desire.  The unrighteous
have told me of delights but not such as those in thy law, O Lord.
Behold, this is the spring of my desire.  See, O Father, look and
see -- and approve!  Let it be pleasing in thy mercy's sight that
I should find favor with thee -- that the secret things of thy
Word may be opened to me when I knock.  I beg this of thee by our
Lord Jesus Christ, thy Son, the Man of thy right hand, the Son of
Man; whom thou madest strong for thy purpose as Mediator between
thee and us; through whom thou didst seek us when we were not
seeking thee, but didst seek us so that we might seek thee; thy
Word, through whom thou madest all things, and me among them; thy
only Son, through whom thou hast called thy faithful people to
adoption, and me among them.  I beseech it of thee through him who
sitteth at thy right hand and maketh intercession for us, "in whom
are hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge."[418]  It is he I
seek in thy books.  Moses wrote of him.  He tells us so himself;
the Truth tells us so.


                          CHAPTER III

     5.  Let me hear and understand how in the beginning thou
madest heaven and earth.[419]  Moses wrote of this; he wrote and
passed on -- moving from thee to thee -- and he is now no longer
before me.  If he were, I would lay hold on him and ask him and
entreat him solemnly that in thy name he would open out these
things to me, and I would lend my bodily ears to the sounds that
came forth out of his mouth.  If, however, he spoke in the Hebrew
language, the sounds would beat on my senses in vain, and nothing
would touch my mind; but if he spoke in Latin, I would understand
what he said.  But how should I then know whether what he said was
true?  If I knew even this much, would it be that I knew it from
him?  Indeed, within me, deep inside the chambers of my thought,
Truth itself -- neither Hebrew, nor Greek, nor Latin, nor
barbarian, without any organs of voice and tongue, without the
sound of syllables -- would say, "He speaks the truth," and I
should be assured by this.  Then I would confidently say to that
man of thine, "You speak the truth."[420]  However, since I cannot
inquire of Moses, I beseech thee, O Truth, from whose fullness he
spoke truth; I beseech thee, my God, forgive my sins, and as thou
gavest thy servant the gift to speak these things, grant me also
the gift to understand them.


                          CHAPTER IV

     6.  Look around; there are the heaven and the earth.  They
cry aloud that they were made, for they change and vary.  Whatever
there is that has not been made, and yet has being, has nothing in
it that was not there before.  This having something not already
existent is what it means to be changed and varied.  Heaven and
earth thus speak plainly that they did not make themselves: "We
are, because we have been made; we did not exist before we came to
be so that we could have made ourselves!"  And the voice with
which they speak is simply their visible presence.  It was thou, O
Lord, who madest these things.  Thou art beautiful; thus they are
beautiful.  Thou art good, thus they are good.  Thou art; thus
they are.  But they are not as beautiful, nor as good, nor as
truly real as thou their Creator art.  Compared with thee, they
are neither beautiful nor good, nor do they even exist.  These
things we know, thanks be to thee.  Yet our knowledge is ignorance
when it is compared with thy knowledge.


                           CHAPTER V

     7.  But _how_ didst thou make the heaven and the earth, and
what was the tool of such a mighty work as thine?  For it was not
like a human worker fashioning body from body, according to the
fancy of his mind, able somehow or other to impose on it a form
which the mind perceived in itself by its inner eye (yet how
should even he be able to do this, if thou hadst not made that
mind?).  He imposes the form on something already existing and
having some sort of being, such as clay, or stone or wood or gold
or such like (and where would these things come from if thou hadst
not furnished them?).  For thou madest his body for the artisan,
and thou madest the mind which directs the limbs; thou madest the
matter from which he makes anything; thou didst create the
capacity by which he understands his art and sees within his mind
what he may do with the things before him; thou gavest him his
bodily sense by which, as if he had an interpreter, he may
communicate from mind to matter what he proposes to do and report
back to his mind what has been done, that the mind may consult
with the Truth which presideth over it as to whether what is done
is well done.
     All these things praise thee, the Creator of them all.  But
how didst thou make them?  How, O God, didst thou make the heaven
and earth?  For truly, neither in heaven nor on earth didst thou
make heaven and earth -- nor in the air nor in the waters, since
all of these also belong to the heaven and the earth.  Nowhere in
the whole world didst thou make the whole world, because there was
no place where it could be made before it was made.  And thou
didst not hold anything in thy hand from which to fashion the
heaven and the earth,[421] for where couldst thou have gotten what
thou hadst not made in order to make something with it?  Is there,
indeed, anything at all except because thou art?  Thus thou didst
speak and they were made,[422] and by thy Word thou didst make
them all.


                          CHAPTER VI

     8.  But how didst thou speak?  Was it in the same manner in
which the voice came from the cloud saying, "This is my beloved
Son"[423]?  For that voice sounded forth and died away; it began
and ended.  The syllables sounded and passed away, the second
after the first, the third after the second, and thence in order,
till the very last after all the rest; and silence after the last.
>From this it is clear and plain that it was the action of a
creature, itself in time, which sounded that voice, obeying thy
eternal will.  And what these words were which were formed at that
time the outer ear conveyed to the conscious mind, whose inner ear
lay attentively open to thy eternal Word.  But it compared those
words which sounded in time with thy eternal word sounding in
silence and said: "This is different; quite different!  These
words are far below me; they are not even real, for they fly away
and pass, but the Word of my God remains above me forever." If,
then, in words that sound and fade away thou didst say that heaven
and earth should be made, and thus _madest_ heaven and earth, then
there was already some kind of corporeal creature _before_ heaven
and earth by whose motions in time that voice might have had its
occurrence in time.  But there was nothing corporeal before the
heaven and the earth; or if there was, then it is certain that
already, without a time-bound voice, thou hadst created whatever
it was out of which thou didst make the time-bound voice by which
thou didst say, "Let the heaven and the earth be made!"  For
whatever it was out of which such a voice was made simply did not
exist at all until it was made by thee.  Was it decreed by thy
Word that a body might be made from which such words might come?


                          CHAPTER VII

     9.  Thou dost call us, then, to understand the Word -- the
God who is God with thee -- which is spoken eternally and by which
all things are spoken eternally.  For what was first spoken was
not finished, and then something else spoken until the whole
series was spoken; but all things, at the same time and forever.
For, otherwise, we should have time and change and not a true
eternity, nor a true immortality.
     This I know, O my God, and I give thanks.  I know, I confess
to thee, O Lord, and whoever is not ungrateful for certain truths
knows and blesses thee along with me.  We know, O Lord, this much
we know: that in the same proportion as anything is not what it
was, and is what it was not, in that very same proportion it
passes away or comes to be.  But there is nothing in thy Word that
passes away or returns to its place; for it is truly immortal and
eternal.  And, therefore, unto the Word coeternal with thee, at
the same time and always thou sayest all that thou sayest.  And
whatever thou sayest shall be made is made, and thou makest
nothing otherwise than by speaking.  Still, not all the things
that thou dost make by speaking are made at the same time and
always.


                         CHAPTER VIII

     10.  Why is this, I ask of thee, O Lord my God?  I see it
after a fashion, but I do not know how to express it, unless I say
that everything that begins to be and then ceases to be begins and
ceases when it is known in thy eternal Reason that it ought to
begin or cease -- in thy eternal Reason where nothing begins or
ceases.  And this is thy Word, which is also "the Beginning,"
because it also speaks to us.[424]  Thus, in the gospel, he spoke
through the flesh; and this sounded in the outward ears of men so
that it might be believed and sought for within, and so that it
might be found in the eternal Truth, in which the good and only
Master teacheth all his disciples.[425]  There, O Lord, I hear thy
voice, the voice of one speaking to me, since he who teacheth us
speaketh to us.  But he that doth not teach us doth not really
speak to us even when he speaketh.  Yet who is it that teacheth us
unless it be the Truth immutable?  For even when we are instructed
by means of the mutable creation, we are thereby led to the Truth
immutable.  There we learn truly as we stand and hear him, and we
rejoice greatly "because of the bridegroom's voice,"[426]
restoring us to the source whence our being comes.  And therefore,
unless the Beginning remained immutable, there would then not be a
place to which we might return when we had wandered away.  But
when we return from error, it is through our gaining knowledge
that we return.  In order for us to gain knowledge he teacheth us,
since he is the Beginning, and speaketh to us.


                          CHAPTER IX

     11.  In this Beginning, O God, thou hast made heaven and
earth -- through thy Word, thy Son, thy Power, thy Wisdom, thy
Truth: all wondrously speaking and wondrously creating.  Who shall
comprehend such things and who shall tell of it?  What is it that
shineth through me and striketh my heart without injury, so that I
both shudder and burn?  I shudder because I am unlike it; I burn
because I am like it.  It is Wisdom itself that shineth through
me, clearing away my fog, which so readily overwhelms me so that I
faint in it, in the darkness and burden of my punishment.  For my
strength is brought down in neediness, so that I cannot endure
even my blessings until thou, O Lord, who hast been gracious to
all my iniquities, also healest all my infirmities -- for it is
thou who "shalt redeem my life from corruption, and crown me with
loving-kindness and tender mercy, and shalt satisfy my desire with
good things so that my youth shall be renewed like the
eagle's."[427]  For by this hope we are saved, and through
patience we await thy promises.  Let him that is able hear thee
speaking to his inner mind.  I will cry out with confidence
because of thy own oracle, "How wonderful are thy works, O Lord;
in wisdom thou hast made them all."[428]  And this Wisdom is the
Beginning, and in that Beginning thou hast made heaven and earth.


                           CHAPTER X

     12.  Now, are not those still full of their old carnal
nature[429] who ask us: "What was God doing _before_ he made
heaven and earth?  For if he was idle," they say, "and doing
nothing, then why did he not continue in that state forever --
doing nothing, as he had always done?  If any new motion has
arisen in God, and a new will to form a creature, which he had
never before formed, how can that be a true eternity in which an
act of will occurs that was not there before?  For the will of God
is not a created thing, but comes before the creation -- and this
is true because nothing could be created unless the will of the
Creator came before it.  The will of God, therefore, pertains to
his very Essence.  Yet if anything has arisen in the Essence of
God that was not there before, then that Essence cannot truly be
called eternal.  But if it was the eternal will of God that the
creation should come to be, why, then, is not the creation itself
also from eternity?"[430]


                          CHAPTER XI

     13.  Those who say these things do not yet understand thee, O
Wisdom of God, O Light of souls.  They do not yet understand how
the things are made that are made by and in thee.  They endeavor
to comprehend eternal things, but their heart still flies about in
the past and future motions of created things, and is still
unstable.  Who shall hold it and fix it so that it may come to
rest for a little; and then, by degrees, glimpse the glory of that
eternity which abides forever; and then, comparing eternity with
the temporal process in which nothing abides, they may see that
they are incommensurable?  They would see that a long time does
not become long, except from the many separate events that occur
in its passage, which cannot be simultaneous.  In the Eternal, on
the other hand, nothing passes away, but the whole is
simultaneously present.  But no temporal process is wholly
simultaneous.  Therefore, let it[431] see that all time past is
forced to move on by the incoming future; that all the future
follows from the past; and that all, past and future, is created
and issues out of that which is forever present.  Who will hold
the heart of man that it may stand still and see how the eternity
which always stands still is itself neither future nor past but
expresses itself in the times that are future and past?  Can my
hand do this, or can the hand of my mouth bring about so difficult
a thing even by persuasion?


                          CHAPTER XII

     14.  How, then, shall I respond to him who asks, "What was
God doing _before_ he made heaven and earth?"  I do not answer, as
a certain one is reported to have done facetiously (shrugging off
the force of the question).  "He was preparing hell," he said,
"for those who pry too deep." It is one thing to see the answer;
it is another to laugh at the questioner -- and for myself I do
not answer these things thus.  More willingly would I have
answered, "I do not know what I do not know," than cause one who
asked a deep question to be ridiculed -- and by such tactics gain
praise for a worthless answer.
     Rather, I say that thou, our God, art the Creator of every
creature.  And if in the term "heaven and earth" every creature is
included, I make bold to say further: "Before God made heaven and
earth, he did not make anything at all.  For if he did, what did
he make unless it were a creature?"  I do indeed wish that I knew
all that I desire to know to my profit as surely as I know that no
creature was made before any creature was made.


                         CHAPTER XIII

     15.  But if the roving thought of someone should wander over
the images of past time, and wonder that thou, the Almighty God,
the All-creating and All-sustaining, the Architect of heaven and
earth, didst for ages unnumbered abstain from so great a work
before thou didst actually do it, let him awake and consider that
he wonders at illusions.  For in what temporal medium could the
unnumbered ages that thou didst not make pass by, since thou art
the Author and Creator of all the ages?  Or what periods of time
would those be that were not made by thee?  Or how could they have
already passed away if they had not already been?  Since,
therefore, thou art the Creator of all times, if there was any
time _before_ thou madest heaven and earth, why is it said that
thou wast abstaining from working?  For thou madest that very time
itself, and periods could not pass by _before_ thou madest the
whole temporal procession.  But if there was no time _before_
heaven and earth, how, then, can it be asked, "What wast thou
doing then?"  For there was no "then" when there was no time.
     16.  Nor dost thou precede any given period of time by
another period of time.  Else thou wouldst not precede all periods
of time.  In the eminence of thy ever-present eternity, thou
precedest all times past, and extendest beyond all future times,
for they are still to come -- and when they have come, they will
be past.  But "Thou art always the Selfsame and thy years shall
have no end."[432]  Thy years neither go nor come; but ours both
go and come in order that all separate moments may come to pass.
All thy years stand together as one, since they are abiding.  Nor
do thy years past exclude the years to come because thy years do
not pass away.  All these years of ours shall be with thee, when
all of them shall have ceased to be.  Thy years are but a day, and
thy day is not recurrent, but always today.  Thy "today" yields
not to tomorrow and does not follow yesterday.  Thy "today" is
eternity.  Therefore, thou didst generate the Coeternal, to whom
thou didst say, "This day I have begotten thee."[433]  Thou madest
all time and before all times thou art, and there was never a time
when there was no time.


                          CHAPTER XIV

     17.  There was no time, therefore, when thou hadst not made
anything, because thou hadst made time itself.  And there are no
times that are coeternal with thee, because thou dost abide
forever; but if times should abide, they would not be times.
     For what is time?  Who can easily and briefly explain it?
Who can even comprehend it in thought or put the answer into
words?  Yet is it not true that in conversation we refer to
nothing more familiarly or knowingly than time?  And surely we
understand it when we speak of it; we understand it also when we
hear another speak of it.
     What, then, is time?  If no one asks me, I know what it is.
If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know.  Yet I
say with confidence that I know that if nothing passed away, there
would be no past time; and if nothing were still coming, there
would be no future time; and if there were nothing at all, there
would be no present time.
     But, then, how is it that there are the two times, past and
future, when even the past is now no longer and the future is now
not yet?  But if the present were always present, and did not pass
into past time, it obviously would not be time but eternity.  If,
then, time present -- if it be time -- comes into existence only
because it passes into time past, how can we say that even this
is, since the cause of its being is that it will cease to be?
Thus, can we not truly say that time _is_ only as it tends toward
nonbeing?


                          CHAPTER XV

     18.  And yet we speak of a long time and a short time; but
never speak this way except of time past and future.  We call a
hundred years ago, for example, a long time past.  In like manner,
we should call a hundred years hence a long time to come.  But we
call ten days ago a short time past; and ten days hence a short
time to come.  But in what sense is something long or short that
is nonexistent?  For the past is not now, and the future is not
yet.  Therefore, let us not say, "It _is_ long"; instead, let us
say of the past, "It _was_ long," and of the future, "It _will be_
long." And yet, O Lord, my Light, shall not thy truth make mockery
of man even here?  For that long time past: was it long when it
was already past, or when it was still present?  For it might have
been long when there was a period that could be long, but when it
was past, it no longer was.  In that case, that which was not at
all could not be long.  Let us not, therefore, say, "Time past was
long," for we shall not discover what it was that was long
because, since it is past, it no longer exists.  Rather, let us
say that "time _present_ was long, because when it was present it
_was_ long." For then it had not yet passed on so as not to be,
and therefore it still was in a state that could be called long.
But after it passed, it ceased to be long simply because it ceased
to be.
     19.  Let us, therefore, O human soul, see whether present
time can be long, for it has been given you to feel and measure
the periods of time.  How, then, will you answer me?
     Is a hundred years when present a long time?  But, first, see
whether a hundred years can be present at once.  For if the first
year in the century is current, then it is present time, and the
other ninety and nine are still future.  Therefore, they are not
yet.  But, then, if the second year is current, one year is
already past, the second present, and all the rest are future.
And thus, if we fix on any middle year of this century as present,
those before it are past, those after it are future.  Therefore, a
hundred years cannot be present all at once.
     Let us see, then, whether the year that is now current can be
present.  For if its first month is current, then the rest are
future; if the second, the first is already past, and the
remainder are not yet.  Therefore, the current year is not present
all at once.  And if it is not present as a whole, then the year
is not present.  For it takes twelve months to make the year, from
which each individual month which is current is itself present one
at a time, but the rest are either past or future.
     20.  Thus it comes out that time present, which we found was
the only time that could be called "long," has been cut down to
the space of scarcely a single day.  But let us examine even that,
for one day is never present as a whole.  For it is made up of
twenty-four hours, divided between night and day.  The first of
these hours has the rest of them as future, and the last of them
has the rest as past; but any of those between has those that
preceded it as past and those that succeed it as future.  And that
one hour itself passes away in fleeting fractions.  The part of it
that has fled is past; what remains is still future.  If any
fraction of time be conceived that cannot now be divided even into
the most minute momentary point, this alone is what we may call
time present.  But this flies so rapidly from future to past that
it cannot be extended by any delay.  For if it is extended, it is
then divided into past and future.  But the present has no
extension[434] whatever.
     Where, therefore, is that time which we may call "long"?  Is
it future?  Actually we do not say of the future, "It is long,"
for it has not yet come to be, so as to be long.  Instead, we say,
"It will be long." _When_ will it be?  For since it is future, it
will not be long, for what may be long is not yet.  It will be
long only when it passes from the future which is not as yet, and
will have begun to be present, so that there can be something that
may be long.  But in that case, time present cries aloud, in the
words we have already heard, that it cannot be "long."


                          CHAPTER XVI

     21.  And yet, O Lord, we do perceive intervals of time, and
we compare them with each other, and we say that some are longer
and others are shorter.  We even measure how much longer or
shorter this time may be than that time.  And we say that this
time is twice as long, or three times as long, while this other
time is only just as long as that other.  But we measure the
passage of time when we measure the intervals of perception.  But
who can measure times past which now are no longer, or times
future which are not yet -- unless perhaps someone will dare to
say that what does not exist can be measured?  Therefore, while
time is passing, it can be perceived and measured; but when it is
past, it cannot, since it is not.


                         CHAPTER XVII

     22.  I am seeking the truth, O Father; I am not affirming it.
O my God, direct and rule me.
     Who is there who will tell me that there are not three times
-- as we learned when boys and as we have also taught boys -- time
past, time present, and time future?  Who can say that there is
only time present because the other two do not exist?  Or do they
also exist; but when, from the future, time becomes present, it
proceeds from some secret place; and when, from times present, it
becomes past, it recedes into some secret place?  For where have
those men who have foretold the future seen the things foretold,
if then they were not yet existing?  For what does not exist
cannot be seen.  And those who tell of things past could not speak
of them as if they were true, if they did not see them in their
minds.  These things could in no way be discerned if they did not
exist.  There are therefore times present and times past.


                         CHAPTER XVIII

     23.  Give me leave, O Lord, to seek still further.  O my
Hope, let not my purpose be confounded.  For if there are times
past and future, I wish to know where they are.  But if I have not
yet succeeded in this, I still know that wherever they are, they
are not there as future or past, but as present.  For if they are
there as future, they are there as "not yet"; if they are there as
past, they are there as "no longer." Wherever they are and
whatever they are they exist therefore only as present.  Although
we tell of past things as true, they are drawn out of the memory
-- not the things themselves, which have already passed, but words
constructed from the images of the perceptions which were formed
in the mind, like footprints in their passage through the senses.
My childhood, for instance, which is no longer, still exists in
time past, which does not now exist.  But when I call to mind its
image and speak of it, I see it in the present because it is still
in my memory.  Whether there is a similar explanation for the
foretelling of future events -- that is, of the images of things
which are not yet seen as if they were already existing -- I
confess, O my God, I do not know.  But this I certainly do know:
that we generally think ahead about our future actions, and this
premeditation is in time present; but that the action which we
premeditate is not yet, because it is still future.  When we shall
have started the action and have begun to do what we were
premeditating, then that action will be in time present, because
then it is no longer in time future.
     24.  Whatever may be the manner of this secret foreseeing of
future things, nothing can be seen except what exists.  But what
exists now is not future, but present.  When, therefore, they say
that future events are seen, it is not the events themselves, for
they do not exist as yet (that is, they are still in time future),
but perhaps, instead, their causes and their signs are seen, which
already do exist.  Therefore, to those already beholding these
causes and signs, they are not future, but present, and from them
future things are predicted because they are conceived in the
mind.  These conceptions, however, exist _now_, and those who
predict those things see these conceptions before them in time
present.
     Let me take an example from the vast multitude and variety of
such things.  I see the dawn; I predict that the sun is about to
rise.  What I see is in time present, what I predict is in time
future -- not that the sun is future, for it already exists; but
its rising is future, because it is not yet.  Yet I could not
predict even its rising, unless I had an image of it in my mind;
as, indeed, I do even now as I speak.  But that dawn which I see
in the sky is not the rising of the sun (though it does precede
it), nor is it a conception in my mind.  These two[435] are seen
in time present, in order that the event which is in time future
may be predicted.
     Future events, therefore, are not yet.  And if they are not
yet, they do not exist.  And if they do not exist, they cannot be
seen at all, but they can be predicted from things present, which
now are and are seen.


                          CHAPTER XIX

     25.  Now, therefore, O Ruler of thy creatures, what is the
mode by which thou teachest souls those things which are still
future?  For thou hast taught thy prophets.  How dost thou, to
whom nothing is future, teach future things -- or rather teach
things present from the signs of things future?  For what does not
exist certainly cannot be taught.  This way of thine is too far
from my sight; it is too great for me, I cannot attain to it.[436]
But I shall be enabled by thee, when thou wilt grant it, O sweet
Light of my secret eyes.


                          CHAPTER XX

     26.  But even now it is manifest and clear that there are
neither times future nor times past.  Thus it is not properly said
that there are three times, past, present, and future.  Perhaps it
might be said rightly that there are three times: a time present
of things past; a time present of things present; and a time
present of things future.  For these three do coexist somehow in
the soul, for otherwise I could not see them.  The time present of
things past is memory; the time present of things present is
direct experience; the time present of things future is
expectation.[437]  If we are allowed to speak of these things so,
I see three times, and I grant that there are three.  Let it still
be said, then, as our misapplied custom has it: "There are three
times, past, present, and future." I shall not be troubled by it,
nor argue, nor object -- always provided that what is said is
understood, so that neither the future nor the past is said to
exist now.  There are but few things about which we speak properly
-- and many more about which we speak improperly -- though we
understand one another's meaning.


                          CHAPTER XXI

     27.  I have said, then, that we measure periods of time as
they pass so that we can say that this time is twice as long as
that one or that this is just as long as that, and so on for the
other fractions of time which we can count by measuring.
     So, then, as I was saying, we measure periods of time as they
pass.  And if anyone asks me, "How do you know this?", I can
answer: "I know because we measure.  We could not measure things
that do not exist, and things past and future do not exist." But
how do we measure present time since it has no extension?  It is
measured while it passes, but when it has passed it is not
measured; for then there is nothing that could be measured.  But
whence, and how, and whither does it pass while it is being
measured?  Whence, but from the future?  Which way, save through
the present?  Whither, but into the past?  Therefore, from what is
not yet, through what has no length, it passes into what is now no
longer.  But what do we measure, unless it is a time of some
length?  For we cannot speak of single, and double, and triple,
and equal, and all the other ways in which we speak of time,
except in terms of the length of the periods of time.  But in what
"length," then, do we measure passing time?  Is it in the future,
from which it passes over?  But what does not yet exist cannot be
measured.  Or, is it in the present, through which it passes?  But
what has no length we cannot measure.  Or is it in the past into
which it passes?  But what is no longer we cannot measure.


                         CHAPTER XXII

     28.  My soul burns ardently to understand this most intricate
enigma.  O Lord my God, O good Father, I beseech thee through
Christ, do not close off these things, both the familiar and the
obscure, from my desire.  Do not bar it from entering into them;
but let their light dawn by thy enlightening mercy, O Lord.  Of
whom shall I inquire about these things?  And to whom shall I
confess my ignorance of them with greater profit than to thee, to
whom these studies of mine (ardently longing to understand thy
Scriptures) are not a bore?  Give me what I love, for I do love
it; and this thou hast given me.  O Father, who truly knowest how
to give good gifts to thy children, give this to me.  Grant it,
since I have undertaken to understand it, and hard labor is my lot
until thou openest it.  I beseech thee, through Christ and in his
name, the Holy of Holies, let no man interrupt me.  "For I have
believed, and therefore do I speak."[438]  This is my hope; for
this I live: that I may contemplate the joys of my Lord.[439]
Behold, thou hast made my days grow old, and they pass away -- and
how I do not know.
     We speak of this time and that time, and these times and
those times: "How long ago since he said this?"  "How long ago
since he did this?"  "How long ago since I saw that?"  "This
syllable is twice as long as that single short syllable." These
words we say and hear, and we are understood and we understand.
They are quite commonplace and ordinary, and still the meaning of
these very same things lies deeply hid and its discovery is still
to come.


                         CHAPTER XXIII

     29.  I once heard a learned man say that the motions of the
sun, moon, and stars constituted time; and I did not agree.  For
why should not the motions of all bodies constitute time?  What if
the lights of heaven should cease, and a potter's wheel still turn
round: would there be no time by which we might measure those
rotations and say either that it turned at equal intervals, or, if
it moved now more slowly and now more quickly, that some rotations
were longer and others shorter?  And while we were saying this,
would we not also be speaking in time?  Or would there not be in
our words some syllables that were long and others short, because
the first took a longer time to sound, and the others a shorter
time?  O God, grant men to see in a small thing the notions that
are common[440] to all things, both great and small.  Both the
stars and the lights of heaven are "for signs and seasons, and for
days and years."[441]  This is doubtless the case, but just as I
should not say that the circuit of that wooden wheel was a day,
neither would that learned man say that there was, therefore, no
time.
     30.  I thirst to know the power and the nature of time, by
which we measure the motions of bodies, and say, for example, that
this motion is twice as long as that.  For I ask, since the word
"day" refers not only to the length of time that the sun is above
the earth (which separates day from night), but also refers to the
sun's entire circuit from east all the way around to east -- on
account of which we can say, "So many days have passed" (the
nights being included when we say, "So many days," and their
lengths not counted separately) -- since, then, the day is ended
by the motion of the sun and by his passage from east to east, I
ask whether the motion itself is the day, or whether the day is
the period in which that motion is completed; or both?  For if the
sun's passage is the day, then there would be a day even if the
sun should finish his course in as short a period as an hour.  If
the motion itself is the day, then it would not be a day if from
one sunrise to another there were a period no longer than an hour.
But the sun would have to go round twenty-four times to make just
one day.  If it is both, then that could not be called a day if
the sun ran his entire course in the period of an hour; nor would
it be a day if, while the sun stood still, as much time passed as
the sun usually covered during his whole course, from morning to
morning.  I shall, therefore, not ask any more what it is that is
called a day, but rather what time is, for it is by time that we
measure the circuit of the sun, and would be able to say that it
was finished in half the period of time that it customarily takes
if it were completed in a period of only twelve hours.  If, then,
we compare these periods, we could call one of them a single and
the other a double period, as if the sun might run his course from
east to east sometimes in a single period and sometimes in a
double period.
     Let no man tell me, therefore, that the motions of the
heavenly bodies constitute time.  For when the sun stood still at
the prayer of a certain man in order that he might gain his
victory in battle, the sun stood still but time went on.  For in
as long a span of time as was sufficient the battle was fought and
ended.[442]
     I see, then, that time is a certain kind of extension.  But
do I see it, or do I only seem to?  Thou, O Light and Truth, wilt
show me.


                          CHAPTER XXIV

     31.  Dost thou command that I should agree if anyone says
that time is "the motion of a body"?  Thou dost not so command.
For I hear that no body is moved but in time; this thou tellest
me.  But that the motion of a body itself is time I do not hear;
thou dost not say so.  For when a body is moved, I measure by time
how long it was moving from the time when it began to be moved
until it stopped.  And if I did not see when it began to be moved,
and if it continued to move so that I could not see when it
stopped, I could not measure the movement, except from the time
when I began to see it until I stopped.  But if I look at it for a
long time, I can affirm only that the time is long but not how
long it may be.  This is because when we say, "How long?", we are
speaking comparatively as: "This is as long as that," or, "This is
twice as long as that"; or other such similar ratios.  But if we
were able to observe the point in space where and from which the
body, which is moved, comes and the point to which it is moved; or
if we can observe its parts moving as in a wheel, we can say how
long the movement of the body took or the movement of its parts
from this place to that.  Since, therefore, the motion of a body
is one thing, and the norm by which we measure how long it takes
is another thing, we cannot see which of these two is to be called
time.  For, although a body is sometimes moved and sometimes
stands still, we measure not only its motion but also its rest as
well; and both by time!  Thus we say, "It stood still as long as
it moved," or, "It stood still twice or three times as long as it
moved" -- or any other ratio which our measuring has either
determined or imagined, either roughly or precisely, according to
our custom.  Therefore, time is not the motion of a body.


                          CHAPTER XXV

     32.  And I confess to thee, O Lord, that I am still ignorant
as to what time is.  And again I confess to thee, O Lord, that I
know that I am speaking all these things in time, and that I have
already spoken of time a long time, and that "very long" is not
long except when measured by the duration of time.  How, then, do
I know this, when I do not know what time is?  Or, is it possible
that I do not know how I can express what I do know?  Alas for me!
I do not even know the extent of my own ignorance.  Behold, O my
God, in thy presence I do not lie.  As my heart is, so I speak.
Thou shalt light my candle; thou, O Lord my God, wilt enlighten my
darkness.[443]


                         CHAPTER XXVI

     33.  Does not my soul most truly confess to thee that I do
measure intervals of time?  But what is it that I thus measure, O
my God, and how is it that I do not know what I measure?  I
measure the motion of a body by time, but the time itself I do not
measure.  But, truly, could I measure the motion of a body -- how
long it takes, how long it is in motion from this place to that --
unless I could measure the time in which it is moving?
     How, then, do I measure this time itself?  Do we measure a
longer time by a shorter time, as we measure the length of a
crossbeam in terms of cubits?[444]  Thus, we can say that the
length of a long syllable is measured by the length of a short
syllable and thus say that the long syllable is double.  So also
we measure the length of poems by the length of the lines, and the
length of the line by the length of the feet, and the length of
the feet by the length of the syllable, and the length of the long
syllables by the length of the short ones.  We do not measure by
pages -- for in that way we would measure space rather than time
-- but when we speak the words as they pass by we say: "It is a
long stanza, because it is made up of so many verses; they are
long verses because they consist of so many feet; they are long
feet because they extend over so many syllables; this is a long
syllable because it is twice the length of a short one."
     But no certain measure of time is obtained this way; since it
is possible that if a shorter verse is pronounced slowly, it may
take up more time than a longer one if it is pronounced hurriedly.
The same would hold for a stanza, or a foot, or a syllable.  From
this it appears to me that time is nothing other than
extendedness;[445] but extendedness of what I do not know.  This
is a marvel to me.  The extendedness may be of the mind itself.
For what is it I measure, I ask thee, O my God, when I say either,
roughly, "This time is longer than that," or, more precisely,
"This is _twice_ as long as that." I know that I am measuring
time.  But I am not measuring the future, for it is not yet; and I
am not measuring the present because it is extended by no length;
and I am not measuring the past because it no longer is.  What is
it, therefore, that I am measuring?  Is it time in its passage,
but not time past [praetereuntia tempora, non praeterita]?  This
is what I have been saying.


                         CHAPTER XXVII

     34.  Press on, O my mind, and attend with all your power.
God is our Helper: "it is he that hath made us and not we
ourselves."[446]  Give heed where the truth begins to dawn.[447]
Suppose now that a bodily voice begins to sound, and continues to
sound -- on and on -- and then ceases.  Now there is silence.  The
voice is past, and there is no longer a sound.  It was future
before it sounded, and could not be measured because it was not
yet; and now it cannot be measured because it is no longer.
Therefore, while it was sounding, it might have been measured
because then there was something that could be measured.  But even
then it did not stand still, for it was in motion and was passing
away.  Could it, on that account, be any more readily measured?
For while it was passing away, it was being extended into some
interval of time in which it might be measured, since the present
has no length.  Supposing, though, that it might have been
measured -- then also suppose that another voice had begun to
sound and is still sounding without any interruption to break its
continued flow.  We can measure it only while it is sounding, for
when it has ceased to sound it will be already past and there will
not be anything there that can be measured.  Let us measure it
exactly; and let us say how much it is.  But while it is sounding,
it cannot be measured except from the instant when it began to
sound, down to the final moment when it left off.  For we measure
the time interval itself from some beginning point to some end.
This is why a voice that has not yet ended cannot be measured, so
that one could say how long or how briefly it will continue.  Nor
can it be said to be equal to another voice or single or double in
comparison to it or anything like this.  But when it is ended, it
is no longer.  How, therefore, may it be measured?  And yet we
measure times; not those which are not yet, nor those which no
longer are, nor those which are stretched out by some delay, nor
those which have no limit.  Therefore, we measure neither times
future nor times past, nor times present, nor times passing by;
and yet we do measure times.
     35.  Deus Creator omnium[448]: this verse of eight syllables
alternates between short and long syllables.  The four short ones
-- that is, the first, third, fifth, and seventh -- are single in
relation to the four long ones -- that is, the second, fourth,
sixth, and eighth.  Each of the long ones is double the length of
each of the short ones.  I affirm this and report it, and common
sense perceives that this indeed is the case.  By common sense,
then, I measure a long syllable by a short one, and I find that it
is twice as long.  But when one sounds after another, if the first
be short and the latter long, how can I hold the short one and how
can I apply it to the long one as a measure, so that I can
discover that the long one is twice as long, when, in fact, the
long one does not begin to sound until the short one leaves off
sounding?  That same long syllable I do not measure as present,
since I cannot measure it until it is ended; but its ending is its
passing away.
     What is it, then, that I can measure?  Where is the short
syllable by which I measure?  Where is the long one that I am
measuring?  Both have sounded, have flown away, have passed on,
and are no longer.  And still I measure, and I confidently answer
-- as far as a trained ear can be trusted -- that this syllable is
single and that syllable double.  And I could not do this unless
they both had passed and were ended.  Therefore I do not measure
them, for they do not exist any more.  But I measure something in
my memory which remains fixed.
     36.  It is in you, O mind of mine, that I measure the periods
of time.  Do not shout me down that it exists [objectively]; do
not overwhelm yourself with the turbulent flood of your
impressions.  In you, as I have said, I measure the periods of
time.  I measure as time present the impression that things make
on you as they pass by and what remains after they have passed by
-- I do not measure the things themselves which have passed by and
left their impression on you.  This is what I measure when I
measure periods of time.  Either, then, these are the periods of
time or else I do not measure time at all.
     What are we doing when we measure silence, and say that this
silence has lasted as long as that voice lasts?  Do we not project
our thought to the measure of a sound, as if it were then
sounding, so that we can say something concerning the intervals of
silence in a given span of time?  For, even when both the voice
and the tongue are still, we review -- in thought -- poems and
verses, and discourse of various kinds or various measures of
motions, and we specify their time spans -- how long this is in
relation to that -- just as if we were speaking them aloud.  If
anyone wishes to utter a prolonged sound, and if, in forethought,
he has decided how long it should be, that man has already in
silence gone through a span of time, and committed his sound to
memory.  Thus he begins to speak and his voice sounds until it
reaches the predetermined end.  It has truly sounded and will go
on sounding.  But what is already finished has already sounded and
what remains will still sound.  Thus it passes on, until the
present intention carries the future over into the past.  The past
increases by the diminution of the future until by the consumption
of all the future all is past.[449]


                          CHAPTER XXVIII

     37.  But how is the future diminished or consumed when it
does not yet exist?  Or how does the past, which exists no longer,
increase, unless it is that in the mind in which all this happens
there are three functions?  For the mind expects, it attends, and
it remembers; so that what it expects passes into what it
remembers by way of what it attends to.  Who denies that future
things do not exist as yet?  But still there is already in the
mind the expectation of things still future.  And who denies that
past things now exist no longer?  Still there is in the mind the
memory of things past.  Who denies that time present has no
length, since it passes away in a moment?  Yet, our attention has
a continuity and it is through this that what is present may
proceed to become absent.  Therefore, future time, which is
nonexistent, is not long; but "a long future" is "a long
expectation of the future." Nor is time past, which is now no
longer, long; a "long past" is "a long memory of the past."
     38.  I am about to repeat a psalm that I know.  Before I
begin, my attention encompasses the whole, but once I have begun,
as much of it as becomes past while I speak is still stretched out
in my memory.  The span of my action is divided between my memory,
which contains what I have repeated, and my expectation, which
contains what I am about to repeat.  Yet my attention is
continually present with me, and through it what was future is
carried over so that it becomes past.  The more this is done and
repeated, the more the memory is enlarged -- and expectation is
shortened -- until the whole expectation is exhausted.  Then the
whole action is ended and passed into memory.  And what takes
place in the entire psalm takes place also in each individual part
of it and in each individual syllable.  This also holds in the
even longer action of which that psalm is only a portion.  The
same holds in the whole life of man, of which all the actions of
men are parts.  The same holds in the whole age of the sons of
men, of which all the lives of men are parts.


                         CHAPTER XXIX

     39.  But "since thy loving-kindness is better than life
itself,"[450] observe how my life is but a stretching out, and how
thy right hand has upheld me in my Lord, the Son of Man, the
Mediator between thee, the One, and us, the many -- in so many
ways and by so many means.  Thus through him I may lay hold upon
him in whom I am also laid hold upon; and I may be gathered up
from my old way of life to follow that One and to forget that
which is behind, no longer stretched out but now pulled together
again -- stretching forth not to what shall be and shall pass away
but to those things that _are_ before me.  Not distractedly now,
but intently, I follow on for the prize of my heavenly
calling,[451] where I may hear the sound of thy praise and
contemplate thy delights, which neither come to be nor pass away.
     But now my years are spent in mourning.[452]  And thou, O
Lord, art my comfort, my eternal Father.  But I have been torn
between the times, the order of which I do not know, and my
thoughts, even the inmost and deepest places of my soul, are
mangled by various commotions until I shall flow together into
thee, purged and molten in the fire of thy love.


                          CHAPTER XXX

     40.  And I will be immovable and fixed in thee, and thy truth
will be my mold.  And I shall not have to endure the questions of
those men who, as if in a morbid disease, thirst for more than
they can hold and say, "What did God make before he made heaven
and earth?"  or, "How did it come into his mind to make something
when he had never before made anything?"  Grant them, O Lord, to
consider well what they are saying; and grant them to see that
where there is no time they cannot say "never." When, therefore,
he is said "never to have made" something -- what is this but to
say that it was made in no time at all?  Let them therefore see
that there could be no time without a created world, and let them
cease to speak vanity of this kind.  Let them also be stretched
out to those things which are before them, and understand that
thou, the eternal Creator of all times, art before all times and
that no times are coeternal with thee; nor is any creature, even
if there is a creature "above time."


                         CHAPTER XXXI

     41.  O Lord my God, what a chasm there is in thy deep secret!
How far short of it have the consequences of my sins cast me?
Heal my eyes, that I may enjoy thy light.  Surely, if there is a
mind that so greatly abounds in knowledge and foreknowledge, to
which all things past and future are as well known as one psalm is
well known to me, that mind would be an exceeding marvel and
altogether astonishing.  For whatever is past and whatever is yet
to come would be no more concealed from him than the past and
future of that psalm were hidden from me when I was chanting it:
how much of it had been sung from the beginning and what and how
much still remained till the end.  But far be it from thee, O
Creator of the universe, and Creator of our souls and bodies --
far be it from thee that thou shouldst merely know all things past
and future.  Far, far more wonderfully, and far more mysteriously
thou knowest them.  For it is not as the feelings of one singing
familiar songs, or hearing a familiar song in which, because of
his expectation of words still to come and his remembrance of
those that are past, his feelings are varied and his senses are
divided.  This is not the way that anything happens to thee, who
art unchangeably eternal, that is, the truly eternal Creator of
minds.  As in the beginning thou knewest both the heaven and the
earth without any change in thy knowledge, so thou didst make
heaven and earth in their beginnings without any division in thy
action.[453]  Let him who understands this confess to thee; and
let him who does not understand also confess to thee!  Oh, exalted
as thou art, still the humble in heart are thy dwelling place!
For thou liftest them who are cast down and they fall not for whom
thou art the Most High.[454]





                         BOOK TWELVE


     The mode of creation and the truth of Scripture.  Augustine
explores the relation of the visible and formed matter of heaven
and earth to the prior matrix from which it was formed.  This
leads to an intricate analysis of "unformed matter" and the primal
"possibility" from which God created, itself created  de nihilo.
He finds a reference to this in the misconstrued Scriptural phrase
"the heaven of heavens." Realizing that his interpretation of Gen.
1:1, 2, is not self-evidently the only possibility, Augustine
turns to an elaborate discussion of the multiplicity of
perspectives in hermeneutics and, in the course of this, reviews
the various possibilities of true interpretation of his Scripture
text.  He emphasizes the importance of tolerance where there are
plural options, and confidence where basic Christian faith is
concerned.


                           CHAPTER I

     1.  My heart is deeply stirred, O Lord, when in this poor
life of mine the words of thy Holy Scripture strike upon it.  This
is why the poverty of the human intellect expresses itself in an
abundance of language.  Inquiry is more loquacious than discovery.
Demanding takes longer than obtaining; and the hand that knocks is
more active than the hand that receives.  But we have the promise,
and who shall break it?  "If God be for us, who can be against
us?"[455]  "Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you; for everyone that asks
receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him that knocks, it shall
be opened."[456]  These are thy own promises, and who need fear to
be deceived when truth promises?


                          CHAPTER II

     2.  In lowliness my tongue confesses to thy exaltation, for
thou madest heaven and earth.  This heaven which I see, and this
earth on which I walk -- from which came this "earth" that I carry
about me -- thou didst make.
     But where is that heaven of heavens, O Lord, of which we hear
in the words of the psalm, "The heaven of heavens is the Lord's,
but the earth he hath given to the children of men"?[457]  Where
is the heaven that we cannot see, in relation to which all that we
can see is earth?  For this whole corporeal creation has been
beautifully formed -- though not everywhere in its entirety -- and
our earth is the lowest of these levels.  Still, compared with
that heaven of heavens, even the heaven of our own earth is only
earth.  Indeed, it is not absurd to call each of those two great
bodies[458] "earth" in comparison with that ineffable heaven which
is the Lord's, and not for the sons of men.


                          CHAPTER III

     3.  And truly this earth was invisible and unformed,[459] and
there was an inexpressibly profound abyss[460] above which there
was no light since it had no form.  Thou didst command it written
that "darkness was on the face of the deep."[461]  What else is
darkness except the absence of light?  For if there had been
light, where would it have been except by being over all, showing
itself rising aloft and giving light?  Therefore, where there was
no light as yet, why was it that darkness was present, unless it
was that light was absent?  Darkness, then, was heavy upon it,
because the light from above was absent; just as there is silence
where there is no sound.  And what is it to have silence anywhere
but simply not to have sound?  Hast thou not, O Lord, taught this
soul which confesses to thee?  Hast thou not thus taught me, O
Lord, that before thou didst form and separate this formless
matter there was _nothing_: neither color, nor figure, nor body,
nor spirit?  Yet it was not absolutely nothing; it was a certain
formlessness without any shape.


                          CHAPTER IV

     4.  What, then, should that formlessness be called so that
somehow it might be indicated to those of sluggish mind, unless we
use some word in common speech?  But what can be found anywhere in
the world nearer to a total formlessness than the earth and the
abyss?  Because of their being on the lowest level, they are less
beautiful than are the other and higher parts, all translucent and
shining.  Therefore, why may I not consider the formlessness of
matter -- which thou didst create without shapely form, from which
to make this shapely world -- as fittingly indicated to men by the
phrase, "The earth invisible and unformed"?


                           CHAPTER V

     5.  When our thought seeks something for our sense to fasten
to [in this concept of unformed matter], and when it says to
itself, "It is not an intelligible form, such as life or justice,
since it is the material for bodies; and it is not a former
perception, for there is nothing in the invisible and unformed
which can be seen and felt" -- while human thought says such
things to itself, it may be attempting either to know by being
ignorant or by knowing how not to know.


                          CHAPTER VI

     6.  But if, O Lord, I am to confess to thee, by my mouth and
my pen, the whole of what thou hast taught me concerning this
unformed matter, I must say first of all that when I first heard
of such matter and did not understand it -- and those who told me
of it could not understand it either -- I conceived of it as
having countless and varied forms.  Thus, I did not think about it
rightly.  My mind in its agitation used to turn up all sorts of
foul and horrible "forms"; but still they were "forms." And still
I called it formless, not because it was unformed, but because it
had what seemed to me a kind of form that my mind turned away
from, as bizarre and incongruous, before which my human weakness
was confused.  And even what I did conceive of as unformed was so,
not because it was deprived of all form, but only as it compared
with more beautiful forms.  Right reason, then, persuaded me that
I ought to remove altogether all vestiges of form whatever if I
wished to conceive matter that was wholly unformed; and this I
could not do.  For I could more readily imagine that what was
deprived of all form simply did not exist than I could conceive of
anything between form and nothing -- something which was neither
formed nor nothing, something that was unformed and nearly
nothing.
     Thus my mind ceased to question my spirit -- filled as it was
with the images of formed bodies, changing and varying them
according to its will.  And so I applied myself to the bodies
themselves and looked more deeply into their mutability, by which
they cease to be what they had been and begin to be what they were
not.  This transition from form to form I had regarded as
involving something like a formless condition, though not actual
nothingness.[462]
     But I desired to know, not to guess.  And, if my voice and my
pen were to confess to thee all the various knots thou hast untied
for me about this question, who among my readers could endure to
grasp the whole of the account?  Still, despite this, my heart
will not cease to give honor to thee or to sing thy praises
concerning those things which it is not able to express.[463]
     For the mutability of mutable things carries with it the
possibility of all those forms into which mutable things can be
changed.  But this mutability -- what is it?  Is it soul?  Is it
body?  Is it the external appearance of soul or body?  Could it be
said, "Nothing was something," and "That which is, is not"?  If
this were possible, I would say that this was it, and in some such
manner it must have been in order to receive these visible and
composite forms.[464]


                          CHAPTER VII

     7.  Whence and how was this, unless it came from thee, from
whom all things are, in so far as they are?  But the farther
something is from thee, the more unlike thee it is -- and this is
not a matter of distance or place.
     Thus it was that thou, O Lord, who art not one thing in one
place and another thing in another place but the Selfsame, and the
Selfsame, and the Selfsame -- "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God
Almighty"[465] -- thus it was that in the beginning, and through
thy Wisdom which is from thee and born of thy substance, thou
didst create something and that out of nothing.[466]  For thou
didst create the heaven and the earth -- not out of thyself, for
then they would be equal to thy only Son and thereby to thee.  And
there is no sense in which it would be right that anything should
be equal to thee that was not of thee.  But what else besides thee
was there out of which thou mightest create these things, O God,
one Trinity, and trine Unity?[467]  And, therefore, it was out of
nothing at all that thou didst create the heaven and earth --
something great and something small -- for thou art Almighty and
Good, and able to make all things good: even the great heaven and
the small earth.  Thou wast, and there was nothing else from which
thou didst create heaven and earth: these two things, one near
thee, the other near to nothing; the one to which only thou art
superior, the other to which nothing else is inferior.


                         CHAPTER VIII

     8.  That heaven of heavens was thine, O Lord, but the earth
which thou didst give to the sons of men to be seen and touched
was not then in the same form as that in which we now see it and
touch it.  For then it was invisible and unformed and there was an
abyss over which there was no light.  The darkness was truly
_over_ the abyss, that is, more than just _in_ the abyss.  For
this abyss of waters which now is visible has even in its depths a
certain light appropriate to its nature, perceptible in some
fashion to fishes and the things that creep about on the bottom of
it.  But then the entire abyss was almost nothing, since it was
still altogether unformed.  Yet even there, there was something
that had the possibility of being formed.  For thou, O Lord, hadst
made the world out of unformed matter, and this thou didst make
out of nothing and didst make it into almost nothing.  From it
thou hast then made these great things which we, the sons of men,
marvel at.  For this corporeal heaven is truly marvelous, this
firmament between the water and the waters which thou didst make
on the second day after the creation of light, saying, "Let it be
done," and it was done.[468]  This firmament thou didst call
heaven, that is, the heaven of this earth and sea which thou
madest on the third day, giving a visible shape to the unformed
matter which thou hadst made before all the days.  For even before
any day thou hadst already made a heaven, but that was the heaven
of this heaven: for in the beginning thou hadst made heaven and
earth.
     But this earth itself which thou hadst made was unformed
matter; it was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the
abyss.  Out of this invisible and unformed earth, out of this
formlessness which is almost nothing, thou didst then make all
these things of which the changeable world consists -- and yet
does not fully consist in itself[469] -- for its very
changeableness appears in this, that its times and seasons can be
observed and numbered.  The periods of time are measured by the
changes of things, while the forms, whose matter is the invisible
earth of which we have spoken, are varied and altered.


                          CHAPTER IX

     9.  And therefore the Spirit, the Teacher of thy
servant,[470] when he mentions that "in the beginning thou madest
heaven and earth," says nothing about times and is silent as to
the days.  For, clearly, that heaven of heavens which thou didst
create in the beginning is in some way an intellectual creature,
although in no way coeternal with thee, O Trinity.  Yet it is
nonetheless a partaker in thy eternity.  Because of the sweetness
of its most happy contemplation of thee, it is greatly restrained
in its own mutability and cleaves to thee without any lapse from
the time in which it was created, surpassing all the rolling
change of time.  But this shapelessness -- this earth invisible
and unformed -- was not numbered among the days itself.  For where
there is no shape or order there is nothing that either comes or
goes, and where this does not occur there certainly are no days,
nor any vicissitude of duration.


                           CHAPTER X

     10.  O Truth, O Light of my heart, let not my own darkness
speak to me!  I had fallen into that darkness and was darkened
thereby.  But in it, even in its depths, I came to love thee.  I
went astray and still I remembered thee.  I heard thy voice behind
me, bidding me return, though I could scarcely hear it for the
tumults of my boisterous passions.  And now, behold, I am
returning, burning and thirsting after thy fountain.  Let no one
hinder me; here will I drink and so have life.  Let me not be my
own life; for of myself I have lived badly.  I was death to
myself; in thee I have revived.  Speak to me; converse with me.  I
have believed thy books, and their words are very deep.


                          CHAPTER XI

     11.  Thou hast told me already, O Lord, with a strong voice
in my inner ear, that thou art eternal and alone hast immortality.
Thou art not changed by any shape or motion, and thy will is not
altered by temporal process, because no will that changes is
immortal.  This is clear to me, in thy sight; let it become
clearer and clearer, I beseech thee.  In that light let me abide
soberly under thy wings.
     Thou hast also told me, O Lord, with a strong voice in my
inner ear, that thou hast created all natures and all substances,
which are not what thou art thyself; and yet they do exist.  Only
that which is nothing at all is not from thee, and that motion of
the will away from thee, who art, toward something that exists
only in a lesser degree -- such a motion is an offense and a sin.
No one's  sin either hurts thee or disturbs the order of thy rule,
either first or last.  All this, in thy sight, is clear to me.
Let it become clearer and clearer, I beseech thee, and in that
light let me abide soberly under thy wings.
     12.  Likewise, thou hast told me, with a strong voice in my
inner ear, that this creation -- whose delight thou alone art --
is not coeternal with thee.  With a most persevering purity it
draws its support from thee and nowhere and never betrays its own
mutability, for thou art ever present with it; and it cleaves to
thee with its entire affection, having no future to expect and no
past that it remembers; it is varied by no change and is extended
by no time.
     O blessed one -- if such there be -- clinging to thy
blessedness!  It is blest in thee, its everlasting Inhabitant and
its Light.  I cannot find a term that I would judge more fitting
for "the heaven of the heavens of the Lord" than "Thy house" --
which contemplates thy delights without any declination toward
anything else and which, with a pure mind in most harmonious
stability, joins all together in the peace of those saintly
spirits who are citizens of thy city in those heavens that are
above this visible heaven.
     13.  From this let the soul that has wandered far away from
thee understand -- if now it thirsts for thee; if now its tears
have become its bread, while daily they say to it, "Where is your
God?"[471]; if now it requests of thee just one thing and seeks
after this: that it may dwell in thy house all the days of its
life (and what is its life but thee?  And what are thy days but
thy eternity, like thy years which do not fail, since thou art the
Selfsame?) -- from this, I say, let the soul understand (as far as
it can) how far above all times thou art in thy eternity; and how
thy house has never wandered away from thee; and, although it is
not coeternal with thee, it continually and unfailingly clings to
thee and suffers no vicissitudes of time.  This, in thy sight, is
clear to me; may it become clearer and clearer to me, I beseech
thee, and in this light may I abide soberly under thy wings.
     14.  Now I do not know what kind of formlessness there is in
these mutations of these last and lowest creatures.  Yet who will
tell me, unless it is someone who, in the emptiness of his own
heart, wanders about and begins to be dizzy in his own fancies?
Who except such a one would tell me whether, if all form were
diminished and consumed, formlessness alone would remain, through
which a thing was changed and turned from one species into
another, so that sheer formlessness would then be characterized by
temporal change?  And surely this could not be, because without
motion there is no time, and where there is no form there is no
change.


                          CHAPTER XII

     15.  These things I have considered as thou hast given me
ability, O my God, as thou hast excited me to knock, and as thou
hast opened to me when I knock.  Two things I find which thou hast
made, not within intervals of time, although neither is coeternal
with thee.  One of them is so formed that, without any wavering in
its contemplation, without any interval of change -- mutable but
not changed -- it may fully enjoy thy eternity and immutability.
The other is so formless that it could not change from one form to
another (either of motion or of rest), and so time has no hold
upon it.  But thou didst not leave this formless, for, before any
"day" in the beginning, thou didst create heaven and earth --
these are the two things of which I spoke.
     But "the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was
over the abyss." By these words its formlessness is indicated to
us -- so that by degrees they may be led forward who cannot wholly
conceive of the privation of all form without arriving at nothing.
>From this formlessness a second heaven might be created and a
second earth -- visible and well formed, with the ordered beauty
of the waters, and whatever else is recorded as created (though
not without days) in the formation of this world.  And all this
because such things are so ordered that in them the changes of
time may take place through the ordered processes of motion and
form.


                         CHAPTER XIII

     16.  Meanwhile this is what I understand, O my God, when I
hear thy Scripture saying, "In the beginning God made the heaven
and the earth, but the earth was invisible and unformed, and
darkness was over the abyss." It does not say on what day thou
didst create these things.  Thus, for the time being I understand
that "heaven of heavens" to mean the intelligible heaven, where to
understand is to know all at once -- not "in part," not "darkly,"
not "through a glass" -- but as a simultaneous whole, in full
sight, "face to face."[472]  It is not this thing now and then
another thing, but (as we said) knowledge all at once without any
temporal change.  And by the invisible and unformed earth, I
understand that which suffers no temporal vicissitude.  Temporal
change customarily means having one thing now and another later;
but where there is no form there can be no distinction between
this or that.  It is, then, by means of these two -- one thing
well formed in the beginning and another thing wholly unformed,
the one heaven (that is, the heaven of heavens) and the other one
earth (but the earth invisible and unformed) -- it is by means of
these two notions that I am able to understand why thy Scripture
said, without mention of days, "In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth." For it immediately indicated which earth it
was speaking about.  When, on the second day, the firmament is
recorded as having been created and called heaven, this suggests
to us which heaven it was that he was speaking about earlier,
without specifying a day.


                           CHAPTER XIV

     17.  Marvelous is the depth of thy oracles.  Their surface is
before us, inviting the little ones; and yet wonderful is their
depth, O my God, marvelous is their depth!  It is a fearful thing
to look into them: an awe of honor and a tremor of love.  Their
enemies I hate vehemently.  Oh, if thou wouldst slay them with thy
two-edged sword, so that they should not be enemies!  For I would
prefer that they should be slain to themselves, that they might
live to thee.  But see, there are others who are not critics but
praisers of the book of Genesis; they say: "The Spirit of God who
wrote these things by his servant Moses did not wish these words
to be understood like this.  He did not wish to have it understood
as you say, but as we say." To them, O God of us all, thyself
being the judge, I give answer.


                           CHAPTER XV

     18.  "Will you say that these things are false which Truth
tells me, with a loud voice in my inner ear, about the very
eternity of the Creator: that his essence is changed in no respect
by time and that his will is not distinct from his essence?  Thus,
he doth not will one thing now and another thing later, but he
willeth once and for all everything that he willeth -- not again
and again; and not now this and now that.  Nor does he will
afterward what he did not will before, nor does he cease to will
what he had willed before.  Such a will would be mutable and no
mutable thing is eternal.  But our God is eternal.
     "Again, he tells me in my inner ear that the expectation of
future things is turned to sight when they have come to pass.  And
this same sight is turned into memory when they have passed.
Moreover, all thought that varies thus is mutable, and nothing
mutable is eternal.  But our God is eternal." These things I sum
up and put together, and I conclude that my God, the eternal God,
hath not made any creature by any new will, and his knowledge does
not admit anything transitory.
     19.  "What, then, will you say to this, you objectors?  Are
these things false?"  "No," they say.  "What then?  Is it false
that every entity already formed and all matter capable of
receiving form is from him alone who is supremely good, because he
is supreme?"  "We do not deny this, either," they say.  "What
then?  Do you deny this: that there is a certain sublime created
order which cleaves with such a chaste love to the true and truly
eternal God that, although it is not coeternal with him, yet it
does not separate itself from him, and does not flow away into any
mutation of change or process but abides in true contemplation of
him alone?"  If thou, O God, dost show thyself to him who loves
thee as thou hast commanded -- and art sufficient for him -- then,
such a one will neither turn himself away from thee nor turn away
toward himself.  This is "the house of God." It is not an earthly
house and it is not made from any celestial matter; but it is a
spiritual house, and it partakes in thy eternity because it is
without blemish forever.  For thou hast made it steadfast forever
and ever; thou hast given it a law which will not be removed.
Still, it is not coeternal with thee, O God, since it is not
without beginning -- it was created.
     20.  For, although we can find no time before it (for wisdom
was created before all things),[473] this is certainly not that
Wisdom which is absolutely coeternal and equal with thee, our God,
its Father, the Wisdom through whom all things were created and in
whom, in the beginning, thou didst create the heaven and earth.
This is truly the created Wisdom, namely, the intelligible nature
which, in its contemplation of light, is light.  For this is also
called wisdom, even if it is a created wisdom.  But the difference
between the Light that lightens and that which is enlightened is
as great as is the difference between the Wisdom that creates and
that which is created.  So also is the difference between the
Righteousness that justifies and the righteousness that is made by
justification.  For we also are called thy righteousness, for a
certain servant of thine says, "That we might be made the
righteousness of God in him."[474]  Therefore, there is a certain
created wisdom that was created before all things: the rational
and intelligible mind of that chaste city of thine.  It is our
mother which is above and is free[475] and "eternal in the
heavens"[476] -- but in what heavens except those which praise
thee, the "heaven of heavens"?  This also is the "heaven of
heavens" which is the Lord's -- although we find no time before
it, since what has been created before all things also precedes
the creation of time.  Still, the eternity of the Creator himself
is before it, from whom it took its beginning as created, though
not in time (since time as yet was not), even though time belongs
to its created nature.
     21.  Thus it is that the intelligible heaven came to be from
thee, our God, but in such a way that it is quite another being
than thou art; it is not the Selfsame.  Yet we find that time is
not only not _before_ it, but not even _in_ it, thus making it
able to behold thy face forever and not ever be turned aside.
Thus, it is varied by no change at all.  But there is still in it
that mutability in virtue of which it could become dark and cold,
if it did not, by cleaving to thee with a supernal love, shine and
glow from thee like a perpetual noon.  O house full of light and
splendor!  "I have loved your beauty and the place of the
habitation of the glory of my Lord,"[477] your builder and
possessor.  In my wandering let me sigh for you; this I ask of him
who made you, that he should also possess me in you, seeing that
he hath also made me.  "I have gone astray like a lost sheep[478];
yet upon the shoulders of my Shepherd, who is your builder, I have
hoped that I may be brought back to you."[479]
     22.  "What will you say to me now, you objectors to whom I
spoke, who still believe that Moses was the holy servant of God,
and that his books were the oracles of the Holy Spirit?  Is it not
in this 'house of God' -- not coeternal with God, yet in its own
mode 'eternal in the heavens' -- that you vainly seek for temporal
change?  You will not find it there.  It rises above all extension
and every revolving temporal period, and it rises to what is
forever good and cleaves fast to God."
     "It is so," they reply.  "What, then, about those things
which my heart cried out to my God, when it heard, within, the
voice of his praise?  What, then, do you contend is false in them?
Is it because matter was unformed, and since there was no form
there was no order?  But where there was no order there could have
been no temporal change.  Yet even this 'almost nothing,' since it
was not altogether nothing, was truly from him from whom
everything that exists is in whatever state it is." "This also,"
they say, "we do not deny."


                          CHAPTER XVI

     23.  Now, I would like to discuss a little further, in thy
presence, O my God, with those who admit that all these things are
true that thy Truth has indicated to my mind.  Let those who deny
these things bark and drown their own voices with as much clamor
as they please.  I will endeavor to persuade them to be quiet and
to permit thy word to reach them.  But if they are unwilling, and
if they repel me, I ask of thee, O my God, that thou shouldst not
be silent to me.[480]  Speak truly in my heart; if only thou
wouldst speak thus, I would send them away, blowing up the dust
and raising it in their own eyes.  As for myself I will enter into
my closet[481] and there sing to thee the songs of love, groaning
with groanings that are unutterable now in my pilgrimage,[482] and
remembering Jerusalem with my heart uplifted to Jerusalem my
country, Jerusalem my mother[483]; and to thee thyself, the Ruler
of the source of Light, its Father, Guardian, Husband; its chaste
and strong delight, its solid joy and all its goods ineffable --
and all of this at the same time, since thou art the one supreme
and true Good!  And I will not be turned away until thou hast
brought back together all that I am from this dispersion and
deformity to the peace of that dearest mother, where the first
fruits of my spirit are to be found and from which all these
things are promised me which thou dost conform and confirm
forever, O my God, my Mercy.  But as for those who do not say that
all these things which are true are false, who still honor thy
Scripture set before us by the holy Moses, who join us in placing
it on the summit of authority for us to follow, and yet who oppose
us in some particulars, I say this: "Be thou, O God, the judge
between my confessions and their gainsaying."


                         CHAPTER XVII

     24.  For they say: "Even if these things are true, still
Moses did not refer to these two things when he said, by divine
revelation, 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth.' By the term 'heaven' he did not mean that spiritual or
intelligible created order which always beholds the face of God.
And by the term 'earth' he was not referring to unformed matter."
     "What then do these terms mean?"
     They reply, "That man [Moses] meant what we mean; this is
what he was saying in those terms." "What is that?"
     "By the terms of heaven and earth," they say, "he wished
first to indicate universally and briefly this whole visible
world; then after this, by an enumeration of the days, he could
point out, one by one, all the things that it has pleased the Holy
Spirit to reveal in this way.  For the people to whom he spoke
were rude and carnal, so that he judged it prudent that only those
works of God which were visible should be mentioned to them."
     But they do agree that the phrases, "The earth was invisible
and unformed," and "The darkened abyss," may not inappropriately
be understood to refer to this unformed matter -- and that out of
this, as it is subsequently related, all the visible things which
are known to all were made and set in order during those specified
"days."
     25.  But now, what if another one should say, "This same
formlessness and chaos of matter was first mentioned by the name
of heaven and earth because, out of it, this visible world -- with
all its entities which clearly appear in it and which we are
accustomed to be called by the name of heaven and earth -- was
created and perfected"?  And what if still another should say:
"The invisible and visible nature is quite fittingly called heaven
and earth.  Thus, the whole creation which God has made in his
wisdom -- that is, in the beginning -- was included under these
two terms.  Yet, since all things have been made, not from the
essence of God, but from nothing; and because they are not the
same reality that God is; and because there is in them all a
certain mutability, whether they abide as the eternal house of God
abides or whether they are changed as the soul and body of man are
changed -- then the common matter of all things invisible and
visible (still formless but capable of receiving form) from which
heaven and earth were to be created (that is, the creature already
fashioned, invisible as well as visible) -- all this was spoken of
in the same terms by which the invisible and unformed earth and
the darkness over the abyss would be called.  There was this
difference, however: that the invisible and unformed earth is to
be understood as having corporeal matter before it had any manner
of form; but the darkness over the abyss was _spiritual_ matter,
before its unlimited fluidity was harnessed, and before it was
enlightened by Wisdom."
     26.  And if anyone wished, he might also say, "The entities
already perfected and formed, invisible and visible, are not
signified by the terms 'heaven and earth,' when it reads, 'In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth'; instead, the
unformed beginning of things, the matter capable of receiving form
and being made was called by these terms -- because the chaos was
contained in it and was not yet distinguished by qualities and
forms, which have now been arranged in their own orders and are
called heaven and earth: the former a spiritual creation, the
latter a physical creation."


                         CHAPTER XVIII

     27.  When all these things have been said and considered, I
am unwilling to contend about words, for such contention is
profitable for nothing but the subverting of the hearer.[484]  But
the law is profitable for edification if a man use it lawfully:
for the end of the law "is love out of a pure heart, and a good
conscience, and faith unfeigned."[485]  And our Master knew it
well, for it was on these two commandments that he hung all the
Law and the Prophets.  And how would it harm me, O my God, thou
Light of my eyes in secret, if while I am ardently confessing
these things -- since many different things may be understood from
these words, all of which may be true -- what harm would be done
if I should interpret the meaning of the sacred writer differently
from the way some other man interprets?  Indeed, all of us who
read are trying to trace out and understand what our author wished
to convey; and since we believe that he speaks truly we dare not
suppose that he has spoken anything that we either know or suppose
to be false.  Therefore, since every person tries to understand in
the Holy Scripture what the writer understood, what harm is done
if a man understands what thou, the Light of all truth-speaking
minds, showest him to be true, although the author he reads did
not understand this aspect of the truth even though he did
understand the truth in a different meaning?[486]


                       CHAPTER XIX[487]

     28.  For it is certainly true, O Lord, that thou didst create
the heaven and the earth.  It is also true that "the beginning" is
thy wisdom in which thou didst create all things.  It is likewise
true that this visible world has its own great division (the
heaven and the earth) and these two terms include all entities
that have been made and created.  It is further true that
everything mutable confronts our minds with a certain lack of
form, whereby it receives form, or whereby it is capable of taking
form.  It is true, yet again, that what cleaves to the changeless
form so closely that even though it is mutable it is not changed
is not subject to temporal process.  It is true that the
formlessness which is almost nothing cannot have temporal change
in it.  It is true that that from which something is made can, in
a manner of speaking, be called by the same name as the thing that
is made from it.  Thus that formlessness of which heaven and earth
were made might be called "heaven and earth." It is true that of
all things having form nothing is nearer to the unformed than the
earth and the abyss.  It is true that not only every created and
formed thing but also everything capable of creation and of form
were created by Thee, from whom all things are.[488]  It is true,
finally, that everything that is formed from what is formless was
formless before it was formed.


                          CHAPTER XX

     29.  From all these truths, which are not doubted by those to
whom thou hast granted insight in such things in their inner eye
and who believe unshakably that thy servant Moses spoke in the
spirit of truth -- from all these truths, then, one man takes the
sense of "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"
to mean, "In his Word, coeternal with himself, God made both the
intelligible and the tangible, the spiritual and the corporeal
creation." Another takes it in a different sense, that "In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth" means, "In his
Word, coeternal with himself, God made the universal mass of this
corporeal world, with all the observable and known entities that
it contains." Still another finds a different meaning, that "In
the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" means, "In his
Word, coeternal with himself, God made the unformed matter of the
spiritual and corporeal creation." Another can take the sense that
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" means, "In
his Word, coeternal with himself, God made the unformed matter of
the physical creation, in which heaven and earth were as yet
indistinguished; but now that they have come to be separated and
formed, we can now perceive them both in the mighty mass of this
world."[489]  Another takes still a further meaning, that "In the
beginning God created heaven and earth" means, "In the very
beginning of creating and working, God made that unformed matter
which contained, undifferentiated, heaven and earth, from which
both of them were formed, and both now stand out and are
observable with all the things that are in them."


                          CHAPTER XXI

     30.  Again, regarding the interpretation of the following
words, one man selects for himself, from all the various truths,
the interpretation that "the earth was invisible and unformed and
darkness was over the abyss" means, "That corporeal entity which
God made was as yet the formless matter of physical things without
order and without light." Another takes it in a different sense,
that "But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was
over the abyss" means, "This totality called heaven and earth was
as yet unformed and lightless matter, out of which the corporeal
heaven and the corporeal earth were to be made, with all the
things in them that are known to our physical senses." Another
takes it still differently and says that "But the earth was
invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss" means,
"This totality called heaven and earth was as yet an unformed and
lightless matter, from which were to be made that intelligible
heaven (which is also called 'the heaven of heavens') and the
earth (which refers to the whole physical entity, under which term
may be included this corporeal heaven) -- that is, He made the
intelligible heaven from which every invisible and visible
creature would be created." He takes it in yet another sense who
says that "But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness
was over the abyss" means, "The Scripture does not refer to that
formlessness by the term 'heaven and earth'; that formlessness
itself already existed.  This it called the invisible 'earth' and
the unformed and lightless 'abyss,' from which -- as it had said
before -- God made the heaven and the earth (namely, the spiritual
and the corporeal creation)." Still another says that "But the
earth was invisible and formless, and darkness was over the abyss"
means, "There was already an unformed matter from which, as the
Scripture had already said, God made heaven and earth, namely, the
entire corporeal mass of the world, divided into two very great
parts, one superior, the other inferior, with all those familiar
and known creatures that are in them."


                         CHAPTER XXII

     31.  Now suppose that someone tried to argue against these
last two opinions as follows: "If you will not admit that this
formlessness of matter appears to be called by the term 'heaven
and earth,' then there was something that God had not made out of
which he did make heaven and earth.  And Scripture has not told us
that God made _this_ matter, unless we understand that it is
implied in the term 'heaven and earth' (or the term 'earth' alone)
when it is said, 'In the beginning God created the heaven and
earth.' Thus, in what follows -- 'the earth was invisible and
unformed' -- even though it pleased Moses thus to refer to
unformed matter, yet we can only understand by it that which God
himself hath made, as it stands written in the previous verse,
'God made heaven and earth.'" Those who maintain either one or the
other of these two opinions which we have set out above will
answer to such objections: "We do not deny at all that this
unformed matter was created by God, from whom all things are, and
are very good -- because we hold that what is created and endowed
with form is a higher good; and we also hold that what is made
capable of being created and endowed with form, though it is a
lesser good, is still a good.  But the Scripture has not said
specifically that God made this formlessness -- any more than it
has said it specifically of many other things, such as the orders
of 'cherubim' and 'seraphim' and those others of which the apostle
distinctly speaks: 'thrones,' 'dominions,' 'principalities,'
'powers'[490] -- yet it is clear that God made all of these.  If
in the phrase 'He made heaven and earth' all things are included,
what are we to say about the waters upon which the Spirit of God
moved?  For if they are understood as included in the term
'earth,' then how can unformed matter be meant by the term 'earth'
when we see the waters so beautifully formed?  Or, if it be taken
thus, why, then, is it written that out of the same formlessness
the firmament was made and called heaven, and yet is it not
specifically written that the waters were made?  For these waters,
which we perceive flowing in so beautiful a fashion, are not
formless and invisible.  But if they received that beauty at the
time God said of them, 'Let the waters which are under the
firmament be gathered together,'[491] thus indicating that their
gathering together was the same thing as their reception of form,
what, then, is to be said about the waters that are _above_ the
firmament?  Because if they are unformed, they do not deserve to
have a seat so honorable, and yet it is not written by what
specific word they were formed.  If, then, Genesis is silent about
anything that God hath made, which neither sound faith nor
unerring understanding doubts that God hath made, let not any
sober teaching dare to say that these waters were coeternal with
God because we find them mentioned in the book of Genesis and do
not find it mentioned when they were created.  If Truth instructs
us, why may we not interpret that unformed matter which the
Scripture calls the earth -- invisible and unformed -- and the
lightless abyss as having been made by God from nothing; and thus
understand that they are not coeternal with him, although the
narrative fails to tell us precisely when they were made?"


                         CHAPTER XXIII

     32.  I have heard and considered these theories as well as my
weak apprehension allows, and I confess my weakness to Thee, O
Lord, though already thou knowest it.  Thus I see that two sorts
of disagreements may arise when anything is related by signs, even
by trustworthy reporters.  There is one disagreement about the
truth of the things involved; the other concerns the meaning of
the one who reports them.  It is one thing to inquire as to what
is true about the formation of the Creation.  It is another thing,
however, to ask what that excellent servant of thy faith, Moses,
would have wished for the reader and hearer to understand from
these words.  As for the first question, let all those depart from
me who imagine that Moses spoke things that are false.  But let me
be united with them in thee, O Lord, and delight myself in thee
with those who feed on thy truth in the bond of love.  Let us
approach together the words of thy book and make diligent inquiry
in them for thy meaning through the meaning of thy servant by
whose pen thou hast given them to us.


                         CHAPTER XXIV

     33.  But in the midst of so many truths which occur to the
interpreters of these words (understood as they can be in
different ways), which one of us can discover that single
interpretation which warrants our saying confidently that Moses
thought _thus_ and that in this narrative he wishes _this_ to be
understood, as confidently as he would say that _this_ is true,
whether Moses thought the one or the other.  For see, O my God, I
am thy servant, and I have vowed in this book an offering of
confession to thee,[492] and I beseech thee that by thy mercy I
may pay my vow to thee.  Now, see, could I assert that Moses meant
nothing else than _this_ [i.e., my interpretation] when he wrote,
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," as
confidently as I can assert that thou in thy immutable Word hast
created all things, invisible and visible?  No, I cannot do this
because it is not as clear to me that _this_ was in his mind when
he wrote these things, as I see it to be certain in thy truth.
For his thoughts might be set upon the very beginning of the
creation when he said, "In the beginning"; and he might have
wished it understood that, in this passage, "heaven and earth"
refers to no formed and perfect entity, whether spiritual or
corporeal, but each of them only newly begun and still formless.
Whichever of these possibilities has been mentioned I can see that
it might have been said truly.  But which of them he did actually
intend to express in these words I do not clearly see.  However,
whether it was one of these or some other meaning which I have not
mentioned that this great man saw in his mind when he used these
words I have no doubt whatever that he saw it truly and expressed
it suitably.


                          CHAPTER XXV

     34.  Let no man fret me now by saying, "Moses did not mean
what _you_ say, but what _I_ say." Now if he asks me, "How do you
know that Moses meant what you deduce from his words?", I ought to
respond calmly and reply as I have already done, or even more
fully if he happens to be untrained.  But when he says, "Moses did
not mean what _you_ say, but what _I_ say," and then does not deny
what either of us says but allows that _both_ are true -- then, O
my God, life of the poor, in whose breast there is no
contradiction, pour thy soothing balm into my heart that I may
patiently bear with people who talk like this!  It is not because
they are godly men and have seen in the heart of thy servant what
they say, but rather they are proud men and have not considered
Moses' meaning, but only love their own -- not because it is true
but because it is their own.  Otherwise they could equally love
another true opinion, as I love what they say when what they speak
is true -- not because it is theirs but because it is true, and
therefore not theirs but true.  And if they love an opinion
because it is true, it becomes both theirs and mine, since it is
the common property of all lovers of the truth.[493]  But I
neither accept nor approve of it when they contend that Moses did
not mean what I say but what they say -- and this because, even if
it were so, such rashness is born not of knowledge, but of
impudence.  It comes not from vision but from vanity.
     And therefore, O Lord, thy judgments should be held in awe,
because thy truth is neither mine nor his nor anyone else's; but
it belongs to all of us whom thou hast openly called to have it in
common; and thou hast warned us not to hold on to it as our own
special property, for if we do we lose it.  For if anyone
arrogates to himself what thou hast bestowed on all to enjoy, and
if he desires something for his own that belongs to all, he is
forced away from what is common to all to what is, indeed, his
very own -- that is, from truth to falsehood.  For he who tells a
lie speaks of his own thought.[494]
     35.  Hear, O God, best judge of all!  O Truth itself, hear
what I say to this disputant.  Hear it, because I say it in thy
presence and before my brethren who use the law rightly to the end
of love.  Hear and give heed to what I shall say to him, if it
pleases thee.
     For I would return this brotherly and peaceful word to him:
"If we both see that what you say is true, and if we both say that
what I say is true, where is it, I ask you, that we see this?
Certainly, I do not see it in you, and you do not see it in me,
but both of us see it in the unchangeable truth itself, which is
above our minds."[495]  If, then, we do not disagree about the
true light of the Lord our God, why do we disagree about the
thoughts of our neighbor, which we cannot see as clearly as the
immutable Truth is seen?  If Moses himself had appeared to us and
said, "This is what I meant," it would not be in order that we
should see it but that we should believe him.  Let us not, then,
"go beyond what is written and be puffed up for the one against
the other."[496]  Let us, instead, "love the Lord our God with all
our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind, and our
neighbor as ourself."[497]  Unless we believe that whatever Moses
meant in these books he meant to be ordered by these two precepts
of love, we shall make God a liar, if we judge of the soul of his
servant in any other way than as he has taught us.  See now, how
foolish it is, in the face of so great an abundance of true
opinions which can be elicited from these words, rashly to affirm
that Moses especially intended only one of these interpretations;
and then, with destructive contention, to violate love itself, on
behalf of which he had said all the things we are endeavoring to
explain!


                         CHAPTER XXVI

     36.  And yet, O my God, thou exaltation of my humility and
rest of my toil, who hearest my confessions and forgivest my sins,
since thou commandest me to love my neighbor as myself, I cannot
believe that thou gavest thy most faithful servant Moses a lesser
gift than I should wish and desire for myself from thee, if I had
been born in his time, and if thou hadst placed me in the position
where, by the use of my heart and my tongue, those books might be
produced which so long after were to profit all nations throughout
the whole world -- from such a great pinnacle of authority -- and
were to surmount the words of all false and proud teachings.  If I
had been Moses -- and we all come from the same mass,[498] and
what is man that thou art mindful of him?[499] -- if I had been
Moses at the time that he was, and if I had been ordered by thee
to write the book of Genesis, I would surely have wished for such
a power of expression and such an art of arrangement to be given
me, that those who cannot as yet understand _how_ God createth
would still not reject my words as surpassing their powers of
understanding.  And I would have wished that those who are already
able to do this would find fully contained in the laconic speech
of thy servant whatever truths they had arrived at in their own
thought; and if, in the light of the Truth, some other man saw
some further meaning, that too would be found congruent to my
words.


                         CHAPTER XXVII

     37.  For just as a spring dammed up is more plentiful and
affords a larger supply of water for more streams over wider
fields than any single stream led off from the same spring over a
long course -- so also is the narration of thy minister: it is
intended to benefit many who are likely to discourse about it and,
with an economy of language, it overflows into various streams of
clear truth, from which each one may draw out for himself that
particular truth which he can about these topics -- this one that
truth, that one another truth, by the broader survey of various
interpretations.  For some people, when they read or hear these
words,[500] think that God, like some sort of man or like some
sort of huge body, by some new and sudden decision, produced
outside himself and at a certain distance two great bodies: one
above, the other below, within which all created things were to be
contained.  And when they hear, "God said, 'Let such and such be
done,' and it was done," they think of words begun and ended,
sounding in time and then passing away, followed by the coming
into being of what was commanded.  They think of other things of
the same sort which their familiarity with the world suggests to
them.
     In these people, who are still little children and whose
weakness is borne up by this humble language as if on a mother's
breast, their faith is built up healthfully and they come to
possess and to hold as certain the conviction that God made all
entities that their senses perceive all around them in such
marvelous variety.  And if one despises these words as if they
were trivial, and with proud weakness stretches himself beyond his
fostering cradle, he will, alas, fall away wretchedly.  Have pity,
O Lord God, lest those who pass by trample on the unfledged
bird,[501] and send thy angel who may restore it to its nest, that
it may live until it can fly.


                        CHAPTER XXVIII

     38.  But others, to whom these words are no longer a nest
but, rather, a shady thicket, spy the fruits concealed in them and
fly around rejoicing and search among them and pluck them with
cheerful chirpings: For when they read or hear these words, O God,
they see that all times past and times future are transcended by
thy eternal and stable permanence, and they see also that there is
no temporal creature that is not of thy making.  By thy will,
since it is the same as thy being, thou hast created all things,
not by any mutation of will and not by any will that previously
was nonexistent -- and not out of thyself, but in thy own
likeness, thou didst make from nothing the form of all things.
This was an unlikeness which was capable of being formed by thy
likeness through its relation to thee, the One, as each thing has
been given form appropriate to its kind according to its
preordained capacity.  Thus, all things were made very good,
whether they remain around thee or whether, removed in time and
place by various degrees, they cause or undergo the beautiful
changes of natural process.
     They see these things and they rejoice in the light of thy
truth to whatever degree they can.
     39.  Again, one of these men[502] directs his attention to
the verse, "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth,"
and he beholds Wisdom as the true "beginning," because it also
speaks to us.  Another man directs his attention to the same
words, and by "beginning" he understands simply the commencement
of creation, and interprets it thus: "In the beginning he made,"
as if it were the same thing as to say, "At the first moment, God
made . . ."  And among those who interpret "In the beginning" to
mean that in thy wisdom thou hast created the heaven and earth,
one believes that the matter out of which heaven and earth were to
be created is what is referred to by the phrase "heaven and
earth." But another believes that these entities were already
formed and distinct.  Still another will understand it to refer to
one formed entity -- a spiritual one, designated by the term
"heaven" -- and to another unformed entity of corporeal matter,
designated by the term "earth." But those who understand the
phrase "heaven and earth" to mean the yet unformed matter from
which the heaven and the earth were to be formed do not take it in
a simple sense: one man regards it as that from which the
intelligible and tangible creations are both produced; and another
only as that from which the tangible, corporeal world is produced,
containing in its vast bosom these visible and observable
entities.  Nor are they in simple accord who believe that "heaven
and earth" refers to the created things already set in order and
arranged.  One believes that it refers to the invisible and
visible world; another, only to the visible world, in which we
admire the luminous heavens and the darkened earth and all the
things that they contain.


                         CHAPTER XXIX

     40.  But he who understands "In the beginning he made" as if
it meant, "At first he made," can truly interpret the phrase
"heaven and earth" as referring only to the "matter" of heaven and
earth, namely, of the prior universal, which is the intelligible
and corporeal creation.  For if he would try to interpret the
phrase as applying to the universe already formed, it then might
rightly be asked of him, "If God first made this, what then did he
do afterward?"  And, after the universe, he will find nothing.
But then he must, however unwillingly, face the question, How is
this the first if there is nothing afterward?  But when he said
that God made matter first formless and then formed, he is not
being absurd if he is able to discern what precedes by eternity,
and what proceeds in time; what comes from choice, and what comes
from origin.  In eternity, God is before all things; in the
temporal process, the flower is before the fruit; in the act of
choice, the fruit is before the flower; in the case of origin,
sound is before the tune.  Of these four relations, the first and
last that I have referred to are understood with much difficulty.
The second and third are very easily understood.  For it is an
uncommon and lofty vision, O Lord, to behold thy eternity
immutably making mutable things, and thereby standing always
before them.  Whose mind is acute enough to be able, without great
labor, to discover how the sound comes before the tune?  For a
tune is a formed sound; and an unformed thing may exist, but a
thing that does not exist cannot be formed.  In the same way,
matter is prior to what is made from it.  It is not prior because
it makes its product, for it is itself made; and its priority is
not that of a time interval.  For in time we do not first utter
formless sounds without singing and then adapt or fashion them
into the form of a song, as wood or silver from which a chest or
vessel is made.  Such materials precede in time the forms of the
things which are made from them.  But in singing this is not so.
For when a song is sung, its sound is heard at the same time.
There is not first a formless sound, which afterward is formed
into a song; but just as soon as it has sounded it passes away,
and you cannot find anything of it which you could gather up and
shape.  Therefore, the song is absorbed in its own sound and the
"sound" of the song is its "matter." But the sound is formed in
order that it may be a tune.  This is why, as I was saying, the
matter of the sound is prior to the form of the tune.  It is not
"before" in the sense that it has any power of making a sound or
tune.  Nor is the sound itself the composer of the tune; rather,
the sound is sent forth from the body and is ordered by the soul
of the singer, so that from it he may form a tune.  Nor is the
sound first in time, for it is given forth together with the tune.
Nor is it first in choice, because a sound is no better than a
tune, since a tune is not merely a sound but a beautiful sound.
But it is first in origin, because the tune is not formed in order
that it may become a sound, but the sound is formed in order that
it may become a tune.
     From this example, let him who is able to understand see that
the matter of things was first made and was called "heaven and
earth" because out of it the heaven and earth were made.  This
primal formlessness was not made first in time, because the form
of things gives rise to time; but now, in time, it is intuited
together with its form.  And yet nothing can be related of this
unformed matter unless it is regarded as if it were the first in
the time series though the last in value -- because things formed
are certainly superior to things unformed -- and it is preceded by
the eternity of the Creator, so that from nothing there might be
made that from which something might be made.


                          CHAPTER XXX

     41.  In this discord of true opinions let Truth itself bring
concord, and may our God have mercy on us all, that we may use the
law rightly to the end of the commandment which is pure love.
Thus, if anyone asks me which of these opinions was the meaning of
thy servant Moses, these would not be my confessions did I not
confess to thee that I do not know.  Yet I do know that those
opinions are true -- with the exception of the carnal ones --
about which I have said what I thought was proper.  Yet those
little ones of good hope are not frightened by these words of thy
Book, for they speak of high things in a lowly way and of a few
basic things in many varied ways.  But let all of us, whom I
acknowledge to see and speak the truth in these words, love one
another and also love thee, our God, O Fountain of Truth -- as we
will if we thirst not after vanity but for the Fountain of Truth.
Indeed, let us so honor this servant of thine, the dispenser of
this Scripture, full of thy Spirit, so that we will believe that
when thou didst reveal thyself to him, and he wrote these things
down, he intended through them what will chiefly minister both for
the light of truth and to the increase of our fruitfulness.


                         CHAPTER XXXI

     42.  Thus, when one man says, "Moses meant what I mean," and
another says, "No, he meant what I do," I think that I speak more
faithfully when I say, "Why could he not have meant both if both
opinions are true?"  And if there should be still a third truth or
a fourth one, and if anyone should seek a truth quite different in
those words, why would it not be right to believe that Moses saw
all these different truths, since through him the one God has
tempered the Holy Scriptures to the understanding of many
different people, who should see truths in it even if they are
different?  Certainly -- and I say this fearlessly and from my
heart -- if I were to write anything on such a supreme authority,
I would prefer to write it so that, whatever of truth anyone might
apprehend from the matter under discussion, my words should re-
echo in the several minds rather than that they should set down
one true opinion so clearly on one point that I should exclude the
rest, even though they contained no falsehood that offended me.
Therefore, I am unwilling, O my God, to be so headstrong as not to
believe that this man [Moses] has received at least this much from
thee.  Surely when he was writing these words, he saw fully and
understood all the truth we have been able to find in them, and
also much besides that we have not been able to discern, or are
not yet able to find out, though it is there in them still to be
found.


                         CHAPTER XXXII

     43.  Finally, O Lord -- who art God and not flesh and blood
-- if any man sees anything less, can anything lie hid from "thy
good Spirit" who shall "lead me into the land of
uprightness,"[503] which thou thyself, through those words, wast
revealing to future readers, even though he through whom they were
spoken fixed on only one among the many interpretations that might
have been found?  And if this is so, let it be agreed that the
meaning he saw is more exalted than the others.  But to us, O
Lord, either point out the same meaning or any other true one, as
it pleases thee.  Thus, whether thou makest known to us what thou
madest known to that man of thine, or some other meaning by the
agency of the same words, still do thou feed us and let error not
deceive us.  Behold, O Lord, my God, how much we have written
concerning these few words -- how much, indeed!  What strength of
mind, what length of time, would suffice for all thy books to be
interpreted in this fashion?[504]  Allow me, therefore, in these
concluding words to confess more briefly to thee and select some
one, true, certain, and good sense that thou shalt inspire,
although many meanings offer themselves and many indeed are
possible.[505]  This is the faith of my confession, that if I
could say what thy servant meant, that is truest and best, and for
that I must strive.  Yet if I do not succeed, may it be that I
shall say at least what thy Truth wished to say to me through its
words, just as it said what it wished to Moses.




                        BOOK THIRTEEN


     The mysteries and allegories of the days of creation.
Augustine undertakes to interpret Gen. 1:2-31 in a mystical and
allegorical fashion so as to exhibit the profundities of God's
power and wisdom and love.  He is also interested in developing
his theories of hermeneutics on his favorite topic: creation.  He
finds the Trinity in the account of creation and he ponders the
work of the Spirit moving over the waters.  In the firmament he
finds the allegory of Holy Scripture and in the dry land and
bitter sea he finds the division between the people of God and the
conspiracy of the unfaithful.  He develops the theme of man's
being made in the image and likeness of God.  He brings his survey
to a climax and his confessions to an end with a meditation on the
goodness of all creation and the promised rest and blessedness of
the eternal Sabbath, on which God, who is eternal rest, "rested."


                           CHAPTER I

     1.  I call on thee, my God, my Mercy, who madest me and didst
not forget me, though I was forgetful of thee.  I call thee into
my soul, which thou didst prepare for thy reception by the desire
which thou inspirest in it.  Do not forsake me when I call on
thee, who didst anticipate me before I called and who didst
repeatedly urge with manifold calling that I should hear thee afar
off and be turned and call upon thee, who callest me.  For thou, O
Lord, hast blotted out all my evil deserts, not punishing me for
what my hands have done; and thou hast anticipated all my good
deserts so as to recompense me for what thy hands have done -- the
hands which made me.  Before I was, thou wast, and I was not
anything at all that thou shouldst grant me being.  Yet, see how I
exist by reason of thy goodness, which made provision for all that
thou madest me to be and all that thou madest me from.  For thou
didst not stand in need of me, nor am I the kind of good entity
which could be a help to thee, my Lord and my God.  It is not that
I may serve thee as if thou wert fatigued in working, or as if thy
power would be the less if it lacked my assistance.  Nor is the
service I pay thee like the cultivation of a field, so that thou
wouldst go untended if I did not tend thee.[506]  Instead, it is
that I may serve and worship thee to the end that I may have my
well-being from thee, from whom comes my capacity for well-being.


                          CHAPTER II

     2.  Indeed, it is from the fullness of thy goodness that thy
creation exists at all: to the end that the created good might not
fail to be, even though it can profit thee nothing, and is nothing
of thee nor equal to thee -- since its created existence comes
from thee.
     For what did the heaven and earth, which thou didst make in
the beginning, ever deserve from thee?  Let them declare -- these
spiritual and corporeal entities, which thou madest in thy wisdom
-- let them declare what they merited at thy hands, so that the
inchoate and the formless, whether spiritual or corporeal, would
deserve to be held in being in spite of the fact that they tend
toward disorder and extreme unlikeness to thee?  An unformed
spiritual entity is more excellent than a formed corporeal entity;
and the corporeal, even when unformed, is more excellent than if
it were simply nothing at all.  Still, these formless entities are
held in their state of being by thee, until they are recalled to
thy unity and receive form and being from thee, the one sovereign
Good.  What have they deserved of thee, since they would not even
be unformed entities except from thee?
     3.  What has corporeal matter deserved of thee -- even in its
invisible and unformed state -- since it would not exist even in
this state if thou hadst not made it?  And, if it did not exist,
it could not merit its existence from thee.
     Or, what has that formless spiritual creation deserved of
thee -- that it should flow lightlessly like the abyss -- since it
is so unlike thee and would not exist at all if it had not been
turned by the Word which made it that same Word, and, illumined by
that Word, had been "made light"[507] although not as thy equal
but only as an image of that Form [of Light] which is equal to
thee?  For, in the case of a body, its being is not the same thing
as its being beautiful; else it could not then be a deformed body.
Likewise, in the case of a created spirit, living is not the same
state as living wisely; else it could then be immutably wise.  But
the true good of every created thing is always to cleave fast to
thee, lest, in turning away from thee, it lose the light it had
received in being turned by thee, and so relapse into a life like
that of the dark abyss.
     As for ourselves, who are a spiritual creation by virtue of
our souls, when we turned away from thee, O Light, we were in that
former life of darkness; and we toil amid the shadows of our
darkness until -- through thy only Son -- we become thy
righteousness,[508] like the mountains of God.  For we, like the
great abyss,[509] have been the objects of thy judgments.


                          CHAPTER III

     4.  Now what thou saidst in the beginning of the creation --
"Let there be light: and there was light" -- I interpret, not
unfitly, as referring to the spiritual creation, because it
already had a kind of life which thou couldst illuminate.  But,
since it had not merited from thee that it should be a life
capable of enlightenment, so neither, when it already began to
exist, did it merit from thee that it should be enlightened.  For
neither could its formlessness please thee until it became light
-- and it became light, not from the bare fact of existing, but by
the act of turning its face to the light which enlightened it, and
by cleaving to it.  Thus it owed the fact that it lived, and lived
happily, to nothing whatsoever but thy grace, since it had been
turned, by a change for the better, toward that which cannot be
changed for either better or worse.  Thou alone art, because thou
alone art without complication.  For thee it is not one thing to
live and another thing to live in blessedness; for thou art
thyself thy own blessedness.


                          CHAPTER IV

     5.  What, therefore, would there have been lacking in thy
good, which thou thyself art, even if these things had never been
made or had remained unformed?  Thou didst not create them out of
any lack but out of the plenitude of thy goodness, ordering them
and turning them toward form,[510] but not because thy joy had to
be perfected by them.  For thou art perfect, and their
imperfection is displeasing.  Therefore were they perfected by
thee and became pleasing to thee -- but not as if thou wert before
that imperfect and had to be perfected in their perfection.  For
thy good Spirit which moved over the face of the waters[511] was
not borne up by them as if he rested on them.  For those in whom
thy good Spirit is said to rest he actually causes to rest in
himself.  But thy incorruptible and immutable will -- in itself
all-sufficient for itself -- moved over that life which thou hadst
made: in which living is not at all the same thing as living
happily, since that life still lives even as it flows in its own
darkness.  But it remains to be turned to him by whom it was made
and to live more and more like "the fountain of life," and in his
light "to see light,"[512] and to be perfected, and enlightened,
and made blessed.


                           CHAPTER V

     6.  See now,[513] how the Trinity appears to me in an enigma.
And thou art the Trinity, O my God, since thou, O Father -- in the
beginning of our wisdom, that is, in thy wisdom born of thee,
equal and coeternal with thee, that is, thy Son -- created the
heaven and the earth.  Many things we have said about the heaven
of heavens, and about the earth invisible and unformed, and about
the shadowy abyss -- speaking of the aimless flux of its being
spiritually deformed unless it is turned to him from whom it has
its life (such as it is) and by his Light comes to be a life
suffused with beauty.  Thus it would be a [lower] heaven of that
[higher] heaven, which afterward was made between water and
water.[514]
     And now I came to recognize, in the name of God, the Father
who made all these things, and in the term "the Beginning" to
recognize the Son, through whom he made all these things; and
since I did believe that my God was the Trinity, I sought still
further in his holy Word, and, behold, "Thy Spirit moved over the
waters." Thus, see the Trinity, O my God: Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, the Creator of all creation!


                          CHAPTER VI

     7.  But why, O truth-speaking Light?  To thee I lift up my
heart -- let it not teach me vain notions.  Disperse its shadows
and tell me, I beseech thee, by that Love which is our mother;
tell me, I beseech thee, the reason why -- after the reference to
heaven and to the invisible and unformed earth, and darkness over
the abyss -- thy Scripture should then at long last refer to thy
Spirit?  Was it because it was appropriate that he should first be
shown to us as "moving over"; and this could not have been said
unless something had already been mentioned over which thy Spirit
could be understood as "moving"?  For he did not "move over" the
Father and the Son, and he could not properly be said to be
"moving over" if he were "moving over" nothing.  Thus, what it was
he was "moving over" had to be mentioned first and he whom it was
not proper to mention otherwise than as "moving over" could then
be mentioned.  But why was it not fitting that he should have been
introduced in some other way than in this context of "moving
over"?


                          CHAPTER VII

     8.  Now let him who is able follow thy apostle with his
understanding when he says, "Thy love is shed abroad in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us"[515] and who teacheth us
about spiritual gifts[516] and showeth us a more excellent way of
love; and who bows his knee unto thee for us, that we may come to
the surpassing knowledge of the love of Christ.[517]  Thus, from
the beginning, he who is above all was "moving over" the waters.
     To whom shall I tell this?  How can I speak of the weight of
concupiscence which drags us downward into the deep abyss, and of
the love which lifts us up by thy Spirit who moved over the
waters?  To whom shall I tell this?  How shall I tell it?  For
concupiscence and love are not certain "places" into which we are
plunged and out of which we are lifted again.  What could be more
like, and yet what more unlike?  They are both feelings; they are
both loves.  The uncleanness of our own spirit flows downward with
the love of worldly care; and the sanctity of thy Spirit raises us
upward by the love of release from anxiety -- that we may lift our
hearts to thee where thy Spirit is "moving over the waters." Thus,
we shall have come to that supreme rest where our souls shall have
passed through the waters which give no standing ground.[518]


                         CHAPTER VIII

     9.  The angels fell, and the soul of man fell; thus they
indicate to us the deep darkness of the abyss, which would have
still contained the whole spiritual creation if thou hadst not
said, in the beginning, "Let there be light: and there was light"
-- and if every obedient mind in thy heavenly city had not adhered
to thee and had not reposed in thy Spirit, which moved immutable
over all things mutable.  Otherwise, even the heaven of heavens
itself would have been a dark shadow, instead of being, as it is
now, light in the Lord.[519]  For even in the restless misery of
the fallen spirits, who exhibit their own darkness when they are
stripped of the garments of thy light, thou showest clearly how
noble thou didst make the rational creation, for whose rest and
beatitude nothing suffices save thee thyself.  And certainly it is
not itself sufficient for its beatitude.  For it is thou, O our
God, who wilt enlighten our darkness; from thee shall come our
garments of light; and then our darkness shall be as the noonday.
Give thyself to me, O my God, restore thyself to me!  See, I love
thee; and if it be too little, let me love thee still more
strongly.  I cannot measure my love so that I may come to know how
much there is still lacking in me before my life can run to thy
embrace and not be turned away until it is hidden in "the covert
of thy presence."[520]  Only this I know, that my existence is my
woe except in thee -- not only in my outward life, but also within
my inmost self -- and all abundance I have which is not my God is
poverty.


                          CHAPTER IX

     10.  But was neither the Father nor the Son "moving over the
waters"?  If we understand this as a motion in space, as a body
moves, then not even the Holy Spirit "moved." But if we understand
the changeless supereminence of the divine Being above every
changeable thing, then Father, Son, and Holy Spirit "moved over
the waters."
     Why, then, is this said of thy Spirit alone?  Why is it said
of him only -- as if he had been in a "place" that is not a place
-- about whom alone it is written, "He is thy gift"?  It is in thy
gift that we rest.  It is there that we enjoy thee.  Our rest is
our "place." Love lifts us up toward that place, and thy good
Spirit lifts our lowliness from the gates of death.[521]  Our
peace rests in the goodness of will.  The body tends toward its
own place by its own gravity.  A weight does not tend downward
only, but moves to its own place.  Fire tends upward; a stone
tends downward.  They are propelled by their own mass; they seek
their own places.  Oil poured under the water rises above the
water; water poured on oil sinks under the oil.  They are moved by
their own mass; they seek their own places.  If they are out of
order, they are restless; when their order is restored, they are
at rest.  My weight is my love.  By it I am carried wherever I am
carried.  By thy gift,[522] we are enkindled and are carried
upward.  We burn inwardly and move forward.  We ascend thy ladder
which is in our heart, and we sing a canticle of degrees[523]; we
glow inwardly with thy fire -- with thy good fire[524] -- and we
go forward because we go up to the peace of Jerusalem[525]; for I
was glad when they said to me, "Let us go into the house of the
Lord."[526]  There thy good pleasure will settle us so that we
will desire nothing more than to dwell there forever.[527]


                           CHAPTER X

     11.  Happy would be that creature who, though it was in
itself other than thou, still had known no other state than this
from the time it was made, so that it was never without thy gift
which moves over everything mutable -- who had been borne up by
the call in which thou saidst, "Let there be light: and there was
light."[528]  For in us there is a distinction between the time
when we were darkness and the time when we were made light.  But
we are not told what would have been the case with that creature
if the light had not been made.  It is spoken of as though there
had been something of flux and darkness in it beforehand so that
the cause by which it was made to be otherwise might be evident.
This is to say, by being turned to the unfailing Light it might
become light.  Let him who is able understand this; and let him
who is not ask of thee.  Why trouble me, as if I could "enlighten
every man that comes into the world"[529]?


                          CHAPTER XI

     12.  Who can understand the omnipotent Trinity?  And yet who
does not speak about it, if indeed it is of it that he speaks?
Rare is the soul who, when he speaks of it, also knows of what he
speaks.  And men contend and strive, but no man sees the vision of
it without peace.
     I could wish that men would consider three things which are
within themselves.  These three things are quite different from
the Trinity, but I mention them in order that men may exercise
their minds and test themselves and come to realize how different
from it they are.[530]
     The three things I speak of are: to be, to know, and to will.
For I am, and I know, and I will.  I am a knowing and a willing
being; I know that I am and that I will; and I will to be and to
know.  In these three functions, therefore, let him who can see
how integral a life is; for there is one life, one mind, one
essence.  Finally, the distinction does not separate the things,
and yet it is a distinction.  Surely a man has this distinction
before his mind; let him look into himself and see, and tell me.
But when he discovers and can say anything about any one of these,
let him not think that he has thereby discovered what is immutable
above them all, which _is_ immutably and _knows_ immutably and
_wills_ immutably.  But whether there is a Trinity there because
these three functions exist in the one God, or whether all three
are in each Person so that they are each threefold, or whether
both these notions are true and, in some mysterious manner, the
Infinite is in itself its own Selfsame object -- at once one and
many, so that by itself it is and knows itself and suffices to
itself without change, so that the Selfsame is the abundant
magnitude of its Unity -- who can readily conceive?  Who can in
any fashion express it plainly?  Who can in any way rashly make a
pronouncement about it?


                          CHAPTER XII

     13.  Go forward in your confession, O my faith; say to the
Lord your God, "Holy, holy, holy, O Lord my God, in thy name we
have been baptized, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit." In thy name we baptize, in the name of the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit.  For among us also God in his Christ
made "heaven and earth," namely, the spiritual and carnal members
of his Church. And true it is that before it received "the form of
doctrine," our "earth"[531] was "invisible and unformed," and we
were covered with the darkness of our ignorance; for thou dost
correct man for his iniquity,[532] and "thy judgments are a great
abyss."[533]  But because thy Spirit was moving over these waters,
thy mercy did not forsake our wretchedness, and thou saidst, "Let
there be light; repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand."[534]  Repent, and let there be light.  Because our soul was
troubled within us, we remembered thee, O Lord, from the land of
Jordan, and from the mountain[535] -- and as we became displeased
with our darkness we turned to thee, "and there was light." And
behold, we were heretofore in darkness, but now we are light in
the Lord.[536]


                         CHAPTER XIII

     14.  But even so, we still live by faith and not by sight,
for we are saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope.  Thus
far deep calls unto deep, but now in "the noise of thy
waterfalls."[537]  And thus far he who said, "I could not speak to
you as if you were spiritual ones, but only as if you were
carnal"[538] -- thus far even he does not count himself to have
apprehended, but forgetting the things that are behind and
reaching forth to the things that are before, he presses on to
those things that are ahead,[539] and he groans under his burden
and his soul thirsts after the living God as the stag pants for
the water brooks,[540] and says, "When shall I come?"[541] --
"desiring to be further clothed by his house which is from
heaven."[542]  And he called to this lower deep, saying, "Be not
conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of
your mind."[543]  And "be not children in understanding, although
in malice be children," in order that "in understanding you may
become perfect."[544]  "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched
you?"[545]  But this is not now only in his own voice but in thy
voice, who sent thy Spirit from above through Him who both
"ascended up on high"[546] and opened up the floodgates of his
gifts, that the force of his streams might make glad the city of
God.[547]
     For that city and for him sighs the Bridegroom's friend,[548]
who has now the first fruits of the Spirit laid up with him, but
who is still groaning within himself and waiting for adoption,
that is, the redemption of his body.[549]  To Him he sighs, for he
is a member of the Bride[550]; for him he is jealous, not for
himself, but because not in his own voice but in the voice of thy
waterfalls he calls on that other deep, of which he is jealous and
in fear; for he fears lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his
subtlety, his mind should be corrupted from the purity which is in
our Bridegroom, thy only Son.  What a light of beauty that will be
when "we shall see him as he is"[551]! -- and when these tears
shall pass away which "have been my meat day and night, while they
continually say unto me, 'Where is your God?'"[552]


                          CHAPTER XIV

     15.  And I myself say: "O my God, where art thou?  See now,
where art thou?"  In thee I take my breath for a little while,
when I pour out my soul beyond myself in the voice of joy and
praise, in the voice of him that keeps holyday.[553]  And still it
is cast down because it relapses and becomes an abyss, or rather
it feels that it still is an abyss.  My faith speaks to my soul --
the faith that thou dost kindle to light my path in the night:
"Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted in
me?  Hope in God."[554]  For his word is a lamp to your feet.[555]
Hope and persevere until the night passes -- that mother of the
wicked; until the Lord's wrath subsides -- that wrath whose
children once we were, of whom we were beforehand in darkness,
whose residue we still bear about us in our bodies, dead because
of sin.[556]  Hope and endure until the day breaks and the shadows
flee away.[557]  Hope in the Lord: in the morning I shall stand in
his presence and keep watch[558]; I shall forever give praise to
him.  In the morning I shall stand and shall see my God, who is
the health of my countenance,[559] who also will quicken our
mortal bodies by the Spirit that dwells in us,[560] because in
mercy he was moving over our lightless and restless inner deep.
>From this we have received an earnest, even now in this
pilgrimage, that we are now in the light, since already we are
saved by hope and are children of the light and children of the
day -- not children of the night, nor of the darkness,[561] which
we have been hitherto.  Between those children of the night and
ourselves, in this still uncertain state of human knowledge, only
thou canst rightly distinguish -- thou who dost test the heart and
who dost call the light day, and the darkness night.[562]  For who
can see us clearly but thee?  What do we have that we have not
received from thee, who madest from the same lump some vessels to
noble, and others to ignoble, use[563]?


                          CHAPTER XV

     16.  Now who but thee, our God, didst make for us that
firmament of the authority of thy divine Scripture to be over us?
For "the heaven shall be folded up like a scroll"[564]; but now it
is stretched over us like a skin.  Thy divine Scripture is of more
sublime authority now that those mortal men through whom thou
didst dispense it to us have departed this life.  And thou
knowest, O Lord, thou knowest how thou didst clothe men with skins
when they became mortal because of sin.[565]  In something of the
same way, thou hast stretched out the firmament of thy Book as a
skin -- that is to say, thou hast spread thy harmonious words over
us through the ministry of mortal men.  For by their very death
that solid firmament of authority in thy sayings, spoken forth by
them, stretches high over all that now drift under it; whereas
while they lived on earth their authority was not so widely
extended.  Then thou hadst not yet spread out the heaven like a
skin; thou hadst not yet spread abroad everywhere the fame of
their death.
     17.  Let us see, O Lord, "the heavens, the work of thy
fingers,"[566] and clear away from our eyes the fog with which
thou hast covered them.  In them[567] is that testimony of thine
which gives wisdom even to the little ones.  O my God, out of the
mouth of babes and sucklings, perfect thy praise.[568]  For we
know no other books that so destroy man's pride, that so break
down the adversary and the self-defender who resists thy
reconciliation by an effort to justify his own sins.  I do not
know, O Lord, I do not know any other such pure words that so
persuade me to confession and make my neck submissive to thy yoke,
and invite me to serve thee for nothing else than thy own sake.
Let me understand these things, O good Father.  Grant this to me,
since I am placed under them; for thou hast established these
things for those placed under them.
     18.  There are other waters that are above this firmament,
and I believe that they are immortal and removed from earthly
corruption.  Let them praise thy name -- this super-celestial
society, thy angels, who have no need to look up at this firmament
or to gain a knowledge of thy Word by reading it -- let them
praise thee.  For they always behold thy face and read therein,
without any syllables in time, what thy eternal will intends.
They read, they choose, they love.[569]  They are always reading,
and what they read never passes away.  For by choosing and by
loving they read the very immutability of thy counsel.  Their book
is never closed, nor is the scroll folded up, because thou thyself
art this to them, and art this to them eternally; because thou
didst range them above this firmament which thou madest firm over
the infirmities of the people below the heavens, where they might
look up and learn thy mercy, which proclaims in time thee who
madest all times.  "For thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and
thy faithfulness reaches to the clouds."[570]  The clouds pass
away, but the heavens remain.  The preachers of thy Word pass away
from this life into another; but thy Scripture is spread abroad
over the people, even to the end of the world.  Indeed, both
heaven and earth shall pass away, but thy words shall never pass
away.[571]  The scroll shall be rolled together, and the "grass"
over which it was spread shall, with all its goodliness, pass
away; but thy Word remains forever[572] -- thy Word which now
appears to us in the dark image of the clouds and through the
glass of heaven, and not as it really is.  And even if we are the
well-beloved of thy Son, it has not yet appeared what we shall
be.[573]  He hath seen us through the entanglement[574] of our
flesh, and he is fair-speaking, and he hath enkindled us, and we
run after his fragrance.[575]  But "when he shall appear, then we
shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."[576]  As he is,
O Lord, we shall see him -- although that time is not yet.


                          CHAPTER XVI

     19.  For just as thou art the utterly Real, thou alone dost
fully know, since thou art immutably, and thou knowest immutably,
and thou willest immutably.  And thy Essence knows and wills
immutably.  Thy Knowledge is and wills immutably.  Thy Will is and
knows immutably.  And it does not seem right to thee that the
immutable Light should be known by the enlightened but mutable
creature in the same way as it knows itself.  Therefore, to thee
my soul is as a land where no water is[577]; for, just as it
cannot enlighten itself by itself, so it cannot satisfy itself by
itself.  Thus the fountain of life is with thee, and "in thy light
shall we see light."[578]


                         CHAPTER XVII

     20.  Who has gathered the "embittered ones"[579] into a
single society?  For they all have the same end, which is temporal
and earthly happiness.  This is their motive for doing everything,
although they may fluctuate within an innumerable diversity of
concerns.  Who but thee, O Lord, gathered them together, thou who
saidst, "Let the waters be gathered together into one place and
let the dry land appear" -- athirst for thee?  For the sea also is
thine, and thou madest it, and thy hands formed the dry land.[580]
For it is not the bitterness of men's wills but the gathering
together of the waters which is called "the sea"; yet thou dost
curb the wicked lusts of men's souls and fix their bounds: how far
they are allowed to advance, and where their waves will be broken
against each other -- and thus thou makest it "a sea," by the
providence of thy governance of all things.
     21.  But as for the souls that thirst after thee and who
appear before thee -- separated from "the society of the [bitter]
sea" by reason of their different ends -- thou waterest them by a
secret and sweet spring, so that "the earth" may bring forth her
fruit and -- thou, O Lord, commanding it -- our souls may bud
forth in works of mercy after their kind.[581]  Thus we shall love
our neighbor in ministering to his bodily needs, for in this way
the soul has seed in itself after its kind when in our own
infirmity our compassion reaches out to the relief of the needy,
helping them even as we would desire to be helped ourselves if we
were in similar need.  Thus we help, not only in easy problems (as
is signified by "the herb yielding its seed") but also in the
offering of our best strength in affording them the aid of
protection (such as "the tree bearing its fruit").  This is to
say, we seek to rescue him who is suffering injury from the hands
of the powerful -- furnishing him with the sheltering protection
which comes from the strong arm of a righteous judgment.[582]


                         CHAPTER XVIII

     22.  Thus, O Lord, thus I beseech thee: let it happen as thou
hast prepared it, as thou givest joy and the capacity for joy.
Let truth spring up out of the earth, and let righteousness look
down from heaven,[583] and let there be lights in the
firmament.[584]
     Let us break our bread with the hungry, let us bring the
shelterless poor to our house; let us clothe the naked, and never
despise those of our own flesh.[585]  See from the fruits which
spring forth from the earth how good it is.  Thus let our temporal
light break forth, and let us from even this lower level of
fruitful action come to the joy of contemplation and hold on high
the Word of Life.  And let us at length appear like "lights in the
world,"[586] cleaving to the firmament of thy Scripture.
     For in it thou makest it plain to us how we may distinguish
between things intelligible and things tangible, as if between the
day and the night -- and to distinguish between souls who give
themselves to things of the mind and others absorbed in things of
sense.  Thus it is that now thou art not alone in the secret of
thy judgment as thou wast before the firmament was made, and
before thou didst divide between the light and the darkness.  But
now also thy spiritual children, placed and ranked in this same
firmament -- thy grace being thus manifest throughout the world --
may shed light upon the earth, and may divide between the day and
night, and may be for the signs of the times[587]; because old
things have passed away, and, lo, all things are become new[588];
and because our salvation is nearer than when we believed; and
because "the night is far spent and the day is at hand"[589]; and
because "thou crownest the year with blessing,"[590] sending the
laborers into thy harvest, in which others have labored in the
sowing and sending laborers also to make new sowings whose harvest
shall not be until the end of time.  Thus thou dost grant the
prayers of him who seeks, and thou dost bless the years of the
righteous man.  But thou art always the Selfsame, and in thy years
which fail not thou preparest a granary for our transient years.
For by an eternal design thou spreadest the heavenly blessings on
the earth in their proper seasons.
     23.  For "to one there is given by thy Spirit the word of
wisdom"[591] (which resembles the greater light -- which is for
those whose delight is in the clear light of truth -- as the light
which is given for the ruling of the day[592]).  But to another
the word of knowledge is given by the same Spirit (as it were, the
"lesser light"); to another, faith; to another, the gift of
healing; to another, the power of working miracles; to another,
the gift of prophecy; to another, the discerning of spirits; to
another, other kinds of tongues -- and all these gifts may be
compared to "the stars." For in them all the one and selfsame
Spirit is at work, dividing to every man his own portion, as He
wills, and making stars to appear in their bright splendor for the
profit of souls.  But the word of knowledge, scientia, in which is
contained all the mysteries[593] which change in their seasons
like the moon; and all the other promises of gifts, which when
counted are like the stars -- all of these fall short of that
splendor of Wisdom in which the day rejoices and are only for the
ruling of the night.  Yet they are necessary for those to whom thy
most prudent servant could not speak as to the spiritually mature,
but only as if to carnal men -- even though he could speak wisdom
among the perfect.[594]  Still the natural man -- as a babe in
Christ, and a drinker of milk, until he is strong enough for solid
meat, and his eye is able to look into the sun -- do not leave him
in a lightless night.  Instead, let him be satisfied with the
light of the moon and the stars.  In thy book thou dost discuss
these things with us wisely, our God -- in thy book, which is thy
"firmament" -- in order that we may be able to view all things in
admiring contemplation, although thus far we must do so through
signs and seasons and in days and years.


                         CHAPTER XIX

     24.  But, first, "wash yourselves and make you clean; put
away iniquity from your souls and from before my eyes"[595] -- so
that "the dry land" may appear.  "Learn to do well, judge the
fatherless, plead for the widow,"[596] that the earth may bring
forth the green herb for food and fruit-bearing trees.  "And come,
let us reason together, saith the Lord"[597] -- that there may be
lights in the firmament of heaven and that they may shine upon the
earth.
     There was that rich man who asked of the good Teacher what he
should do to attain eternal life.  Let the good Teacher (whom the
rich man thought a man and nothing more) give him an answer -- he
is good for he is God.  Let him answer him that, if he would enter
into life, he must keep the commandments: let him put away from
himself the bitterness of malice and wickedness; let him not kill,
nor commit adultery, nor steal, nor bear false witness[598] --
that "the dry land" may appear and bring forth the honoring of
fathers and mothers and the love of neighbor.  "All these," he
replied, "I have kept." Where do so many thorns come from, if the
earth is really fruitful?  uproot the brier patch of avarice;
"sell what you have, and be filled with fruit by giving to the
poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and follow" the Lord
if you would be perfect and joined with those in whose midst he
speaketh wisdom -- who know how to give rightly to the day and to
the night -- and you will also understand, so that for you also
there may be lights in the firmament of heaven -- which will not
be there, however, unless your heart is there also.  And your
heart will not be there unless your treasure is there,[599] as you
have heard from the good Teacher.  But "the barren earth"[600] was
grieved, and the briers choked the word.[601]
     25.  But you, O elect people, set in the firmament of the
world,[602] who have forsaken all that you may follow the Lord:
follow him now, and confound the mighty!  Follow him, O beautiful
feet,[603] and shine in the firmament, that the heavens may
declare his glory, dividing the light of the perfect ones[604] --
though not yet so perfect as the angels -- from the darkness of
the little ones -- who are nevertheless not utterly despised.
Shine over all the earth, and let the day be lighted by the sun,
utter the Word of wisdom to the day ("day unto day utters
speech"[605]) and let the night, lighted by the moon, display the
Word of knowledge to the night.  The moon and the stars give light
for the night; the night does not put them out, and they illumine
in its proper mode.  For lo, it is as if God were saying, "Let
there be lights in the firmament of the heaven": and suddenly
there came a sound from heaven, as if it were a rushing mighty
wind, and there appeared cloven tongues of fire, and they sat on
each of them.[606]  And then they were made to be lights in the
firmament of heaven, having the Word of life.  Run to and fro
everywhere, you holy fires, you lovely fires, for you are the
light of the world and you are not to be hid under a peck
measure.[607]  He to whom you cleave is raised on high, and he
hath raised you on high.  Run to and fro; make yourselves known
among all the nations!


                          CHAPTER XX

     26.  Also let the sea conceive and bring forth your works,
and let the waters bear the moving creatures that have life.[608]
For by separating the precious from the vile you are made the
mouth of God[609] by whom he said, "Let the waters bring forth."
This does not refer to the living creatures which the earth brings
forth, but to the creeping creatures that have life and the fowls
that fly over the earth.  For, by the ministry of thy holy ones,
thy mysteries have made their way amid the buffeting billows of
the world, to instruct the nations in thy name, in thy Baptism.
And among these things many great and marvelous works have been
wrought, which are analogous to the huge whales.  The words of thy
messengers have gone flying over the earth, high in the firmament
of thy Book which is spread over them as the authority beneath
which they are to fly wheresoever they go.  For "there is no
speech nor language where their voice is not heard," because
"their sound has gone out through all the earth, and their words
to the end of the world"[610] -- and this because thou, O Lord,
hast multiplied these things by thy blessing.
     27.  Am I speaking falsely?  Am I mingling and confounding
and not rightly distinguishing between the knowledge of these
things in the firmament of heaven and those corporeal works in the
swelling sea and beneath the firmament of heaven?  For there are
those things, the knowledge of which is solid and defined.  It
does not increase from generation to generation and thus they
stand, as it were, as lights of wisdom and knowledge.  But there
are many and varied physical processes that manifest these
selfsame principles.  And thus one thing growing from another is
multiplied by thy blessing, O God, who dost so refresh our easily
wearied mortal senses that in our mental cognition a single thing
may be figured and signified in many different ways by different
bodily motions.
     "The waters" have brought forth these mysteries, but only at
thy word.  The needs of the people who were alien to the eternity
of thy truth have called them forth, but only in thy gospel, since
it was these "waters" which cast them up -- the waters whose
stagnant bitterness was the reason why they came forth through thy
Word.
     28.  Now all the things that thou hast made are fair, and
yet, lo, thou who didst make all things art inexpressibly fairer.
And if Adam had not fallen away from thee, that brackish sea --
the human race -- so deeply prying, so boisterously swelling, so
restlessly moving, would never have flowed forth from his belly.
Thus, there would have been no need for thy ministers to use
corporeal and tangible signs in the midst of many "waters" in
order to show forth their mystical deeds and words.  For this is
the way I interpret the phrases "creeping creatures" and "flying
fowl." Still, men who have been instructed and initiated and made
dependent on thy corporeal mysteries would not be able to profit
from them if it were not that their soul has a higher life and
unless, after the word of its admission, it did not look beyond
toward its perfection.


                          CHAPTER XXI

     29.  And thus, in thy Word, it was not the depth of the sea
but "the earth,"[611] separated from the brackishness of the
water, that brought forth, not "the creeping and the flying
creature that has life," but "the living soul" itself![612]
     And now this soul no longer has need of baptism, as the
heathen had, or as it did when it was covered with the waters --
and there can be no other entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven,
since thou hast appointed that baptism should be the entrance.
Nor does it seek great, miraculous works by which to buttress
faith.  For such a soul does not refuse to believe unless it sees
signs and marvels, now that "the faithful earth" is separated from
"the waters" of the sea, which have been made bitter by
infidelity.  Thus, for them, "tongues are for a sign, not to those
who believe but to those who do not believe."[613]
     And the earth which thou hast founded above the waters does
not stand in need of those flying creatures which the waters
brought forth at thy word.  Send forth thy word into it by the
agency of thy messengers.  For we only tell of their works, but it
is thou who dost the works in them, so that they may bring forth
"a living soul" in the earth.
     The earth brings forth "the living soul" because "the earth"
is the cause of such things being done by thy messengers, just as
the sea was the cause of the production of the creeping creatures
having life and the flying fowl under the firmament of heaven.
"The earth" no longer needs them, although it feeds on the Fish
which was taken out of the deep,[614] set out on that table which
thou preparest in the presence of those who believe.  To this end
he was raised from the deep: that he might feed "the dry land."
And "the fowl," even though they were bred in the sea, will yet be
multiplied on the earth.  The preaching of the first evangelists
was called forth by reason of man's infidelity, but the faithful
also are exhorted and blessed by them in manifold ways, day by
day.  "The living soul" has its origin from "the earth," because
only to the faithful is there any profit in restraining themselves
from the love of this world, so that their soul may live to thee.
This soul was dead while it was living in pleasures -- in
pleasures that bear death in them -- whereas thou, O Lord, art the
living delight of the pure heart.
     30.  Now, therefore, let thy ministers do their work on "the
earth" -- not as they did formerly in "the waters" of infidelity,
when they had to preach and speak by miracles and mysteries and
mystical expressions, in which ignorance -- the mother of wonder
-- gives them an attentive ear because of its fear of occult and
strange things.  For this is the entry into faith for the sons of
Adam who are forgetful of thee, who hide themselves from thy face,
and who have become a darkened abyss.  Instead, let thy ministers
work even as on "the dry land," safe from the whirlpools of the
abyss.  Let them be an example unto the faithful by living before
them and stirring them up to imitation.
     For in such a setting, men will heed, not with the mere
intent to hear, but also to act.  Seek the Lord and your soul
shall live[615] and "the earth" may bring forth "the living soul."
Be not conformed to this world;[616] separate yourselves from it.
The soul lives by avoiding those things which bring death if they
are loved.  Restrain yourselves from the unbridled wildness of
pride, from the indolent passions of luxury, and from what is
falsely called knowledge.[617]  Thus may the wild beast be tamed,
the cattle subdued, and the serpent made harmless.  For, in
allegory, these figures are the motions of our mind: that is to
say, the haughtiness of pride, the delight of lust, and the poison
of curiosity are motions of the dead soul -- not so dead that it
has lost all motion, but dead because it has deserted the fountain
of life, and so has been taken up by this transitory world and
conformed to it.
     31.  But thy Word, O God, is a fountain of life eternal, and
it does not pass away.  Therefore, this desertion is restrained by
thy Word when it says to us, "Be not conformed to this world," to
the end that "the earth" may bring forth a "living soul" in the
fountain of life -- a soul disciplined by thy Word, by thy
evangelists, by the following of the followers of thy Christ.  For
this is the meaning of "after his kind." A man tends to follow the
example of his friend.  Thus, he [Paul] says, "Become as I am,
because I have become as you are."[618]
     Thus, in this "living soul" there shall be good beasts,
acting meekly.  For thou hast commanded this, saying: "Do your
work in meekness and you shall be loved by all men."[619]  And the
cattle will be good, for if they eat much they shall not suffer
from satiety; and if they do not eat at all they will suffer no
lack.  And the serpents will be good, not poisonous to do harm,
but only cunning in their watchfulness -- exploring only as much
of this temporal nature as is necessary in order that the eternal
nature may "be clearly seen, understood through the things that
have been made."[620]  For all these animals will obey reason
when, having been restrained from their death-dealing ways, they
live and become good.


                         CHAPTER XXII

     32.  Thus, O Lord, our God, our Creator, when our affections
have been turned from the love of the world, in which we died by
living ill; and when we began to be "a living soul" by living
well; and when the word, "Be not conformed to this world," which
thou didst speak through thy apostle, has been fulfilled in us,
then will follow what thou didst immediately add when thou saidst,
"But be transformed by the renewing of your mind."[621]  This will
not now be "after their kind," as if we were following the
neighbor who went before us, or as if we were living after the
example of a better man -- for thou didst not say, "Let man be
made after his kind," but rather, "Let us make man in our own
image and our own likeness,"[622] so that then we may be able to
prove what thy will is.
     This is why thy minister -- begetting children by the gospel
so that he might not always have them babes whom he would have to
feed with milk and nurse as children -- this is why he said, "Be
transformed by the renewing of your minds, that you may prove what
is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God."[623]
Therefore thou didst not say, "Let man be made," but rather, "Let
us make man." And thou didst not say, "After his kind," but after
"our image" and "likeness." Indeed, it is only when man has been
renewed in his mind, and comes to behold and apprehend thy truth,
that he does not need another man as his director, to show him how
to imitate human examples.  Instead, by thy guidance, he proves
what is thy good and acceptable and perfect will.  And thou dost
teach him, now that he is able to understand, to see the trinity
of the Unity and the unity of the Trinity.
     This is why the statement in the plural, "Let us make man,"
is also connected with the statement in the singular, "And God
made man." Thus it is said in the plural, "After our likeness,"
and then in the singular, "After the image of God." Man is thus
transformed in the knowledge of God, according to the image of Him
who created him.  And now, having been made spiritual, he judges
all things -- that is, all things that are appropriate to be
judged -- and he himself is judged of no man.[624]


                         CHAPTER XXIII

     33.  Now this phrase, "he judges all things," means that man
has dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the
air, and over all cattle and wild beasts, and over all the earth,
and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.  And he
does this by the power of reason in his mind by which he perceives
"the things of the Spirit of God."[625]  But, when man was put in
this high office, he did not understand what was involved and thus
was reduced to the level of the brute beasts, and made like
them.[626]
     Therefore in thy Church, O our God, by the grace thou hast
given us -- since we are thy workmanship, created in good works
(not only those who are in spiritual authority but also those who
are spiritually subject to them) -- thou madest man male and
female.  Here all are equal in thy spiritual grace where, as far
as sex is concerned, there is neither male nor female, just as
there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor bond nor free.  Spiritual men,
therefore, whether those who are in authority or those who are
subject to authority, judge spiritually.  They do not judge by the
light of that spiritual knowledge which shines in the firmament,
for it is inappropriate for them to judge by so sublime an
authority.  Nor does it behoove them to judge concerning thy Book
itself, although there are some things in it which are not clear.
Instead, we submit our understanding to it and believe with
certainty that what is hidden from our sight is still rightly and
truly spoken.  In this way, even though a man is now spiritual and
renewed by the knowledge of God according to the image of him who
created him, he must be a doer of the law rather than its
judge.[627]  Neither does the spiritual man judge concerning that
division between spiritual and carnal men which is known to thy
eyes, O God, and which may not, as yet, be made manifest to us by
their external works, so that we may know them by their fruits;
yet thou, O God, knowest them already and thou hast divided and
called them secretly, before the firmament was made.  Nor does a
man, even though he is spiritual, judge the disordered state of
society in this world.  For what business of his is it to judge
those who are without, since he cannot know which of them may
later on come into the sweetness of thy grace, and which of them
may continue in the perpetual bitterness of their impiety?
     34.  Man, then, even if he was made after thy own image, did
not receive the power of dominion over the lights of heaven, nor
over the secret heaven, nor over the day and the night which thou
calledst forth before the creation of the heaven, nor over the
gathering together of the waters which is the sea.  Instead, he
received dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowls of the
air; and over all cattle, and all the earth; and over all creeping
things which creep on the earth.
     Indeed, he judges and approves what he finds right and
disapproves what he finds amiss, whether in the celebration of
those mysteries by which are initiated those whom thy mercy hast
sought out  in the midst of many waters; or in that sacrament in
which is exhibited the Fish itself[628] which, being raised from
the depths, the pious "earth"[629] feeds upon; or, in the signs
and symbols of words, which are subject to the authority of thy
Book -- such signs as burst forth and sound from the mouth, as if
it were "flying" under the firmament, interpreting, expounding,
discoursing, disputing, blessing, invoking thee, so that the
people may answer, "Amen."[630]  The reason that all these words
have to be pronounced vocally is because of the abyss of this
world and the blindness of our flesh in which thoughts cannot be
seen directly,[631] but have to be spoken aloud in our ears.
Thus, although the flying fowl are multiplied on the earth, they
still take their origins from the waters.
     The spiritual man also judges by approving what is right and
reproving what he finds amiss in the works and morals of the
faithful, such as in their almsgiving, which is signified by the
phrase, "The earth bringing forth its fruit." And he judges of the
"living soul," which is then made to live by the disciplining of
her affections in chastity, in fasting, and in holy meditation.
And he also judges concerning all those things which are perceived
by the bodily senses.  For it can be said that he should judge in
all matters about which he also has the power of correction.


                         CHAPTER XXIV

     35.  But what is this; what kind of mystery is this?  Behold,
O Lord, thou dost bless men in order that they may be "fruitful
and multiply, and replenish the earth." In this art thou not
making a sign to us that we may understand something
[allegorically]?  Why didst thou not also bless the light, which
thou calledst "the day," nor the firmament of heaven, nor the
lights, nor the stars, nor the earth, nor the sea?  I might reply,
O our God, that thou in creating us after thy own image -- I might
reply that thou didst will to bestow this gift of blessing upon
man alone, if thou hadst not similarly blessed the fishes and the
whales, so that they too should be fruitful and multiply and
replenish the waters of the sea; and also the fowls, so that they
should be multiplied on the earth.  In like fashion, I might say
that this blessing properly belonged only to such creatures as are
propagated from their own kind, if I could find it given also as a
blessing to trees, and plants, and the beasts of the earth.  But
this "increase and multiply" was not said to plants or trees or
beasts or serpents -- although all of these, along with fishes and
birds and men, do actually increase by propagation and so preserve
their species.
     36.  What, then, shall I say, O Truth, O my Life: that it was
idly and vainly said?  Surely not this, O Father of piety; far be
it from a servant of thy Word to say anything like this!  But if I
do not understand what thou meanest by that phrase, let those who
are better than I -- that is, those more intelligent than I --
interpret it better, in the degree that thou hast given each of us
the ability to understand.
     But let also my confession be pleasing in thy eyes, for I
confess to thee that I believe, O Lord, that thou hast not spoken
thus in vain.  Nor will I be silent as to what my reading has
suggested to me.  For it is valid, and I do not see anything to
prevent me from thus interpreting the figurative sayings in thy
books.  For I know that a thing that is understood in only one way
in the mind may be expressed in many different ways by the body;
and I know that a thing that has only one manner of expression
through the body may be understood in the mind in many different
ways.  For consider this single example -- the love of God and of
our neighbor -- by how many different mysteries and countless
languages, and, in each language, by how many different ways of
speaking, this is signified corporeally!  In similar fashion, the
"young fish" in "the waters" increase and multiply.  On the other
hand, whoever you are who reads this, observe and behold what
Scripture declares, and how the voice pronounces it _in only one
way_, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."[632]  Is
this not understood in many different ways by different kinds of
true interpretations which do not involve the deceit of error?
Thus the offspring of men are fruitful and do multiply.[633]
     37.  If, then, we consider the nature of things, in their
strictly literal sense, and not allegorically, the phrase, "Be
fruitful and multiply," applies to all things that are begotten by
seed.  But if we treat these words figuratively, as I judge that
the Scripture intended them to be -- since it cannot be for
nothing that this blessing is attributed only to the offspring of
marine life and man -- then we discover that the characteristic of
fecundity belongs also to the spiritual and physical creations
(which are signified by "heaven and earth"), and also in righteous
and unrighteous souls (which are signified by "light and
darkness") and in the sacred writers through whom the law is
uttered (who are signified by "the firmament established between
the waters and the waters"); and in the earthly commonwealth still
steeped in their bitterness (which is signified by "the sea"); and
in the zeal of holy souls (signified by "the dry land"); and the
works of mercy done in this present life (signified by "the seed-
bearing herbs and fruit-bearing trees"); and in spiritual gifts
which shine out for our edification (signified by "the lights of
heaven"); and to human affections ruled by temperance (signified
by "the living soul").  In all these instances we meet with
multiplicity and fertility and increase; but the particular way in
which "Be fruitful and multiply" can be exemplified differs
widely.  Thus a single category may include many things, and we
cannot discover them except through their signs displayed
corporeally and by the things being excogitated by the mind.
     We thus interpret the phrase, "The generation of the waters,"
as referring to the corporeally expressed signs [of fecundity],
since they are made necessary by the degree of our involvement in
the flesh.  But the power of human generation refers to the
process of mental conception; this we see in the fruitfulness of
reason.  Therefore, we believe that to both of these two kinds it
has been said by thee, O Lord, "Be fruitful and multiply." In this
blessing, I recognize that thou hast granted us the faculty and
power not only to express what we understand by a single idea in
many different ways but also to understand in many ways what we
find expressed obscurely in a single statement.  Thus the waters
of the sea are replenished, and their waves are symbols of diverse
meanings.  And thus also the earth is also replenished with human
offspring.  Its dryness is the symbol of its thirst for truth, and
of the fact that reason rules over it.


                          CHAPTER XXV

     38.  I also desire to say, O my Lord God, what the following
Scripture suggests to me.  Indeed, I will speak without fear, for
I will speak the truth, as thou inspirest me to know what thou
dost will that I should say concerning these words.  For I do not
believe I can speak the truth by any other inspiration than thine,
since thou art the Truth, and every man a liar.[634]  Hence, he
that speaks a lie, speaks out of himself.  Therefore, if I am to
speak the truth, I must speak of thy truth.
     Behold, thou hast given us for our food every seed-bearing
herb on the face of the earth, and all trees that bear in
themselves seed of their own kind; and not to us only, but to all
the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field and all creeping
things.[635]  Still, thou hast not given these things to the
fishes and great whales.  We have said that by these fruits of the
earth the works of mercy were signified and figured forth in an
allegory: thus, from the fruitful earth, things are provided for
the necessities of life.  Such an "earth" was the godly
Onesiphorus, to whose house thou gavest mercy because he often
refreshed Paul and was not ashamed of his bonds.[636]  This was
also the way of the brethren from Macedonia, who bore such fruit
and supplied to him what he lacked.  But notice how he grieves for
certain "trees," which did not give him the fruit that was due,
when he said, "At my first answer no man stood with me, but all
men forsook me: I pray God, that it be not laid up to their
charge."[637]  For we owe "fruits" to those who minister spiritual
doctrine to us through their understanding of the divine
mysteries.  We owe these to them as men.  We owe these fruits,
also, to "the living souls" since they offer themselves as
examples for us in their own continence.  And, finally, we owe
them likewise to "the flying creatures" because of their blessings
which are multiplied on the earth, for "their sound has gone forth
into all the earth."[638]


                         CHAPTER XXVI

     39.  Those who find their joy in it are fed by these
"fruits"; but those whose god is their belly find no joy in them.
For in those who offer these fruits, it is not the fruit itself
that matters, but the spirit in which they give them.  Therefore,
he who serves God and not his own belly may rejoice in them, and I
plainly see why.  I see it, and I rejoice with him greatly.  For
he [Paul] had received from the Philippians the things they had
sent by Epaphroditus; yet I see why he rejoiced.  He was fed by
what he found his joy in; for, speaking truly, he says, "I rejoice
in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me has
flourished again, in which you were once so careful, but it had
become a weariness to you.[639]  These Philippians, in their
extended period of weariness in well-doing, had become weak and
were, so to say, dried up; they were no longer bringing forth the
fruits of good works.  And now Paul rejoices in them -- and not
just for himself alone -- because they were flourishing again in
ministering to his needs.  Therefore he adds: "I do not speak in
respect of my want, for I have learned in whatsoever state I am
therewith to be content.  I know both how to be abased and how to
abound; everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be
full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.  I can
do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me."[640]
     40.  Where do you find joy in all things, O great Paul?  What
is the cause of your joy?  On what do you feed, O man, renewed now
in the knowledge of God after the image of him who created you, O
living soul of such great continence -- O tongue like a winged
bird, speaking mysteries?  What food is owed such creatures; what
is it that feeds you?  It is joy!  For hear what follows:
"Nevertheless, you have done well in that you have shared with me
in my affliction."[641]  This is what he finds his joy in; this is
what he feeds on.  They have done well, not merely because his
need had been relieved -- for he says to them, "You have opened my
heart when I was in distress" -- but because he knew both how to
abound and how to suffer need, in thee who didst strengthen him.
And so he said, "You [Philippians] know also that in the beginning
of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church shared
with me in regard to giving and receiving, except you only.  For
even in Thessalonica you sent time and time again, according to my
need."[642]  He now finds his joy in the fact that they have
returned once again to these good works, and he is made glad that
they are flourishing again, as a fruitful field when it recovers
its fertility.
     41.  Was it on account of his own needs alone that he said,
"You have sent me gifts according to my needs?"  Does he find joy
in that?  Certainly not for that alone.  But how do we know this?
We know it because he himself adds, "Not because I desire a gift,
but because I desire fruit."[643]
     Now I have learned from thee, O my God, how to distinguish
between the terms "gift" and "fruit." A "gift" is the thing
itself, given by one who bestows life's necessities on another --
such as money, food, drink, clothing, shelter, and aid.  But "the
fruit" is the good and right will of the giver.  For the good
Teacher not only said, "He that receives a prophet," but he added,
"In the name of a prophet." And he did not say only, "He who
receives a righteous man," but added, "In the name of a righteous
man."[644]  Thus, surely, the former shall receive the reward of a
prophet; the latter, that of a righteous man.  Nor did he say
only, "Whoever shall give a cup of cold water to one of these
little ones to drink," but added, "In the name of a disciple"; and
concluded, "Truly I tell you he shall not lose his reward." The
"gift" involves receiving a prophet, receiving a righteous man,
handing a cup of cold water to a disciple: but the "fruit" is to
do all this in the name of a prophet, in the name of a righteous
man, in the name of a disciple.  Elijah was fed by the widow with
"fruit," for she knew that she was feeding a man of God and this
is why she fed him.  But he was fed by the raven with a "gift."
The inner man of Elijah was not fed by this "gift," but only the
outer man, which otherwise might have perished from the lack of
such food.


                         CHAPTER XXVII

     42.  Therefore I will speak before thee, O Lord, what is
true, in order that the uninstructed[645] and the infidels, who
require the mysteries of initiation and great works of miracles --
which we believe are signified by the phrase, "Fishes and great
whales" -- may be helped in being gained [for the Church] when
they endeavor to provide that thy servants are refreshed in body,
or otherwise aided in this present life.  For they do not really
know why this should be done, and to what end.  Thus the former do
not feed the latter, and the latter do not feed the former; for
neither do the former offer their "gifts" through a holy and right
intent, nor do the others rejoice in the gifts of those who do not
as yet see the "fruit." For it is on the "fruit" that the mind is
fed, and by which it is gladdened.  And, therefore, fishes and
whales are not fed on such food as the earth alone brings forth
when they have been separated and divided from the bitterness of
"the waters" of the sea.


                        CHAPTER XXVIII

     43.  And thou, O God, didst see everything that thou hadst
made and, behold, it was very good.[646]  We also see the whole
creation and, behold, it is all very good.  In each separate kind
of thy work, when thou didst say, "Let them be made," and they
were made, thou didst see that it was good.  I have counted seven
times where it is written that thou didst see what thou hadst made
was "good." And there is the eighth time when thou didst see _all_
things that thou hadst made and, behold, they were not only good
but also _very_ good; for they were now seen as a totality.
Individually they were only good; but taken as a totality they
were both good and very good.  Beautiful bodies express this
truth; for a body which consists of several parts, each of which
is beautiful, is itself far more beautiful than any of its
individual parts separately, by whose well-ordered union the whole
is completed even though these parts are separately beautiful.


                         CHAPTER XXIX

     44.  And I looked attentively to find whether it was seven or
eight times that thou didst see thy works were good, when they
were pleasing to thee, but I found that there was no "time" in thy
seeing which would help me to understand in what sense thou hadst
looked so many "times" at what thou hadst made.  And I said: "O
Lord, is not this thy Scripture true, since thou art true, and thy
truth doth set it forth?  Why, then, dost thou say to me that in
thy seeing there are no times, while this Scripture tells me that
what thou madest each day thou didst see to be good; and when I
counted them I found how many 'times'?"  To these things, thou
didst reply to me, for thou art my God, and thou dost speak to thy
servant with a strong voice in his inner ear, my deafness, and
crying: "O man, what my Scripture says, I say.  But it speaks in
terms of time, whereas time does not affect my Word -- my Word
which exists coeternally with myself.  Thus the things you see
through my Spirit, I see; just as what you say through my Spirit,
I say.  But while you see those things in time, I do not see them
in time; and when you speak those things in time, I do not speak
them in time."


                          CHAPTER XXX

     45.  And I heard this, O Lord my God, and drank up a drop of
sweetness from thy truth, and understood that there are some men
to whom thy works are displeasing, who say that many of them thou
didst make under the compulsion of necessity -- such as the
pattern of the heavens and the courses of the stars -- and that
thou didst not make them out of what was thine, but that they were
already created elsewhere and from other sources.  It was thus
[they say] that thou didst collect and fashion and weave them
together, as if from thy conquered enemies thou didst raise up the
walls of the universe; so that, built into the ramparts of the
building, they might not be able a second time to rebel against
thee.  And, even of other things, they say that thou didst neither
make them nor arrange them -- for example, all flesh and all the
very small living creatures, and all things fastened to the earth
by their roots.  But [they say] a hostile mind and an alien nature
-- not created by thee and in every way contrary to thee -- begot
and framed all these things in the nether parts of the world.[647]
They who speak thus are mad [insani], since they do not see thy
works through thy Spirit, nor recognize thee in them.


                         CHAPTER XXXI

     46.  But for those who see these things through thy Spirit,
it is thou who seest them in them.  When, therefore, they see that
these things are good, it is thou who seest that they are good;
and whatsoever things are pleasing because of thee, it is thou who
dost give us pleasure in those things.  Those things which please
us through thy Spirit are pleasing to thee in us.  "For what man
knows the things of a man except the spirit of a man which is in
him?  Even so, no man knows the things of God, but the Spirit of
God.  Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the
Spirit of God, that we might know the things that are freely given
to us from God."[648]  And I am admonished to say: "Yes, truly.
No man knows the things of God, but the Spirit of God: but how,
then, do we also know what things are given us by God?"  The
answer is given me: "Because we know these things by his Spirit;
for no one knows but the Spirit of God." But just as it is truly
said to those who were to speak through the Spirit of God, "It is
not you who speak," so it is also truly said to them who know
through the Spirit of God, "It is not you yourselves who know,"
and just as rightly it may be said to those who perceive through
the Spirit of God that a thing is good; it is not they who see,
but God who seeth that it is good.
     It is, therefore, one thing to think like the men who judge
something to be bad when it is good, as do those whom we have
already mentioned.  It is quite another thing that a man should
see as good what is good -- as is the case with many whom thy
creation pleases because it is good, yet what pleases them in it
is not thee, and so they would prefer to find their joy in thy
creatures rather than to find their joy in thee.  It is still
another thing that when a man sees a thing to be good, God should
see in him that it is good -- that truly he may be loved in what
he hath made, he who cannot be loved except through the Holy
Spirit which he hath given us: "Because the love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us."[649]
It is by him that we see whatever we see to be good in any degree,
since it is from him, who doth not exist in any particular degree
but who simply is what he is.[650]


                         CHAPTER XXXII

     47.  Thanks be to thee, O Lord!  We see the heaven and the
earth, either the corporeal part -- higher and lower -- or the
spiritual and physical creation.  And we see the light made and
divided from the darkness for the adornment of these parts, from
which the universal mass of the world or the universal creation is
constituted.  We see the firmament of heaven, either the original
"body" of the world between the spiritual (higher) waters and the
corporeal (lower) waters[651] or the expanse of air -- which is
also called "heaven" -- through which the fowls of heaven wander,
between the waters which move in clouds above them and which drop
down in dew on clear nights, and those waters which are heavy and
flow along the earth.  We see the waters gathered together in the
vast plains of the sea; and the dry land, first bare and then
formed, so as to be visible and well-ordered; and the soil of
herbs and trees.  We see the light shining from above -- the sun
to serve the day, the moon and the stars to give cheer in the
night; and we see by all these that the intervals of time are
marked and noted.  We see on every side the watery elements,
fruitful with fishes, beasts, and birds -- and we notice that the
density of the atmosphere which supports the flights of birds is
increased by the evaporation of the waters.  We see the face of
the earth, replete with earthly creatures; and man, created in thy
image and likeness, in the very image and likeness of thee -- that
is, having the power of reason and understanding -- by virtue of
which he has been set over all irrational creatures.  And just as
there is in his soul one element which controls by its power of
reflection and another which has been made subject so that it
should obey, so also, physically, the woman was made for the man;
for, although she had a like nature of rational intelligence in
the mind, still in the sex of her body she should be similarly
subject to the sex of her husband, as the appetite of action is
subjected to the deliberation of the mind in order to conceive the
rules of right action.  These things we see, and each of them is
good; and the whole is very good!


                        CHAPTER XXXIII

     48.  Let thy works praise thee, that we may love thee; and
let us love thee that thy works may praise thee -- those works
which have a beginning and an end in time -- a rising and a
setting, a growth and a decay, a form and a privation.  Thus, they
have their successions of morning and evening, partly hidden,
partly plain.  For they were made from nothing by thee, and not
from thyself, and not from any matter that is not thine, or that
was created beforehand.  They were created from concreated matter
-- that is, matter that was created by thee at the same time that
thou didst form its formlessness, without any interval of time.
Yet, since the matter of heaven and earth is one thing and the
form of heaven and earth is another thing, thou didst create
matter out of absolutely nothing (de omnino nihilo), but the form
of the world thou didst form from formless matter (de informi
materia).  But both were done at the same time, so that form
followed matter with no delaying interval.


                         CHAPTER XXXIV

     49.  We have also explored the question of what thou didst
desire to figure forth, both in the creation and in the
description of things in this particular order.  And we have seen
that things taken separately are good, and all things taken
together are very good, both in heaven and earth.  And we have
seen that this was wrought through thy Word, thy only Son, the
head and the body of the Church, and it signifies thy
predestination before all times, without morning and evening.  But
when, in time, thou didst begin to unfold the things destined
before time, so that thou mightest make hidden things manifest and
mightest reorder our disorders -- since our sins were over us and
we had sunk into profound darkness away from thee, and thy good
Spirit was moving over us to help us in due season -- thou didst
justify the ungodly and also didst divide them from the wicked;
and thou madest the authority of thy Book a firmament between
those above who would be amenable to thee and those beneath who
would be subject to them.  And thou didst gather the society of
unbelievers[652] into a conspiracy, in order that the zeal of the
faithful might become manifest and that they might bring forth
works of mercy unto thee, giving their earthly riches to the poor
to obtain heavenly riches.  Then thou didst kindle the lights in
the firmament, which are thy holy ones, who have the Word of Life
and who shine with an exalted authority, warranted to them by
their spiritual gifts.  And then, for the instruction of the
unbelieving nations, thou didst out of physical matter produce the
mysteries and the visible miracles and the sounds of words in
harmony with the firmament of thy Book, through which the faithful
should be blessed.  After this thou didst form "the living soul"
of the faithful, through the ordering of their passions by the
strength of continence.  And then thou didst renew, after thy
image and likeness, the mind which is faithful to thee alone,
which needs to imitate no human authority.  Thus, thou didst
subordinate rational action to the higher excellence of
intelligence, as the woman is subordinate to the man.  Finally, in
all thy ministries which were needed to perfect the faithful in
this life, thou didst will that these same faithful ones should
themselves bring forth good things, profitable for their temporal
use and fruitful for the life to come.  We see all these things,
and they are very good, because thou seest them thus in us -- thou
who hast given us thy Spirit, by which we may see them so and love
thee in them.


                         CHAPTER XXXV

     50.  O Lord God, grant us thy peace -- for thou hast given us
all things.  Grant us the peace of quietness, the peace of the
Sabbath, the peace without an evening.  All this most beautiful
array of things, all so very good, will pass away when all their
courses are finished -- for in them there is both morning and
evening.
     51.  But the seventh day is without an evening, and it has no
setting, for thou hast sanctified it with an everlasting duration.
After all thy works of creation, which were very good, thou didst
rest on the seventh day, although thou hadst created them all in
unbroken rest -- and this so that the voice of thy Book might
speak to us with the prior assurance that after our works -- and
they also are very good because thou hast given them to us -- we
may find our rest in thee in the Sabbath of life eternal.[653]


                        CHAPTER XXXVII

     52.  For then also thou shalt so rest in us as now thou
workest in us; and, thus, that will be thy rest through us, as
these are thy works through us.  But thou, O Lord, workest
evermore and art always at rest.  Thou seest not in time, thou
movest not in time, thou restest not in time.  And yet thou makest
all those things which are seen in time -- indeed, the very times
themselves -- and everything that proceeds in and from time.


                        CHAPTER XXXVIII

     53.  We can see all those things which thou hast made because
they are -- but they are because thou seest them.[654]  And we see
with our eyes that they are, and we see with our minds that they
are good.  But thou sawest them as made when thou sawest that they
would be made.
     And now, in this present time, we have been moved to do well,
now that our heart has been quickened by thy Spirit; but in the
former time, having forsaken thee, we were moved to do evil.[655]
But thou, O the one good God, hast never ceased to do good!  And
we have accomplished certain good works by thy good gifts, and
even though they are not eternal, still we hope, after these
things here, to find our rest in thy great sanctification.  But
thou art the Good, and needest no rest, and art always at rest,
because thou thyself art thy own rest.
     What man will teach men to understand this?  And what angel
will teach the angels?  Or what angels will teach men?  We must
ask it of thee; we must seek it in thee; we must knock for it at
thy door.  Only thus shall we receive; only thus shall we find;
only thus shall thy door be opened.[656]




                            NOTES

[1] He had no models before him, for such earlier writings as the
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and the autobiographical sections
in Hilary of Poitiers and Cyprian of Carthage have only to be
compared with the Confessions to see how different they are.
[2] Gen. 1:1.
[3] Gen. 2:2.
[4] Notice the echo here of Acts 9:1.
[5] Ps. 100:3.
[6] Cf. Ps. 145:3 and Ps. 147:5.
[7] Rom. 10:14.
[8] Ps. 22:26.
[9] Matt. 7:7.
[10] A reference to Bishop Ambrose of Milan; see Bk. V, Ch. XIII;
Bk. VIII, Ch. 11, 3.
[11] Ps. 139:8.
[12] Jer. 23:24.
[13] Cf. Ps. 18:31.
[14] Ps. 35:3.
[15] Cf. Ps. 19:12, 13.
[16] Ps. 116:10.
[17] Cf. Ps. 32:5.
[18] Cf. Job 9:2.
[19] Ps. 130:3.
[20] Ps. 102:27.
[21] Ps. 102:27.
[22] Cf. Ps. 92:1.
[23] Cf. Ps. 51:5.
[24] In baptism which, Augustine believed, established the
effigiem Christi in the human soul.
[25] Cf. Ps. 78:39.
[26] Cf. Ps. 72:27.
[27] Aeneid, VI, 457
[28] Cf. Aeneid, II.
[29] Lignum is a common metaphor for the cross; and it was often
joined to the figure of Noah's ark, as the means of safe transport
from earth to heaven.
[30] This apostrophe to "the torrent of human custom" now switches
its focus to the poets who celebrated the philanderings of the
gods; see De civ. Dei, II, vii-xi; IV, xxvi-xxviii.
[31] Probably a contemporary disciple of Cicero (or the Academics)
whom Augustine had heard levy a rather common philosopher's
complaint against Olympian religion and the poetic myths about it.
Cf. De Labriolle, I, 21 (see Bibl.).
[32] Terence, Eunuch., 584-591; quoted again in De civ. Dei, II,
vii.
[33] Aeneid, I, 38.
[34] Cf. Ps. 103:8 and Ps. 86:15.
[35] Ps. 27:8.
[36] An interesting mixed reminiscence of Enneads, I, 5:8 and Luke
15:13-24.
[37] Ps. 123:1.
[38] Matt. 19:14.
[39] Another Plotinian echo; cf. Enneads, III, 8:10.
[40] Yet another Plotinian phrase; cf. Enneads, I, 6, 9:1-2.
[41] Cf. Gen. 3:18 and De bono conjugali, 8-9, 39-35 (N-PNF, III,
396-413).
[42] 1 Cor. 7:28.
[43] 1 Cor. 7:1.
[44] 1 Cor. 7:32, 33.
[45] Cf. Matt. 19:12.
[46] Twenty miles from Tagaste, famed as the birthplace of
Apuleius, the only notable classical author produced by the
province of Africa.
[47] Another echo of the De profundis (Ps. 130:1) -- and the most
explicit statement we have from Augustine of his motive and aim in
writing these "confessions."
[48] Cf. 1 Cor. 3:9.
[49] Ps. 116:16.
[50] Cf. Jer. 51:6; 50:8.
[51] Cf. Ps. 73:7.
[52] Cicero, De Catiline, 16.
[53] Deus summum bonum et bonum verum meum.
[54] Avertitur, the opposite of convertitur: the evil will turns
the soul _away_ from God; this is sin.  By grace it is turned _to_
God; this is _conversion_.
[55] Ps. 116:12.
[56] Ps. 19:12.
[57] Cf. Matt. 25:21.
[58] Cf. Job 2:7, 8.
[59] 2 Cor. 2:16.
[60] Eversores, "overturners," from overtere, to overthrow or
ruin.  This was the nickname of a gang of young hoodlums in
Carthage, made up largely, it seems, of students in the schools.
[61] A minor essay now lost.  We know of its existence from other
writers, but the only fragments that remain are in Augustine's
works: Contra Academicos, III, 14:31; De beata vita, X;
Soliloquia, I, 17; De civitate Dei, III, 15; Contra Julianum, IV,
15:78; De Trinitate, XIII, 4:7, 5:8; XIV, 9:12, 19:26; Epist.
CXXX, 10.
[62] Note this merely parenthetical reference to his father's
death and contrast it with the account of his mother's death in
Bk. IX, Chs. X-XII.
[63] Col. 2:8, 9.
[64] I.e., Marcus Tullius Cicero.
[65] These were the Manicheans, a pseudo-Christian sect founded by
a Persian religious teacher, Mani (c. A.D. 216-277).  They
professed a highly eclectic religious system chiefly distinguished
by its radical dualism and its elaborate cosmogony in which good
was co-ordinated with light and evil with darkness.  In the sect,
there was an esoteric minority called perfecti, who were supposed
to obey the strict rules of an ascetic ethic; the rest were
auditores, who followed, at a distance, the doctrines of the
perfecti but not their rules.  The chief attraction of Manicheism
lay in the fact that it appeared to offer a straightforward,
apparently profound and rational solution to the problem of evil,
both in nature and in human experience.  Cf. H.C. Puech, Le
Manicheisme, son fondateur -- sa doctrine (Paris, 1949); F.C.
Burkitt, The Religion of the Manichees (Cambridge, 1925); and
Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee (Cambridge, 1947).
[66] James 1:17.
[67] Cf. Plotinus, Enneads, V, 3:14.
[68] Cf. Luke 15:16.
[69] Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII, 219-224.
[70] For the details of the Manichean cosmogony, see Burkitt, op.
cit., ch. 4.
[71] Prov. 9:18.
[72] Cf. Prov. 9:17; see also Prov. 9:13 (Vulgate text).
[73] Cf. Enchiridion, IV.
[74] Cf. Matt. 22:37-39.
[75] Cf. 1 John 2:16.  And see also Bk. X, Chs. XXX-XLI, for an
elaborate analysis of them.
[76] Cf. Ex. 20:3-8; Ps. 144:9.  In Augustine's Sermon IX, he
points out that in the Decalogue _three_ commandments pertain to
God and _seven_ to men.
[77] Acts 9:5.
[78] An example of this which Augustine doubtless had in mind is
God's command to Abraham to offer up his son Isaac as a human
sacrifice.  Cf. Gen. 22:1, 2.
[79] Electi sancti.  Another Manichean term for the perfecti, the
elite and "perfect" among them.
[80] Ps. 144:7.
[81] Dedocere me mala ac docere bona; a typical Augustinian
wordplay.
[82] Ps. 50:14.
[83] Cf. John 6:27.
[84] Ps. 74:21.
[85] Cf. Ps. 4:2.
[86] The rites of the soothsayers, in which animals were killed,
for auguries and propitiation of the gods.
[87] Cf. Hos. 12:1.
[88] Ps. 41:4.
[89] John 5:14.
[90] Ps. 51:17.
[91] Vindicianus; see below, Bk. VII, Ch. VI, 8.
[92] James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5.
[93] Rom. 5:5.
[94] Cf. Ps. 106:2.
[95] Cf. Ps. 42:5; 43:5.
[96] Ibid.
[97] Cf. Ovid, Tristia, IV, 4:74.
[98] Cf. Horace, Ode I, 3:8, where he speaks of Virgil, et serves
animae dimidium meae.  Augustine's memory changes the text here to
dimidium animae suae.
[99] 2 Tim. 4:3.
[100] Ps. 119:142.
[101] Ps. 80:3.
[102] That is, our physical universe.
[103] Ps. 19:5.
[104] John 1:10.
[105] De pulchro et apto; a lost essay with no other record save
echoes in the rest of Augustine's aesthetic theories.  Cf. The
Nature of the Good Against the Manicheans, VIII-XV; City of God,
XI, 18; De ordine, I, 7:18; II, 19:51; Enchiridion, III, 10; I, 5.
[106] Eph. 4:14.
[107] Ps. 72:18.
[108] Ps. 18:28.
[109] John 1:16.
[110] John 1:9.
[111] Cf. James 1:17.
[112] Cf. James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5.
[113] Ps. 78:39.
[114] Cf. Jer. 25:10; 33:11; John 3:29; Rev. 18:23.
[115] Cf. Ps. 51:8.
[116] The first section of the Organon, which analyzes the problem
of predication and develops "the ten categories" of essence and
the nine "accidents." This existed in a Latin translation by
Victorinus, who also translated the Enneads of Plotinus, to which
Augustine refers infra, Bk. VIII, Ch. II, 3.
[117] Cf. Gen. 3:18.
[118] Again, the Prodigal Son theme; cf. Luke 15:13.
[119] Cf. Ps. 17:8.
[120] Ps. 35:10.
[121] Cf. Ps. 19:6.
[122] Cf. Rev. 21:4.
[123] Cf. Ps. 138:6.
[124] Ps. 8:7.
[125] Heb. 12:29.
[126] An echo of the opening sentence, Bk. I, Ch. I, 1.
[127] Cf. 1 Cor. 1:30.
[128] Cf. Matt. 22:21.
[129] Cf. Rom. 1:21ff.
[130] Cf. Rom. 1:23.
[131] Cf. Rom. 1:25.
[132] Wis. 11:20.
[133] Cf. Job 28:28.
[134] Eph. 4:13, 14.
[135] Ps. 36:23 (Vulgate).
[136] Ps. 142:5.
[137] Cf. Eph. 2:15.
[138] Bk. I, Ch. XI, 17.
[139] Cf. Ps. 51:17.
[140] A constant theme in The Psalms and elsewhere; cf. Ps. 136.
[141] Cf. Ps. 41:4.
[142] Cf. Ps 141:3f.
[143] Followers of the skeptical tradition established in the
Platonic Academy by Arcesilaus and Carneades in the third century
B.C.  They taught the necessity of suspended judgment in all
questions of truth, and would allow nothing more than the consent
of probability.  This tradition was known in Augustine's time
chiefly through the writings of Cicero; cf. his Academica.  This
kind of skepticism shook Augustine's complacency severely, and he
wrote one of his first dialogues, Contra Academicos, in an effort
to clear up the problem posed thereby.
[144] The Manicheans were under an official ban in Rome.
[145] Ps. 139:22.
[146] A mixed figure here, put together from Ps. 4:7; 45:7;
104:15; the phrase sobriam vini ebrietatem is almost certainly an
echo of a stanza of one of Ambrose's own hymns, Splendor paternae
gloriae, which Augustine had doubtless learned in Milan: "Bibamus
sobriam ebrietatem spiritus." Cf. W.I. Merrill, Latin Hymns
(Boston, 1904), pp. 4, 5.
[147] Ps. 119:155.
[148] Cf. 2 Cor. 3:6.  The discovery of the allegorical method of
interpretation opened new horizons for Augustine in Biblical
interpretation and he adopted it as a settled principle in his
sermons and commentaries; cf. M. Pontet, L'Exegese de Saint
Augustin predicateur (Lyons, 1946).
[149] Cf. Ps. 71:5.
[150] Cf. Ps. 10:1.
[151] Cf. Luke 7:11-17.
[152] Cf. John 4:14.
[153] Rom. 12:11.
[154] 2 Tim. 2:15.
[155] Cf. Gen. 1:26f.
[156] The Church.
[157] 2 Cor. 3:6.
[158] Another reference to the Academic doctrine of suspendium;
cf. Bk. V, Ch. X, 19, and also Enchiridion, VII, 20.
[159] Nisi crederentur, omnino in hac vita nihil ageremus, which
should be set alongside the more famous nisi crederitis, non
intelligetis (Enchiridion, XIII, 14).  This is the basic
assumption of Augustine's whole epistemology.  See Robert E.
Cushman, "Faith and Reason in the Thought of St. Augustine," in
Church History (XIX, 4, 1950), pp. 271-294.
[160] Cf. Heb. 11:6.
[161] Cf. Plato, Politicus, 273 D.
[162] Alypius was more than Augustine's close friend; he became
bishop of Tagaste and was prominent in local Church affairs in the
province of Africa.
[163] Prov. 9:8.
[164] Luke 16:10.
[165] Luke 16:11, 12.
[166] Cf. Ps. 145:15.
[167] Here begins a long soliloquy which sums up his turmoil over
the past decade and his present plight of confusion and
indecision.
[168] Cf. Wis. 8:21 (LXX).
[169] Isa. 28:15.
[170] Ecclus. 3:26.
[171] The normal minimum legal age for marriage was twelve!  Cf.
Justinian, Institutiones, I, 10:22.
[172] Cf. Ps. 33:11.
[173] Cf. Ps. 145:15, 16.
[174] A variation on "restless is our heart until it comes to find
rest in Thee," Bk. I, Ch. I, 1.
[175] Isa. 46:4.
[176] Thirty years old; although the term "youth" (juventus)
normally included the years twenty to forty.
[177] Phantasmata, mental constructs, which may be internally
coherent but correspond to no reality outside the mind.
[178] Echoes here of Plato's Timaeus and Plotinus' Enneads,
although with no effort to recall the sources or elaborate the
ontological theory.
[179] Cf. the famous "definition" of God in Anselm's ontological
argument: "that being than whom no greater can be conceived." Cf.
Proslogium, II-V.
[180] This simile is Augustine's apparently original improvement
on Plotinus' similar figure of the net in the sea; Enneads, IV,
3:9.
[181] Gen. 25:21 to 33:20.
[182] Cf. Job 15:26 (Old Latin version).
[183] Cf. Ps. 103:9-14.
[184] James 4:6.
[185] Cf. John 1:14.
[186] It is not altogether clear as to which "books" and which
"Platonists" are here referred to.  The succeeding analysis of
"Platonism" does not resemble any single known text closely enough
to allow for identification.  The most reasonable conjecture, as
most authorities agree, is that the "books" here mentioned were
the Enneads  of Plotinus, which Marius Victorinus (q.v. infra, Bk.
VIII, Ch. II, 3-5) had translated into Latin several years before;
cf. M.P. Garvey, St. Augustine: Christian or Neo-Platonist
(Milwaukee, 1939).  There is also a fair probability that
Augustine had acquired some knowledge of the Didaskalikos of
Albinus; cf. R.E. Witt, Albinus and the History of Middle
Platonism (Cambridge, 1937).
[187] Cf. this mixed quotation of John 1:1-10 with the Fifth
Ennead and note Augustine's identification of Logos, in the Fourth
Gospel, with Nous in Plotinus.
[188] John 1:11, 12
[189] John 1:13.
[190] John 1:14.
[191] Phil. 2:6.
[192] Phil. 2:7-11.
[193] Rom. 5:6; 8:32.
[194] Luke 10:21.
[195] Cf. Matt. 11:28, 29.
[196] Cf. Ps. 25:9, 18.
[197] Matt. 11:29.
[198] Rom. 1:21, 22.
[199] Rom. 1:23.
[200] An echo of Porphyry's De abstinentia ab esu animalium.
[201] The allegorical interpretation of the Israelites' despoiling
the Egyptians (Ex. 12:35, 36) made it refer to the liberty of
Christian thinkers in appropriating whatever was good and true
from the pagan philosophers of the Greco-Roman world.  This was a
favorite theme of Clement of Alexandria and Origen and was quite
explicitly developed in Origen's Epistle to Gregory Thaumaturgus
(ANF, IX, pp. 295, 296); cf. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, II,
41-42.
[202] Cf. Acts 17:28.
[203] Cf. Rom. 1:25.
[204] Cf. Ps. 39:11.
[205] Some MSS. add "immo vero" ("yea, verily"), but not the best
ones; cf. De Labriolle, op. cit., I, p. 162.
[206] Rom. 1:20.
[207] A locus classicus of the doctrine of the privative character
of evil and the positive character of the good.  This is a
fundamental premise in Augustine's metaphysics: it reappears in
Bks. XII-XIII, in the Enchiridion, and elsewhere (see note, infra,
p. 343).  This doctrine of the goodness of all creation is taken
up into the scholastic metaphysics; cf. Confessions, Bks. XII-
XIII, and Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentes, II: 45.
[208] Ps. 148:7-12.
[209] Ps. 148:1-5.
[210] "The evil which overtakes us has its source in self-will, in
the entry into the sphere of process and in the primal assertion
of the desire for self-ownership" (Plotinus, Enneads, V, 1:1).
[211] "We have gone weighed down from beneath; the vision is
frustrated" (Enneads, VI, 9:4).
[212] Rom. 1:20.
[213] The Plotinian Nous.
[214] This is an astonishingly candid and plain account of a
Plotinian ecstasy, the pilgrimage of the soul from its absorption
in things to its rapturous but momentary vision of the One; cf.
especially the Sixth Ennead, 9:3-11, for very close parallels in
thought and echoes of language.  This is one of two ecstatic
visions reported in the Confessions ; the other is, of course, the
last great moment with his mother at Ostia (Bk. IX, Ch. X, 23-25).
One comes before the "conversion" in the Milanese garden (Bk.
VIII, Ch. XII, 28-29); the other, after.  They ought to be
compared with particular interest in their _similarities_ as well
as their significant differences.  Cf. also K.E. Kirk, The Vision
of God (London, 1932), pp. 319-346.
[215] 1 Tim. 2:5.
[216] Rom. 9:5.
[217] John 14:6.
[218] An interesting reminder that the Apollinarian heresy was
condemned but not extinct.
[219] It is worth remembering that both Augustine and Alypius were
catechumens and had presumably been receiving doctrinal
instruction in preparation for their eventual baptism and full
membership in the Catholic Church. That their ideas on the
incarnation, at this stage, were in such confusion raises an
interesting problem.
[220] Cf. Augustine's The Christian Combat as an example of "the
refutation of heretics."
[221] Cf. 1 Cor. 11:19.
[222] Non peritus, sed periturus essem.
[223] Cf. 1 Cor. 3:11f.
[224] Rom. 7:22, 23.
[225] Rom. 7:24, 25.
[226] Cf. Prov. 8:22 and Col. 1:15.  Augustine is here identifying
the figure of Wisdom in Proverbs with the figure of the Logos in
the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel.  In the Arian controversy both
these references to God's Wisdom and Word as "created" caused
great difficulty for the orthodox, for the Arians triumphantly
appealed to them as proof that Jesus Christ was a "creature" of
God.  But Augustine was a Chalcedonian before Chalcedon, and there
is no doubt that he is here quoting familiar Scripture and filling
it with the interpretation achieved by the long struggle of the
Church to affirm the coeternity and consubstantiality of Jesus
Christ and God the Father.
[227] Cf. Ps. 62:1, 2, 5, 6.
[228] Cf. Ps. 91:13.
[229] A figure that compares the dangers of the solitary traveler
in a bandit-infested land and the safety of an imperial convoy on
a main highway to the capital city.
[230] Cf. 1 Cor. 15:9.
[231] Ps. 35:10.
[232] Cf. Ps. 116:16, 17.
[233] Cf. Ps. 8:1.
[234] 1 Cor. 13:12.
[235] Matt. 19:12.
[236] Rom. 1:21.
[237] Job 28:28.
[238] Prov. 3:7.
[239] Rom. 1:22.
[240] Col. 2:8.
[241] Virgil, Aeneid, VIII, 698.
[242] Ps. 144:5.
[243] Luke 15:4.
[244] Cf. Luke, ch. 15.
[245] 1 Cor. 1:27.
[246] A garbled reference to the story of the conversion of
Sergius Paulus, proconsul of Cyprus, in Acts 13:4-12.
[247] 2 Tim. 2:21.
[248] Gal. 5:17.
[249] The text here is a typical example of Augustine's love of
wordplay and assonance, as a conscious literary device: tuae
caritati me dedere quam meae cupiditati cedere; sed illud
placebat et vincebat, hoc libebat et vinciebat.
[250] Eph. 5:14.
[251] Rom. 7:22-25.
[252] The last obstacles that remained.  His intellectual
difficulties had been cleared away and the intention to become a
Christian had become strong.  But incontinence and immersion in
his career were too firmly fixed in habit to be overcome by an act
of conscious resolution.
[253] Treves, an important imperial town on the Moselle; the
emperor referred to here was probably Gratian.  Cf. E.A. Freeman,
"Augusta Trevororum," in the British Quarterly Review (1875), 62,
pp. 1-45.
[254] Agentes in rebus, government agents whose duties ranged from
postal inspection and tax collection to espionage and secret
police work.  They were ubiquitous and generally dreaded by the
populace; cf. J.S. Reid, "Reorganization of the Empire," in
Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I, pp. 36-38.
[255] The inner circle of imperial advisers; usually rather
informally appointed and usually with precarious tenure.
[256] Cf. Luke 14:28-33.
[257] Eph. 5:8.
[258] Cf. Ps. 34:5.
[259] Cf. Ps. 6:3; 79:8.
[260] This is the famous Tolle, lege; tolle, lege.
[261] Doubtless from Ponticianus, in their earlier conversation.
[262] Matt. 19:21.
[263] Rom. 13:13.
[264] Note the parallels here to the conversion of Anthony and the
agentes in rebus.
[265] Rom. 14:1.
[266] Eph. 3:20.
[267] Ps. 116:16, 17.
[268] An imperial holiday season, from late August to the middle
of October.
[269] Cf. Ps. 46:10.
[270] His subsequent baptism; see below, Ch. VI.
[271] Luke 14:14.
[272] Ps. 125:3.
[273] The heresy of Docetism, one of the earliest and most
persistent of all Christological errors.
[274] Cf. Ps. 27:8.
[275] The group included Monica, Adeodatus (Augustine's fifteen-
year-old son), Navigius (Augustine's brother), Rusticus and
Fastidianus (relatives), Alypius, Trygetius, and Licentius (former
pupils).
[276] A somewhat oblique acknowledgment of the fact that none of
the Cassiciacum dialogues has any distinctive or substantial
Christian content  This has often been pointed to as evidence that
Augustine's conversion thus far had brought him no farther than to
a kind of Christian Platonism; cf. P. Alfaric, L'Evolution
intellectuelle de Saint Augustin (Paris, 1918).
[277] The dialogues written during this stay at Cassiciacum:
Contra Academicos, De beata vita, De ordine, Soliloquia.  See, in
this series, Vol. VI, pp. 17-63, for an English translation of the
Soliloquies.
[278] Cf. Epistles II and III.
[279] A symbolic reference to the "cedars of Lebanon"; cf. Isa.
2:12-14; Ps. 29:5.
[280] There is perhaps a remote connection here with Luke 10:18-
20.
[281] Ever since the time of Ignatius of Antioch who referred to
the Eucharist as "the medicine of immortality," this had been a
popular metaphor to refer to the sacraments; cf. Ignatius,
Ephesians 20:2.
[282] Here follows (8-11) a brief devotional commentary on Ps. 4.
[283] John 7:39.
[284] Idipsum -- the oneness and immutability of God.
[285] Cf. v. 9.
[286] 1 Cor. 15:54.
[287] Concerning the Teacher; cf. Vol. VI of this series, pp. 64-
101.
[288] This was apparently the first introduction into the West of
antiphonal chanting, which was already widespread in the East.
Ambrose brought it in; Gregory brought it to perfection.
[289] Cf. S. of Sol. 1:3, 4.
[290] Cf. Isa. 40:6; 1 Peter 1:24: "All flesh is grass." See Bk.
XI, Ch. II, 3.
[291] Ecclus. 19:1.
[292] 1 Tim. 5:9.
[293] Phil. 3:13.
[294] Cf. 1 Cor. 2:9.
[295] Ps. 36:9.
[296] Idipsum.
[297] Cf. this report of a "Christian ecstasy" with the Plotinian
ecstasy recounted in Bk. VII, Ch. XVII, 23, above.
[298] Cf. Wis. 7:21-30; see especially v. 27: "And being but one,
she [Wisdom] can do all things: and remaining in herself the same,
she makes all things new."
[299] Matt. 25:21.
[300] 1 Cor. 15:51.
[301] Navigius, who had joined them in Milan, but about whom
Augustine is curiously silent save for the brief and unrevealing
references in De beata vita-, I, 6, to II, 7, and De ordine, I, 2-
3.
[302] A.D. 387.
[303] Nec omnino moriebatur.  Is this an echo of Horace's famous
memorial ode, Exegi monumentum aere perennius . . . non omnis
moriar?  Cf. Odes, Book III, Ode XXX.
[304] 1 Tim. 1:5.
[305] Cf. this passage, as Augustine doubtless intended, with the
story of his morbid and immoderate grief at the death of his
boyhood friend, above, Bk. IV, Chs. IV, 9, to VII, 12.
[306] Ps. 101:1.
[307] Ps. 68:5.
[308] Sir Tobie Matthew (adapted).  For Augustine's own analysis
of the scansion and structure of this hymn, see De musica, VI,
2:2-3; for a brief commentary on the Latin text, see A.S. Walpole,
Early Latin Hymns (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 44-49.
[309] 1 Cor. 15:22.
[310] Matt. 5:22.
[311] 2 Cor. 10:17.
[312] Rom. 8:34.
[313] Cf. Matt. 6:12.
[314] Ps. 143:2.
[315] Matt. 5:7.
[316] Cf. Rom. 9:15.
[317] Ps. 119:108.
[318] Cf. 1 Cor. 13:12.
[319] Eph. 5:27.
[320] Ps. 51:6.
[321] John 3:21.
[322] 1 Cor. 2:11.
[323] 1 Cor. 13:7.
[324] Ps. 32:1.
[325] Ps. 144:7, 8.
[326] Cf. Rev. 8:3-5.  "And the smoke of the incense with the
prayers of the saints went up before God out of the angel's hand"
(v. 4).
[327] 1 Cor. 2:11.
[328] 1 Cor. 13:12.
[329] Isa. 58:10.
[330] Rom. 1:20.
[331] Cf. Rom. 9:15.
[332] One of the pre-Socratic "physiologer." Cf. Cicero's On the
Nature of the Gods (a likely source for Augustine's knowledge of
early Greek philosophy), I, 10: "After Anaximander comes
Anaximenes, who taught that the air is God. . . ."
[333] An important text for Augustine's conception of sensation
and the relation of body and mind.  Cf. On Music, VI, 5:10; The
Magnitude of the Soul, 25:48; On the Trinity, XII, 2:2; see also
F. Coplestone, A History of Philosophy (London, 1950), II, 51-60,
and E. Gilson, Introduction a l'etude de Saint Augustin, pp. 74-
87.
[334] Rom. 1:20.
[335] Reading videnti (with De Labriolle) instead of vident (as in
Skutella).
[336] Ps. 32:9.
[337] The notion of the soul's immediate self-knowledge is a basic
conception in Augustine's psychology and epistemology; cf. the
refutation of skepticism, Si fallor, sum in On Free Will, II, 3:7;
see also the City of God, XI, 26.
[338] Again, the mind-body dualism typical of the Augustinian
tradition.  Cf. E. Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy
(Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1940), pp. 173-188; and E.
Gilson, The Philosophy of Saint Bonaventure (Sheed & Ward, New
York, 1938), ch. XI.
[339] Luke 15:8.
[340] Cf. Isa. 55:3.
[341] Cf. the early dialogue "On the Happy Life" in Vol. I of The
Fathers of the Church (New York, 1948).
[342] Gal. 5:17.
[343] Ps. 42:11.
[344] Cf. Enchiridion, VI, 19ff.
[345] When he is known at all, God is known as the Self-evident.
This is, of course, not a doctrine of innate ideas but rather of
the necessity, and reality, of divine illumination as the dynamic
source of all our knowledge of divine reality.  Cf. Coplestone,
op. cit., ch. IV, and Cushman, op. cit.
[346] Cf. Wis. 8:21.
[347] Cf. Enneads, VI, 9:4.
[348] 1 John 2:16.
[349] Eph. 3:20.
[350] 1 Cor. 15:54.
[351] Cf. Matt. 6:34.
[352] 1 Cor. 9:27.
[353] Cf. Luke 21:34.
[354] Cf. Wis. 8:21.
[355] Ecclus. 18:30.
[356] 1 Cor. 8:8.
[357] Phil. 4:11-13.
[358] Ps. 103:14.
[359] Cf. Gen. 3:19.
[360] Luke 15:24.
[361] Ecclus. 23:6.
[362] Titus 1:15.
[363] Rom. 14:20.
[364] 1 Tim. 4:4.
[365] 1 Cor. 8:8.
[366] Cf. Col. 2:16.
[367] Rom. 14:3.
[368] Luke 5:8.
[369] John 16:33.
[370] Cf. Ps. 139:16.
[371] Cf. the evidence for Augustine's interest and proficiency in
music in his essay De musica, written a decade earlier.
[372] Cf. 2 Cor. 5:2.
[373] Cf. Tobit, chs. 2 to 4.
[374] Gen. 27:1; cf. Augustine's Sermon IV, 20:21f.
[375] Cf. Gen., ch. 48.
[376] Again, Ambrose, Deus, creator omnium, an obvious favorite of
Augustine's.  See above, Bk. IX, Ch. XII, 32.
[377] Ps. 25:15.
[378] Ps. 121:4.
[379] Ps. 26:3.
[380] 1 John 2:16.
[381] Cf. Ps. 103:3-5.
[382] Cf. Matt. 11:30.
[383] 1 Peter 5:5.
[384] Cf. Ps. 18:7, 13.
[385] Cf. Isa. 14:12-14.
[386] Cf. Prov. 27:21.
[387] Cf. Ps. 19:12.
[388] Cf. Ps. 141:5.
[389] Ps. 109:22.
[390] Ps. 31:22.
[391] Cf. the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, Luke 18:9-
14.
[392] Cf. Eph. 2:2.
[393] 2 Cor. 11:14.
[394] Rom. 6:23.
[395] 1 Tim. 2:5.
[396] Cf. Rom. 8:32.
[397] Phil. 2:6-8.
[398] Cf. Ps. 88:5; see Ps. 87:6 (Vulgate).
[399] Ps. 103:3.
[400] Cf. Rom. 8:34.
[401] John 1:14.
[402] 2 Cor. 5:15.
[403] Ps. 119:18.
[404] Col. 2:3.
[405] Cf. Ps. 21:27 (Vulgate).
[406] In the very first sentence of Confessions, Bk. I, Ch. I.
Here we have a basic and recurrent motif of the Confessions from
beginning to end: the celebration and praise of the greatness and
goodness of God -- Creator and Redeemer.  The repetition of it
here connects this concluding section of the Confessions, Bks. XI-
XIII, with the preceding part.
[407] Matt. 6:8.
[408] The "virtues" of the Beatitudes, the reward for which is
blessedness; cf. Matt. 5:1-11.
[409] Ps. 118:1; cf. Ps. 136.
[410] An interesting symbol of time's ceaseless passage; the
reference is to a water clock (clepsydra).
[411] Cf. Ps. 130:1, De profundis.
[412] Ps. 74:16.
[413] This metaphor is probably from Ps. 29:9.
[414] A repetition of the metaphor above, Bk. IX, Ch. VII, 16.
[415] Ps. 26:7.
[416] Ps. 119:18.
[417] Cf. Matt. 6:33.
[418] Col. 2:3.
[419] Augustine was profoundly stirred, in mind and heart, by the
great mystery of creation and the Scriptural testimony about it.
In addition to this long and involved analysis of time and
creation which follows here, he returned to the story in Genesis
repeatedly: e.g., De Genesi contra Manicheos; De Genesi ad
litteram, liber imperfectus (both written _before_ the Confessions
); De Genesi ad litteram, libri  XII and De civitate Dei, XI-XII
(both written _after_ the Confessions ).
[420] The final test of truth, for Augustine, is self-evidence and
the final source of truth is the indwelling Logos.
[421] Cf. the notion of creation in Plato's Timaeus (29D-30C; 48E-
50C), in which the Demiurgos (craftsman) fashions the universe
from pre-existent matter and imposes as much form as the
Receptacle will receive.  The notion of the world fashioned from
pre-existent matter of some sort was a universal idea in Greco-
Roman cosmology.
[422] Cf. Ps. 33:9.
[423] Matt. 3:17.
[424] Cf. the Vulgate of John 8:25.
[425] Cf. Augustine's emphasis on Christ as true Teacher in De
Magistro.
[426] Cf. John 3:29.
[427] Cf. Ps. 103:4, 5 (mixed text).
[428] Ps. 104:24.
[429] Pleni vetustatis suae.  In Sermon CCLXVII, 2 (PL 38, c.
1230), Augustine has a similar usage.  Speaking of those who pour
new wine into old containers, he says: Carnalitas vetustas est,
gratia novitas est, "Carnality is the old nature; grace is the
new"; cf. Matt. 9:17.
[430] The notion of the eternity of this world was widely held in
Greek philosophy, in different versions, and was incorporated into
the Manichean rejection of the Christian doctrine of creatio ex
nihilo which Augustine is citing here.  He returns to the
question, and his answer to it, again in De civitate Dei, XI, 4-8.
[431] The unstable "heart" of those who confuse time and eternity.
[432] Cf. Ps. 102:27.
[433] Ps. 2:7.
[434] Spatium, which means extension either in space or time.
[435] The breaking light and the image of the rising sun.
[436] Cf. Ps. 139:6.
[437] Memoria, contuitus, and expectatio: a pattern that
corresponds vaguely to the movement of Augustine's thought in the
Confessions: from direct experience back to the supporting
memories and forward to the outreach of hope and confidence in
God's provident grace.
[438] Cf. Ps. 116:10.
[439] Cf. Matt. 25:21, 23.
[440] Communes notitias, the universal principles of "common
sense." This idea became a basic category in scholastic
epistemology.
[441] Gen. 1:14.
[442] Cf. Josh. 10:12-14.
[443] Cf. Ps. 18:28.
[444] Cubitum, literally the distance between the elbow and the
tip of the middle finger; in the imperial system of weights and
measures it was 17.5 inches.
[445] Distentionem, "spread-out-ness"; cf. Descartes' notion of
res extensae, and its relation to time.
[446] Ps. 100:3.
[447] Here Augustine begins to summarize his own answers to the
questions he has raised in his analysis of time.
[448] The same hymn of Ambrose quoted above, Bk. IX, Ch. XII, 39,
and analyzed again in De musica, VI, 2:2.
[449] This theory of time is worth comparing with its most notable
restatement in modern poetry, in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets and
especially "Burnt Norton."
[450] Ps. 63:3.
[451] Cf. Phil. 3:12-14.
[452] Cf. Ps. 31:10.
[453] Note here the preparation for the transition from this
analysis of time in Bk. XI to the exploration of the mystery of
creation in Bks. XII and XIII.
[454] Celsitudo, an honorific title, somewhat like "Your
Highness."
[455] Rom. 8:31.
[456] Matt. 7:7, 8.
[457] Vulgate, Ps. 113:16 (cf. Ps. 115:16, K.J.; see also Ps.
148:4, both Vulgate and K.J.): Caelum caeli domino, etc.
Augustine finds a distinction here for which the Hebrew text gives
no warrant.  The Hebrew is a typical nominal sentence and means
simply "The heavens are the heavens of Yahweh"; cf. the Soncino
edition of The Psalms, edited by A. Cohen; cf. also R.S.V., Ps.
115:16.  The LXX reading seems to rest on a variant Hebrew text.
This idiomatic construction does not mean "the heavens of the
heavens" (as it is too literally translated in the LXX), but
rather "highest heaven." This is a familiar way, in Hebrew, of
emphasizing a superlative (e.g., "King of kings," "Song of
songs").  The singular thing can be described superlatively only
in terms of itself!
[458] Earth and sky.
[459] It is interesting that Augustine should have preferred the
invisibilis et incomposita of the Old Latin version of Gen. 1:2
over the inanis et vacua of the Vulgate, which was surely
accessible to him.  Since this is to be a key phrase in the
succeeding exegesis this reading can hardly have been the casual
citation of the old and familiar version.  Is it possible that
Augustine may have had the sensibilities and associations of his
readers in mind -- for many of them may have not known Jerome's
version or, at least, not very well?
[460] Abyssus, literally, the unplumbed depths of the sea, and as
a constant meaning here, "the depths beyond measure."
[461] Gen. 1:2.
[462] Augustine may not have known the Platonic doctrine of
nonbeing (cf. Sophist, 236C-237B), but he clearly is deeply
influenced here by Plotinus; cf. Enneads, II, 4:8f., where matter
is analyzed as a substratum without quantity or quality; and 4:15:
"Matter, then, must be described as toapeiron (the indefinite). .
. .  Matter is indeterminateness and nothing else." In short,
materia informis is sheer possibility; not anything and not
nothing!
[463] Dictare: was Augustine dictating his Confessions? It is very
probable.
[464] Visibiles et compositas, the opposite of "invisible and
unformed."
[465] Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8.
[466] De nihilo.
[467] Trina unitas.
[468] Cf. Gen. 1:6.
[469] Constat et non constat, the created earth really exists but
never is self-sufficient.
[470] Moses.
[471] Ps. 42:3, 10.
[472] Cor. 13:12.
[473] Cf. Ecclus. 1:4.
[474] 2 Cor. 5:21.
[475] Cf. Gal. 4:26.
[476] 2 Cor. 5:1.
[477] Cf. Ps. 26:8.
[478] Ps. 119:176.
[479] To "the house of God."
[480] Cf. Ps. 28:1.
[481] Cubile, i.e., the heart.
[482] Cf. Rom. 8:26.
[483] The heavenly Jerusalem of Gal. 4:26, which had become a
favorite Christian symbol of the peace and blessedness of heaven;
cf. the various versions of the hymn "Jerusalem, My Happy Home" in
Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology, pp. 580-583.  The original text
is found in the Liber meditationum, erroneously ascribed to
Augustine himself.
[484] Cf. 2 Tim. 2:14.
[485] 1 Tim. 1:5.
[486] This is the basis of Augustine's defense of allegory as both
legitimate and profitable in the interpretation of Scripture.  He
did not mean that there is a plurality of literal truths in
Scripture but a multiplicity of perspectives on truth which
amounted to different levels and interpretations of truth.  This
gave Augustine the basis for a positive tolerance of varying
interpretations which did hold fast to the essential common
premises about God's primacy as Creator; cf. M. Pontet, L'Exegese
de Saint Augustin predicateur (Lyons, 1944), chs. II and III.
[487] In this chapter, Augustine summarizes what he takes to be
the Christian consensus on the questions he has explored about the
relation of the intellectual and corporeal creations.
[488] Cf. 1 Cor. 8:6.
[489] Mole mundi.
[490] Cf. Col. 1:16.
[491] Gen. 1:9.
[492] Note how this reiterates a constant theme in the Confessions
as a whole; a further indication that Bk. XII is an integral part
of the single whole.
[493] Cf. De libero arbitrio, II, 8:20, 10:28.
[494] Cf. John 8:44.
[495] The essential thesis of the De Magistro; it has important
implications both for Augustine's epistemology and for his theory
of Christian nurture; cf. the De catechizandis rudibus.
[496] 1 Cor. 4:6.
[497] Cf. Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; see also Matt. 22:37, 39.
[498] Cf. Rom. 9:21.
[499] Cf. Ps. 8:4.
[500] "In the beginning God created," etc.
[501] An echo of Job 39:13-16.
[502] The thicket denizens mentioned above.
[503] Cf. Ps. 143:10.
[504] Something of an understatement!  It is interesting to note
that Augustine devotes more time and space to these opening verses
of Genesis than to any other passage in the entire Bible -- and he
never commented on the _full_ text of Genesis.  Cf. Karl Barth's
274 pages devoted to Gen., chs. 1;2, in the Kirchliche Dogmatik,
III, I, pp. 103-377.
[505] Transition, in preparation for the concluding book (XIII),
which undertakes a constructive resolution to the problem of the
analysis of the mode of creation made here in Bk. XII.
[506] This is a compound -- and untranslatable -- Latin pun: neque
ut sic te colam quasi terram, ut sis uncultus si non te colam.
[507] Cf. Enneads, I, 2:4: "What the soul now sees, it certainly
always possessed, but as lying in the darkness. . . .  To dispel
the darkness and thus come to knowledge of its inner content, it
must thrust toward the light." Compare the notions of the
initiative of such movements in the soul in Plotinus and
Augustine.
[508] Cf. 2 Cor. 5:21.
[509] Cf. Ps. 36:6 and see also Augustine's Exposition on the
Psalms, XXXVI, 8, where he says that "the great preachers
[receivers of God's illumination] are the mountains of God," for
they first catch the light on their summits.  The abyss he called
"the depth of sin" into which the evil and unfaithful fall.
[510] Cf. Timaeus, 29D-30A, "He [the Demiurge-Creator] was good:
and in the good no jealousy . . . can ever arise.  So, being
without jealousy, he desired that all things should come as near
as possible to being like himself. . . .  He took over all that is
visible . . . and brought it from order to order, since he judged
that order was in every way better" (F. M. Cornford, Plato's
Cosmology, New York, 1937, p. 33).  Cf. Enneads, V, 4:1, and
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, III, 3.
[511] Cf. Gen. 1:2.
[512] Cf. Ps. 36:9.
[513] In this passage in Genesis on the creation.
[514] Cf. Gen. 1:6.
[515] Rom. 5:5.
[516] 1 Cor. 12:1.
[517] Cf. Eph. 3:14, 19.
[518] Cf. the Old Latin version of Ps. 123:5.
[519] Cf. Eph. 5:8.
[520] Cf. Ps. 31:20.
[521] Cf. Ps. 9:13.
[522] The Holy Spirit.
[523] Canticum graduum.  Psalms 119 to 133 as numbered in the
Vulgate were regarded as a single series of ascending steps by
which the soul moves up toward heaven; cf. The Exposition on the
Psalms, loc. cit.
[524] Tongues of fire, symbol of the descent of the Holy Spirit;
cf. Acts 2:3, 4.
[525] Cf. Ps. 122:6.
[526] Ps. 122:1.
[527] Cf. Ps. 23:6.
[528] Gen. 1:3.
[529] John 1:9.
[530] Cf. the detailed analogy from self to Trinity in De
Trinitate, IX-XII.
[531] I.e., the Church.
[532] Cf. Ps. 39:11.
[533] Ps. 36:6.
[534] Gen. 1:3 and Matt. 4:17; 3:2.
[535] Cf. Ps. 42:5, 6.
[536] Cf. Eph. 5:8.
[537] Ps. 42:7.
[538] Cf. 1 Cor. 3:1.
[539] Cf. Phil. 3:13.
[540] Cf. Ps. 42:1.
[541] Ps. 42:2.
[542] Cf. 2 Cor. 5:1-4.
[543] Rom. 12:2.
[544] 1 Cor. 14:20.
[545] Gal. 3:1.
[546] Eph. 4:8, 9.
[547] Cf. Ps. 46:4.
[548] Cf. John 3:29.
[549] Cf. Rom. 8:23.
[550] I.e., the Body of Christ.
[551] 1 John 3:2.
[552] Ps. 42:3.
[553] Cf. Ps. 42:4.
[554] Ps. 43:5.
[555] Cf. Ps. 119:105.
[556] Cf. Rom. 8:10.
[557] Cf. S. of Sol. 2:17.
[558] Cf. Ps. 5:3.
[559] Ps. 43:5.
[560] Cf. Rom. 8:11.
[561] 1 Thess. 5:5.
[562] Cf. Gen. 1:5.
[563] Cf. Rom. 9:21.
[564] Isa. 34:4.
[565] Cf. Gen. 3:21.
[566] Ps. 8:3.
[567] "The heavens," i.e. the Scriptures.
[568] Cf. Ps. 8:2.
[569] Legunt, eligunt, diligunt.
[570] Ps. 36:5.
[571] Cf. Matt. 24:35.
[572] Cf. Isa. 40:6-8.
[573] Cf. 1 John 3:2.
[574] Retia, literally "a net"; such as those used by retiarii,
the gladiators who used nets to entangle their opponents.
[575] Cf. S. of Sol. 1:3, 4.
[576] 1 John 3:2.
[577] Cf. Ps. 63:1.
[578] Ps. 36:9.
[579] Amaricantes, a figure which Augustine develops both in the
Exposition of the Psalms and The City of God.  Commenting on Ps.
65, Augustine says: "For the sea, by a figure, is used to indicate
this world, with its bitter saltiness and troubled storms, where
men with perverse and depraved appetites have become like fishes
devouring one another." In The City of God, he speaks of the
bitterness of life in the civitas terrena; cf. XIX, 5.
[580] Cf. Ps. 95:5.
[581] Cf. Gen. 1:10f.
[582] In this way, Augustine sees an analogy between the good
earth bearing its fruits and the ethical "fruit-bearing" of the
Christian love of neighbor.
[583] Cf. Ps. 85:11.
[584] Cf. Gen. 1:14.
[585] Cf. Isa. 58:7.
[586] Cf. Phil. 2:15.
[587] Cf. Gen. 1:19.
[588] Cf. 2 Cor. 5:17.
[589] Cf. Rom. 13:11, 12.
[590] Ps. 65:11.
[591] For this whole passage, cf. the parallel developed here with
1 Cor. 12:7-11.
[592] In principio diei, an obvious echo to the Vulgate ut
praesset diei of Gen. 1:16.  Cf. Gibb and Montgomery, p. 424 (see
Bibl.), for a comment on in principio diei and in principio
noctis, below.
[593] Sacramenta; but cf. Augustine's discussion of sacramenta in
the Old Testament in the Exposition of the Psalms, LXXIV, 2: "The
sacraments of the Old Testament promised a Saviour; the sacraments
of the New Testament give salvation."
[594] Cf. 1 Cor. 3:1; 2:6.
[595] Isa. 1:16.
[596] Isa. 1:17.
[597] Isa. 1:18.
[598] Cf. for this syntaxis, Matt. 19:16-22 and Ex. 20:13-16.
[599] Cf. Matt. 6:21.
[600] I.e., the rich young ruler.
[601] Cf. Matt. 13:7.
[602] Cf. Matt. 97 Reading here, with Knoll and the Sessorianus,
in firmamento mundi.
[603] Cf. Isa. 52:7.
[604] Perfectorum.  Is this a conscious use, in a Christian
context, of the distinction he had known so well among the
Manicheans -- between the perfecti and the auditores?
[605] Ps. 19:2.
[606] Cf. Acts 2:2, 3.
[607] Cf. Matt. 5:14, 15.
[608] Cf. Gen. 1:20.
[609] Cf. Jer. 15:19.
[610] Ps. 19:4.
[611] That is, the Church.
[612] An allegorical ideal type of the perfecti in the Church.
[613] 1 Cor. 14:22.
[614] The fish was an early Christian rebus for "Jesus Christ."
The Greek word for fish, was arranged acrostically to make the
phrase Jesus Christ, GodUs Son, Saviour; cf. Smith and Cheetham,
Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, pp. 673f.; see also Cabrol,
Dictionnaire d'archeologie chretienne, Vol. 14, cols. 1246-1252,
for a full account of the symbolism and pictures of early
examples.
[615] Cf. Ps. 69:32.
[616] Cf. Rom. 12:2.
[617] Cf. 1 Tim. 6:20.
[618] Gal. 4:12.
[619] Cf. Ecclus. 3:19.
[620] Rom. 1:20.
[621] Rom. 12:2.
[622] Gen. 1:26.
[623] Rom. 12:2 (mixed text).
[624] Cf. 1 Cor. 2:15.
[625] 1 Cor. 2:14.
[626] Cf. Ps. 49:20.
[627] Cf. James 4:11.
[628] See above, Ch. XXI, 30.
[629] I.e., the Church.
[630] Cf. 1 Cor. 14:16.
[631] Another reminder that, ideally, knowledge is immediate and
direct.
[632] Here, again, as in a coda, Augustine restates his central
theme and motif in the whole of his "confessions": the primacy of
God, His constant creativity, his mysterious, unwearied,
unfrustrated redemptive love.  All are summed up in this mystery
of creation in which the purposes of God are announced and from
which all Christian hope takes its premise.
[633] That is, from basic and essentially simple ideas, they
proliferate multiple -- and valid -- implications and corollaries.
[634] Cf. Rom. 3:4.
[635] Cf. Gen. 1:29, 30.
[636] Cf. 2 Tim. 1:16.
[637] 2 Tim. 4:16.
[638] Cf. Ps. 19:4.
[639] Phil. 4:10 (mixed text).
[640] Phil. 4:11-13.
[641] Phil. 4:14.
[642] Phil. 4:15-17.
[643] Phil. 4:17.,
[644] Cf. Matt. 10:41, 42.
[645] Idiotae: there is some evidence that this term was used to
designate pagans who had a nominal connection with the Christian
community but had not formally enrolled as catechumens.  See Th.
Zahn in Neue kirkliche Zeitschrift (1899), pp. 42-43.
[646] Gen. 1:31.
[647] A reference to the Manichean cosmogony and similar dualistic
doctrines of "creation."
[648] 1 Cor. 2:11, 12.
[649] Rom. 5:5.
[650] Sed quod est, est.  Note the variant text in Skutella, op.
cit.: sed est, est.  This is obviously an echo of the Vulgate Ex.
3:14: ego sum qui sum.
[651] Augustine himself had misgivings about this passage.  In the
Retractations, he says that this statement was made "without due
consideration." But he then adds, with great justice: "However,
the point in question is very obscure" (res autem in abdito est
valde); cf. Retract., 2:6.
[652] See above, amaricantes, Ch. XVII, 20.
[653] Cf. this requiescamus in te with the requiescat in te in Bk.
I, Ch. I.
[654] Cf. The City of God, XI, 10, on Augustine's notion that the
world exists as a thought in the mind of God.
[655] Another conscious connection between Bk. XIII and Bks. I-X.
[656] This final ending is an antiphon to Bk. XII, Ch. I, 1 above.






                         Enchiridion

                   On Faith, Hope, and Love


                              by

                       Saint Augustine






                          CHAPTER I

          The Occasion and Purpose of this "Manual"

     1.  I cannot say, my dearest son Laurence, how much your
learning pleases me, and how much I desire that you should be wise
-- though not one of those of whom it is said: "Where is the wise?
Where is the scribe?  Where is the disputant of this world?  Hath
not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?"[1]  Rather, you
should be one of those of whom it is written, "The multitude of
the wise is the health of the world"[2]; and also you should be
the kind of man the apostle wishes those men to be to whom he
said,[3] "I would have you be wise in goodness and simple in
evil."[4]
     2.  Human wisdom consists in piety.  This you have in the
book of the saintly Job, for there he writes that Wisdom herself
said to man, "Behold, piety is wisdom."[5]  If, then, you ask what
kind of piety she was speaking of, you will find it more
distinctly designated by the Greek term qeosebeia, literally, "the
service of God." The Greek has still another word for "piety,"
ensebeia, which also signifies "proper service." This too refers
chiefly to the service of God.  But no term is better than
qeosebeia, which clearly expresses the idea of the man's service
of God as the source of human wisdom.
     When you ask me to be brief, you do not expect me to speak of
great issues in a few sentences, do you?  Is not this rather what
you desire: a brief summary or a short treatise on the proper mode
of worshipping [serving] God?
     3.  If I should answer, "God should be worshipped in faith,
hope, love," you would doubtless reply that this was shorter than
you wished, and might then beg for a brief explication of what
each of these three means: What should be believed, what should be
hoped for, and what should be loved?  If I should answer these
questions, you would then have everything you asked for in your
letter.  If you have kept a copy of it, you can easily refer to
it.  If not, recall your questions as I discuss them.
     4.  It is your desire, as you wrote, to have from me a book,
a sort of enchiridion,[6] as it might be called -- something to
have "at hand" -- that deals with your questions.  What is to be
sought after above all else?  What, in view of the divers
heresies, is to be avoided above all else?  How far does reason
support religion; or what happens to reason when the issues
involved concern faith alone; what is the beginning and end of our
endeavor?  What is the most comprehensive of all explanations?
What is the certain and distinctive foundation of the catholic
faith?  You would have the answers to all these questions if you
really understood what a man should believe, what he should hope
for, and what he ought to love.  For these are the chief things --
indeed, the only things -- to seek for in religion.  He who turns
away from them is either a complete stranger to the name of Christ
or else he is a heretic.  Things that arise in sensory experience,
or that are analyzed by the intellect, may be demonstrated by the
reason.  But in matters that pass beyond the scope of the physical
senses, which we have not settled by our own understanding, and
cannot -- here we must believe, without hesitation, the witness of
those men by whom the Scriptures (rightly called divine) were
composed, men who were divinely aided in their senses and their
minds to see and even to foresee the things about which they
testify.
     [5].  But, as this faith, which works by love,[7] begins to
penetrate the soul, it tends, through the vital power of goodness,
to change into sight, so that the holy and perfect in heart catch
glimpses of that ineffable beauty whose full vision is our highest
happiness.  Here, then, surely, is the answer to your question
about the beginning and the end of our endeavor.  We begin in
faith, we are perfected in sight.[8]  This likewise is the most
comprehensive of all explanations.  As for the certain and
distinctive foundation of the catholic faith, it is Christ.  "For
other foundation," said the apostle, "can no man lay save that
which has been laid, which is Christ Jesus."[9]  Nor should it be
denied that this is the distinctive basis of the catholic faith,
just because it appears that it is common to us and to certain
heretics as well.  For if we think carefully about the meaning of
Christ, we shall see that among some of the heretics who wish to
be called Christians, the _name_ of Christ is held in honor, but
the reality itself is not among them.  To make all this plain
would take too long -- because we would then have to review all
the heresies that have been, the ones that now exist, and those
which could exist under the label "Christian," and we would have
to show that what we have said of all is true of each of them.
Such a discussion would take so many volumes as to make it seem
endless.[10]
     6.  You have asked for an enchiridion, something you could
carry around, not just baggage for your bookshelf.  Therefore we
may return to these three ways in which, as we said, God should be
served: faith, hope, love.  It is easy to _say_ what one ought to
believe, what to hope for, and what to love.  But to defend our
doctrines against the calumnies of those who think differently is
a more difficult and detailed task.  If one is to have this
wisdom, it is not enough just to put an enchiridion in the hand.
It is also necessary that a great zeal be kindled in the heart.


                          CHAPTER II

      The Creed and the Lord's Prayer as Guides to the
                    Interpretation of the
        Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love

     7.  Let us begin, for example, with the Symbol[11] and the
Lord's Prayer.  What is shorter to hear or to read?  What is more
easily memorized?  Since through sin the human race stood
grievously burdened by great misery and in deep need of mercy, a
prophet, preaching of the time of God's grace, said, "And it shall
be that all who invoke the Lord's name will be saved."[12]  Thus,
we have the Lord's Prayer.  Later, the apostle, when he wished to
commend this same grace, remembered this prophetic testimony and
promptly added, "But how shall they invoke him in whom they have
not believed?"[13]  Thus, we have the Symbol.  In these two we
have the three theological virtues working together: faith
believes; hope and love pray.  Yet without faith nothing else is
possible; thus faith prays too.  This, then, is the meaning of the
saying, "How shall they invoke him in whom they have not
believed?"
     8.  Now, is it possible to hope for what we do not believe
in?  We can, of course, believe in something that we do not hope
for.  Who among the faithful does not believe in the punishment of
the impious?  Yet he does not hope for it, and whoever believes
that such a punishment is threatening him and draws back in horror
from it is more rightly said to fear than to hope.  A poet,
distinguishing between these two feelings, said,

       "Let those who dread be allowed to hope,"[14]

but another poet, and a better one, did not put it rightly:

     "Here, if I could have hoped for [i.e., foreseen]
               such a grievous blow..." [15]

Indeed, some grammarians use this as an example of inaccurate
language and comment, "He said 'to hope' when he should have said
'to fear.'"
     Therefore faith may refer to evil things as well as to good,
since we believe in both the good and evil.  Yet faith is good,
not evil.  Moreover, faith refers to things past and present and
future.  For we believe that Christ died; this is a past event.
We believe that he sitteth at the Father's right hand; this is
present.  We believe that he will come as our judge; this is
future.  Again, faith has to do with our own affairs and with
those of others.  For everyone believes, both about himself and
other persons -- and about things as well -- that at some time he
began to exist and that he has not existed forever.  Thus, not
only about men, but even about angels, we believe many things that
have a bearing on religion.
     But hope deals only with good things, and only with those
which lie in the future, and which pertain to the man who
cherishes the hope.  Since this is so, faith must be distinguished
from hope: they are different terms and likewise different
concepts.  Yet faith and hope have this in common: they refer to
what is not seen, whether this unseen is believed in or hoped for.
Thus in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is used by the
enlightened defenders of the catholic rule of faith, faith is said
to be "the conviction of things not seen."[16]  However, when a
man maintains that neither words nor witnesses nor even arguments,
but only the evidence of present experience, determine his faith,
he still ought not to be called absurd or told, "You have seen;
therefore you have not believed." For it does not follow that
unless a thing is not seen it cannot be believed.  Still it is
better for us to use the term "faith," as we are taught in "the
sacred eloquence,"[17] to refer to things not seen.  And as for
hope, the apostle says: "Hope that is seen is not hope.  For if a
man sees a thing, why does he hope for it?  If, however, we hope
for what we do not see, we then wait for it in patience."[18]
When, therefore, our good is believed to be future, this is the
same thing as hoping for it.
     What, then, shall I say of love, without which faith can do
nothing?  There can be no true hope without love.  Indeed, as the
apostle James says, "Even the demons believe and tremble."[19]
     Yet they neither hope nor love.  Instead, believing as we do
that what we hope for and love is coming to pass, they tremble.
Therefore, the apostle Paul approves and commends the faith that
works by love and that cannot exist without hope.  Thus it is that
love is not without hope, hope is not without love, and neither
hope nor love are without faith.


                         CHAPTER III

                   God the Creator of All;
               and the Goodness of All Creation

     9.  Wherefore, when it is asked what we ought to believe in
matters of religion, the answer is not to be sought in the
exploration of the nature of things [rerum natura], after the
manner of those whom the Greeks called "physicists."[20]  Nor
should we be dismayed if Christians are ignorant about the
properties and the number of the basic elements of nature, or
about the motion, order, and deviations of the stars, the map of
the heavens, the kinds and nature of animals, plants, stones,
springs, rivers, and mountains; about the divisions of space and
time, about the signs of impending storms, and the myriad other
things which these "physicists" have come to understand, or think
they have.  For even these men, gifted with such superior insight,
with their ardor in study and their abundant leisure, exploring
some of these matters by human conjecture and others through
historical inquiry, have not yet learned everything there is to
know.  For that matter, many of the things they are so proud to
have discovered are more often matters of opinion than of verified
knowledge.
     For the Christian, it is enough to believe that the cause of
all created things, whether in heaven or on earth, whether visible
or invisible, is nothing other than the goodness of the Creator,
who is the one and the true God.[21]  Further, the Christian
believes that nothing exists save God himself and what comes from
him; and he believes that God is triune, i.e., the Father, and the
Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from
the same Father, but one and the same Spirit of the Father and the
Son.
     10.  By this Trinity, supremely and equally and immutably
good, were all things created.  But they were not created
supremely, equally, nor immutably good.  Still, each single
created thing is good, and taken as a whole they are very good,
because together they constitute a universe of admirable beauty.
     11.  In this universe, even what is called evil, when it is
rightly ordered and kept in its place, commends the good more
eminently, since good things yield greater pleasure and praise
when compared to the bad things.  For the Omnipotent God, whom
even the heathen acknowledge as the Supreme Power over all, would
not allow any evil in his works, unless in his omnipotence and
goodness, as the Supreme Good, he is able to bring forth good out
of evil.  What, after all, is anything we call evil except the
privation of good?  In animal bodies, for instance, sickness and
wounds are nothing but the privation of health.  When a cure is
effected, the evils which were present (i.e., the sickness and the
wounds) do not retreat and go elsewhere.  Rather, they simply do
not exist any more.  For such evil is not a substance; the wound
or the disease is a defect of the bodily substance which, as a
substance, is good.  Evil, then, is an accident, i.e., a privation
of that good which is called health.  Thus, whatever defects there
are in a soul are privations of a natural good.  When a cure takes
place, they are not transferred elsewhere but, since they are no
longer present in the state of health, they no longer exist at
all.[22]


                          CHAPTER IV

                      The Problem of Evil

     12.  All of nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of
all nature is supremely good.  But nature is not supremely and
immutably good as is the Creator of it.  Thus the good in created
things can be diminished and augmented.  For good to be diminished
is evil; still, however much it is diminished, something must
remain of its original nature as long as it exists at all.  For no
matter what kind or however insignificant a thing may be, the good
which is its "nature" cannot be destroyed without the thing itself
being destroyed.  There is good reason, therefore, to praise an
uncorrupted thing, and if it were indeed an incorruptible thing
which could not be destroyed, it would doubtless be all the more
worthy of praise.  When, however, a thing is corrupted, its
corruption is an evil because it is, by just so much, a privation
of the good.  Where there is no privation of the good, there is no
evil.  Where there is evil, there is a corresponding diminution of
the good.  As long, then, as a thing is being corrupted, there is
good in it of which it is being deprived; and in this process, if
something of its being remains that cannot be further corrupted,
this will then be an incorruptible entity [natura
incorruptibilis], and to this great good it will have come through
the process of corruption.  But even if the corruption is not
arrested, it still does not cease having some good of which it
cannot be further deprived.  If, however, the corruption comes to
be total and entire, there is no good left either, because it is
no longer an entity at all.  Wherefore corruption cannot consume
the good without also consuming the thing itself.  Every actual
entity [natura] is therefore good; a greater good if it cannot be
corrupted, a lesser good if it can be.  Yet only the foolish and
unknowing can deny that it is still good even when corrupted.
Whenever a thing is consumed by corruption, not even the
corruption remains, for it is nothing in itself, having no
subsistent being in which to exist.
     13.  From  this it follows that there is nothing to be called
evil if there is nothing good.  A good that wholly lacks an evil
aspect is entirely good.  Where there is some evil in a thing, its
good is defective or defectible.  Thus there can be no evil where
there is no good.  This leads us to a surprising conclusion: that,
since every being, in so far as it is a being, is good, if we then
say that a defective thing is bad, it would seem to mean that we
are saying that what is evil is good, that only what is good is
ever evil and that there is no evil apart from something good.
This is because every actual entity is good [omnis natura bonum
est].  Nothing evil exists _in itself_, but only as an evil aspect
of some actual entity.  Therefore, there can be nothing evil
except something good.  Absurd as this sounds, nevertheless the
logical connections of the argument compel us to it as inevitable.
At the same time, we must take warning lest we incur the prophetic
judgment which reads: "Woe to those who call evil good and good
evil: who call darkness light and light darkness; who call the
bitter sweet and the sweet bitter."[23]  Moreover the Lord himself
saith: "An evil man brings forth evil out of the evil treasure of
his heart."[24]  What, then, is an evil man but an evil entity
[natura mala], since man is an entity?  Now, if a man is something
good because he is an entity, what, then, is a bad man except an
evil good?  When, however, we distinguish between these two
concepts, we find that the bad man is not bad because he is a man,
nor is he good because he is wicked.  Rather, he is a good entity
in so far as he is a man, evil in so far as he is wicked.
Therefore, if anyone says that simply to be a man is evil, or that
to be a wicked man is good, he rightly falls under the prophetic
judgment: "Woe to him who calls evil good and good evil." For this
amounts to finding fault with God's work, because man is an entity
of God's creation.  It also means that we are praising the defects
in this particular man _because_ he is a wicked person.  Thus,
every entity, even if it is a defective one, in so far as it is an
entity, is good.  In so far as it is defective, it is evil.
     14.  Actually, then, in these two contraries we call evil and
good, the rule of the logicians fails to apply.[25]  No weather is
both dark and bright at the same time; no food or drink is both
sweet and sour at the same time; no body is, at the same time and
place, both white and black, nor deformed and well-formed at the
same time.  This principle is found to apply in almost all
disjunctions: two contraries cannot coexist in a single thing.
Nevertheless, while no one maintains that good and evil are not
contraries, they can not only coexist, but the evil cannot exist
at all without the good, or in a thing that is not a good.  On the
other hand, the good can exist without evil.  For a man or an
angel could exist and yet not be wicked, whereas there cannot be
wickedness except in a man or an angel.  It is good to be a man,
good to be an angel; but evil to be wicked.  These two contraries
are thus coexistent, so that if there were no good in what is
evil, then the evil simply could not be, since it can have no mode
in which to exist, nor any source from which corruption springs,
unless it be something corruptible.  Unless this something is
good, it cannot be corrupted, because corruption is nothing more
than the deprivation of the good.  Evils, therefore, have their
source in the good, and unless they are parasitic on something
good, they are not anything at all.  There is no other source
whence an evil thing can come to be.  If this is the case, then,
in so far as a thing is an entity, it is unquestionably good.  If
it is an incorruptible entity, it is a great good.  But even if it
is a corruptible entity, it still has no mode of existence except
as an aspect of something that is good.  Only by corrupting
something good can corruption inflict injury.
     15.  But when we say that evil has its source in the good, do
not suppose that this denies our Lord's judgment: "A good tree
cannot bear evil fruit."[26]  This cannot be, even as the Truth
himself declareth: "Men do not gather grapes from thorns," since
thorns cannot bear grapes.  Nevertheless, from good soil we can
see both vines and thorns spring up.  Likewise, just as a bad tree
does not grow good fruit, so also an evil will does not produce
good deeds.  From a human nature, which is good in itself, there
can spring forth either a good or an evil will.  There was no
other place from whence evil could have arisen in the first place
except from the nature -- good in itself -- of an angel or a man.
This is what our Lord himself most clearly shows in the passage
about the trees and the fruits, for he said: "Make the tree good
and the fruits will be good, or make the tree bad and its fruits
will be bad."[27]  This is warning enough that bad fruit cannot
grow on a good tree nor good fruit on a bad one.  Yet from that
same earth to which he was referring, both sorts of trees can
grow.


                          CHAPTER V

               The Kinds and Degrees of Error

     16.  This being the case, when that verse of Maro's gives us
pleasure,

     "Happy is he who can understand the causes of things,"[28]

it still does not follow that our felicity depends upon our
knowing the causes of the great physical processes in the world,
which are hidden in the secret maze of nature,

     "Whence earthquakes, whose force swells the sea to flood,
     so that they burst their bounds and then subside again,"[29]

and other such things as this.
     But we ought to know the causes of good and evil in things,
at least as far as men may do so in this life, filled as it is
with errors and distress, in order to avoid these errors and
distresses.  We must always aim at that true felicity wherein
misery does not distract, nor error mislead.  If it is a good
thing to understand the causes of physical motion, there is
nothing of greater concern in these matters which we ought to
understand than our own health.  But when we are in ignorance of
such things, we seek out a physician, who has seen how the secrets
of heaven and earth still remain hidden from us, and what patience
there must be in unknowing.
     17.  Although we should beware of error wherever possible,
not only in great matters but in small ones as well, it is
impossible not to be ignorant of many things.  Yet it does not
follow that one falls into error out of ignorance alone.  If
someone thinks he knows what he does not know, if he approves as
true what is actually false, this then is error, in the proper
sense of the term.  Obviously, much depends on the question
involved in the error, for in one and the same question one
naturally prefers the instructed to the ignorant, the expert to
the blunderer, and this with good reason.  In a complex issue,
however, as when one man knows one thing and another man knows
something else, if the former knowledge is more useful and the
latter is less useful or even harmful, who in this latter case
would not prefer ignorance?  There are some things, after all,
that it is better not to know than to know.  Likewise, there is
sometimes profit in error -- but on a journey, not in morals.[30]
This sort of thing happened to us once, when we mistook the way at
a crossroads and did not go by the place where an armed gang of
Donatists lay in wait to ambush us.  We finally arrived at the
place where we were going, but only by a roundabout way, and upon
learning of the ambush, we were glad to have erred and gave thanks
to God for our error.  Who would doubt, in such a situation, that
the erring traveler is better off than the unerring brigand?  This
perhaps explains the meaning of our finest poet, when he speaks
for an unhappy lover:

          "When I saw [her] I was undone,
          and fatal error swept me away,"[31]

for there is such a thing as a fortunate mistake which not only
does no harm but actually does some good.
     But now for a more careful consideration of the truth in this
business.  To err means nothing more than to judge as true what is
in fact false, and as false what is true.  It means to be certain
about the uncertain, uncertain about the certain, whether it be
certainly true or certainly false.  This sort of error in the mind
is deforming and improper, since the fitting and proper thing
would be to be able to say, in speech or judgment: "Yes, yes.  No,
no."[32]  Actually, the wretched lives we lead come partly from
this: that sometimes if they are not to be entirely lost, error is
unavoidable.  It is different in that higher life where Truth
itself is the life of our souls, where none deceives and none is
deceived.  In this life men deceive and are deceived, and are
actually worse off when they deceive by lying than when they are
deceived by believing lies.  Yet our rational mind shrinks from
falsehood, and naturally avoids error as much as it can, so that
even a deceiver is unwilling to be deceived by somebody else.[33]
For the liar thinks he does not deceive himself and that he
deceives only those who believe him.  Indeed, he does not err in
his lying, if he himself knows what the truth is.  But he is
deceived in this, that he supposes that his lie does no harm to
himself, when actually every sin harms the one who commits it more
that it does the one who suffers it.


                          CHAPTER VI

                     The Problem of Lying

     18.  Here a most difficult and complex issue arises which I
once dealt with in a large book, in response to the urgent
question whether it is ever the duty of a righteous man to
lie.[34]  Some go so far as to contend that in cases concerning
the worship of God or even the nature of God, it is sometimes a
good and pious deed to speak falsely.  It seems to me, however,
that every lie is a sin, albeit there is a great difference
depending on the intention and the topic of the lie.  He does not
sin as much who lies in the attempt to be helpful as the man who
lies as a part of a deliberate wickedness.  Nor does one who, by
lying, sets a traveler on the wrong road do as much harm as one
who, by a deceitful lie, perverts the way of a life.  Obviously,
no one should be adjudged a liar who speaks falsely what he
sincerely supposes is the truth, since in his case he does not
deceive but rather is deceived.  Likewise, a man is not a liar,
though he could be charged with rashness, when he incautiously
accepts as true what is false.  On the other hand, however, that
man is a liar in his own conscience who speaks the truth supposing
that it is a falsehood.  For as far as his soul is concerned,
since he did not say what he believed, he did not tell the truth,
even though the truth did come out in what he said.  Nor is a man
to be cleared of the charge of lying whose mouth unknowingly
speaks the truth while his conscious intention is to lie.  If we
do not consider the things spoken of, but only the intentions of
the one speaking, he is the better man who unknowingly speaks
falsely -- because he judges his statement to be true -- than the
one who unknowingly speaks the truth while in his heart he is
attempting to deceive.  For the first man does not have one
intention in his heart and another in his word, whereas the other,
whatever be the facts in his statement, still "has one thought
locked in his heart, another ready on his tongue,"[35] which is
the very essence of lying.  But when we do consider the things
spoken of, it makes a great difference in what respect one is
deceived or lies.  To be deceived is a lesser evil than to lie, as
far as a man's intentions are concerned.  But it is far more
tolerable that a man should lie about things not connected with
religion than for one to be deceived in matters where faith and
knowledge are prerequisite to the proper service of God.  To
illustrate what I mean by examples: If one man lies by saying that
a dead man is alive, and another man, being deceived, believes
that Christ will die again after some extended future period --
would it not be incomparably better to lie in the first case than
to be deceived in the second?  And would it not be a lesser evil
to lead someone into the former error than to be led by someone
into the latter?
     19.  In some things, then, we are deceived in great matters;
in others, small.  In some of them no harm is done; in others,
even good results.  It is a great evil for a man to be deceived so
as not to believe what would lead him to life eternal, or what
would lead to eternal death.  But it is a small evil to be
deceived by crediting a falsehood as the truth in a matter where
one brings on himself some temporal setback which can then be
turned to good use by being borne in faithful patience -- as for
example, when someone judges a man to be good who is actually bad,
and consequently has to suffer evil on his account.  Or, take the
man who believes a bad man to be good, yet suffers no harm at his
hand.  He is not badly deceived nor would the prophetic
condemnation fall on him: "Woe to those who call evil good." For
we should understand that this saying refers to the things in
which men are evil and not to the men themselves.  Hence, he who
calls adultery a good thing may be rightly accused by the
prophetic word.  But if he calls a man good supposing him to be
chaste and not knowing that he is an adulterer, such a man is not
deceived in his doctrine of good and evil, but only as to the
secrets of human conduct.  He calls the man good on the basis of
what he supposed him to be, and this is undoubtedly a good thing.
Moreover, he calls adultery bad and chastity good.  But he calls
this particular man good in ignorance of the fact that he is an
adulterer and not chaste.  In similar fashion, if one escapes an
injury through an error, as I mentioned before happened to me on
that journey, there is even something good that accrues to a man
through his mistakes.  But when I say that in such a case a man
may be deceived without suffering harm therefrom, or even may gain
some benefit thereby, I am not saying that error is not a bad
thing, nor that it is a positively good thing.  I speak only of
the evil which did not happen or the good which did happen,
through the error, which was not caused by the error itself but
which came out of it.  Error, in itself and by itself, whether a
great error in great matters or a small error in small affairs, is
always a bad thing.  For who, except in error, denies that it is
bad to approve the false as though it were the truth, or to
disapprove the truth as though it were falsehood, or to hold what
is certain as if it were uncertain, or what is uncertain as if it
were certain?  It is one thing to judge a man good who is actually
bad -- this is an error.  It is quite another thing not to suffer
harm from something evil if the wicked man whom we supposed to be
good actually does nothing harmful to us.  It is one thing to
suppose that this particular road is the right one when it is not.
It is quite another thing that, from this error -- which is a bad
thing -- something good actually turns out, such as being saved
from the onslaught of wicked men.


                         CHAPTER VII

             Disputed Questions about the Limits
        of Knowledge and Certainty in Various Matters

     20.  I do not rightly know whether errors of this sort should
be called sins -- when one thinks well of a wicked man, not
knowing what his character really is, or when, instead of our
physical perception, similar perceptions occur which we experience
in the spirit (such as the illusion of the apostle Peter when he
thought he was seeing a vision but was actually being liberated
from fetters and chains by the angel[36]) Or in perceptual
illusions when we think something is smooth which is actually
rough, or something sweet which is bitter, something fragrant
which is putrid, that a noise is thunder when it is actually a
wagon passing by, when one takes this man for that, or when two
men look alike, as happens in the case of twins -- whence our poet
speaks of "a pleasant error for parents"[37] -- I say I do not
know whether these and other such errors should be called sins.
     Nor am I at the moment trying to deal with that knottiest of
questions which baffled the most acute men of the Academy, whether
a wise man ought ever to affirm anything positively lest he be
involved in the error of affirming as true what may be false,
since all questions, as they assert, are either mysterious
[occulta] or uncertain.  On these points I wrote three books in
the early stages of my conversion because my further progress was
being blocked by objections like this which stood at the very
threshold of my understanding.[38]  It was necessary to overcome
the despair of being unable to attain to truth, which is what
their arguments seemed to lead one to.  Among them every error is
deemed a sin, and this can be warded off only by a systematic
suspension of positive assent.  Indeed they say it is an error if
someone believes in what is uncertain.  For them, however, nothing
is certain in human experience, because of the deceitful likeness
of falsehood to the truth, so that even if what appears to be true
turns out to be true indeed, they will still dispute it with the
most acute and even shameless arguments.
     Among us, on the other hand, "the righteous man lives by
faith."[39]  Now, if you take away positive affirmation,[40] you
take away faith, for without positive affirmation nothing is
believed.  And there are truths about things unseen, and unless
they are believed, we cannot attain to the happy life, which is
nothing less than life eternal.  It is a question whether we ought
to argue with those who profess themselves ignorant not only about
the eternity yet to come but also about their present existence,
for they [the Academics] even argue that they do not know what
they cannot help knowing.  For no one can "not know" that he
himself is alive.  If he is not alive, he cannot "not know" about
it or anything else at all, because either to know or to "not
know" implies a living subject.  But, in such a case, by not
positively affirming that they are alive, the skeptics ward off
the appearance of error in themselves, yet they do make errors
simply by showing themselves alive; one cannot err who is not
alive.  That we live is therefore not only true, but it is
altogether certain as well.  And there are many things that are
thus true and certain concerning which, if we withhold positive
assent, this ought not to be regarded as a higher wisdom but
actually a sort of dementia.
     21.  In those things which do not concern our attainment of
the Kingdom of God, it does not matter whether they are believed
in or not, or whether they are true or are supposed to be true or
false.  To err in such questions, to mistake one thing for
another, is not to be judged as a sin or, if it is, as a small and
light one.  In sum, whatever kind or how much of an error these
miscues may be, it does not involve the way that leads to God,
which is the faith of Christ which works through love.  This way
of life was not abandoned in that error so dear to parents
concerning the twins.[41]  Nor did the apostle Peter deviate from
this way when he thought he saw a vision and so mistook one thing
for something else.  In his case, he did not discover the actual
situation until after the angel, by whom he was freed, had
departed from him.  Nor did the patriarch Jacob deviate from this
way when he believed that his son, who was in fact alive, had been
devoured by a wild beast.  We may err through false impressions of
this kind, with our faith in God still safe, nor do we thus leave
the way that leads us to him.  Nevertheless, such mistakes, even
if they are not sins, must still be listed among the evils of this
life, which is so readily subject to vanity that we judge the
false for true, reject the true for the false, and hold as
uncertain what is actually certain.  For even if these mistakes do
not affect that faith by which we move forward to affirm truth and
eternal beatitude, yet they are not unrelated to the misery in
which we still exist.  Actually, of course, we would be deceived
in nothing at all, either in our souls or our physical senses, if
we were already enjoying that true and perfected happiness.
     22.  Every lie, then, must be called a sin, because every man
ought to speak what is in his heart -- not only when he himself
knows the truth, but even when he errs and is deceived, as a man
may be.  This is so whether it be true or is only supposed to be
true when it is not.  But a man who lies says the opposite of what
is in his heart, with the deliberate intent to deceive.  Now
clearly, language, in its proper function, was developed not as a
means whereby men could deceive one another, but as a medium
through which a man could communicate his thought to others.
Wherefore to use language in order to deceive, and not as it was
designed to be used, is a sin.
     Nor should we suppose that there is any such thing as a lie
that is not a sin, just because we suppose that we can sometimes
help somebody by lying.  For we could also do this by stealing, as
when a secret theft from a rich man who does not feel the loss is
openly given to a pauper who greatly appreciates the gain.  Yet no
one would say that such a theft was not a sin.  Or again, we could
also "help" by committing adultery, if someone appeared to be
dying for love if we would not consent to her desire and who, if
she lived, might be purified by repentance.  But it cannot be
denied that such an adultery would be a sin.  If, then, we hold
chastity in such high regard, wherein has truth offended us so
that although chastity must not be violated by adultery, even for
the sake of some other good, yet truth may be violated by lying?
That men have made progress toward the good, when they will not
lie save for the sake of human values, is not to be denied.  But
what is rightly praised in such a forward step, and perhaps even
rewarded, is their good will and not their deceit.  The deceit may
be pardoned, but certainly ought not to be praised, especially
among the heirs of the New Covenant to whom it has been said, "Let
your speech be yes, yes; no, no: for what is more than this comes
from evil."[42]  Yet because of what this evil does, never ceasing
to subvert this mortality of ours, even the joint heirs of Christ
themselves pray, "Forgive us our debts."[43]


                         CHAPTER VIII

              The Plight of Man After the Fall

     23.  With this much said, within the necessary brevity of
this kind of treatise, as to what we need to know about the causes
of good and evil -- enough to lead us in the way toward the
Kingdom, where there will be life without death, truth without
error, happiness without anxiety -- we ought not to doubt in any
way that the cause of everything pertaining to our good is nothing
other than the bountiful goodness of God himself.  The cause of
evil is the defection of the will of a being who is mutably good
from the Good which is immutable.  This happened first in the case
of the angels and, afterward, that of man.
     24.  This was the primal lapse of the rational creature, that
is, his first privation of the good.  In train of this there creptt
in, even without his willing it, ignorance of the right things to
do and also an appetite for noxious things.  And these brought
along with them, as their companions, error and misery.  When
these two evils are felt to be imminent, the soul's motion in
flight from them is called fear.  Moreover, as the soul's
appetites are satisfied by things harmful or at least inane -- and
as it fails to recognize the error of its ways -- it falls victim
to unwholesome pleasures or may even be exhilarated by vain joys.
>From these tainted springs of action -- moved by the lash of
appetite rather than a feeling of plenty -- there flows out every
kind of misery which is now the lot of rational natures.
     25.  Yet such a nature, even in its evil state, could not
lose its appetite for blessedness.  There are the evils that both
men and angels have in common, for whose wickedness God hath
condemned them in simple justice.  But man has a unique penalty as
well: he is also punished by the death of the body.  God had
indeed threatened man with death as penalty if he should sin.  He
endowed him with freedom of the will in order that he might rule
him by rational command and deter him by the threat of death.  He
even placed him in the happiness of paradise in a sheltered nook
of life [in umbra vitae] where, by being a good steward of
righteousness, he would rise to better things.
     26.  From this state, after he had sinned, man was banished,
and through his sin he subjected his descendants to the punishment
of sin and damnation, for he had radically corrupted them, in
himself, by his sinning.  As a consequence of this, all those
descended from him and his wife (who had prompted him to sin and
who was condemned along with him at the same time) -- all those
born through carnal lust, on whom the same penalty is visited as
for disobedience -- all these entered into the inheritance of
original sin.  Through this involvement they were led, through
divers errors and sufferings (along with the rebel angels, their
corruptors and possessors and companions), to that final stage of
punishment without end.  "Thus by one man, sin entered into the
world and death through sin; and thus death came upon all men,
since all men have sinned."[44]  By "the world" in this passage
the apostle is, of course, referring to the whole human race.
     27.  This, then, was the situation: the whole mass of the
human race stood condemned, lying ruined and wallowing in evil,
being plunged from evil into evil and, having joined causes with
the angels who had sinned, it was paying the fully deserved
penalty for impious desertion.  Certainly the anger of God rests,
in full justice, on the deeds that the wicked do freely in blind
and unbridled lust; and it is manifest in whatever penalties they
are called on to suffer, both openly and secretly.  Yet the
Creator's goodness does not cease to sustain life and vitality
even in the evil angels, for were _this_ sustenance withdrawn,
they would simply cease to exist.  As for mankind, although born
of a corrupted and condemned stock, he still retains the power to
form and animate his seed, to direct his members in their temporal
order, to enliven his senses in their spatial relations, and to
provide bodily nourishment.  For God judged it better to bring
good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.  And if he
had willed that there should be no reformation in the case of men,
as there is none for the wicked angels, would it not have been
just if the nature that deserted God and, through the evil use of
his powers, trampled and transgressed the precepts of his Creator,
which could have been easily kept -- the same creature who
stubbornly turned away from His Light and violated the image of
the Creator in himself, who had in the evil use of his free will
broken away from the wholesome discipline of God's law -- would it
not have been just if such a being had been abandoned by God
wholly and forever and laid under the everlasting punishment which
he deserved?  Clearly God would have done this if he were only
just and not also merciful and if he had not willed to show far
more striking evidence of his mercy by pardoning some who were
unworthy of it.


                          CHAPTER IX

           The Replacement of the Fallen Angels By
      Elect Men (28-30); The Necessity of Grace (30-32)

     28.  While some of the angels deserted God in impious pride
and were cast into the lowest darkness from the brightness of
their heavenly home, the remaining number of the angels persevered
in eternal bliss and holiness with God.  For these faithful angels
were not descended from a single angel, lapsed and damned.  Hence,
the original evil did not bind them in the fetters of inherited
guilt, nor did it hand the whole company over to a deserved
punishment, as is the human lot.  Instead, when he who became the
devil first rose in rebellion with his impious company and was
then with them prostrated, the rest of the angels stood fast in
pious obedience to the Lord and so received what the others had
not had -- a sure knowledge of their everlasting security in his
unfailing steadfastness.
     29.  Thus it pleased God, Creator and Governor of the
universe, that since the whole multitude of the angels had not
perished in this desertion of him, those who had perished would
remain forever in perdition, but those who had remained loyal
through the revolt should go on rejoicing in the certain knowledge
of the bliss forever theirs.  From the other part of the rational
creation -- that is, mankind -- although it had perished as a
whole through sins and punishments, both original and personal,
God had determined that a portion of it would be restored and
would fill up the loss which that diabolical disaster had caused
in the angelic society.  For this is the promise to the saints at
the resurrection, that they shall be equal to the angels of
God.[45]
     Thus the heavenly Jerusalem, our mother and the commonwealth
of God, shall not be defrauded of her full quota of citizens, but
perhaps will rule over an even larger number.  We know neither the
number of holy men nor of the filthy demons, whose places are to
be filled by the sons of the holy mother, who seemed barren in the
earth, but whose sons will abide time without end in the peace the
demons lost.  But the number of those citizens, whether those who
now belong or those who will in the future, is known to the mind
of the Maker, "who calleth into existence things which are not, as
though they were,"[46] and "ordereth all things in measure and
number and weight."[47]
     30.  But now, can that part of the human race to whom God
hath promised deliverance and a place in the eternal Kingdom be
restored through the merits of their own works?  Of course not!
For what good works could a lost soul do except as he had been
rescued from his lostness?  Could he do this by the determination
of his free will?  Of course not!  For it was in the evil use of
his free will that man destroyed himself and his will at the same
time.  For as a man who kills himself is still alive when he kills
himself, but having killed himself is then no longer alive and
cannot resuscitate himself after he has destroyed his own life --
so also sin which arises from the action of the free will turns
out to be victor over the will and the free will is destroyed.
"By whom a man is overcome, to this one he then is bound as
slave."[48]  This is clearly the judgment of the apostle Peter.
And since it is true, I ask you what kind of liberty can one have
who is bound as a slave except the liberty that loves to sin?
     He serves freely who freely does the will of his master.
Accordingly he who is slave to sin is free to sin.  But thereafter
he will not be free to do right unless he is delivered from the
bondage of sin and begins to be the servant of righteousness.
This, then, is true liberty: the joy that comes in doing what is
right.  At the same time, it is also devoted service in obedience
to righteous precept.
     But how would a man, bound and sold, get back his liberty to
do good, unless he could regain it from Him whose voice saith, "If
the Son shall make you free, then you will be free indeed"[49]?
But before this process begins in man, could anyone glory in his
good works as if they were acts of his free will, when he is not
yet free to act rightly?  He could do this only if, puffed up in
proud vanity, he were merely boasting.  This attitude is what the
apostle was reproving when he said, "By grace you have been saved
by faith."[50]
     31.  And lest men should arrogate to themselves saving faith
as their own work and not understand it as a divine gift, the same
apostle who says somewhere else that he had "obtained mercy of the
Lord to be trustworthy"[51] makes here an additional comment: "And
this is not of yourselves, rather it is a gift of God -- not
because of works either, lest any man should boast."[52]  But
then, lest it be supposed that the faithful are lacking in good
works, he added further, "For we are his workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus to good works, which God hath prepared beforehand for
us to walk in them."[53]
     We are then truly free when God ordereth our lives, that is,
formeth and createth us not as men -- this he hath already done --
but also as good men, which he is now doing by his grace, that we
may indeed be new creatures in Christ Jesus.[54]  Accordingly, the
prayer: "Create in me a clean heart, O God."[55]  This does not
mean, as far as the natural human heart is concerned, that God
hath not already created this.
     32.  Once again, lest anyone glory, if not in his own works,
at least in the determination of his free will, as if some merit
had originated from him and as if the freedom to do good works had
been bestowed on him as a kind of reward, let him hear the same
herald of grace, announcing: "For it is God who is at work in you
both to will and to do according to his good will."[56]  And, in
another place: "It is not therefore a matter of man's willing, or
of his running, but of God's showing mercy."[57]  Still, it is
obvious that a man who is old enough to exercise his reason cannot
believe, hope, or love unless he wills it, nor could he run for
the prize of his high calling in God without a decision of his
will.  In what sense, therefore, is it "not a matter of human
willing or running but of God's showing mercy," unless it be that
"the will itself is prepared by the Lord," even as it is
written?[58]  This saying, therefore, that "it is not a matter of
human willing or running but of God's showing mercy," means that
the action is from both, that is to say, from the will of man and
from the mercy of God.  Thus we accept the dictum, "It is not a
matter of human willing or running but of God's showing mercy," as
if it meant, "The will of man is not sufficient by itself unless
there is also the mercy of God." By the same token, the mercy of
God is not sufficient by itself unless there is also the will of
man.  But if we say rightly that "it is not a matter of human
willing or running but of God's showing mercy," because the will
of man alone is not enough, why, then, is not the contrary rightly
said, "It is not a matter of God's showing mercy but of a man's
willing," since the mercy of God by itself alone is not enough?
Now, actually, no Christian would dare to say, "It is not a matter
of God's showing mercy but of man's willing," lest he explicitly
contradict the apostle.  The conclusion remains, therefore, that
this saying: "Not man's willing or running but God's showing
mercy," is to be understood to mean that the whole process is
credited to God, who both prepareth the will to receive divine aid
and aideth the will which has been thus prepared.[59]
     For a man's good will comes before many other gifts from God,
but not all of them.  One of the gifts it does not antedate is --
just itself!  Thus in the Sacred Eloquence we read both, "His
mercy goes before me,"[60] and also, "His mercy shall follow
me."[61]  It predisposes a man before he wills, to prompt his
willing.  It follows the act of willing, lest one's will be
frustrated.  Otherwise, why are we admonished to pray for our
enemies,[62] who are plainly not now willing to live piously,
unless it be that God is even now at work in them and in their
wills?[63]  Or again, why are we admonished to ask in order to
receive, unless it be that He who grants us what we will is he
through whom it comes to pass that we will?  We pray for enemies,
therefore, that the mercy of God should go before them, as it goes
before us; we pray for ourselves that his mercy shall follow us.


                          CHAPTER X

                  Jesus Christ the Mediator

     33.  Thus it was that the human race was bound in a just doom
and all men were children of wrath.  Of this wrath it is written:
"For all our days are wasted; we are ruined in thy wrath; our
years seem like a spider's web."[64]  Likewise Job spoke of this
wrath: "Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble."[65]
And even the Lord Jesus said of it: "He that believes in the Son
has life everlasting, but he that believes not does not have life.
Instead, the wrath of God abides in him."[66]  He does not say,
"It will come," but, "It now abides." Indeed every man is born
into this state.  Wherefore the apostle says, "For we too were by
nature children of wrath even as the others."[67]  Since men are
in this state of wrath through original sin -- a condition made
still graver and more pernicious as they compounded more and worse
sins with it -- a Mediator was required; that is to say, a
Reconciler who by offering a unique sacrifice, of which all the
sacrifices of the Law and the Prophets were shadows, should allay
that wrath.  Thus the apostle says, "For if, when we were enemies,
we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, even more now
being reconciled by his blood we shall be saved from wrath through
him."[68]  However, when God is said to be wrathful, this does not
signify any such perturbation in him as there is in the soul of a
wrathful man.  His verdict, which is always just, takes the name
"wrath" as a term borrowed from the language of human feelings.
This, then, is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord --
that we are reconciled to God through the Mediator and receive the
Holy Spirit so that we may be changed from enemies into sons, "for
as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of
God."[69]
     34.  It would take too long to say all that would be truly
worthy of this Mediator.  Indeed, men cannot speak properly of
such matters.  For who can unfold in cogent enough fashion this
statement, that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,"[70] so
that we should then believe in "the only Son of God the Father
Almighty, born of the Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin." Yet it is
indeed true that the Word was made flesh, the flesh being assumed
by the Divinity, not the Divinity being changed into flesh.  Of
course, by the term "flesh" we ought here to understand "man," an
expression in which the part signifies the whole, just as it is
said, "Since by the works of the law no flesh shall be
justified,"[71] which is to say, no _man_ shall be justified.  Yet
certainly we must say that in that assumption nothing was lacking
that belongs to human nature.
     But it was a nature entirely free from the bonds of all sin.
It was not a nature born of both sexes with fleshly desires, with
the burden of sin, the guilt of which is washed away in
regeneration.  Instead, it was the kind of nature that would be
fittingly born of a virgin, conceived by His mother's faith and
not her fleshly desires.  Now if in his being born, her virginity
had been destroyed, he would not then have been born of a virgin.
It would then be false (which is unthinkable) for the whole Church
to confess him "born of the Virgin Mary." This is the Church
which, imitating his mother, daily gives birth to his members yet
remains virgin.  Read, if you please, my letter on the virginity
of Saint Mary written to that illustrious man, Volusianus, whom I
name with honor and affection.[72]
     35.  Christ Jesus, Son of God, is thus both God and man.  He
was God before all ages; he is man in this age of ours.  He is God
because he is the Word of God, for "the Word was God."[73]  Yet he
is man also, since in the unity of his Person a rational soul and
body is joined to the Word.
     Accordingly, in so far as he is God, he and the Father are
one.  Yet in so far as he is man, the Father is greater than he.
Since he was God's only Son -- not by grace but by nature -- to
the end that he might indeed be the fullness of all grace, he was
also made Son of Man -- and yet he was in the one nature as well
as in the other, one Christ.  "For being in the form of God, he
judged it not a violation to be what he was by nature, the equal
of God.  Yet he emptied himself, taking on the form of a
servant,"[74] yet neither losing nor diminishing the form of
God.[75]  Thus he was made less and remained equal, and both these
in a unity as we said before.  But he is one of these because he
is the Word; the other, because he was a man.  As the Word, he is
the equal of the Father; as a man, he is less.  He is the one Son
of God, and at the same time Son of Man; the one Son of Man, and
at the same time God's Son.  These are not two sons of God, one
God and the other man, but _one_ Son of God -- God without origin,
man with a definite origin -- our Lord Jesus Christ.


                          CHAPTER XI

              The Incarnation as Prime Example
                of the Action of God's Grace

     36.  In this the grace of God is supremely manifest,
commended in grand and visible fashion; for what had the human
nature in the man Christ merited, that it, and no other, should be
assumed into the unity of the Person of the only Son of God?  What
good will, what zealous strivings, what good works preceded this
assumption by which that particular man deserved to become one
Person with God?  Was he a man before the union, and was this
singular grace given him as to one particularly deserving before
God?  Of course not!  For, from the moment he began to be a man,
that man began to be nothing other than God's Son, the only Son,
and this because the Word of God assuming him became flesh, yet
still assuredly remained God.  Just as every man is a personal
unity -- that is, a unity of rational soul and flesh -- so also is
Christ a personal unity: Word and man.
     Why should there be such great glory to a human nature -- and
this undoubtedly an act of grace, no merit preceding unless it be
that those who consider such a question faithfully and soberly
might have here a clear manifestation of God's great and sole
grace, and this in order that they might understand how they
themselves are justified from their sins by the selfsame grace
which made it so that the man Christ had no power to sin?  Thus
indeed the angel hailed his mother when announcing to her the
future birth: "Hail," he said, "full of grace." And shortly
thereafter, "You have found favor with God."[76]  And this was
said of her, that she was full of grace, since she was to be
mother of her Lord, indeed the Lord of all.  Yet, concerning
Christ himself, when the Evangelist John said, "And the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us," he added, "and we beheld his
glory, a glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and
truth."[77]  When he said, "The Word was made flesh," this means,
"Full of grace." When he also said, "The glory of the only
begotten of the Father," this means, "Full of truth." Indeed it
was Truth himself, God's only begotten Son -- and, again, this not
by grace but by nature -- who, by grace, assumed human nature into
such a personal unity that he himself became the Son of Man as
well.
     37.  This same Jesus Christ, God's one and only Son our Lord,
was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.  Now obviously
the Holy Spirit is God's gift, a gift that is itself equal to the
Giver; wherefore the Holy Spirit is God also, not inferior to the
Father and the Son.  Now what does this mean, that Christ's birth
in respect to his human nature was of the Holy Spirit, save that
this was itself also a work of grace?
     For when the Virgin asked of the angel the manner by which
what he announced would come to pass (since she had known no man),
the angel answered: "The Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the
power of the Most High shall overshadow you; therefore the Holy
One which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of
God."[78]  And when Joseph wished to put her away, suspecting
adultery (since he knew she was not pregnant by him), he received
a similar answer from the angel: "Do not fear to take Mary as your
wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy
Spirit"[79] -- that is, "What you suspect is from another man is
of the Holy Spirit."


                         CHAPTER XII

                The Role of the Holy Spirit

     38.  Are we, then, to say that the Holy Spirit is the Father
of Christ's human nature, so that as God the Father generated the
Word, so the Holy Spirit generated the human nature, and that from
both natures Christ came to be one, Son of God the Father as the
Word, Son of the Holy Spirit as man?  Do we suppose that the Holy
Spirit is his Father through begetting him of the Virgin Mary?
Who would dare to say such a thing?  There is no need to show by
argument how many absurd consequences such a notion has, when it
is so absurd in itself that no believer's ear can bear to hear it.
Actually, then, as we confess our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God
from God yet born as man of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,
there is in each nature (in both the divine and the human) the
only Son of God the Father Almighty, from whom proceeds the Holy
Spirit.
     How, then, do we say that Christ is born of the Holy Spirit,
if the Holy Spirit did not beget him?  Is it because he made him?
This might be, since through our Lord Jesus Christ -- in the form
of God -- all things were made.  Yet in so far as he is man, he
himself was made, even as the apostle says: "He was made of the
seed of David according to the flesh."[80]  But since that
creature which the Virgin conceived and bore, though it was
related to the Person of the Son alone, was made by the whole
Trinity -- for the works of the Trinity are not separable -- why
is the Holy Spirit named as the One who made it?  Is it, perhaps,
that when any One of the Three is named in connection with some
divine action, the whole Trinity is to be understood as involved
in that action?  This is true and can be shown by examples, but we
should not dwell too long on this kind of solution.
     For what still concerns us is how it can be said, "Born of
the Holy Spirit," when he is in no wise the Son of the Holy
Spirit?  Now, just because God made [fecit] this world, one could
not say that the world is the son of God, or that it is "born" of
God.  Rather, one says it was "made" or "created" or "founded" or
"established" by him, or however else one might like to speak of
it.  So, then, when we confess, "Born of the Holy Spirit and the
Virgin Mary," the sense in which he is not the Son of the Holy
Spirit and yet is the son of the Virgin Mary, when he was born
both of him and of her, is difficult to explain.  But there is no
doubt as to the fact that he was not born from him as Father as he
was born of her as mother.
     39.  Consequently we should not grant that whatever is born
of something should therefore be called the son of that thing.
Let us pass over the fact that a son is "born" of a man in a
different sense than a hair is, or a louse, or a maw worm -- none
of these is a son.  Let us pass over these things, since they are
an unfitting analogy in so great a matter.  Yet it is certain that
those who are born of water and of the Holy Spirit would not
properly be called sons of the water by anyone.  But it does make
sense to call them sons of God the Father and of Mother Church.
Thus, therefore, the one born of the Holy Spirit is the son of God
the Father, not of the Holy Spirit.
     What we said about the hair and the other things has this
much relevance, that it reminds us that not everything which is
"born" of something is said to be "son" to him from which it is
"born." Likewise, it does not follow that those who are called
sons of someone are always said to have been born of him, since
there are some who are adopted.  Even those who are called "sons
of Gehenna" are not born _of_ it, but have been destined _for_ it,
just as the sons of the Kingdom are destined for that.
     40.  Wherefore, since a thing may be "born" of something
else, yet not in the fashion of a "son," and conversely, since not
everyone who is called son is born of him whose son he is called
-- this is the very mode in which Christ was "born" of the Holy
Spirit (yet not as a son), and of the Virgin Mary as a son -- this
suggests to us the grace of God by which a certain human person,
no merit whatever preceding, at the very outset of his existence,
was joined to the Word of God in such a unity of person that the
selfsame one who is Son of Man should be Son of God, and the one
who is Son of God should be Son of Man.  Thus, in his assumption
of human nature, grace came to be natural to that nature, allowing
no power to sin.  This is why grace is signified by the Holy
Spirit, because he himself is so perfectly God that he is also
called God's Gift.  Still, to speak adequately of this -- even if
one could -- would call for a very long discussion.


                          CHAPTER XIII

                    Baptism and Original Sin

     41.  Since he was begotten and conceived in no pleasure of
carnal appetite -- and therefore bore no trace of original sin --
he was, by the grace of God (operating in a marvelous and an
ineffable manner), joined and united in a personal unity with the
only-begotten Word of the Father, a Son not by grace but by
nature.  And although he himself committed no sin, yet because of
"the likeness of sinful flesh"[81] in which he came, he was
himself called sin and was made a sacrifice for the washing away
of sins.
     Indeed, under the old law, sacrifices for sins were often
called sins.[82]  Yet he of whom those sacrifices were mere
shadows was himself actually made sin.  Thus, when the apostle
said, "For Christ's sake, we beseech you to be reconciled to God,"
he straightway added, "Him, who knew no sin, he made to be sin for
us that we might be made to be the righteousness of God in
him."[83]  He does not say, as we read in some defective copies,
"He who knew no sin did sin for us," as if Christ himself
committed sin for our sake.  Rather, he says, "He [Christ] who
knew no sin, he [God] made to be sin for us." The God to whom we
are to be reconciled hath thus made him the sacrifice for sin by
which we may be reconciled.
     He himself is therefore sin as we ourselves are righteousness
-- not our own but God's, not in ourselves but in him.  Just as he
was sin -- not his own but ours, rooted not in himself but in us
-- so he showed forth through the likeness of sinful flesh, in
which he was crucified, that since sin was not in him he could
then, so to say, die to sin by dying in the flesh, which was "the
likeness of sin." And since he had never lived in the old manner
of sinning, he might, in his resurrection, signify the new life
which is ours, which is springing to life anew from the old death
in which we had been dead to sin.
     42.  This is the meaning of the great sacrament of baptism,
which is celebrated among us.  All who attain to this grace die
thereby to sin -- as he himself is said to have died to sin
because he died in the flesh, that is, "in the likeness of sin" --
and they are thereby alive by being reborn in the baptismal font,
just as he rose again from the sepulcher.  This is the case no
matter what the age of the body.
     43.  For whether it be a newborn infant or a decrepit old man
-- since no one should be barred from baptism -- just so, there is
no one who does not die to sin in baptism.  Infants die to
original sin only; adults, to all those sins which they have
added, through their evil living, to the burden they brought with
them at birth.
      44.  But even these are frequently said to die to sin, when
without doubt they die not to one but to many sins, and to all the
sins which they have themselves already committed by thought,
word, and deed.  Actually, by the use of the singular number the
plural number is often signified, as the poet said,

     	"And they fill the belly with the armed warrior,"[84]

     although they did this with many warriors.  And in our own
Scriptures we read: "Pray therefore to the Lord that he may take
from us the serpent."[85]  It does not say "serpents," as it
might, for they were suffering from many serpents.  There are,
moreover, innumerable other such examples.
     Yet, when the original sin is signified by the use of the
plural number, as we say when infants are baptized "unto the
remission of sins," instead of saying "unto the remission of sin,"
then we have the converse expression in which the singular is
expressed by the plural number.  Thus in the Gospel, it is said of
Herod's death, "For they are dead who sought the child's
life"[86]; it does not say, "He is dead." And in Exodus: "They
made," [Moses] says, "to themselves gods of gold," when they had
made one calf.  And of this calf, they said: "These are thy gods,
O Israel, which brought you out of the land of Egypt,"[87] here
also putting the plural for the singular.
     45.  Still, even in that one sin -- which "entered into the
world by one man and so spread to all men,"[88] and on account of
which infants are baptized -- one can recognize a plurality of
sins, if that single sin is divided, so to say, into its separate
elements.  For there is pride in it, since man preferred to be
under his own rule rather than the rule of God; and sacrilege too,
for man did not acknowledge God; and murder, since he cast himself
down to death; and spiritual fornication, for the integrity of the
human mind was corrupted by the seduction of the serpent; and
theft, since the forbidden fruit was snatched; and avarice, since
he hungered for more than should have sufficed for him -- and
whatever other sins that could be discovered in the diligent
analysis of that one sin.
     46.  It is also said -- and not without support -- that
infants are involved in the sins of their parents, not only of the
first pair, but even of their own, of whom they were born.
Indeed, that divine judgment, "I shall visit the sins of the
fathers on their children,"[89] definitely applies to them before
they come into the New Covenant by regeneration.  This Covenant
was foretold by Ezekiel when he said that the sons should not bear
their fathers' sins, nor the proverb any longer apply in Israel,
"Our fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are
set on edge."[90]
     This is why each one of them must be born again, so that he
may thereby be absolved of whatever sin was in him at the time of
birth.  For the sins committed by evil-doing after birth can be
healed by repentance -- as, indeed, we see it happen even after
baptism.  For the new birth [regeneratio] would not have been
instituted except for the fact that the first birth [generatio]
was tainted -- and to such a degree that one born of even a lawful
wedlock said, "I was conceived in iniquities; and in sins did my
mother nourish me in her womb."[91]  Nor did he say "in iniquity"
or "in sin," as he might have quite correctly; rather, he
preferred to say "iniquities" and "sins," because, as I explained
above, there are so many sins in that one sin -- which has passed
into all men, and which was so great that human nature was changed
and by it brought under the necessity of death -- and also because
there are other sins, such as those of parents, which, even if
they cannot change our nature in the same way, still involve the
children in guilt, unless the gracious grace and mercy of God
interpose.
     47.  But, in the matter of the sins of one's other parents,
those who stand as one's forebears from Adam down to one's own
parents, a question might well be raised: whether a man at birth
is involved in the evil deeds of all his forebears, and their
multiplied original sins, so that the later in time he is born,
the worse estate he is born in; or whether, on this very account,
God threatens to visit the sins of the parents as far as -- but no
farther than -- the third and fourth generations, because in his
mercy he will not continue his wrath beyond that.  It is not his
purpose that those not given the grace of regeneration be crushed
under too heavy a burden in their eternal damnation, as they would
be if they were bound to bear, as original guilt, all the sins of
their ancestors from the beginning of the human race, and to pay
the due penalty for them.  Whether yet another solution to so
difficult a problem might or might not be found by a more diligent
search and interpretation of Holy Scripture, I dare not rashly
affirm.


                          CHAPTER XIV

            The Mysteries of Christ's Mediatorial
            Work (48-49) and Justification (50-55)

     48.  That one sin, however, committed in a setting of such
great happiness, was itself so great that by it, in one man, the
whole human race was originally and, so to say, radically
condemned.  It cannot be pardoned and washed away except through
"the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,"[92]
who alone could be born in such a way as not to need to be reborn.
     49.  They were not reborn, those who were baptized by John's
baptism, by which Christ himself was baptized.[93]  Rather, they
were _prepared_ by the ministry of this forerunner, who said,
"Prepare a way for the Lord,"[94] for Him in whom alone they could
be reborn.
     For his baptism is not with water alone, as John's was, but
with the Holy Spirit as well.  Thus, whoever believes in Christ is
reborn by that same Spirit, of whom Christ also was born, needing
not to be reborn.  This is the reason for the Voice of the Father
spoken over him at his baptism, "Today have I begotten thee,"[95]
which pointed not to that particular day on which he was baptized,
but to that "day" of changeless eternity, in order to show us that
this Man belonged to the personal Unity of the Only Begotten.  For
a day that neither begins with the close of yesterday nor ends
with the beginning of tomorrow is indeed an eternal "today."
     Therefore, he chose to be baptized in water by John, not
thereby to wash away any sin of his own, but to manifest his great
humility.  Indeed, baptism found nothing in him to wash away, just
as death found nothing to punish.  Hence, it was in authentic
justice, and not by violent power, that the devil was overcome and
conquered: for, as he had most unjustly slain Him who was in no
way deserving of death, he also did most justly lose those whom he
had justly held in bondage as punishment for their sins.
Wherefore, He took upon himself both baptism and death, not out of
a piteous necessity but through his own free act of showing mercy
-- as part of a definite plan whereby One might take away the sin
of the world, just as one man had brought sin into the world, that
is, the whole human race.
     50.  There is a difference, however.  The first man brought
sin into the world, whereas this One took away not only that one
sin but also all the others which he found added to it.  Hence,
the apostle says, "And the gift [of grace] is not like the effect
of the one that sinned: for the judgment on that one trespass was
condemnation; but the gift of grace is for many offenses, and
brings justification."[96]  Now it is clear that the one sin
originally inherited, even if it were the only one involved, makes
men liable to condemnation.  Yet grace justifies a man for many
offenses, both the sin which he originally inherited in common
with all the others and also the multitude of sins which he has
committed on his own.
     51.  However, when he [the apostle] says, shortly after,
"Therefore, as the offense of one man led all men to condemnation,
so also the righteousness of one man leads all men to the life of
justification,"[97] he indicates sufficiently that everyone born
of Adam is subject to damnation, and no one, unless reborn of
Christ, is free from such a damnation.
     52.  And after this discussion of punishment through one man
and grace through the Other, as he deemed sufficient for that part
of the epistle, the apostle passes on to speak of the great
mystery of holy baptism in the cross of Christ, and to do this so
that we may understand nothing other in the baptism of Christ than
the likeness of the death of Christ.  The death of Christ
crucified is nothing other than the likeness of the forgiveness of
sins -- so that in the very same sense in which the death is real,
so also is the forgiveness of our sins real, and in the same sense
in which his resurrection is real, so also in us is there
authentic justification.
     He asks: "What, then, shall we say?  Shall we continue in
sin, that grace may abound?"[98] -- for he had previously said,
"But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound."[99]  And
therefore he himself raised the question whether, because of the
abundance of grace that follows sin, one should then continue in
sin.  But he answers, "God forbid!"  and adds, "How shall we, who
are dead to sin, live any longer therein?"[100]  Then, to show
that we are dead to sin, "Do you not know that all we who were
baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?"[101]
     If, therefore, the fact that we are baptized into the death
of Christ shows that we are dead to sin, then certainly infants
who are baptized in Christ die to sin, since they are baptized
into his own death.  For there is no exception in the saying, "All
we who are baptized into Christ Jesus are baptized into his
death." And the effect of this is to show that we are dead to sin.
     Yet what sin do infants die to in being reborn except that
which they inherit in being born?  What follows in the epistle
also pertains to this: "Therefore we were buried with him by
baptism into death; that, as Christ was raised up from the dead by
the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in the
newness of life.  For if we have been united with him in the
likeness of his death, we shall be also united with him in the
likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man is
crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that
henceforth we should not serve sin.  For he that is dead is freed
from sin.  Now if we are dead with Christ, we believe that we
shall also live with him: knowing that Christ, being raised from
the dead, dies no more; death has no more dominion over him.  For
the death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he
lives, he lives unto God.  So also, reckon yourselves also to be
dead to sin, but alive unto God through Christ Jesus."[102]
     Now, he had set out to prove that we should not go on
sinning, in order that thereby grace might abound, and had said,
"If we have died to sin, how, then, shall we go on living in it?"
And then to show that we were dead to sin, he had added, "Know you
not, that as many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were
baptized into his death?"  Thus he concludes the passage as he
began it.  Indeed, he introduced the death of Christ in order to
say that even he died to sin.  To what sin, save that of the flesh
in which he existed, not as sinner, but in "the likeness of sin"
and which was, therefore, called by the name of sin?  Thus, to
those baptized into the death of Christ -- into which not only
adults but infants as well are baptized -- he says, "So also you
should reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in
Christ Jesus."
     53.  Whatever was done, therefore, in the crucifixion of
Christ, his burial, his resurrection on the third day, his
ascension into heaven, his being seated at the Father's right hand
-- all these things were done thus, that they might not only
signify their mystical meanings but also serve as a model for the
Christian life which we lead here on the earth.  Thus, of his
crucifixion it was said, "And they that are Jesus Christ's have
crucified their own flesh, with the passions and lusts
thereof"[103]; and of his burial, "For we are buried with Christ
by baptism into death"; of his resurrection, "Since Christ is
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also
should walk with him in newness of life"; of his ascension and
session at the Father's right hand: "But if you have risen again
with Christ, seek the things which are above, where Christ is
sitting at the right hand of God.  Set your affection on things
above, not on things on the earth.  For you are dead, and your
life is hid with Christ in God."[104]
     54.  Now what we believe concerning Christ's future actions,
since we confess that he will come again from heaven to judge the
living and the dead, does not pertain to this life of ours as we
live it here on earth, because it belongs not to his deeds already
done, but to what he will do at the close of the age.  To this the
apostle refers and goes on to add, "When Christ, who is your life,
shall appear, you shall then also appear with him in glory."[105]
     55.  There are two ways to interpret the affirmation that he
"shall judge the living and the dead." On the one hand, we may
understand by "the living" those who are not yet dead but who will
be found living in the flesh when he comes; and we may understand
by "the dead" those who have left the body, or who shall have left
it before his coming.  Or, on the other hand, "the living" may
signify "the righteous," and "the dead" may signify "the
unrighteous" -- since the righteous are to be judged as well as
the unrighteous.  For sometimes the judgment of God is passed upon
the evil, as in the word, "But they who have done evil [shall come
forth] to the resurrection of judgment."[106]  And sometimes it is
passed upon the good, as in the word, "Save me, O God, by thy
name, and judge me in thy strength."[107]  Indeed, it is by the
judgment of God that the distinction between good and evil is
made, to the end that, being freed from evil and not destroyed
with the evildoers, the good may be set apart at his right
hand.[108]  This is why the psalmist cried, "Judge me, O God,"
and, as if to explain what he had said, "and defend my cause
against an unholy nation."[109]


                          CHAPTER XV

         The Holy Spirit (56) and the Church (57-60)

     56.  Now, when we have spoken of Jesus Christ, the only Son
of God our Lord, in the brevity befitting our confession of faith,
we go on to affirm that we believe also in the Holy Spirit, as
completing the Trinity which is God; and after that we call to
mind our faith "in holy Church." By this we are given to
understand that the rational creation belonging to the free
Jerusalem ought to be mentioned in a subordinate order to the
Creator, that is, the supreme Trinity.  For, of course, all that
has been said about the man Christ Jesus refers to the unity of
the Person of the Only Begotten.
     Thus, the right order of the Creed demanded[110] that the
Church be made subordinate to the Trinity, as a house is
subordinate to him who dwells in it, the temple to God, and the
city to its founder.  By the Church here we are to understand the
whole Church, not just the part that journeys here on earth from
rising of the sun to its setting, praising the name of the
Lord[111] and singing a new song of deliverance from its old
captivity, but also that part which, in heaven, has always, from
creation, held fast to God, and which never experienced the evils
of a fall.  This part, composed of the holy angels, remains in
blessedness, and it gives help, even as it ought, to the other
part still on pilgrimage.  For both parts together will make one
eternal consort, as even now they are one in the bond of love --
the whole instituted for the proper worship of the one God.[112]
Wherefore, neither the whole Church nor any part of it wishes to
be worshiped as God nor to be God to anyone belonging to the
temple of God -- the temple that is being built up of "the gods"
whom the uncreated God created.[113]  Consequently, if the Holy
Spirit were creature and not Creator, he would obviously be a
rational creature, for this is the highest of the levels of
creation.  But in this case he would not be set in the rule of
faith _before_ the Church, since he would then belong _to_ the
Church, in that part of it which is in heaven.  He would not have
a temple, for he himself would be a temple.  Yet, in fact, he hath
a temple of which the apostle speaks, "Know you not that your body
is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have
from God?"[114]  In another place, he says of this body, "Know you
not that your bodies are members of Christ?"[115]  How, then, is
he not God who has a temple?  Or how can he be less than Christ
whose members are his temple?  It is not that he has one temple
and God another temple, since the same apostle says: "Know you not
that you are the temple of God," and then, as if to prove his
point, added, "and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"
     God therefore dwelleth in his temple, not the Holy Spirit
only, but also Father and Son, who saith of his body -- in which
he standeth as Head of the Church on earth "that in all things he
may be pre-eminent"[116] -- "Destroy this temple and in three days
I will raise it up again."[117]  Therefore, the temple of God- --
that is, of the supreme Trinity as a whole -- is holy Church, the
Universal Church in heaven and on the earth.
     57.  But what can we affirm about that part of the Church in
heaven, save that in it no evil is to be found, nor any apostates,
nor will there be again, since that time when "God did not spare
the sinning angels" -- as the apostle Peter writes -- "but casting
them out, he delivered them into the prisons of darkness in hell,
to be reserved for the sentence in the Day of Judgment"[118]?
     58.  Still, how is life ordered in that most blessed and
supernal society?  What differences are there in rank among the
angels, so that while all are called by the general title "angels"
-- as we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews, "But to which of the
angels said he at any time, 'Sit at my right hand'?"[119]; this
expression clearly signifies that all are angels without exception
-- yet there are archangels there as well?  Again, should these
archangels be called "powers" [virtutes], so that the verse,
"Praise him all his angels; praise him, all his powers,"[120]
would mean the same thing as, "Praise him, all his angels; praise
him, all his archangels"?  Or, what distinctions are implied by
the four designations by which the apostle seems to encompass the
entire heavenly society, "Be they thrones or dominions,
principalities, or powers"[121]?  Let them answer these questions
who can, if they can indeed prove their answers.  For myself, I
confess to ignorance of such matters.  I am not even certain about
another question: whether the sun and moon and all the stars
belong to that same heavenly society -- although they seem to be
nothing more than luminous bodies, with neither perception nor
understanding.
     59.  Furthermore, who can explain the kind of bodies in which
the angels appeared to men, so that they were not only visible,
but tangible as well?  And, again, how do they, not by impact of
physical stimulus but by spiritual force, bring certain visions,
not to the physical eyes but to the spiritual eyes of the mind, or
speak something, not to the ears, as from outside us, but actually
from within the human soul, since they are present within it too?
For, as it is written in the book of the Prophets: "And the angel
that spoke in me, said to me . . ."[122]  He does not say, "Spoke
_to_ me" but "Spoke _in_ me." How do they appear to men in sleep,
and communicate through dreams, as we read in the Gospel: "Behold,
the angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep,
saying..."[123]?  By these various modes of presentation, the
angels seem to indicate that they do not have tangible bodies.
Yet this raises a very difficult question: How, then, did the
patriarchs wash the angels' feet?[124]  How, also, did Jacob
wrestle with the angel in such a tangible fashion?[125]
     To ask such questions as these, and to guess at the answers
as one can, is not a useless exercise in speculation, so long as
the discussion is moderate and one avoids the mistake of those who
think they know what they do not know.


                         CHAPTER XVI

             Problems About Heavenly and Earthly
                   Divisions of the Church

     60.  It is more important to be able to discern and tell when
Satan transforms himself as an angel of light, lest by this
deception he should seduce us into harmful acts.  For, when he
deceives the corporeal senses, and does not thereby turn the mind
from that true and right judgment by which one leads the life of
faith, there is no danger to religion.  Or if, feigning himself to
be good, he does or says things that would fit the character of
the good angels, even if then we believe him good, the error is
neither dangerous nor fatal to the Christian faith.  But when, by
these alien wiles, he begins to lead us into his own ways, then
great vigilance is required to recognize him and not follow after.
But how few men are there who are able to avoid his deadly
stratagems, unless God guides and preserves them!  Yet the very
difficulty of this business is useful in this respect: it shows
that no man should rest his hopes in himself, nor one man in
another, but all who are God's should cast their hopes on him.
And that this latter is obviously the best course for us no pious
man would deny.
     61.  This part of the Church, therefore, which is composed of
the holy angels and powers of God will become known to us as it
really is only when, at the end of the age, we are joined to it,
to possess, together with it, eternal bliss.  But the other part
which, separated from this heavenly company, wanders through the
earth is better known to us because we are in it, and because it
is composed of men like ourselves.  This is the part that has been
redeemed from all sin by the blood of the sinless Mediator, and
its cry is: "If God be for us, who is against us?  He that spared
not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all. . . ."[126]  Now
Christ did not die for the angels.  But still, what was done for
man by his death for man's redemption and his deliverance from
evil was done for the angels also, because by it the enmity caused
by sin between men and the angels is removed and friendship
restored.  Moreover, this redemption of mankind serves to repair
the ruins left by the angelic apostasy.
     62.  Of course, the holy angels, taught by God -- in the
eternal contemplation of whose truth they are blessed -- know how
many of the human race are required to fill up the full census of
that commonwealth.  This is why the apostle says "that all things
are restored to unity in Christ, both those in heaven and those on
the earth in him."[127]  The part in heaven is indeed restored
when the number lost from the angelic apostasy are replaced from
the ranks of mankind.  The part on earth is restored when those
men predestined to eternal life are redeemed from the old state of
corruption.
     Thus by the single sacrifice, of which the many victims of
the law were only shadows, the heavenly part is set at peace with
the earthly part and the earthly reconciled to the heavenly.
Wherefore, as the same apostle says: "For it pleased God that all
plenitude of being should dwell in him and by him to reconcile all
things to himself, making peace with them by the blood of his
cross, whether those things on earth or those in heaven."[128]
     63.  This peace, as it is written, "passes all
understanding." It cannot be known by us until we have entered
into it.  For how is the heavenly realm set at peace, save
together with us; that is, by concord with us?  For in that realm
there is always peace, both among the whole company of rational
creatures and between them and their Creator.  This is the peace
that, as it is said, "passes all understanding." But obviously
this means _our_ understanding, not that of those who always see
the Father's face.  For no matter how great our understanding may
be, "we know in part, and we see in a glass darkly."[129]  But
when we shall have become "equal to God's angels,"[130] then, even
as they do, "we shall see face to face."[131]  And we shall then
have as great amity toward them as they have toward us; for we
shall come to love them as much as we are loved by them.
     In this way their peace will become known to us, since ours
will be like theirs in kind and measure -- nor will it then
surpass our understanding.  But the peace of God, which is there,
will still doubtless surpass our understanding and theirs as well.
For, of course, in so far as a rational creature is blessed, this
blessedness comes, not from himself, but from God.  Hence, it
follows that it is better to interpret the passage, "The peace of
God which passes all understanding," so that from the word "all"
not even the understanding of the holy angels should be excepted.
Only God's understanding is excepted; for, of course, his peace
does not surpass his own understanding.


                         CHAPTER XVII

              Forgiveness of Sins in the Church

     64.  The angels are in concord with us even now, when our
sins are forgiven.  Therefore, in the order of the Creed, after
the reference to "holy Church" is placed the reference to
"forgiveness of sins." For it is by this that the part of the
Church on earth stands; it is by this that "what was lost and is
found again"[132] is not lost again.  Of course, the gift of
baptism is an exception.  It is an antidote given us against
original sin, so that what is contracted by birth is removed by
the new birth -- though it also takes away actual sins as well,
whether of heart, word, or deed.  But except for this great
remission -- the beginning point of a man's renewal, in which all
guilt, inherited and acquired, is washed away -- the rest of life,
from the age of accountability (and no matter how vigorously we
progress in righteousness), is not without the need for the
forgiveness of sins.  This is the case because the sons of God, as
long as they live this mortal life, are in a conflict with death.
And although it is truly said of them, "As many as are led by the
Spirit of God, they are the sons of God,"[133] yet even as they
are being led by the Spirit of God and, as sons of God, advance
toward God, they are also being led by their own spirits so that,
weighed down by the corruptible body and influenced by certain
human feelings, they thus fall away from themselves and commit
sin.  But it matters _how much_.  Although every crime is a sin,
not every sin is a crime.  Thus we can say of the life of holy men
even while they live in this mortality, that they are found
without crime.  "But if we say that we have no sin," as the great
apostle says, "we deceive even ourselves, and the truth is not in
us."[134]
     65.  Nevertheless, no matter how great our crimes, their
forgiveness should never be despaired of in holy Church for those
who truly repent, each according to the measure of his sin.  And,
in the act of repentance,[135] where a crime has been committed of
such gravity as also to cut off the sinner from the body of
Christ, we should not consider the measure of time as much as the
measure of sorrow.  For, "a contrite and humbled heart God will
not despise."[136]
     Still, since the sorrow of one heart is mostly hid from
another, and does not come to notice through words and other such
signs -- even when it is plain to Him of whom it is said, "My
groaning is not hid from thee"[137] -- times of repentance have
been rightly established by those set over the churches, that
satisfaction may also be made in the Church, in which the sins are
forgiven.  For, of course, outside her they are not forgiven.  For
she alone has received the pledge of the Holy Spirit,[138] without
whom there is no forgiveness of sins.  Those forgiven thus obtain
life everlasting.
     66.  Now the remission of sins has chiefly to do with the
future judgment.  In this life the Scripture saying holds true: "A
heavy yoke is on the sons of Adam, from the day they come forth
from their mother's womb till the day of their burial in the
mother of us all."[139]  Thus we see even infants, after the
washing of regeneration, tortured by divers evil afflictions.
This helps us to understand that the whole import of the
sacraments of salvation has to do more with the hope of future
goods than with the retaining or attaining of present goods.
     Indeed, many sins seem to be ignored and go unpunished; but
their punishment is reserved for the future.  It is not in vain
that the day when the Judge of the living and the dead shall come
is rightly called the Day of Judgment.  Just so, on the other
hand, some sins are punished here, and, if they are forgiven, will
certainly bring no harm upon us in the future age.  Hence,
referring to certain temporal punishments, which are visited upon
sinners in this life, the apostle, speaking to those whose sins
are blotted out and not reserved to the end, says: "For if we
judge ourselves truly we should not be judged by the Lord.  But
when we are judged, we are chastised by the Lord, that we may not
be condemned along with this world."[140]


                      CHAPTER XVIII[141]

                       Faith and Works

     67.  There are some, indeed, who believe that those who do
not abandon the name of Christ, and who are baptized in his laver
in the Church, who are not cut off from it by schism or heresy,
who may then live in sins however great, not washing them away by
repentance, nor redeeming them by alms -- and who obstinately
persevere in them to life's last day -- even these will still be
saved, "though as by fire." They believe that such people will be
punished by fire, prolonged in proportion to their sins, but still
not eternal.
     But those who believe thus, and still are Catholics, are
deceived, as it seems to me, by a kind of merely human
benevolence.  For the divine Scripture, when consulted, answers
differently.  Moreover, I have written a book about this question,
entitled Faith and Works,[142] in which, with God's help, I have
shown as best I could that, according to Holy Scripture, the faith
that saves is the faith that the apostle Paul adequately describes
when he says, "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails
anything, nor uncircumcision, but the faith which works through
love."[143]  But if faith works evil and not good, then without
doubt, according to the apostle James "it is dead in itself."[144]
He then goes on to say, "If a man says he has faith, yet has not
works, can his faith be enough to save him?"[145]
     Now, if the wicked man were to be saved by fire on account of
his faith only, and if this is the way the statement of the
blessed Paul should be understood -- "But he himself shall be
saved, yet so as by fire"[146] -- then faith without works would
be sufficient to salvation.  But then what the apostle James said
would be false.  And also false would be another statement of the
same Paul himself: "Do not err," he says; "neither fornicators,
nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the unmanly, nor homosexuals,
nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor
extortioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of God."[147]  Now, if
those who persist in such crimes as these are nevertheless saved
by their faith in Christ, would they not then be in the Kingdom of
God?
     68.  But, since these fully plain and most pertinent
apostolic testimonies cannot be false, that one obscure saying
about those who build on "the foundation, which is Christ, not
gold, silver, and precious stones, but wood, hay, and
stubble"[148] -- for it is about these it is said that they will
be saved as by fire, not perishing on account of the saving worth
of their foundation -- such a statement must be interpreted so
that it does not contradict these fully plain testimonies.
     In fact, wood and hay and stubble may be understood, without
absurdity, to signify such an attachment to those worldly things
-- albeit legitimate in themselves -- that one cannot suffer their
loss without anguish in the soul.  Now, when such anguish "burns,"
and Christ still holds his place as foundation in the heart --
that is, if nothing is preferred to him and if the man whose
anguish "burns" would still prefer to suffer loss of the things he
greatly loves than to lose Christ -- then one is saved, "by fire."
But if, in time of testing, he should prefer to hold onto these
temporal and worldly goods rather than to Christ, he does not have
him as foundation -- because he has put "things" in the first
place -- whereas in a building nothing comes before the
foundations.
     Now, this fire, of which the apostle speaks, should be
understood as one through which both kinds of men must pass: that
is, the man who builds with gold, silver, and precious stones on
this foundation and also the man who builds with wood, hay, and
stubble.  For, when he had spoken of this, he added: "The fire
shall try every man's work, of what sort it is.  If any man's work
abides which he has built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.
If any man's work burns up, he shall suffer loss; but he himself
shall be saved, yet so as by fire."[149]  Therefore the fire will
test the work, not only of the one, but of both.
     The fire is a sort of trial of affliction, concerning which
it is clearly written elsewhere: "The furnace tries the potter's
vessels and the trial of affliction tests righteous men."[150]
This kind of fire works in the span of this life, just as the
apostle said, as it affects the two different kinds of faithful
men.  There is, for example, the man who "thinks of the things of
God, how he may please God." Such a man builds on Christ the
foundation, with gold, silver, and precious stones.  The other man
"thinks about the things of the world, how he may please his
wife"[151]; that is, he builds upon the same foundation with wood,
hay, and stubble.  The work of the former is not burned up, since
he has not loved those things whose loss brings anguish.  But the
work of the latter is burned up, since things are not lost without
anguish when they have been loved with a possessive love.  But
because, in this second situation, he prefers to suffer the loss
of these things rather than losing Christ, and does not desert
Christ from fear of losing such things -- even though he may
grieve over his loss -- "he is saved," indeed, "yet so as by
fire." He "burns" with grief, for the things he has loved and
lost, but this does not subvert nor consume him, secured as he is
by the stability and the indestructibility of his foundation.
     69.  It is not incredible that something like this should
occur after this life, whether or not it is a matter for fruitful
inquiry.  It may be discovered or remain hidden whether some of
the faithful are sooner or later to be saved by a sort of
purgatorial fire, in proportion as they have loved the goods that
perish, and in proportion to their attachment to them.  However,
this does not apply to those of whom it was said, "They shall not
possess the Kingdom of God,"[152] unless their crimes are remitted
through due repentance.  I say "due repentance" to signify that
they must not be barren of almsgiving, on which divine Scripture
lays so much stress that our Lord tells us in advance that, on the
bare basis of fruitfulness in alms, he will impute merit to those
on his right hand; and, on the same basis of unfruitfulness,
demerit to those on his left -- when he shall say to the former,
"Come, blessed of my Father, receive the Kingdom," but to the
latter, "Depart into everlasting fire."[153]


                         CHAPTER XIX

                 Almsgiving and Forgiveness

     70.  We must beware, however, lest anyone suppose that
unspeakable crimes such as they commit who "will not possess the
Kingdom of God" can be perpetrated daily and then daily redeemed
by almsgiving.  Of course, life must be changed for the better,
and alms should be offered as propitiation to God for our past
sins.  But he is not somehow to be bought off, as if we always had
a license to commit crimes with impunity.  For, "he has given no
man a license to sin"[154] -- although, in his mercy, he does blot
out sins already committed, if due satisfaction for them is not
neglected.
     71.  For the passing and trivial sins of every day, from
which no life is free, the everyday prayer of the faithful makes
satisfaction.  For they can say, "Our Father who art in heaven,"
who have already been reborn to such a Father "by water and the
Spirit."[155]  This prayer completely blots out our minor and
everyday sins.  It also blots out those sins which once made the
life of the faithful wicked, but from which, now that they have
changed for the better by repentance, they have departed.  The
condition of this is that just as they truly say, "Forgive us our
debts" (since there is no lack of debts to be forgiven), so also
they truly say, "As we forgive our debtors"[156]; that is, if what
is said is also done.  For to forgive a man who seeks forgiveness
is indeed to give alms.
     72.  Accordingly, what our Lord says -- "Give alms and,
behold, all things are clean to you"[157] -- applies to all useful
acts of mercy.  Therefore, not only the man who gives food to the
hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, hospitality
to the wayfarer, refuge to the fugitive; who visits the sick and
the prisoner, redeems the captive, bears the burdens of the weak,
leads the blind, comforts the sorrowful, heals the sick, shows the
errant the right way, gives advice to the perplexed, and does
whatever is needful for the needy[158] -- not only does this man
give alms, but the man who forgives the trespasser also gives alms
as well.  He is also a giver of alms who, by blows or other
discipline, corrects and restrains those under his command, if at
the same time he forgives from the heart the sin by which he has
been wronged or offended, or prays that it be forgiven the
offender.  Such a man gives alms, not only in that he forgives and
prays, but also in that he rebukes and administers corrective
punishment, since in this he shows mercy.
     Now, many benefits are bestowed on the unwilling, when their
interests and not their preferences are consulted.  And men
frequently are found to be their own enemies, while those they
suppose to be their enemies are their true friends.  And then, by
mistake, they return evil for good, when a Christian ought not to
return evil even for evil.  Thus, there are many kinds of alms, by
which, when we do them, we are helped in obtaining forgiveness of
our own sins.
     73.  But none of these alms is greater than the forgiveness
from the heart of a sin committed against us by someone else.  It
is a smaller thing to wish well or even to do well to one who has
done you no evil.  It is far greater -- a sort of magnificent
goodness -- to love your enemy, and always to wish him well and,
as you can, _do_ well to him who wishes you ill and who does you
harm when he can.  Thus one heeds God's command: "Love your
enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that
persecute you."[159]
     Such counsels are for the perfect sons of God.  And although
all the faithful should strive toward them and through prayer to
God and earnest endeavor bring their souls up to this level, still
so high a degree of goodness is not possible for so great a
multitude as we believe are heard when, in prayer, they say,
"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Accordingly, it
cannot be doubted that the terms of this pledge are fulfilled if a
man, not yet so perfect that he already loves his enemies, still
forgives from the heart one who has sinned against him and who now
asks his forgiveness.  For he surely seeks forgiveness when he
asks for it when he prays, saying, "As we forgive our debtors."
For this means, "Forgive us our debts when we ask for forgiveness,
as we also forgive our debtors when they ask for forgiveness."
     74.  Again, if one seeks forgiveness from a man against whom
he sinned -- moved by his sin to seek it -- he should no longer be
regarded as an enemy, and it should not now be as difficult to
love him as it was when he was actively hostile.
     Now, a man who does not forgive from the heart one who asks
forgiveness and is repentant of his sins can in no way suppose
that his own sins are forgiven by the Lord, since the Truth cannot
lie, and what hearer and reader of the gospel has not noted who it
was who said, "I am the Truth"[160]?  It is, of course, the One
who, when he was teaching the prayer, strongly emphasized this
sentence which he put in it, saying: "For if you forgive men their
trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you your
trespasses.  But if you will not forgive men, neither will your
Father forgive you your offenses."[161]  He who is not awakened by
such great thundering is not asleep, but dead.  And yet such a
word has power to awaken even the dead.


                          CHAPTER XX

                     Spiritual Almsgiving

     75.  Now, surely, those who live in gross wickedness and take
no care to correct their lives and habits, who yet, amid their
crimes and misdeeds, continue to multiply their alms, flatter
themselves in vain with the Lord's words, "Give alms; and, behold,
all things are clean to you." They do not understand how far this
saying reaches.  In order for them to understand, let them notice
to whom it was that he said it.  For this is the context of it in
the Gospel: "As he was speaking, a certain Pharisee asked him to
dine with him.  And he went in and reclined at the table.  And the
Pharisee began to wonder and ask himself why He had not washed
himself before dinner.  But the Lord said to him: 'Now you
Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but within
you are still full of extortion and wickedness.  Foolish ones!
Did not He who made the outside make the inside too?
Nevertheless, give for alms what remains within; and, behold, all
things are clean to you.'"[162] Should we interpret this to mean
that to the Pharisees, who had not the faith of Christ, all things
are clean if only they give alms, as they deem it right to give
them, even if they have not believed in him, nor been reborn of
water and the Spirit?  But all are unclean who are not made clean
by the faith of Christ, of whom it is written, "Cleansing their
hearts by faith."[163]  And as the apostle said, "But to them that
are unclean and unbelieving nothing is clean; both their minds and
consciences are unclean."[164]  How, then, should all things be
clean to the Pharisees, even if they gave alms, but were not
believers?  Or, how could they be believers, if they were
unwilling to believe in Christ and to be born again in his grace?
And yet, what they heard is true: "Give alms; and behold, all
things are clean to you."
     76.  He who would give alms as a set plan of his life should
begin with himself and give them to himself.  For almsgiving is a
work of mercy, and the saying is most true: "Have mercy upon your
own soul, pleasing God."[165]  The purpose of the new birth is
that we should become pleasing to God, who is justly displeased
with the sin we contracted in birth.  This is the first
almsgiving, which we give to ourselves -- when through the mercy
of a merciful God we come to inquire about our wretchedness and
come to acknowledge the just verdict by which we were put in need
of that mercy, of which the apostle says, "Judgment came by that
one trespass to condemnation."[166]  And the same herald of grace
then adds (in a word of thanksgiving for God's great love), "But
God commendeth his love toward us in that, while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us."[167]  Thus, when we come to a valid
estimate of our wretchedness and begin to love God with the love
he himself giveth us, we then begin to live piously and
righteously.
     But the Pharisees, while they gave as alms a tithing of even
the least of their fruits, disregarded this "judgment and love of
God." Therefore, they did not begin their almsgiving with
themselves, nor did they, first of all, show mercy toward
themselves.  In reference to this right order of self-love, it was
said, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."[168]
     Therefore, when the Lord had reproved the Pharisees for
washing themselves on the outside while inwardly they were still
full of extortion and wickedness, he then admonished them also to
give those alms which a man owes first to himself -- to make clean
the inner man: "However," he said, "give what remains as alms,
and, behold, all things are clean to you." Then, to make plain the
import of his admonition, which they had ignored, and to show them
that he was not ignorant of their kind of almsgiving, he adds,
"But woe to you, Pharisees"[169] -- as if to say, "I am advising
you to give the kind of alms which shall make all things clean to
you." "But woe to you, for you tithe mint and rue and every herb"
-- "I know these alms of yours and you need not think I am
admonishing you to give them up" -- "and then neglect justice and
the love of God." "_This_ kind of almsgiving would make you clean
from all inward defilement, just as the bodies which you wash are
made clean by you." For the word "all" here means both "inward"
and "outward" -- as elsewhere we read, "Make clean the inside, and
the outside will become clean."[170]
     But, lest it appear that he was rejecting the kind of alms we
give of the earth's bounty, he adds, "These things you should do"
-- that is, pay heed to the judgment and love of God -- and "not
omit the others" -- that is, alms done with the earth's bounty.
     77.  Therefore, let them not deceive themselves who suppose
that by giving alms -- however profusely, and whether of their
fruits or money or anything else -- they purchase impunity to
continue in the enormity of their crimes and the grossness of
their wickedness.  For not only do they do such things, but they
also love them so much that they would always choose to continue
in them -- if they could do so with impunity.  "But he who loves
iniquity hates his own soul."[171]  And he who hates his own soul
is not merciful but cruel to it.  For by loving it after the
world's way he hates it according to God's way of judging.
Therefore, if one really wished to give alms to himself, that all
things might become clean to him, he would hate his soul after the
world's way and love it according to God's way.  No one, however,
gives any alms at all unless he gives from the store of Him who
needs not anything.  "Accordingly," it is said, "His mercy shall
go before me."[172]


                         CHAPTER XXI

                   Problems of Casuistry

     78.  What sins are trivial and what are grave, however, is
not for human but for divine judgment to determine.  For we see
that, in respect of some sins, even the apostle, by pardoning
them, has conceded this point.  Such a case is seen in what the
venerable Paul says to married folks: "Do not deprive one another,
except by consent for a time to give yourselves to prayer, and
then return together lest Satan tempt you at the point of self-
control."[173]  One could consider that it is not a sin for a
married couple to have intercourse, not only for the sake of
procreating children -- which is the good of marriage -- but also
for the sake of the carnal pleasure involved.  Thus, those whose
self-control is weak could avoid fornication, or adultery, and
other kinds of impurity too shameful to name, into which their
lust might drag them through Satan's tempting.  Therefore one
could, as I said, consider this not a sin, had the apostle not
added, "But I say this as a concession, not as a rule." Who, then,
denies that it is a sin when he agrees that apostolic authority
for doing it is given only by "concession"?
     Another such case is seen where he says, "Dare any of you,
having a case against another, bring it to be judged before the
unrighteous and not the saints?"[174]  And a bit later: "If,
therefore, you have cases concerning worldly things," he says,
"you appoint those who are contemptible in the Church's eyes.  I
say this to shame you.  Can it be that there is not a wise man
among you, who could judge between his brethren?  But brother goes
to law with brother, and that in the presence of
unbelievers."[175]  And here it might be thought that it was not a
sin to bring suit against a brother, and that the only sin
consisted in wishing it judged outside the Church, if the apostle
had not added immediately, "Now therefore the whole fault among
you is that you have lawsuits with one another."[176]  Then, lest
someone excuse himself on this point by saying that he had a just
cause and was suffering injustice which he wished removed by
judicial sentence, the apostle directly resists such thoughts and
excuses by saying: "Why not rather suffer iniquity?  Why not
rather be defrauded?"[177]  Thus we are brought back to that
saying of the Lord: "If anyone would take your tunic and contend
in court with you, let go your cloak also."[178]  And in another
place: "If a man takes away your goods, seek them not back."[179]
Thus, he forbids his own to go to court with other men in secular
suits.  And it is because of this teaching that the apostle says
that this kind of action is "a fault." Still, when he allows such
suits to be decided in the Church, brothers judging brothers, yet
sternly forbids such a thing outside the Church, it is clear that
some concession is being made here for the infirmities of the
weak.
     Because of these and similar sins -- and of others even less
than these, such as offenses in words and thoughts -- and because,
as the apostle James confesses, "we all offend in many
things,"[180] it behooves us to pray to the Lord daily and often,
and say, "Forgive us our debts," and not lie about what follows
this petition, "As we also forgive our debtors."
     79.  There are, however, some sins that could be deemed quite
trifling if the Scriptures did not show that they are more serious
than we think.  For who would suppose that one saying to his
brother, "You fool," is "in danger of hell-fire," if the Truth had
not said it?  Still, for the hurt he immediately supplied a
medicine, adding the precept of brotherly reconciliation: "If,
therefore, you are offering a gift at the altar, and remember
there that your brother has something against you,"[181] etc.
     Or who would think how great a sin it is to observe days and
months and years and seasons -- as those people do who will or
will not begin projects on certain days or in certain months or
years, because they follow vain human doctrines and suppose that
various seasons are lucky or unlucky -- if we did not infer the
magnitude of this evil from the apostle's fear, in saying to such
men, "I fear for you, lest perhaps I have labored among you in
vain"[182]?
     80.  To this one might add those sins, however grave and
terrible, which, when they come to be habitual, are then believed
to be trivial or no sins at all.  And so far does this go that
such sins are not only not kept secret, but are even proclaimed
and published abroad -- cases of which it is written, "The sinner
is praised in the desires of his soul; and he that works iniquity
is blessed."[183]
     In the divine books such iniquity is called a "cry" (clamor).
You have such a usage in the prophet Isaiah's reference to the
evil vineyard: "I looked that he should perform justice, yet he
did iniquity; not justice but a cry."[184]  So also is that
passage in Genesis: "The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is
multiplied,"[185] for among these people such crimes were not only
unpunished, but were openly committed, as if sanctioned by law.
     So also in our times so many evils, even if not like those
[of old], have come to be public customs that we not only do not
dare excommunicate a layman; we do not dare degrade a clergyman
for them.  Thus, several years ago, when I was expounding the
Epistle to the Galatians, where the apostle says, "I fear for you,
lest perchance I have labored in vain among you," I was moved to
exclaim: "Woe to the sins of men!  We shrink from them only when
we are not accustomed to them.  As for those sins to which we are
accustomed -- although the blood of the Son of God was shed to
wash them away -- although they are so great that the Kingdom of
God is wholly closed to them, yet, living with them often we come
to tolerate them, and, tolerating them, we even practice some of
them!  But grant, O Lord, that we do not practice any of them
which we could prohibit!"  I shall someday know whether immoderate
indignation moved me here to speak rashly.


                         CHAPTER XXII

                    The Two Causes of Sin

     81.  I shall now mention what I have often discussed before
in other places in my short treatises.[186]  We sin from two
causes: either from not seeing what we ought to do, or else from
not doing what we have already seen we ought to do.  Of these two,
the first is ignorance of the evil; the second, weakness.
     We must surely fight against both; but we shall as surely be
defeated unless we are divinely helped, not only to see what we
ought to do, but also, as sound judgment increases, to make our
love of righteousness victor over our love of those things because
of which -- either by desiring to possess them or by fearing to
lose them -- we fall, open-eyed, into known sin.  In this latter
case, we are not only sinners -- which we are even when we sin
through ignorance -- but also lawbreakers: for we do not do what
we should, and we do what we know already we should not.
     Accordingly, we should pray for pardon if we have sinned, as
we do when we say, "Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our
debtors." But we should also pray that God should guide us away
from sin, and this we do when we say, "Lead us not into
temptation" -- and we should make our petitions to Him of whom it
is said in the psalm, "The Lord is my light and my
salvation"[187]; that, as Light, he may take away our ignorance,
as Salvation, our weakness.
     82.  Now, penance itself is often omitted because of
weakness, even when in Church custom there is an adequate reason
why it should be performed.  For shame is the fear of displeasing
men, when a man loves their good opinion more than he regards
judgment, which would make him humble himself in penitence.
Wherefore, not only for one to repent, but also in order that he
may be enabled to do so, the mercy of God is prerequisite.
Otherwise, the apostle would not say of some men, "In case God
giveth them repentance."[188]  And, similarly, that Peter might be
enabled to weep bitterly, the Evangelist tells, "The Lord looked
at him."[189]
     83.  But the man who does not believe that sins are forgiven
in the Church, who despises so great a bounty of the divine gifts
and ends, and persists to his last day in such an obstinacy of
mind -- that man is guilty of the unpardonable sin against the
Holy Spirit, in whom Christ forgiveth sins.[190]  I have discussed
this difficult question, as clearly as I could, in a little book
devoted exclusively to this very point.[191]


                        CHAPTER XXIII

              The Reality of the Resurrection

     84.  Now, with respect to the resurrection of the body -- and
by this I do not mean the cases of resuscitation after which
people died again, but a resurrection to eternal life after the
fashion of Christ's own body -- I have not found a way to discuss
it briefly and still give satisfactory answers to all the
questions usually raised about it.  Yet no Christian should have
the slightest doubt as to the fact that the bodies of all men,
whether already or yet to be born, whether dead or still to die,
will be resurrected.
     85.  Once this fact is established, then, first of all, comes
the question about abortive fetuses, which are indeed "born" in
the mother's womb, but are never so that they could be "reborn."
For, if we say that there is a resurrection for them, then we can
agree that at least as much is true of fetuses that are fully
formed.  But, with regard to undeveloped fetuses, who would not
more readily think that they perish, like seeds that did not
germinate?[192]
     But who, then, would dare to deny -- though he would not dare
to affirm it either -- that in the resurrection day what is
lacking in the forms of things will be filled out?  Thus, the
perfection which time would have accomplished will not be lacking,
any more than the blemishes wrought by time will still be present.
Nature, then, will be cheated of nothing apt and fitting which
time's passage would have brought, nor will anything remain
disfigured by anything adverse and contrary which time has
wrought.  But what is not yet a whole will become whole, just as
what has been disfigured will be restored to its full figure.
     86.  On this score, a corollary question may be most
carefully discussed by the most learned men, and still I do not
know that any man can answer it, namely: When does a human being
begin to live in the womb?  Is there some form of hidden life, not
yet apparent in the motions of a living thing?  To deny, for
example, that those fetuses ever lived at all which are cut away
limb by limb and cast out of the wombs of pregnant women, lest the
mothers die also if the fetuses were left there dead, would seem
much too rash.  But, in any case, once a man begins to live, it is
thereafter possible for him to die.  And, once dead, wheresoever
death overtook him, I cannot find the basis on which he would not
have a share in the resurrection of the dead.
     87.  By the same token, the resurrection is not to be denied
in the cases of monsters which are born and live, even if they
quickly die, nor should we believe that they will be raised as
they were, but rather in an amended nature and free from faults.
Far be it from us to say of that double-limbed man recently born
in the Orient -- about whom most reliable brethren have given
eyewitness reports and the presbyter Jerome, of holy memory, has
left a written account[193] -- far be it from us, I say, to
suppose that at the resurrection there will be one double man, and
not rather two men, as there would have been if they had actually
been born twins.  So also in other cases, which, because of some
excess or defect or gross deformity, are called monsters: at the
resurrection they will be restored to the normal human
physiognomy, so that every soul will have its own body and not two
bodies joined together, even though they were born this way.
Every soul will have, as its own, all that is required to complete
a whole human body.
     88.  Moreover, with God, the earthly substance from which the
flesh of mortal man is produced does not perish.  Instead, whether
it be dissolved into dust or ashes, or dispersed into vapors and
the winds, or converted into the substance of other bodies (or
even back into the basic elements themselves), or has served as
food for beasts or even men and been turned into their flesh -- in
an instant of time this matter returns to the soul that first
animated it, and that caused it to become a man, to live and to
grow.
     89.  This earthly matter which becomes a corpse upon the
soul's departure will not, at the resurrection, be so restored
that the parts into which it was separated and which have become
parts of other things must necessarily return to the same parts of
the body in which they were situated -- though they do return to
the body from which they were separated.  Otherwise, to suppose
that the hair recovers what frequent clippings have taken off, or
the nails get back what trimming has pared off, makes for a wild
and wholly unbecoming image in the minds of those who speculate
this way and leads them thus to disbelieve in the resurrection.
But take the example of a statue made of fusible metal: if it were
melted by heat or pounded into dust, or reduced to a shapeless
mass, and an artist wished to restore it again from the mass of
the same material, it would make no difference to the wholeness of
the restored statue which part of it was remade of what part of
the metal, so long as the statue, as restored, had been given all
the material of which it was originally composed.  Just so, God --
an artist who works in marvelous and mysterious ways -- will
restore our bodies, with marvelous and mysterious celerity, out of
the whole of the matter of which it was originally composed.  And
it will make no difference, in the restoration, whether hair
returns to hair and nails to nails, or whether the part of this
original matter that had perished is turned back into flesh and
restored to other parts of the body.  The main thing is that the
providence of the [divine] Artist takes care that nothing
unbecoming will result.
     90.  Nor does it follow that the stature of each person will
be different when brought to life anew because there were
differences in stature when first alive, nor that the lean will be
raised lean or the fat come back to life in their former obesity.
But if this is in the Creator's plan, that each shall retain his
special features and the proper and recognizable likeness of his
former self -- while an equality of physical endowment will be
preserved -- then the matter of which each resurrection body is
composed will be so disposed that none shall be lost, and any
defect will be supplied by Him who can create out of nothing as he
wills.
     But if in the bodies of those rising again there is to be an
intelligible inequality, such as between voices that fill out a
chorus, this will be managed by disposing the matter of each body
so to bring men into their place in the angelic band and impose
nothing on their senses that is inharmonious.  For surely nothing
unseemly will be there, and whatever is there will be fitting, and
this because the unfitting will simply not be.
     91.  The bodies of the saints, then, shall rise again free
from blemish and deformity, just as they will be also free from
corruption, encumbrance, or handicap.  Their facility [facilitas]
will be as complete as their felicity [felicitas].  This is why
their bodies are called "spiritual," though undoubtedly they will
be bodies and not spirits.  For just as now the body is called
"animate" [animale], though it is a body and not a "spirit"
[anima], so then it will be a "spiritual body," but still a body
and not a spirit.
     Accordingly, then, as far as the corruption which weighs down
the soul and the vices through which "the flesh lusts against the
spirit"[194] are concerned, there will be no "flesh," but only
body, since there are bodies that are called "heavenly
bodies."[195]  This is why it is said, "Flesh and blood shall not
inherit the Kingdom of God," and then, as if to expound what was
said, it adds, "Neither shall corruption inherit
incorruption."[196]  What the writer first called "flesh and
blood" he later called "corruption," and what he first called "the
Kingdom of God" he then later called "incorruption."
     But, as far as the substance of the resurrection body is
concerned, it will even then still be "flesh." This is why the
body of Christ is called "flesh" even after the resurrection.
Wherefore the apostle also says, "What is sown a natural body
[corpus animale] rises as a spiritual body [corpus
spirituale]."[197]  For there will then be such a concord between
flesh and spirit -- the spirit quickening the servant flesh
without any need of sustenance therefrom -- that there will be no
further conflict within ourselves.  And just as there will be no
more external enemies to bear with, so neither shall we have to
bear with ourselves as enemies within.
     92.  But whoever are not liberated from that mass of
perdition (brought to pass through the first man) by the one
Mediator between God and man, they will also rise again, each in
his own flesh, but only that they may be punished together with
the devil and his angels.  Whether these men will rise again with
all their faults and deformities, with their diseased and deformed
members -- is there any reason for us to labor such a question?
For obviously the uncertainty about their bodily form and beauty
need not weary us, since their damnation is certain and eternal.
And let us not be moved to inquire how their body can be
incorruptible if it can suffer -- or corruptible if it cannot die.
For there is no true life unless it be lived in happiness; no true
incorruptibility save where health is unscathed by pain.  But
where an unhappy being is not allowed to die, then death itself,
so to say, dies not; and where pain perpetually afflicts but never
destroys, corruption goes on endlessly.  This state is called, in
the Scripture, "the second death."[198]
     93.  Yet neither the first death, in which the soul is
compelled to leave its body, nor the second death, in which it is
not allowed to leave the body undergoing punishment, would have
befallen man if no one had sinned.  Surely, the lightest of all
punishments will be laid on those who have added no further sin to
that originally contracted.  Among the rest, who have added
further Sins to that one, they will suffer a damnation somewhat
more tolerable in proportion to the lesser degree of their
iniquity.


                         CHAPTER XXIV

       The Solution to Present Spiritual Enigmas to Be
           Awaited in the Life of the World To Come

     94.  And thus it will be that while the reprobated angels and
men go on in their eternal punishment, the saints will go on
learning more fully the blessings which grace has bestowed upon
them.  Then, through the actual realities of their experience,
they will see more clearly the meaning of what is written in The
Psalms: "I will sing to thee of mercy and judgment, O Lord"[199]
-- since no one is set free save by unmerited mercy and no one is
damned save by a merited condemnation.
     95.  Then what is now hidden will not be hidden: when one of
two infants is taken up by God's mercy and the other abandoned
through God's judgment -- and when the chosen one knows what would
have been his just deserts in judgment -- why was the one chosen
rather than the other, when the condition of the two was the same?
Or again, why were miracles not wrought in the presence of certain
people who would have repented in the face of miraculous works,
while miracles were wrought in the presence of those who were not
about to believe.  For our Lord saith most plainly: "Woe to you,
Chorazin; woe to you, Bethsaida.  For if in Tyre and Sidon had
been wrought the miracles done in your midst, they would have
repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes."[200]  Now, obviously,
God did not act unjustly in not willing their salvation, even
though they could have been saved, if he willed it so.[201]
     Then, in the clearest light of wisdom, will be seen what now
the pious hold by faith, not yet grasping it in clear
understanding -- how certain, immutable, and effectual is the will
of God, how there are things he can do but doth not will to do,
yet willeth nothing he cannot do, and how true is what is sung in
the psalm: "But our God is above in heaven; in heaven and on earth
he hath done all things whatsoever that he would."[202]  This
obviously is not true, if there is anything that he willed to do
and did not do, or, what were worse, if he did not do something
because man's will prevented him, the Omnipotent, from doing what
he willed.  Nothing, therefore, happens unless the Omnipotent
wills it to happen.  He either allows it to happen or he actually
causes it to happen.
     96.  Nor should we doubt that God doth well, even when he
alloweth whatever happens ill to happen.  For he alloweth it only
through a just judgment -- and surely all that is just is good.
Therefore, although evil, in so far as it is evil, is not good,
still it is a good thing that not only good things exist but evil
as well.  For if it were not good that evil things exist, they
would certainly not be allowed to exist by the Omnipotent Good,
for whom it is undoubtedly as easy not to allow to exist what he
does not will, as it is for him to do what he does will.
     Unless we believe this, the very beginning of our Confession
of Faith is imperiled -- the sentence in which we profess to
believe in God the Father Almighty.  For he is called Almighty for
no other reason than that he can do whatsoever he willeth and
because the efficacy of his omnipotent will is not impeded by the
will of any creature.
     97.  Accordingly, we must now inquire about the meaning of
what was said most truly by the apostle concerning God, "Who
willeth that all men should be saved."[203]  For since not all --
not even a majority -- _are_ saved, it would indeed appear that
the fact that what God willeth to happen does not happen is due to
an embargo on God's will by the human will.
     Now, when we ask for the reason why not all are saved, the
customary answer is: "Because they themselves have not willed it."
But this cannot be said of infants, who have not yet come to the
power of willing or not willing.  For, if we could attribute to
their wills the infant squirmings they make at baptism, when they
resist as hard as they can, we would then have to say that they
were saved against their will.  But the Lord's language is clearer
when, in the Gospel, he reproveth the unrighteous city: "How
often," he saith, "would I have gathered your children together,
as a hen gathers her chicks, and you would not."[204]  This sounds
as if God's will had been overcome by human wills and as if the
weakest, by not willing, impeded the Most Powerful so that he
could not do what he willed.  And where is that omnipotence by
which "whatsoever he willed in heaven and on earth, he has done,"
if he willed to gather the children of Jerusalem together, and did
not do so?  Or, is it not rather the case that, although Jerusalem
did not will that her children be gathered together by him, yet,
despite her unwillingness, God did indeed gather together those
children of hers whom he would?  It is not that "in heaven and on
earth" he hath willed and done some things, and willed other
things and not done them.  Instead, "all things whatsoever he
willed, he hath done."


                         CHAPTER XXV

           Predestination and the Justice of God

     98.  Furthermore, who would be so impiously foolish as to say
that God cannot turn the evil wills of men -- as he willeth, when
he willeth, and where he willeth -- toward the good?  But, when he
acteth, he acteth through mercy; when he doth not act, it is
through justice.  For, "he hath mercy on whom he willeth; and whom
he willeth, he hardeneth."[205]
     Now when the apostle said this, he was commending grace, of
which he had just spoken in connection with the twin children in
Rebecca's womb: "Before they had yet been born, or had done
anything good or bad, in order that the electing purpose of God
might continue -- not through works but through the divine calling
-- it was said of them, 'The elder shall serve the younger.'
"[206] Accordingly, he refers to another prophetic witness, where
it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau have I hated."[207]  Then,
realizing how what he said could disturb those whose understanding
could not penetrate to this depth of grace, he adds: "What
therefore shall we say to this?  Is there unrighteousness in God?
God forbid!"[208]  Yet it does seem unfair that, without any merit
derived from good works or bad, God should love the one and hate
the other.  Now, if the apostle had wished us to understand that
there were future good deeds of the one, and evil deeds of the
other -- which God, of course, foreknew -- he would never have
said "not of good works" but rather "of _future_ works." Thus he
would have solved the difficulty; or, rather, he would have left
no difficulty to be solved.  As it is, however, when he went on to
exclaim, "God forbid!" -- that is, "God forbid that there should
be unfairness in God" -- he proceeds immediately to add (to prove
that no unfairness in God is involved here), "For he says to
Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will
show pity to whom I will show pity.'"[209] Now, who but a fool
would think God unfair either when he imposes penal judgment on
the deserving or when he shows mercy to the undeserving?  Finally,
the apostle concludes and says, "Therefore, it is not a question
of him who wills nor of him who runs but of God's showing
mercy."[210]
     Thus, both the twins were "by nature children of wrath,"[211]
not because of any works of their own, but because they were both
bound in the fetters of damnation originally forged by Adam.  But
He who said, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy," loved
Jacob in unmerited mercy, yet hated Esau with merited justice.
Since this judgment [of wrath] was due them both, the former
learned from what happened to the other that the fact that he had
not, with equal merit, incurred the same penalty gave him no
ground to boast of his own distinctive merits -- but, instead,
that he should glory in the abundance of divine grace, because "it
is not a question of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of
God's showing mercy."[212]  And, indeed, the whole visage of
Scripture and, if I may speak so, the lineaments of its
countenance, are found to exhibit a mystery, most profound and
salutary, to admonish all who carefully look thereupon "that he
who glories, should glory in the Lord."[213]
     99.  Now, after the apostle had commended God's mercy in
saying, "So then, there is no question of him who wills nor of him
who runs, but of God's showing mercy," next in order he intends to
speak also of his judgment -- for where his mercy is not shown, it
is not unfairness but justice.  For with God there is no
injustice.  Thus, he immediately added, "For the Scripture says to
Pharaoh, 'For this very purpose I raised you up, that I may show
through you my power, and that my name may be proclaimed in all
the earth."[214]  Then, having said this, he draws a conclusion
that looks both ways, that is, toward mercy and toward judgment:
"Therefore," he says, "he hath mercy on whom he willeth, and whom
he willeth he hardeneth." He showeth mercy out of his great
goodness; he hardeneth out of no unfairness at all.  In this way,
neither does he who is saved have a basis for glorying in any
merit of his own; nor does the man who is damned have a basis for
complaining of anything except what he has fully merited.  For
grace alone separates the redeemed from the lost, all having been
mingled together in the one mass of perdition, arising from a
common cause which leads back to their common origin.  But if any
man hears this in such a way as to say: "Why then does he find
fault?  For who resists his will?"[215] -- as if to make it seem
that man should not therefore be blamed for being evil _because_
God "hath mercy on whom he willeth and whom he willeth he
hardeneth" -- God forbid that we should be ashamed to give the
same reply as we see the apostle giving: "O man, who are you to
reply to God?  Does the molded object say to the molder, 'Why have
you made me like this?'  Or is not the potter master of his clay,
to make from the same mass one vessel for honorable, another for
ignoble, use?"[216]
     There are some stupid men who think that in this part of the
argument the apostle had no answer to give; and, for lack of a
reasonable rejoinder, simply rebuked the audacity of his
gainsayer.  But what he said -- "O man, who are you?" -- has
actually great weight and in an argument like this recalls man, in
a single word, to consider the limits of his capacity and, at the
same time, supplies an important explanation.
     For if one does not understand these matters, who is he to
talk back to God?  And if one does understand, he finds no better
ground even then for talking back.  For if he understands, he sees
that the whole human race was condemned in its apostate head by a
divine judgment so just that not even if a single member of the
race were ever saved from it, no one could rail against God's
justice.  And he also sees that those who are saved had to be
saved on such terms that it would show -- by contrast with the
greater number of those not saved but simply abandoned to their
wholly just damnation -- what the whole mass deserved and to what
end God's merited judgment would have brought them, had not his
undeserved mercy interposed.  Thus every mouth of those disposed
to glory in their own merits should be stopped, so that "he that
glories may glory in the Lord."[217]


                         CHAPTER XXVI

            The Triumph of God's Sovereign Good Will

     100.  These are "the great works of the Lord, well-considered
in all his acts of will"[218] -- and so wisely well-considered
that when his angelic and human creation sinned (that is, did not
do what he willed, but what it willed) he could still accomplish
what he himself had willed and this through the same creaturely
will by which the first act contrary to the Creator's will had
been done.  As the Supreme Good, he made good use of evil deeds,
for the damnation of those whom he had justly predestined to
punishment and for the salvation of those whom he had mercifully
predestined to grace.
     For, as far as they were concerned, they did what God did not
will that they do, but as far as God's omnipotence is concerned,
they were quite unable to achieve their purpose.  In their very
act of going against his will, his will was thereby accomplished.
This is the meaning of the statement, "The works of the Lord are
great, well-considered in all his acts of will" -- that in a
strange and ineffable fashion even that which is done against his
will is not done without his will.  For it would not be done
without his allowing it -- and surely his permission is not
unwilling but willing -- nor would he who is good allow the evil
to be done, unless in his omnipotence he could bring good even out
of evil.
     101.  Sometimes, however, a man of good will wills something
that God doth not will, even though God's will is much more, and
much more certainly, good -- for under no circumstances can it
ever be evil.  For example, it is a good son's will that his
father live, whereas it is God's good will that he should die.
Or, again, it can happen that a man of evil will can will
something that God also willeth with a good will -- as, for
example, a bad son wills that his father die and this is also
God's will.  Of course, the former wills what God doth not will,
whereas the latter does will what God willeth.  Yet the piety of
the one, though he wills not what God willeth, is more consonant
with God's will than is the impiety of the other, who wills the
same thing that God willeth.  There is a very great difference
between what is fitting for man to will and what is fitting for
God -- and also between the ends to which a man directs his will
-- and this difference determines whether an act of will is to be
approved or disapproved.  Actually, God achieveth some of his
purposes -- which are, of course, all good -- through the evil
wills of bad men.  For example, it was through the ill will of the
Jews that, by the good will of the Father, Christ was slain for us
-- a deed so good that when the apostle Peter would have nullified
it he was called "Satan" by him who had come in order to be
slain.[219]  How good seemed the purposes of the pious faithful
who were unwilling that the apostle Paul should go to Jerusalem,
lest there he should suffer the things that the prophet Agabus had
predicted![220]  And yet God had willed that he should suffer
these things for the sake of the preaching of Christ, and for the
training of a martyr for Christ.  And this good purpose of his he
achieved, not through the good will of the Christians, but through
the ill will of the Jews.  Yet they were more fully his who did
not will what he willed than were those who were willing
instruments of his purpose -- for while he and the latter did the
very same thing, he worked through them with a good will, whereas
they did his good will with their ill will.
     102.  But, however strong the wills either of angels or of
men, whether good or evil, whether they will what God willeth or
will something else, the will of the Omnipotent is always
undefeated.  And this will can never be evil, because even when it
inflicts evils, it is still just; and obviously what is just is
not evil.  Therefore, whether through pity "he hath mercy on whom
he willeth," or in justice "whom he willeth, he hardeneth," the
omnipotent God never doth anything except what he doth will, and
doth everything that he willeth.


                        CHAPTER XXVII

          Limits of God's Plan for Human Salvation

     103.  Accordingly, when we hear and read in sacred Scripture
that God "willeth that all men should be saved,"[221] although we
know well enough that not all men are saved, we are not on that
account to underrate the fully omnipotent will of God.  Rather, we
must understand the Scripture, "Who will have all men to be
saved," as meaning that no man is saved unless God willeth his
salvation: not that there is no man whose salvation he doth not
will, but that no one is saved unless He willeth it.  Moreover,
his will should be sought in prayer, because if he willeth, then
what he willeth must necessarily be.  And, indeed, it was of
prayer to God that the apostle was speaking when he made that
statement.  Thus, we are also to understand what is written in the
Gospel about Him "who enlighteneth every man."[222]  This means
that there is no man who is enlightened except by God.
     In any case, the word concerning God, "who will have all men
to be saved," does not mean that there is no one whose salvation
he doth not will -- he who was unwilling to work miracles among
those who, he said, would have repented if he had wrought them --
but by "all men" we are to understand the whole of mankind, in
every single group into which it can be divided: kings and
subjects; nobility and plebeians; the high and the low; the
learned and unlearned; the healthy and the sick; the bright, the
dull, and the stupid; the rich, the poor, and the middle class;
males, females, infants, children, the adolescent, young adults
and middle-aged and very old; of every tongue and fashion, of all
the arts, of all professions, with the countless variety of wills
and minds and all the other things that differentiate people.  For
from which of these groups doth not God will that some men from
every nation should be saved through his only begotten Son our
Lord?  Therefore, he doth save them since the Omnipotent cannot
will in vain, whatsoever he willeth.
     Now, the apostle had enjoined that prayers should be offered
"for all men"[223] and especially "for kings and all those of
exalted station,"[224] whose worldly pomp and pride could be
supposed to be a sufficient cause for them to despise the humility
of the Christian faith.  Then, continuing his argument, "for this
is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour"[225]--
that is, to pray even for such as these [kings] -- the apostle, to
remove any warrant for despair, added, "Who willeth that all men
be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth."[226]  Truly,
then, God hath judged it good that through the prayers of the
lowly he would deign to grant salvation to the exalted -- a
paradox we have already seen exemplified.  Our Lord also useth the
same manner of speech in the Gospel, where he saith to the
Pharisees, "You tithe mint and rue and every herb."[227]
Obviously, the Pharisees did not tithe what belonged to others,
nor all the herbs of all the people of other lands.  Therefore,
just as we should interpret "every herb" to mean "every kind of
herb," so also we can interpret "all men" to mean "all kinds of
men." We could interpret it in any other fashion, as long as we
are not compelled to believe that the Omnipotent hath willed
anything to be done which was not done.  "He hath done all things
in heaven and earth, whatsoever he willed,"[228] as Truth sings of
him, and surely he hath not willed to do anything that he hath not
done.  There must be no equivocation on this point.


                        CHAPTER XXVIII

                      The Destiny of Man

     104.  Consequently, God would have willed to preserve even
the first man in that state of salvation in which he was created
and would have brought him in due season, after the begetting of
children, to a better state without the intervention of death --
where he not only would have been unable to sin, but would not
have had even the will to sin -- if he had foreknown that man
would have had a steadfast will to continue without sin, as he had
been created to do.  But since he did foreknow that man would make
bad use of his free will -- that is, that he would sin -- God
prearranged his own purpose so that he could do good to man, even
in man's doing evil, and so that the good will of the Omnipotent
should be nullified by the bad will of men, but should nonetheless
be fulfilled.
     105.  Thus it was fitting that man should be created, in the
first place, so that he could will both good and evil -- not
without reward, if he willed the good; not without punishment, if
he willed the evil.  But in the future life he will not have the
power to will evil; and yet this will not thereby restrict his
free will.  Indeed, his will will be much freer, because he will
then have no power whatever to serve sin.  For we surely ought not
to find fault with such a will, nor say it is no will, or that it
is not rightly called free, when we so desire happiness that we
not only are unwilling to be miserable, but have no power
whatsoever to will it.
     And, just as in our present state, our soul is unable to will
unhappiness for ourselves, so then it will be forever unable to
will iniquity.  But the ordered course of God's plan was not to be
passed by, wherein he willed to show how good the rational
creature is that is able not to sin, although one unable to sin is
better.[229]  So, too, it was an inferior order of immortality --
but yet it was immortality -- in which man was capable of not
dying, even if the higher order which is to be is one in which man
will be incapable of dying.[230]
     106.  Human nature lost the former kind of immortality
through the misuse of free will.  It is to receive the latter
through grace -- though it was to have obtained it through merit,
if it had not sinned.  Not even then, however, could there have
been any merit without grace.  For although sin had its origin in
free will alone, still free will would not have been sufficient to
maintain justice, save as divine aid had been afforded man, in the
gift of participation in the immutable good.  Thus, for example,
the power to die when he wills it is in a man's own hands -- since
there is no one who could not kill himself by not eating (not to
mention other means).  But the bare will is not sufficient for
maintaining life, if the aids of food and other means of
preservation are lacking.
     Similarly, man in paradise was capable of self-destruction by
abandoning justice by an act of will; yet if the life of justice
was to be maintained, his will alone would not have sufficed,
unless He who made him had given him aid.  But, after the Fall,
God's mercy was even more abundant, for then the will itself had
to be freed from the bondage in which sin and death are the
masters.  There is no way at all by which it can be freed by
itself, but only through God's grace, which is made effectual in
the faith of Christ.  Thus, as it is written, even the will by
which "the will itself is prepared by the Lord"[231] so that we
may receive the other gifts of God through which we come to the
Gift eternal -- this too comes from God.
     107.  Accordingly, even the life eternal, which is surely the
wages of good works, is called a _gift_ of God by the apostle.
"For the wages of sin," he says, "is death; but the gift of God is
eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."[232]  Now, wages for
military service are paid as a just debit, not as a gift.  Hence,
he said "the wages of sin is death," to show that death was not an
unmerited pun ishment for sin but a just debit.  But a gift,
unless it be gratuitous, is not grace.  We are, therefore, to
understand that even man's merited goods are gifts from God, and
when life eternal is given through them, what else do we have but
"grace upon grace returned"[233]?
     Man was, therefore, made upright, and in such a fashion that
he could either continue in that uprightness -- though not without
divine aid -- or become perverted by his own choice.  Whichever of
these two man had chosen, God's will would be done, either by man
or at least _concerning_ him.  Wherefore, since man chose to do
his own will instead of God's, God's will _concerning_ him was
done; for, from the same mass of perdition that flowed out of that
common source, God maketh "one vessel for honorable, another for
ignoble use"[234]; the ones for honorable use through his mercy,
the ones for ignoble use through his judgment; lest anyone glory
in man, or -- what is the same thing -- in himself.
     108.  Now, we could not be redeemed, even through "the one
Mediator between God and man, Man himself, Christ Jesus,"[235] if
he were not also God.  For when Adam was made -- being made an
upright man -- there was no need for a mediator.  Once sin,
however, had widely separated the human race from God, it was
necessary for a mediator, who alone was born, lived, and was put
to death without sin, to reconcile us to God, and provide even for
our bodies a resurrection to life eternal -- and all this in order
that man's pride might be exposed and healed through God's
humility.  Thus it might be shown man how far he had departed from
God, when by the incarnate God he is recalled to God; that man in
his contumacy might be furnished an example of obedience by the
God-Man; that the fount of grace might be opened up; that even the
resurrection of the body -- itself promised to the redeemed --
might be previewed in the resurrection of the Redeemer himself;
that the devil might be vanquished by that very nature he was
rejoicing over having deceived -- all this, however, without
giving man ground for glory in himself, lest pride spring up anew.
And if there are other advantages accruing from so great a mystery
of the Mediator, which those who profit from them can see or
testify -- even if they cannot be described -- let them be added
to this list.


                         CHAPTER XXIX

                       "The Last Things"

     109.  Now, for the time that intervenes between man's death
and the final resurrection, there is a secret shelter for his
soul, as each is worthy of rest or affliction according to what it
has merited while it lived in the body.
     110.  There is no denying that the souls of the dead are
benefited by the piety of their living friends, when the sacrifice
of the Mediator is offered for the dead, or alms are given in the
church. But these means benefit only those who, when they were
living, have merited that such services could be of help to them.
For there is a mode of life that is neither so good as not to need
such helps after death nor so bad as not to gain benefit from them
after death.  There is, however, a good mode of life that does not
need such helps, and, again, one so thoroughly bad that, when such
a man departs this life, such helps avail him nothing.  It is
here, then, in this life, that all merit or demerit is acquired
whereby a man's condition in the life hereafter is improved or
worsened.  Therefore, let no one hope to obtain any merit with God
after he is dead that he has neglected to obtain here in this
life.
     So, then, those means which the Church constantly uses in
interceding for the dead are not opposed to that statement of the
apostle when he said, "For all of us shall stand before the
tribunal of Christ, so that each may receive according to what he
has done in the body, whether good or evil."[236]  For each man
has for himself while living in the body earned the merit whereby
these means can benefit him [after death].  For they do not
benefit all.  And yet why should they not benefit all, unless it
be because of the different kinds of lives men lead in the body?
Accordingly, when sacrifices, whether of the altar or of alms, are
offered for the baptized dead, they are thank offerings for the
very good, propitiations for the not-so-very-bad [non valde
malis], and, as for the very bad -- even if they are of no help to
the dead -- they are at least a sort of consolation to the living.
Where they are of value, their benefit consists either in
obtaining a full forgiveness or, at least, in making damnation
more tolerable.
     111.  After the resurrection, however, when the general
judgment has been held and finished, the boundary lines will be
set for the two cities: the one of Christ, the other of the devil;
one for the good, the other for the bad -- both including angels
and men.  In the one group, there will be no will to sin, in the
other, no power to sin, nor any further possibility of dying.  The
citizens of the first commonwealth will go on living truly and
happily in life eternal.  The second will go on, miserable in
death eternal, with no power to die to it.  The condition of both
societies will then be fixed and endless.  But in the first city,
some will outrank others in bliss, and in the second, some will
have a more tolerable burden of misery than others.
     112.  It is quite in vain, then, that some -- indeed very
many -- yield to merely human feelings and deplore the notion of
the eternal punishment of the damned and their interminable and
perpetual misery.  They do not believe that such things will be.
Not that they would go counter to divine Scripture -- but,
yielding to their own human feelings, they soften what seems harsh
and give a milder emphasis to statements they believe are meant
more to terrify than to express the literal truth.  "God will not
forget," they say, "to show mercy, nor in his anger will he shut
up his mercy." This is, in fact, the text of a holy psalm.[237]
But there is no doubt that it is to be interpreted to refer to
those who are called "vessels of mercy,"[238] those who are freed
from misery not by their own merits but through God's mercy.  Even
so, if they suppose that the text applies to all men, there is no
ground for them further to suppose that there can be an end for
those of whom it is said, "Thus these shall go into everlasting
punishment."[239]  Otherwise, it can as well be thought that there
will also be an end to the happiness of those of whom the
antithesis was said: "But the righteous into life eternal."
     But let them suppose, if it pleases them, that, for certain
intervals of time, the punishments of the damned are somewhat
mitigated.  Even so, the wrath of God must be understood as still
resting on them.  And this is damnation -- for this anger, which
is not a violent passion in the divine mind, is called "wrath" in
God.  Yet even in his wrath -- his wrath resting on them -- he
does not "shut up his mercy." This is not to put an end to their
eternal afflictions, but rather to apply or interpose some little
respite in their torments.  For the psalm does not say, "To put an
end to his wrath," or, "_After_ his wrath," but, "_In_ his wrath."
Now, if this wrath were all there is [in man's damnation], and
even if it were present only in the slightest degree conceivable
-- still, to be lost out of the Kingdom of God, to be an exile
from the City of God, to be estranged from the life of God, to
suffer loss of the great abundance of God's blessings which he has
hidden for those who fear him and prepared for those who hope in
him[240] -- this would be a punishment so great that, if it be
eternal, no torments that we know could be compared to it, no
matter how many ages they continued.
     113.  The eternal death of the damned -- that is, their
estrangement from the life of God -- will therefore abide without
end, and it will be common to them all, no matter what some
people, moved by their human feelings, may wish to think about
gradations of punishment, or the relief or intermission of their
misery.  In the same way, the eternal life of the saints will
abide forever, and also be common to all of them no matter how
different the grades of rank and honor in which they shine forth
in their effulgent harmony.


                         CHAPTER XXX

     The Principles of Christian Living: Faith and Hope

     114.  Thus, from our confession of _faith_, briefly
summarized in the Creed (which is milk for babes when pondered at
the carnal level but food for strong men when it is considered and
studied spiritually), there is born the good _hope_ of the
faithful, accompanied by a holy _love_.[241]  But of these
affirmations, all of which ought _faithfully_ to be believed, only
those which have to do with _hope_ are contained in the Lord's
Prayer.  For "cursed is everyone," as the divine eloquence
testified, "who rests his hope in man."[242]  Thus, he who rests
his hope in himself is bound by the bond of this curse.
Therefore, we should seek from none other than the Lord God
whatever it is that we hope to do well, or hope to obtain as
reward for our good works.
     115.  Accordingly, in the Evangelist Matthew, the Lord's
Prayer may be seen to contain seven petitions: three of them ask
for eternal goods, the other four for temporal goods, which are,
however, necessary for obtaining the eternal goods.
     For when we say: "Hallowed be thy name.  Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven"[243] -- this last
being wrongly interpreted by some as meaning "in body and spirit"
-- these blessings will be retained forever.  They begin in this
life, of course; they are increased in us as we make progress, but
in their perfection -- which is to be hoped for in the other life
-- they will be possessed forever!  But when we say: "Give us this
day our daily bread.  And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our
debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil,"[244] who does not see that all these pertain to our needs
in the present life?  In that life eternal -- where we all hope to
be -- the hallowing of God's name, his Kingdom, and his will, in
our spirit and body will abide perfectly and immortally.  But in
this life we ask for "daily bread" because it is necessary, in the
measure required by soul and body, whether we take the term in a
spiritual or bodily sense, or both.  And here too it is that we
petition for forgiveness, where the sins are committed; here too
are the temptations that allure and drive us to sinning; here,
finally, the evil from which we wish to be freed.  But in that
other world none of these things will be found.
     116.  However, the Evangelist Luke, in his version of the
Lord's Prayer, has brought together, not seven, but five
petitions.  Yet, obviously, there is no discrepancy here, but
rather, in his brief way, the Evangelist has shown us how the
seven petitions should be understood.  Actually, God's name is
even now hallowed in the spirit, but the Kingdom of God is yet to
come in the resurrection of the body.  Therefore, Luke was seeking
to show that the third petition ["Thy will be done"] is a
repetition of the first two, and makes this better understood by
omitting it.  He then adds three other petitions, concerning daily
bread, forgiveness of sins, and avoidance of temptation.[245]
However, what Matthew puts in the last place, "But deliver us from
evil," Luke leaves out, in order that we might understand that it
was included in what was previously said about temptation.  This
is, indeed, why Matthew said, "_But_ deliver us," instead of,
"_And_ deliver us," as if to indicate that there is only one
petition -- "Will not this, but that" -- so that anyone would
realize that he is being delivered from evil in that he is not
being led into temptation.


                         CHAPTER XXXI

                             Love

     117.  And now regarding _love_, which the apostle says is
greater than the other two -- that is, faith and hope -- for the
more richly it dwells in a man, the better the man in whom it
dwells.  For when we ask whether someone is a good man, we are not
asking what he believes, or hopes, but what he loves.  Now, beyond
all doubt, he who loves aright believes and hopes rightly.
Likewise, he who does not love believes in vain, even if what he
believes is true; he hopes in vain, even if what he hopes for is
generally agreed to pertain to true happiness, unless he believes
and hopes for this: that he may through prayer obtain the gift of
love.  For, although it is true that he cannot hope without love,
it may be that there is something without which, if he does not
love it, he cannot realize the object of his hopes.  An example of
this would be if a man hopes for life eternal -- and who is there
who does not love that? -- and yet does not love _righteousness_,
without which no one comes to it.
     Now this is the true faith of Christ which the apostle
commends: faith that works through love.  And what it yet lacks in
love it asks that it may receive, it seeks that it may find, and
knocks that it may be opened unto it.[246]  For faith achieves
what the law commands [fides namque impetrat quod lex imperat].
And, without the gift of God -- that is, without the Holy Spirit,
through whom love is shed abroad in our hearts -- the law may bid
but it cannot aid [jubere lex poterit, non juvare].  Moreover, it
can make of man a transgressor, who cannot then excuse himself by
pleading ignorance.  For appetite reigns where the love of God
does not.[247]
     118.  When, in the deepest shadows of ignorance, he lives
according to the flesh with no restraint of reason -- this is the
primal state of man.[248]  Afterward, when "through the law the
knowledge of sin"[249] has come to man, and the Holy Spirit has
not yet come to his aid -- so that even if he wishes to live
according to the law, he is vanquished -- man sins knowingly and
is brought under the spell and made the slave of sin, "for by
whatever a man is vanquished, of this master he is the
slave"[250].  The effect of the knowledge of the law is that sin
works in man the whole round of concupiscence, which adds to the
guilt of the first transgression.  And thus it is that what was
written is fulfilled: "The law entered in, that the offense might
abound."[251]  This is the _second_ state of man.[252]
     But if God regards a man with solicitude so that he then
believes in God's help in fulfilling His commands, and if a man
begins to be led by the Spirit of God, then the mightier power of
love struggles against the power of the flesh.[253]  And although
there is still in man a power that fights against him -- his
infirmity being not yet fully healed -- yet he [the righteous man]
lives by faith and lives righteously in so far as he does not
yield to evil desires, conquering them by his love of
righteousness.  This is the _third_ stage of the man of good hope.
     A final peace is in store for him who continues to go forward
in this course toward perfection through steadfast piety.  This
will be perfected beyond this life in the repose of the spirit,
and, at the last, in the resurrection of the body.
     Of these four different stages of man, the first is before
the law, the second is under the law, the third is under grace,
and the fourth is in full and perfect peace.  Thus, also, the
history of God's people has been ordered by successive temporal
epochs, as it pleased God, who "ordered all things in measure and
number and weight."[254]  The first period was before the law; the
second under the law, which was given through Moses; the next,
under grace which was revealed through the first Advent of the
Mediator."[255]  This grace was not previously absent from those
to whom it was to be imparted, although, in conformity to the
temporal dispensations, it was veiled and hidden.  For none of the
righteous men of antiquity could find salvation apart from the
faith of Christ.  And, unless Christ had also been known to them,
he could not have been prophesied to us -- sometimes openly and
sometimes obscurely -- through their ministry.
     119.  Now, in whichever of these four "ages" -- if one can
call them that -- the grace of regeneration finds a man, then and
there all his past sins are forgiven him and the guilt he
contracted in being born is removed by his being reborn.  And so
true is it that "the Spirit breatheth where he willeth"[256] that
some men have never known the second "age" of slavery under the
law, but begin to have divine aid directly under the new
commandment.
     120.  Yet, before a man can receive the commandment, he must,
of course, live according to the flesh.  But, once he has been
imbued with the sacrament of rebirth, no harm will come to him
even if he then immediately depart this life -- "Wherefore on this
account Christ died and rose again, that he might be the Lord of
both the living and the dead."'[257] Nor will the kingdom of death
have dominion over him for whom He, who was "free among the
dead,"[258] died.


                        CHAPTER XXXII

                    The End of All the Law

     121.  All the divine precepts are, therefore, referred back
to _love_, of which the apostle says, "Now the end of the
commandment is love, out of a pure heart, and a good conscience
and a faith unfeigned."[259]  Thus every commandment harks back to
love.  For whatever one does either in fear of punishment or from
some carnal impulse, so that it does not measure up to the
standard of love which the Holy Spirit sheds abroad in our hearts
-- whatever it is, it is not yet done as it should be, although it
may seem to be.  Love, in this context, of course includes both
the love of God and the love of our neighbor and, indeed, "on
these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets"[260] --
and, we may add, the gospel and the apostles, for from nowhere
else comes the voice, "The end of the commandment is love,"[261]
and, "God is love."[262]
     Therefore, whatsoever things God commands (and one of these
is, "Thou shalt not commit adultery"[263]) and whatsoever things
are not positively ordered but are strongly advised as good
spiritual counsel (and one of these is, "It is a good thing for a
man not to touch a woman"[264]) -- all of these imperatives are
rightly obeyed only when they are measured by the standard of our
love of God and our love of our neighbor in God [propter Deum].
This applies both in the present age and in the world to come.
Now we love God in faith; then, at sight.  For, though mortal men
ourselves, we do not know the hearts of mortal men.  But then "the
Lord will illuminate the hidden things in the darkness and will
make manifest the cogitations of the heart; and then shall each
one have his praise from God"[265] -- for what will be praised and
loved in a neighbor by his neighbor is just that which, lest it
remain hidden, God himself will bring to light.  Moreover, passion
decreases as love increases[266] until love comes at last to that
fullness which cannot be surpassed, "for greater love than this no
one has, that a man lay down his life for his friends."[267]  Who,
then, can explain how great the power of love will be, when there
will be no passion [cupiditas] for it to restrain or overcome?
For, then, the supreme state of true health [summa sanitas] will
have been reached, when the struggle with death shall be no more.


                        CHAPTER XXXIII

                          Conclusion

     122.  But somewhere this book must have an end.  You can see
for yourself whether you should call it an Enchiridion, or use it
as one.  But since I have judged that your zeal in Christ ought
not to be spurned and since I believe and hope for good things for
you through the help of our Redeemer, and since I love you greatly
as one of the members of his body, I have written this book for
you -- may its usefulness match its prolixity! -- on Faith, Hope,
and Love.




                             NOTES

[1] 1 Cor. 1:20.
[2] Wis. 6:26 (Vulgate).
[3] Rom. 16:19.
[4] A later interpolation, not found in the best MSS., adds, "As
no one can exist from himself, so also no one can be wise in
himself save only as he is enlightened by Him of whom it is
written, 'All wisdom is from God' [Ecclus. 1:1]."
[5] Job 28:28.
[6] A transliteration of the Greek, literally, a handbook or
manual.
[7] Cf. Gal. 5:6.
[8] Cf. 1 Cor. 13:10, 11.
[9] 1 Cor. 3:11.
[10] Already, very early in his ministry (397), Augustine had
written De agone Christiano, in which he had reviewed and refuted
a full score of heresies threatening the orthodox faith.
[11] The Apostles' Creed.  Cf. Augustine's early essay On Faith
and the Creed.
[12] Joel 2:32.
[13] Rom. 10:14.
[14] Lucan, Pharsalia, II, 15.
[15] Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 419.  The context of this quotation is
Dido's lament over Aeneas' prospective abandonment of her.  She is
saying that if she could have foreseen such a disaster, she would
have been able to bear it.  Augustine's criticism here is a
literalistic quibble.
[16] Heb. 11:1.
[17] Sacra eloquia -- a favorite phrase of Augustine's for the
Bible.
[18] Rom. 8:24, 25 (Old Latin).
[19] James 2:19.
[20] One of the standard titles of early Greek philosophical
treatises would translate into Latin as De rerum natura.  This is,
in fact, the title of Lucretius' famous poem, the greatest
philosophical work written in classical Latin.
[21] This basic motif appears everywhere in Augustine's thought as
the very foundation of his whole system.
[22] This section (Chs. III and IV) is the most explicit statement
of a major motif which pervades the whole of Augustinian
metaphysics.  We see it in his earliest writings, Soliloquies, 1,
2, and De ordine, II, 7.  It is obviously a part of the
Neoplatonic heritage which Augustine appropriated for his
Christian philosophy.  The good is positive, constructive,
essential; evil is privative, destructive, parasitic on the good.
It has its origin, not in nature, but in the will.  Cf.
Confessions, Bk. VII, Chs. III, V, XII-XVI; On Continence, 14-16;
On the Gospel of John, Tractate XCVIII, 7; City of God, XI, 17;
XII, 7-9.
[23] Isa. 5:20.
[24] Matt. 12:35.
[25] This refers to Aristotle's well-known principle of "the
excluded middle."
[26] Matt. 7:18.
[27] Cf. Matt. 12:33.
[28] Virgil, Georgios, II, 490.
[29] Ibid., 479.
[30] Sed in via pedum, non in via morum.
[31] Virgil, Eclogue, VIII, 42.  The context of the passage is
Damon's complaint over his faithless Nyssa; he is here remembering
the first time he ever saw her -- when he was twelve!  Cf.
Theocritus, II, 82.
[32] Cf. Matt. 5:37.
[33] Cf. Confessions, Bk. X, Ch. XXIII.
[34] Ad consentium contra mendacium, CSEL (J. Zycha, ed.), Vol.
41, pp. 469-528; also Migne, PL, 40, c. 517-548; English
translation by H.B. Jaffee in Deferrari, St. Augustine: Treatises
on Various Subjects (The Fathers of the Church, New York, 1952),
pp. 113-179.  This had been written about a year earlier than the
Enchiridion.  Augustine had also written another treatise On Lying
much earlier, c. 395; see De mendacio in CSEL (J. Zycha, ed.),
Vol. 41, pp. 413-466; Migne, PL, 40, c. 487-518; English
translation by M.S. Muldowney in Deferrari, op. cit., pp. 47-109.
This summary of his position here represents no change of view
whatever on this question.
[35] Sallust, The War with Catiline, X, 6-7.
[36] Cf. Acts 12:9.
[37] Virgil, Aeneid, X, 392.
[38] This refers to one of the first of the Cassiciacum dialogues,
Contra Academicos.  The gist of Augustine's refutation of
skepticism is in III, 23ff.  Throughout his whole career he
continued to maintain this position: that certain knowledge begins
with self-knowledge.  Cf. Confessions, Bk. V, Ch. X, 19; see also
City of God, XI, xxvii.
[39] Hab. 2:4; Rom. 1:17.
[40] A direct contrast between suspensus assenso -- the watchword
of the Academics -- and assensio, the badge of Christian
certitude.
[41] See above, VII, 90.
[42] Matt. 5:37.
[43] Matt. 6:12.
[44] Rom. 5:12.
[45] Cf. Luke 20:36.
[46] Rom. 4:17.
[47] Wis. 11:20.
[48] 2 Peter 2:19.
[49] John 8:36.
[50] Eph. 2:8.
[51] 1 Cor. 7:25.
[52] Eph. 2:8, 9.
[53] Eph. 2:10.
[54] Cf. Gal. 6:15; I1 Cor. 5:17.
[55] Ps. 51:10.
[56] Phil. 2:13.
[57] Rom. 9:16.
[58] Prov. 8:35 (LXX).
[59] From the days at Cassiciacum till the very end, Augustine
toiled with the mystery of the primacy of God's grace and the
reality of human freedom.  Of two things he was unwaveringly sure,
even though they involved him in a paradox and the appearance of
confusion.  The first is that God's grace is not only primary but
also sufficient as the ground and source of human willing.  And
against the Pelagians and other detractors from grace, he did not
hesitate to insist that grace is irresistible and inviolable.  Cf.
On Grace and Free Will, 99, 41-43; On the Predestination of the
Saints, 19:10; On the Gift of Perseverance, 41; On the Soul and
Its Origin, 16; and even the Enchiridion, XXIV, 97.
	But he never drew from this deterministic emphasis the
conclusion that man is unfree and everywhere roundly rejects the
not illogical corollary of his theonomism, that man's will counts
for little or nothing except as passive agent of God's will.  He
insists on responsibility on man's part in responding to the
initiatives of grace.  For this emphasis, which is
characteristically directed to the faithful themselves, see On the
Psalms, LXVIII, 7-8; On the Gospel of John, Tractate, 53:6-8; and
even his severest anti-Pelagian tracts: On Grace and Free Will, 6-
8, 10, 31 and On Admonition and Grace, 2-8.
[60] Ps. 58:11 (Vulgate).
[61] Ps. 23:6.
[62] Cf. Matt. 5:44.
[63] The theme that he had explored in Confessions, Bks. I-IX.
See especially Bk. V, Chs. X, XIII; Bk. VII, Ch. VIII; Bk. IX, Ch.
I.
[64] Cf. Ps. 90:9.
[65] Job 14:1.
[66] John 3:36.
[67] Eph. 2:3.
[68] Rom. 5:9, 10.
[69] Rom. 8:14.
[70] John 1:14.
[71] Rom. 3:20.
[72] Epistle CXXXVII, written in 412 in reply to a list of queries
sent to Augustine by the proconsul of Africa.
[73] John 1:1.
[74] Phil. 2:6, 7.
[75] These metaphors for contrasting the "two natures" of Jesus
Christ were favorite figures of speech in Augustine's
Christological thought.  Cf. On the Gospel of John, Tractate 78;
On the Trinity, I, 7; II, 2; IV, 19-20; VII, 3; New Testament
Sermons, 76, 14.
[76] Luke 1:28-30.
[77] John 1:14.
[78] Luke 1:35.
[79] Matt. 1:20.
[80] Rom. 1:3.
[81] Rom. 8:3.
[82] Cf. Hos. 4:8.
[83] I1 Cor. 5:20, 21.
[84] Virgil, Aeneid, II, 1, 20.
[85] Num. 21:7 (LXX).
[86] Matt. 2:20.
[87] Ex. 32:4.
[88] Rom. 5:12.
[89] Deut. 5:9.
[90] Ezek. 18:2.
[91] Ps. 51:5.
[92] 1 Tim. 2:5.
[93] Matt. 3:13.
[94] Luke 3:4; Isa. 40:3.
[95] Ps. 2:7; Heb. 5:5; cf. Mark 1:9-11.
[96] Rom. 5:16.
[97] Rom. 5:18.
[98] Rom. 6:1.
[99] Rom. 5:20.
[100] Rom. 6:2.
[101] Rom. 6:3.
[102] Rom. 6:4-11.
[103] Gal. 5:24.
[104] Col. 3:1-3.
[105] Col. 3:4.
[106] John 5:29.
[107] Ps. 54:1.
[108] Cf. Matt. 25:32, 33.
[109] Ps. 43:1.
[110] Reading the classical Latin form poscebat (as in Scheel and
PL) for the late form poxebat (as in Riviere and many old MSS.).
[111] Cf. Ps. 113:3.
[112] Here reading unum deum (with Riviere and PL) against deum
(in Scheel).
[113] A hyperbolic expression referring to "the saints."
Augustine's Scriptural backing for such an unusual phrase is Ps.
82:6 and John 10:34f.  But note the firm distinction between ex
diis quos facit and non factus Deus.
[114] 1 Cor. 6:19.
[115] 1 Cor. 6:15.
[116] Col. 1:18.
[117] John 2:19.
[118] 2 Peter 2:4 (Old Latin).
[119] Heb. 1:13.
[120] Ps. 148:2 (LXX).
[121] Col. 1:16.
[122] Zech. 1:9.
[123] Matt. 1:20.
[124] Gen. 18:4; 19:2.
[125] Gen. 32:24.
[126] Rom. 8:31, 32.
[127] Cf. Eph. 1:10.
[128] Col. 1:19, 20.
[129] Cf. 1 Cor. 13:9, 12
[130] Cf. Luke 20:36.
[131] 1 Cor. 13:12.
[132] Cf. Luke 15:24.
[133] Rom. 8:14.
[134] 1 John 1:8.
[135] In actione poenitentiae; cf. Luther's similar conception of
poenitentiam agite in the 95 Theses and in De poenitentia.
[136] Ps. 51:17.
[137] Ps. 38:9.
[138] I1 Cor. 1:22.
[139] Ecclus. 40:1 (Vulgate).
[140] 1 Cor. 11:31, 32.
[141] This chapter supplies an important clue to the date of the
Enchiridion and an interesting side light on Augustine's
inclination to re-use "good material." In his treatise on The
Eight Questions of Dulcitius (De octo Dulcitii quaestionibus), 1:
10-13, Augustine quotes this entire chapter as a part of his
answer to the question whether those who sin after baptism are
ever delivered from hell.  The date of the De octo is 422 or,
possibly, 423; thus we have a terminus ad quem for the date of the
Enchiridion.  Still the best text of De octo is Migne, PL, 40, c.
147-170, and the best English translation is in Deferrari, St.
Augustine: Treatises on Various Subjects (The Fathers of the
Church, New York, 1952), pp. 427-466.
[142] A short treatise, written in 413, in which Augustine seeks
to combine the Pauline and Jacobite emphases by analyzing what
kind of faith and what kind of works are _both_ essential to
salvation. The best text is that of Joseph Zycha in CSEL, Vol. 41,
pp. 35-97; but see also Migne, PL, 40, c. 197-230.  There is an
English translation by C.L. Cornish in A Library of Fathers of the
Holy Catholic Church; Seventeen Short Treatises, pp. 37-84.
[143] Gal. 5:6.
[144] James 2:17.
[145] James 2:14.
[146] 1 Cor. 3:15.
[147] 1 Cor. 6:9, 10.
[148] 1 Cor. 3:11, 12.
[149] 1 Cor. 3:11-15.
[150] Ecclus. 27:5.
[151] Cf. 1 Cor. 7:32, 33
[152] See above, XVIII, 67.
[153] Matt. 25:34, 41.
[154] Ecclus. 15:20.
[155] John 3:5.
[156] Matt. 6:9-12.
[157] Cf. Luke 11 :41.
[158] This is a close approximation of the medieval lists of "The
Seven Works of Mercy." Cf. J.T. McNeill, A History of the Cure of
Souls, pp. 155, 161.  (Harper & Brothers, 1951, New York.)
[159] Matt. 5:44.
[160] John 14:6.
[161] Matt. 6:14, 15.
[162] Luke 11:37-41.
[163] Acts 15:9.
[164] Titus 1:15.
[165] Ecclus. 30:24 (Vulgate).
[166] Rom. 5:16.
[167] Rom. 5:8.
[168] Luke 10:27.
[169] Luke 11:42.
[170] Matt. 23:26.
[171] Ps. 10:6 (Vulgate).
[172] Ps. 58:11 (Vulgate); cf. Ps. 59:10 (R.S.V.).
[173] 1 Cor. 7:5 (mixed text).
[174] 1 Cor. 6:1.
[175] 1 Cor. 6:4-6.
[176] 1 Cor. 6:7a.
[177] 1 Cor. 6:7b.
[178] Matt. 5:40.
[179] Luke 6:30.
[180] James 3:2 (Vulgate).
[181] Matt. 5:22, 23.
[182] Gal. 4:11 (Vulgate).
[183] Ps. 10:3 (Vulgate).
[184] Isa. 5:7 (LXX).
[185] Gen. 18:20 (Vulgate with one change).
[186] For example, Contra Faust., XXII, 78; De pecc. meritis et
remissione, I, xxxix, 70; ibid., II, xxii, 26; Quaest. in
Heptateuch, 4:24; De libero arbitrio, 3:18, 55; De div. quaest.,
83:26; De natura et gratia, 67:81; Contra duas ep. Pelag., I:3, 7;
I:13:27.
[187] Ps. 27:1.
[188] 2 Tim. 2:25 (mixed text).
[189] Cf. Luke 22:61.
[190] Cf. John 20:22, 23.
[191] This libellus is included in Augustine's Sermons (LXXI, PL,
38, col. 445-467), to which Possidius gave the title De blasphemia
in Spiritum Sanctum.  English translation in N-PNF, 1st Series,
Vol. VI, Sermon XXI, pp. 318-332.
[192] Sicut semina quae concepta non fuerint.
[193] Jerome, Epistle to Vitalis, Ep. LXXII, 2; PL, 22, 674.
Augustine also refers to similar phenomena in The City of God,
XVI. viii, 2.
[194] Gal. 5:17.
[195] 1 Cor. 15:40.
[196] 1 Cor. 15:50.
[197] 1 Cor. 15:44.
[198] Rev. 2:11; 20:6, 14.
[199] Ps. 100:1 (Vulgate); cf. Ps. 101:1 (R.S.V.).
[200] Matt. 11:21.
[201] This is one of the rare instances in which a textual variant
in Augustine's text affects a basic issue in the interpretation of
his doctrine.  All but one of the major old editions, up to and
including Migne, here read: Nec utique deus injuste noluit salvos
fiere eum possent salvi esse SI VELLENT (if _they_ willed it).
This would mean the attribution of a decisive role in human
salvation to the human will and would thus stand out in bold
relief from his general stress in the rest of the Enchiridion and
elsewhere on the primacy and even irresistibility of grace.  The
Jansenist edition of Augustine, by Arnauld in 1648, read SI VELLET
(if _He_ willed it) and the reading became the subject of
acrimonious controversy between the Jansenists and the Molinists.
The Maurist edition reads si vellet, on the strength of much
additional MS. evidence that had not been available up to that
time.  In modern times, the si vellet reading has come to have the
overwhelming support of the critical editors, although Riviere
still reads si vellent.  Cf. Scheel, 76-77 (See Bibl.); Riviere,
402-403; J.G. Krabinger, S. Aurelii Augustini Enchiridion
(Tubingen, 1861 ), p. 116; Faure-Passaglia, S. Aurelii Augustini
Enchiridion (Naples, 1847), p. 178; and H. Hurter, Sanctorum
Patrum opuscula selecta (Innsbruck, 1895), p. 123.
[202] Cf. Ps. 113:11 (a mixed text; composed inexactly from Ps.
115:3 and Ps. 135:6; an interesting instance of Augustine's sense
of liberty with the texts of Scripture.  Here he is doubtless
quoting from memory).
[203] 1 Tim. 2:4.
[204] Matt. 23:37.
[205] Rom. 9:18.
[206] Rom. 9:11, 12.
[207] Cf. Mal. 1:2, 3 and Rom. 9:13.
[208] Rom. 9:14.
[209] Rom. 9:15.
[210] Rom. 9:15; see above, IX, 32.
[211] Eph. 2:3.
[212] Rom. 9:16.
[213] 1 Cor. 1 :31; cf. Jer. 9:24.  The _religious_ intention of
Augustine's emphasis upon divine sovereignty and predestination is
never so much to account for the doom of the wicked as to
underscore the sheer and wonderful gratuity of salvation.
[214] Rom. 9:17; cf. Ex. 9:16.
[215] Rom. 9:19.
[216] Rom. 9:20, 21.
[217] 1 Cor. 1:31.
[218] Ps. 110:2 (Vulgate).
[219] Matt. 16:23.
[220] Acts 21:10-12.
[221] 1 Tim. 2:4.
[222] John 1:9.
[223] 1 Tim. 2:1.
[224] 1 Tim. 2:2.
[225] 1 Tim. 2:3.
[226] 1 Tim. 2:4.
[227] Luke 11:42.
[228] Ps. 135:6.
[229] Another example of Augustine's wordplay.  Man's original
capacities included both the power not to sin and the power to sin
(posse non peccare et posse peccare).  In Adam's original sin, man
lost the posse non peccare (the power not to sin) and retained the
posse peccare (the power to sin) -- which he continues to
exercise.  In the fulfillment of grace, man will have the posse
peccare taken away and receive the highest of all, the power not
to be able to sin, non posse peccare.  Cf. On Correction and Grace
XXXIII.
[230] Again, a wordplay between posset non mori and non possit
mori.
[231] Prov. 8:35 (LXX).
[232] Rom. 6:23.
[233] Cf. John 1:16.
[234] Rom. 9:21.
[235] 1 Tim. 2:5 (mixed text).
[236] Rom. 14:10; I1 Cor. 5:10.
[237] Cf. Ps. 77:9.
[238] Rom. 9:23.
[239] Matt. 25:46.
[240] Cf. Ps. 31:19.
[241] Note the artificial return to the triadic scheme of the
treatise: faith, hope, and love.
[242] Jer. 17:5.
[243] Matt. 6:9, 10.
[244] Matt. 6:11-13.
[245] Luke 11:2-4.
[246] Matt. 7:7.
[247] Another wordplay on cupiditas and caritas.
[248] An interesting resemblance here to Freud's description of
the Id, the primal core of our unconscious life.
[249] Rom. 3:20.
[250] 2 Peter 2:19.
[251] Rom. 5:20.
[252] Compare the psychological notion of the effect of external
moral pressures and their power to arouse guilt feelings, as in
Freud's notion of "superego."
[253] Gal. 5:17.
[254] Wis. 11:21 (Vulgate).
[255] Cf. John 1:17.
[256] John 3:8.
[257] Rom. 14:9.
[258] Cf. Ps. 88:5.
[259] 1 Tim. 1:5.
[260] Matt. 22:40.
[261] 1 Tim. 1:5.
[262] 1 John 4:16.
[263] Ex. 20:14; Matt. 5:27; etc.
[264] 1 Cor. 7:1.
[265] 1 Cor. 4:5.
[266] Minuitur autem cupiditas caritate crescente.
[267] John 15:23.


End of Confessions & Enchiridion

