- cid
- bafkreieuiasz3ttkjixulqojc7bekckbw65qsbdbx6b5ai2kj4t7gvczxu
- content_type
- image/jpeg
- filename
- confessionsofsaugu00augu_page_0049.jpg
- height
- 2325
- key
- pdf-page-1769747276336-90lg0csx7yc
- ocr_model
- mistral-ocr-latest
- page_number
- 49
- pdf_type
- scanned
- size
- 789704
- text
- The Confessions of S. Augustine. 23
guished from the fog of lust. Both did confusedly boil in me, and hurried my youthful weakness over the precipice of desire, and sunk me in an abyss of shame. Thy wrath had lowered over me, and I knew it not. I was grown deaf by the clanking of the chain of my mortality, the punishment of the pride of my soul; and I strayed further from Thee, and Thou didst let me alone, and I was tossed about, and poured out, and dissipated, and I boiled over in my fornications, and Thou didst hold Thy peace, O Thou my tardy joy! Thou then didst hold Thy peace, and I wandered further and further from Thee, into more and more barren occasions of sorrows, with a proud dejectedness, and a restless weariness.
Oh! that some one had then restrained my distress, and turned to account the fleeting beauties of these newest powers, had put a bound to their pleasureableness, that so the tides of my youth might have cast themselves upon the shore of marriage if the duty of paternity had not sufficed to calm them, as Thy law prescribes, O Lord: who this way formest the offspring of our mortal race, being able with a gentle hand to blunt the thorns, which were shut out from Thy paradise! For Thy omnipotence is not far from us, even though we are far from Thee. Else ought I more watchfully to have heeded the solemn voice from Thy clouds; “Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh, but I spare you.” And “it is good for a man not to touch a woman.” And “he that is unmarried thinketh of the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he that is married careth for the things of this world, how he may please his wife” (1 Cor. vii.).
To these words I should have listened more attentively, and being continent “for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” (S. Matt. xix. 12), I should the more happily have awaited Thy embraces; but I, poor wretch, as though I had been a boiling sea, followed the tide of my impulses, and forsook Thee, I exceeded all the bounds of Thy laws, yet I escaped not Thy scourges. For what mortal can? For Thou wert ever with me angry in mercy, and besprinkling with most bitter vexations all my unlawful pleasures: that I might seek pleasures free from offence. But where to find such, I could not discover, save in Thee, O Lord, who “shapest our trouble for a precept” (Ps. xciv. 20, Vulg.), and
- text_extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T04:35:12.077Z
- text_extracted_by
- ocr-service
- text_has_content
- true
- text_images_count
- 0
- text_source
- ocr
- uploaded
- true
- width
- 1438