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- The Confessions of S. Augustine. 25
now growing toward manhood, and endued with the restlessness of youth, he, as though already exulting in his grandchildren, gladly told it to my mother; intoxicated with that joy wherein the world forgetteth Thee its Creator, and loveth Thy creature instead of Thyself, through that invisible wine of self-will, which is perverse, and inclined to base things. But in my mother's breast Thou hadst already begun Thy temple, and the foundation of Thy holy habitation, whereas my father was as yet a catechumen, and that but recently. She then was startled with an holy fear and trembling; and though I was not as yet one of the faithful, she feared for me those crooked ways, in which they walk, who “turn their back unto Thee and not their face” (Jer. ii. 27).
Woe is me! and dare I say that Thou didst hold Thy peace, O my God, while I was straying further from Thee? Didst Thou then indeed hold Thy peace to me? And whose but Thine were these words which by my mother, Thy faithful one, Thou didst chant in my ears? Nothing whereof sunk into my heart, so as to do it. For she wished, and I remember in private with great earnestness warned me, “to flee fornication, and especially never to sin with another’s wife.” These seemed to me womanish advices, which I should blush to obey. But they were Thine, and I knew it not: and I thought Thou didst hold Thy peace, and that it was she who spake; by whom Thou didst not hold Thy peace; and in her wast despised by me, her son, “the son of Thy handmaid and Thy servant” (Ps. cxvi. 16). But I knew it not; and ran headlong with such blindness, that amongst my equals I was ashamed of being less vicious, when I heard them boast of their vices, yea, boasting the more the baser they were: and I took pleasure, not only in a vicious act, but in the praise of it. What is worthy of blame but Vice? But I made myself out more vicious than I was to avoid being blamed; and when there was nothing which I could plead guilty of, to be like the most abandoned, I would pretend that I had done what I had not done, that I might not seem more contemptible because I was more innocent; or be held the cheaper because more chaste.
Behold with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon, and wallowed in the mire thereof, as if in a bed
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