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- Book 333.
TREATS OF HIS SEVENTEENTH, EIGHTEENTH, AND NINETEENTH YEARS SPENT AT CARTHAGE, WHERE, IN ADDITION TO HIS STUDIES, HE WAS TAKEN IN THE SNARE OF LAWLESS LOVE, AND PLUNGED INTO MANICHÆAN ERRORS.
## CHAPTER I.
*Captive to a lawless passion, a man base and dishonourable would fain be fine and courtly.*
I CAME to Carthage, where there seethed all around me a cauldron of lawless loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and I hated safety, and a way without snares. For within me was a famine of that inward food, Thyself, my God; yet, through that famine I was not hungered; but was without all longing for incorruptible sustenance, not because filled therewith, but the more empty, the more I loathed it. For this cause my soul was unhealthy; and being ulcerous, miserably cast itself forth, seeking to be scraped by the touch of objects of sense. Yet if these had not a soul, they would not be objects of love. To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to me; but more, when I obtained to enjoy the person I loved. I defiled, therefore, the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I beclouded its brightness with the hell of lustfulness; and thus foul and unseemly, I would fain, through excess of vanity, be fine and courtly. I fell headlong then into the love, with which I longed to be taken captive. My God, my Mercy, with how much gall didst Thou out of Thy great goodness besprinkle for me that sweetness? For I was both beloved, and secretly
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