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- confessions
- text
- Thy Christ, my God and Lord. Whereupon the mother of my flesh, being
much troubled (since, with a heart pure in Thy faith, she even more
lovingly travailed in birth of my salvation), would in eager haste
have provided for my consecration and cleansing by the health-giving
sacraments, confessing Thee, Lord Jesus, for the remission of sins,
unless I had suddenly recovered. And so, as if I must needs be
again polluted should I live, my cleansing was deferred, because the
defilements of sin would, after that washing, bring greater and more
perilous guilt. I then already believed: and my mother, and the whole
household, except my father: yet did not he prevail over the power of my
mother's piety in me, that as he did not yet believe, so neither
should I. For it was her earnest care that Thou my God, rather than he,
shouldest be my father; and in this Thou didst aid her to prevail over
her husband, whom she, the better, obeyed, therein also obeying Thee,
who hast so commanded.
I beseech Thee, my God, I would fain know, if so Thou willest, for
what purpose my baptism was then deferred? was it for my good that the
rein was laid loose, as it were, upon me, for me to sin? or was it not
laid loose? If not, why does it still echo in our ears on all sides,
"Let him alone, let him do as he will, for he is not yet baptised?" but
as to bodily health, no one says, "Let him be worse wounded, for he is
not yet healed." How much better then, had I been at once healed; and
then, by my friends' and my own, my soul's recovered health had been
kept safe in Thy keeping who gavest it. Better truly. But how many and
great waves of temptation seemed to hang over me after my boyhood! These
my mother foresaw; and preferred to expose to them the clay whence I
might afterwards be moulded, than the very cast, when made.
In boyhood itself, however (so much less dreaded for me than youth),
I loved not study, and hated to be forced to it. Yet I was forced; and
this was well done towards me, but I did not well; for, unless forced, I
had not learnt. But no one doth well against his will, even though what
he doth, be well. Yet neither did they well who forced me, but what was
well came to me from Thee, my God. For they were regardless how I should
employ what they forced me to learn, except to satiate the insatiate
desires of a wealthy beggary, and a shameful glory. But Thou, by whom
the very hairs of our head are numbered, didst use for my good the error
of all who urged me to learn; and my own, who would not learn, Thou
didst use for my punishment--a fit penalty for one, so small a boy and
so great a sinner. So by those who did not well, Thou didst well for me;
and by my own sin Thou didst justly punish me. For Thou hast commanded,
and so it is, that every inordinate affection should be its own
punishment.
But why did I so much hate the Greek, which I studied as a boy? I do not
yet fully know. For the Latin I loved; not what my first masters, but
what the so-called grammarians taught me. For those first lessons,
reading, writing and arithmetic, I thought as great a burden and penalty
as any Greek. And yet whence was this too, but from the sin and vanity
of this life, because I was flesh, and a breath that passeth away and
cometh not again? For those first lessons were better certainly, because
more certain; by them I obtained, and still retain, the power of reading
what I find written, and myself writing what I will; whereas in the
others, I was forced to learn the wanderings of one Aeneas, forgetful of
my own, and to weep for dead Dido, because she killed herself for love;
the while, with dry eyes, I endured my miserable self dying among these
things, far from Thee, O God my life.
For what more miserable than a miserable being who commiserates not
himself; weeping the death of Dido for love to Aeneas, but weeping not
his own death for want of love to Thee, O God. Thou light of my heart,
Thou bread of my inmost soul, Thou Power who givest vigour to my mind,
who quickenest my thoughts, I loved Thee not. I committed fornication
against Thee, and all around me thus fornicating there echoed "Well
done! well done!" for the friendship of this world is fornication
against Thee; and "Well done! well done!" echoes on till one is ashamed
not to be thus a man. And for all this I wept not, I who wept for Dido
slain, and "seeking by the sword a stroke and wound extreme," myself
seeking the while a worse extreme, the extremest and lowest of Thy
creatures, having forsaken Thee, earth passing into the earth. And
if forbid to read all this, I was grieved that I might not read what
grieved me. Madness like this is thought a higher and a richer learning,
than that by which I learned to read and write.
But now, my God, cry Thou aloud in my soul; and let Thy truth tell me,
"Not so, not so. Far better was that first study." For, lo, I would
readily forget the wanderings of Aeneas and all the rest, rather than
how to read and write. But over the entrance of the Grammar School is a
vail drawn! true; yet is this not so much an emblem of aught recondite,
as a cloak of error. Let not those, whom I no longer fear, cry out
against me, while I confess to Thee, my God, whatever my soul will, and
acquiesce in the condemnation of my evil ways, that I may love Thy
good ways. Let not either buyers or sellers of grammar-learning cry out
against me. For if I question them whether it be true that Aeneas came
on a time to Carthage, as the poet tells, the less learned will reply
that they know not, the more learned that he never did. But should I ask
with what letters the name "Aeneas" is written, every one who has
learnt this will answer me aright, as to the signs which men have
conventionally settled. If, again, I should ask which might be forgotten
with least detriment to the concerns of life, reading and writing or
these poetic fictions? who does not foresee what all must answer who
have not wholly forgotten themselves? I sinned, then, when as a boy I
preferred those empty to those more profitable studies, or rather loved
the one and hated the other. "One and one, two"; "two and two, four";
this was to me a hateful singsong: "the wooden horse lined with
armed men," and "the burning of Troy," and "Creusa's shade and sad
similitude," were the choice spectacle of my vanity.
Why then did I hate the Greek classics, which have the like tales? For
Homer also curiously wove the like fictions, and is most sweetly-vain,
yet was he bitter to my boyish taste. And so I suppose would Virgil
be to Grecian children, when forced to learn him as I was Homer.
Difficulty, in truth, the difficulty of a foreign tongue, dashed, as it
were, with gall all the sweetness of Grecian fable. For not one word of
it did I understand, and to make me understand I was urged vehemently
with cruel threats and punishments. Time was also (as an infant) I
knew no Latin; but this I learned without fear or suffering, by mere
observation, amid the caresses of my nursery and jests of friends,
smiling and sportively encouraging me. This I learned without any
pressure of punishment to urge me on, for my heart urged me to give
birth to its conceptions, which I could only do by learning words not of
those who taught, but of those who talked with me; in whose ears also I
gave birth to the thoughts, whatever I conceived. No doubt, then, that
a free curiosity has more force in our learning these things, than a
frightful enforcement.