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- confessions
- text
- a teacher or learner of the hereditary laws of pronunciation will more
offend men by speaking without the aspirate, of a "uman being," in
despite of the laws of grammar, than if he, a "human being," hate a
"human being" in despite of Thine. As if any enemy could be more hurtful
than the hatred with which he is incensed against him; or could wound
more deeply him whom he persecutes, than he wounds his own soul by his
enmity. Assuredly no science of letters can be so innate as the record
of conscience, "that he is doing to another what from another he would
be loth to suffer." How deep are Thy ways, O God, Thou only great,
that sittest silent on high and by an unwearied law dispensing penal
blindness to lawless desires. In quest of the fame of eloquence, a man
standing before a human judge, surrounded by a human throng, declaiming
against his enemy with fiercest hatred, will take heed most watchfully,
lest, by an error of the tongue, he murder the word "human being"; but
takes no heed, lest, through the fury of his spirit, he murder the real
human being.
This was the world at whose gate unhappy I lay in my boyhood; this
the stage where I had feared more to commit a barbarism, than having
committed one, to envy those who had not. These things I speak and
confess to Thee, my God; for which I had praise from them, whom I then
thought it all virtue to please. For I saw not the abyss of vileness,
wherein I was cast away from Thine eyes. Before them what more foul than
I was already, displeasing even such as myself? with innumerable lies
deceiving my tutor, my masters, my parents, from love of play, eagerness
to see vain shows and restlessness to imitate them! Thefts also I
committed, from my parents' cellar and table, enslaved by greediness, or
that I might have to give to boys, who sold me their play, which all
the while they liked no less than I. In this play, too, I often
sought unfair conquests, conquered myself meanwhile by vain desire of
preeminence. And what could I so ill endure, or, when I detected it,
upbraided I so fiercely, as that I was doing to others? and for which
if, detected, I was upbraided, I chose rather to quarrel than to yield.
And is this the innocence of boyhood? Not so, Lord, not so; I cry Thy
mercy, my God. For these very sins, as riper years succeed, these very
sins are transferred from tutors and masters, from nuts and balls and
sparrows, to magistrates and kings, to gold and manors and slaves, just
as severer punishments displace the cane. It was the low stature then of
childhood which Thou our King didst commend as an emblem of lowliness,
when Thou saidst, Of such is the kingdom of heaven.
Yet, Lord, to Thee, the Creator and Governor of the universe, most
excellent and most good, thanks were due to Thee our God, even hadst
Thou destined for me boyhood only. For even then I was, I lived, and
felt; and had an implanted providence over my well-being--a trace of
that mysterious Unity whence I was derived; I guarded by the inward
sense the entireness of my senses, and in these minute pursuits, and in
my thoughts on things minute, I learnt to delight in truth, I hated to
be deceived, had a vigorous memory, was gifted with speech, was
soothed by friendship, avoided pain, baseness, ignorance. In so small a
creature, what was not wonderful, not admirable? But all are gifts of
my God: it was not I who gave them me; and good these are, and these
together are myself. Good, then, is He that made me, and He is my good;
and before Him will I exult for every good which of a boy I had. For it
was my sin, that not in Him, but in His creatures--myself and others--I
sought for pleasures, sublimities, truths, and so fell headlong into
sorrows, confusions, errors. Thanks be to Thee, my joy and my glory
and my confidence, my God, thanks be to Thee for Thy gifts; but do Thou
preserve them to me. For so wilt Thou preserve me, and those things
shall be enlarged and perfected which Thou hast given me, and I myself
shall be with Thee, since even to be Thou hast given me.
BOOK II
I will now call to mind my past foulness, and the carnal corruptions of
my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my God.
For love of Thy love I do it; reviewing my most wicked ways in the very
bitterness of my remembrance, that Thou mayest grow sweet unto me (Thou
sweetness never failing, Thou blissful and assured sweetness); and
gathering me again out of that my dissipation, wherein I was torn
piecemeal, while turned from Thee, the One Good, I lost myself among a
multiplicity of things. For I even burnt in my youth heretofore, to be
satiated in things below; and I dared to grow wild again, with these
various and shadowy loves: my beauty consumed away, and I stank in Thine
eyes; pleasing myself, and desirous to please in the eyes of men.
And what was it that I delighted in, but to love, and be loved? but
I kept not the measure of love, of mind to mind, friendship's bright
boundary: but out of the muddy concupiscence of the flesh, and the
bubblings of youth, mists fumed up which beclouded and overcast my
heart, that I could not discern the clear brightness of love from the
fog of lustfulness. Both did confusedly boil in me, and hurried my
unstayed youth over the precipice of unholy desires, and sunk me in a
gulf of flagitiousnesses. Thy wrath had gathered 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 lettest me alone, and I was tossed about, and wasted, and
dissipated, and I boiled over in my fornications, and Thou heldest Thy
peace, O Thou my tardy joy! Thou then heldest Thy peace, and I wandered
further and further from Thee, into more and more fruitless seed-plots
of sorrows, with a proud dejectedness, and a restless weariness.
Oh! that some one had then attempered my disorder, and turned to account
the fleeting beauties of these, the extreme points of Thy creation! had
put a bound to their pleasureableness, that so the tides of my youth
might have cast themselves upon the marriage shore, if they could not be
calmed, and kept within the object of a family, as Thy law prescribes,
O Lord: who this way formest the offspring of this our death, being
able with a gentle hand to blunt the thorns which were excluded from Thy
paradise? For Thy omnipotency is not far from us, even when we be far
from Thee. Else ought I more watchfully to have heeded the voice from
the 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.
To these words I should have listened more attentively, and being
severed for the kingdom of heaven's sake, had more happily awaited Thy
embraces; but I, poor wretch, foamed like a troubled sea, following the
rushing of my own tide, forsaking Thee, and exceeded all Thy limits; yet
I escaped not Thy scourges. For what mortal can? For Thou wert ever with
me mercifully rigorous, and besprinkling with most bitter alloy all my
unlawful pleasures: that I might seek pleasures without alloy. But where
to find such, I could not discover, save in Thee, O Lord, who teachest
by sorrow, and woundest us, to heal; and killest us, lest we die 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 (to which human shamelessness giveth free licence, though
unlicensed by Thy laws) took the rule over me, and I resigned myself
wholly to it?