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- confessions
- text
- upon Thee, the food that perisheth not? But what sort of man is any man,
seeing he is but a man? Let now the strong and the mighty laugh at us,
but let us poor and needy confess unto Thee.
In those years I taught rhetoric, and, overcome by cupidity, made sale
of a loquacity to overcome by. Yet I preferred (Lord, Thou knowest)
honest scholars (as they are accounted), and these I, without artifice,
taught artifices, not to be practised against the life of the guiltless,
though sometimes for the life of the guilty. And Thou, O God, from afar
perceivedst me stumbling in that slippery course, and amid much smoke
sending out some sparks of faithfulness, which I showed in that my
guidance of such as loved vanity, and sought after leasing, myself their
companion. In those years I had one,--not in that which is called
lawful marriage, but whom I had found out in a wayward passion, void of
understanding; yet but one, remaining faithful even to her; in whom I
in my own case experienced what difference there is betwixt the
self-restraint of the marriage-covenant, for the sake of issue, and
the bargain of a lustful love, where children are born against their
parents' will, although, once born, they constrain love.
I remember also, that when I had settled to enter the lists for a
theatrical prize, some wizard asked me what I would give him to win; but
I, detesting and abhorring such foul mysteries, answered, "Though the
garland were of imperishable gold, I would not suffer a fly to be
killed to gain me it." For he was to kill some living creatures in his
sacrifices, and by those honours to invite the devils to favour me. But
this ill also I rejected, not out of a pure love for Thee, O God of my
heart; for I knew not how to love Thee, who knew not how to conceive
aught beyond a material brightness. And doth not a soul, sighing after
such fictions, commit fornication against Thee, trust in things unreal,
and feed the wind? Still I would not forsooth have sacrifices offered
to devils for me, to whom I was sacrificing myself by that superstition.
For what else is it to feed the wind, but to feed them, that is by going
astray to become their pleasure and derision?
Those impostors then, whom they style Mathematicians, I consulted
without scruple; because they seemed to use no sacrifice, nor to pray to
any spirit for their divinations: which art, however, Christian and
true piety consistently rejects and condemns. For, it is a good thing to
confess unto Thee, and to say, Have mercy upon me, heal my soul, for I
have sinned against Thee; and not to abuse Thy mercy for a licence to
sin, but to remember the Lord's words, Behold, thou art made whole, sin
no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. All which wholesome advice
they labour to destroy, saying, "The cause of thy sin is inevitably
determined in heaven"; and "This did Venus, or Saturn, or Mars":
that man, forsooth, flesh and blood, and proud corruption, might be
blameless; while the Creator and Ordainer of heaven and the stars is
to bear the blame. And who is He but our God? the very sweetness and
well-spring of righteousness, who renderest to every man according to
his works: and a broken and contrite heart wilt Thou not despise.
There was in those days a wise man, very skilful in physic, and renowned
therein, who had with his own proconsular hand put the Agonistic garland
upon my distempered head, but not as a physician: for this disease Thou
only curest, who resistest the proud, and givest grace to the humble.
But didst Thou fail me even by that old man, or forbear to heal my soul?
For having become more acquainted with him, and hanging assiduously and
fixedly on his speech (for though in simple terms, it was vivid, lively,
and earnest), when he had gathered by my discourse that I was given to
the books of nativity-casters, he kindly and fatherly advised me to cast
them away, and not fruitlessly bestow a care and diligence, necessary
for useful things, upon these vanities; saying, that he had in his
earliest years studied that art, so as to make it the profession whereby
he should live, and that, understanding Hippocrates, he could soon have
understood such a study as this; and yet he had given it over, and taken
to physic, for no other reason but that he found it utterly false;
and he, a grave man, would not get his living by deluding people. "But
thou," saith he, "hast rhetoric to maintain thyself by, so that thou
followest this of free choice, not of necessity: the more then oughtest
thou to give me credit herein, who laboured to acquire it so perfectly
as to get my living by it alone." Of whom when I had demanded, how then
could many true things be foretold by it, he answered me (as he could)
"that the force of chance, diffused throughout the whole order of
things, brought this about. For if when a man by haphazard opens the
pages of some poet, who sang and thought of something wholly different,
a verse oftentimes fell out, wondrously agreeable to the present
business: it were not to be wondered at, if out of the soul of man,
unconscious what takes place in it, by some higher instinct an answer
should be given, by hap, not by art, corresponding to the business and
actions of the demander."
And thus much, either from or through him, Thou conveyedst to me, and
tracedst in my memory, what I might hereafter examine for myself. But at
that time neither he, nor my dearest Nebridius, a youth singularly good
and of a holy fear, who derided the whole body of divination, could
persuade me to cast it aside, the authority of the authors swaying me
yet more, and as yet I had found no certain proof (such as I sought)
whereby it might without all doubt appear, that what had been truly
foretold by those consulted was the result of haphazard, not of the art
of the star-gazers.
In those years when I first began to teach rhetoric in my native town,
I had made one my friend, but too dear to me, from a community of
pursuits, of mine own age, and, as myself, in the first opening flower
of youth. He had grown up of a child with me, and we had been both
school-fellows and play-fellows. But he was not yet my friend as
afterwards, nor even then, as true friendship is; for true it cannot be,
unless in such as Thou cementest together, cleaving unto Thee, by that
love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is
given unto us. Yet was it but too sweet, ripened by the warmth of
kindred studies: for, from the true faith (which he as a youth had
not soundly and thoroughly imbibed), I had warped him also to those
superstitious and pernicious fables, for which my mother bewailed me.
With me he now erred in mind, nor could my soul be without him. But
behold Thou wert close on the steps of Thy fugitives, at once God of
vengeance, and Fountain of mercies, turning us to Thyself by wonderful
means; Thou tookest that man out of this life, when he had scarce filled
up one whole year of my friendship, sweet to me above all sweetness of
that my life.
Who can recount all Thy praises, which he hath felt in his one self?
What diddest Thou then, my God, and how unsearchable is the abyss of
Thy judgments? For long, sore sick of a fever, he lay senseless in
a death-sweat; and his recovery being despaired of, he was baptised,
unknowing; myself meanwhile little regarding, and presuming that his
soul would retain rather what it had received of me, not what was
wrought on his unconscious body. But it proved far otherwise: for he was
refreshed, and restored.