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- confessions
- text
- 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? My friends meanwhile took no care by marriage to save my
fall; their only care was that I should learn to speak excellently, and
be a persuasive orator.
For that year were my studies intermitted: whilst after my return from
Madaura (a neighbour city, whither I had journeyed to learn grammar and
rhetoric), the expenses for a further journey to Carthage were being
provided for me; and that rather by the resolution than the means of my
father, who was but a poor freeman of Thagaste. To whom tell I this? not
to Thee, my God; but before Thee to mine own kind, even to that small
portion of mankind as may light upon these writings of mine. And to what
purpose? that whosoever reads this, may think out of what depths we are
to cry unto Thee. For what is nearer to Thine ears than a confessing
heart, and a life of faith? Who did not extol my father, for that beyond
the ability of his means, he would furnish his son with all necessaries
for a far journey for his studies' sake? For many far abler citizens
did no such thing for their children. But yet this same father had no
concern how I grew towards Thee, or how chaste I were; so that I were
but copious in speech, however barren I were to Thy culture, O God, who
art the only true and good Lord of Thy field, my heart.
But while in that my sixteenth year I lived with my parents, leaving all
school for a while (a season of idleness being interposed through the
narrowness of my parents' fortunes), the briers of unclean desires grew
rank over my head, and there was no hand to root them out. When that my
father saw me at the baths, now growing towards manhood, and endued
with a restless youthfulness, he, as already hence anticipating his
descendants, gladly told it to my mother; rejoicing in that tumult of
the senses wherein the world forgetteth Thee its Creator, and becometh
enamoured of Thy creature, instead of Thyself, through the fumes of that
invisible wine of its self-will, turning aside and bowing down to the
very basest 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 but a Catechumen, and that but recently. She then was
startled with a holy fear and trembling; and though I was not as yet
baptised, feared for me those crooked ways in which they walk who turn
their back to Thee, and not their face.
Woe is me! and dare I say that Thou heldest Thy peace, O my God, while I
wandered 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 sangest in my ears? Nothing whereof sunk into my heart, so as
to do it. For she wished, and I remember in private with great anxiety
warned me, "not to commit fornication; but especially never to defile
another man'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 wert silent and that it was she who spake; by whom Thou wert not
silent unto me; and in her wast despised by me, her son, the son of Thy
handmaid, Thy servant. But I knew it not; and ran headlong with such
blindness, that amongst my equals I was ashamed of a less shamelessness,
when I heard them boast of their flagitiousness, yea, and the more
boasting, the more they were degraded: and I took pleasure, not only in
the pleasure of the deed, but in the praise. What is worthy of dispraise
but vice? But I made myself worse than I was, that I might not be
dispraised; and when in any thing I had not sinned as the abandoned
ones, I would say that I had done what I had not done, that I might not
seem contemptible in proportion as I was innocent; or of less account,
the more chaste.
Behold with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon, and
wallowed in the mire thereof, as if in a bed of spices and precious
ointments. And that I might cleave the faster to its very centre, the
invisible enemy trod me down, and seduced me, for that I was easy to be
seduced. Neither did the mother of my flesh (who had now fled out of
the centre of Babylon, yet went more slowly in the skirts thereof as
she advised me to chastity, so heed what she had heard of me from her
husband, as to restrain within the bounds of conjugal affection, if it
could not be pared away to the quick) what she felt to be pestilent
at present and for the future dangerous. She heeded not this, for she
feared lest a wife should prove a clog and hindrance to my hopes. Not
those hopes of the world to come, which my mother reposed in Thee; but
the hope of learning, which both my parents were too desirous I should
attain; my father, because he had next to no thought of Thee, and of
me but vain conceits; my mother, because she accounted that those
usual courses of learning would not only be no hindrance, but even some
furtherance towards attaining Thee. For thus I conjecture, recalling, as
well as I may, the disposition of my parents. The reins, meantime, were
slackened to me, beyond all temper of due severity, to spend my time in
sport, yea, even unto dissoluteness in whatsoever I affected. And in all
was a mist, intercepting from me, O my God, the brightness of Thy truth;
and mine iniquity burst out as from very fatness.
Theft is punished by Thy law, O Lord, and the law written in the hearts
of men, which iniquity itself effaces not. For what thief will abide a
thief? not even a rich thief, one stealing through want. Yet I lusted to
thieve, and did it, compelled by no hunger, nor poverty, but through a
cloyedness of well-doing, and a pamperedness of iniquity. For I stole
that, of which I had enough, and much better. Nor cared I to enjoy what
I stole, but joyed in the theft and sin itself. A pear tree there was
near our vineyard, laden with fruit, tempting neither for colour nor
taste. To shake and rob this, some lewd young fellows of us went, late
one night (having according to our pestilent custom prolonged our sports
in the streets till then), and took huge loads, not for our eating, but
to fling to the very hogs, having only tasted them. And this, but to
do what we liked only, because it was misliked. Behold my heart, O
God, behold my heart, which Thou hadst pity upon in the bottom of the
bottomless pit. Now, behold, let my heart tell Thee what it sought
there, that I should be gratuitously evil, having no temptation to ill,
but the ill itself. It was foul, and I loved it; I loved to perish,
I loved mine own fault, not that for which I was faulty, but my fault
itself. Foul soul, falling from Thy firmament to utter destruction; not
seeking aught through the shame, but the shame itself!
For there is an attractiveness in beautiful bodies, in gold and silver,
and all things; and in bodily touch, sympathy hath much influence, and
each other sense hath his proper object answerably tempered. Worldy
honour hath also its grace, and the power of overcoming, and of mastery;
whence springs also the thirst of revenge. But yet, to obtain all these,
we may not depart from Thee, O Lord, nor decline from Thy law.