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- confessions
- text
- another, whom she loved not as Ambrose, whom, for my salvation,
she loved most entirely; and he her again, for her most religious
conversation, whereby in good works, so fervent in spirit, she was
constant at church; so that, when he saw me, he often burst forth into
her praises; congratulating me that I had such a mother; not knowing
what a son she had in me, who doubted of all these things, and imagined
the way to life could not be found out.
Nor did I yet groan in my prayers, that Thou wouldest help me; but
my spirit was wholly intent on learning, and restless to dispute. And
Ambrose himself, as the world counts happy, I esteemed a happy man, whom
personages so great held in such honour; only his celibacy seemed to me
a painful course. But what hope he bore within him, what struggles he
had against the temptations which beset his very excellencies, or what
comfort in adversities, and what sweet joys Thy Bread had for the hidden
mouth of his spirit, when chewing the cud thereof, I neither could
conjecture, nor had experienced. Nor did he know the tides of my
feelings, or the abyss of my danger. For I could not ask of him, what
I would as I would, being shut out both from his ear and speech by
multitudes of busy people, whose weaknesses he served. With whom when he
was not taken up (which was but a little time), he was either refreshing
his body with the sustenance absolutely necessary, or his mind with
reading. But when he was reading, his eye glided over the pages, and
his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were at rest.
Ofttimes when we had come (for no man was forbidden to enter, nor was it
his wont that any who came should be announced to him), we saw him thus
reading to himself, and never otherwise; and having long sat silent
(for who durst intrude on one so intent?) we were fain to depart,
conjecturing that in the small interval which he obtained, free from the
din of others' business, for the recruiting of his mind, he was loth to
be taken off; and perchance he dreaded lest if the author he read should
deliver any thing obscurely, some attentive or perplexed hearer should
desire him to expound it, or to discuss some of the harder questions; so
that his time being thus spent, he could not turn over so many volumes
as he desired; although the preserving of his voice (which a very little
speaking would weaken) might be the truer reason for his reading to
himself. But with what intent soever he did it, certainly in such a man
it was good.
I however certainly had no opportunity of enquiring what I wished of
that so holy oracle of Thine, his breast, unless the thing might be
answered briefly. But those tides in me, to be poured out to him,
required his full leisure, and never found it. I heard him indeed every
Lord's day, rightly expounding the Word of truth among the people; and
I was more and more convinced that all the knots of those crafty
calumnies, which those our deceivers had knit against the Divine Books,
could be unravelled. But when I understood withal, that "man created
by Thee, after Thine own image," was not so understood by Thy spiritual
sons, whom of the Catholic Mother Thou hast born again through grace,
as though they believed and conceived of Thee as bounded by human shape
(although what a spiritual substance should be I had not even a faint or
shadowy notion); yet, with joy I blushed at having so many years barked
not against the Catholic faith, but against the fictions of carnal
imaginations. For so rash and impious had I been, that what I ought by
enquiring to have learned, I had pronounced on, condemning. For Thou,
Most High, and most near; most secret, and most present; Who hast not
limbs some larger, some smaller, but art wholly every where, and no
where in space, art not of such corporeal shape, yet hast Thou made man
after Thine own image; and behold, from head to foot is he contained in
space.
Ignorant then how this Thy image should subsist, I should have knocked
and proposed the doubt, how it was to be believed, not insultingly
opposed it, as if believed. Doubt, then, what to hold for certain,
the more sharply gnawed my heart, the more ashamed I was, that so long
deluded and deceived by the promise of certainties, I had with childish
error and vehemence, prated of so many uncertainties. For that they were
falsehoods became clear to me later. However I was certain that they
were uncertain, and that I had formerly accounted them certain, when
with a blind contentiousness, I accused Thy Catholic Church, whom I now
discovered, not indeed as yet to teach truly, but at least not to teach
that for which I had grievously censured her. So I was confounded, and
converted: and I joyed, O my God, that the One Only Church, the body of
Thine Only Son (wherein the name of Christ had been put upon me as an
infant), had no taste for infantine conceits; nor in her sound doctrine
maintained any tenet which should confine Thee, the Creator of all, in
space, however great and large, yet bounded every where by the limits of
a human form.
I joyed also that the old Scriptures of the law and the Prophets were
laid before me, not now to be perused with that eye to which before they
seemed absurd, when I reviled Thy holy ones for so thinking, whereas
indeed they thought not so: and with joy I heard Ambrose in his sermons
to the people, oftentimes most diligently recommend this text for a
rule, The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life; whilst he drew
aside the mystic veil, laying open spiritually what, according to the
letter, seemed to teach something unsound; teaching herein nothing that
offended me, though he taught what I knew not as yet, whether it were
true. For I kept my heart from assenting to any thing, fearing to fall
headlong; but by hanging in suspense I was the worse killed. For I
wished to be as assured of the things I saw not, as I was that seven and
three are ten. For I was not so mad as to think that even this could not
be comprehended; but I desired to have other things as clear as this,
whether things corporeal, which were not present to my senses, or
spiritual, whereof I knew not how to conceive, except corporeally. And
by believing might I have been cured, that so the eyesight of my soul
being cleared, might in some way be directed to Thy truth, which abideth
always, and in no part faileth. But as it happens that one who has tried
a bad physician, fears to trust himself with a good one, so was it with
the health of my soul, which could not be healed but by believing, and
lest it should believe falsehoods, refused to be cured; resisting Thy
hands, Who hast prepared the medicines of faith, and hast applied
them to the diseases of the whole world, and given unto them so great
authority.
Being led, however, from this to prefer the Catholic doctrine, I felt
that her proceeding was more unassuming and honest, in that she required
to be believed things not demonstrated (whether it was that they could
in themselves be demonstrated but not to certain persons, or could not
at all be), whereas among the Manichees our credulity was mocked by a
promise of certain knowledge, and then so many most fabulous and
absurd things were imposed to be believed, because they could not be
demonstrated. Then Thou, O Lord, little by little with most tender and
most merciful hand, touching and composing my heart, didst persuade
me--considering what innumerable things I believed, which I saw not, nor
was present while they were done, as so many things in secular history,
so many reports of places and of cities, which I had not seen; so many
of friends, so many of physicians, so many continually of other men,
which unless we should believe, we should do nothing at all in this
life; lastly, with how unshaken an assurance I believed of what
parents I was born, which I could not know, had I not believed