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- confessions
- text
- 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 upon
hearsay--considering all this, Thou didst persuade me, that not they who
believed Thy Books (which Thou hast established in so great authority
among almost all nations), but they who believed them not, were to be
blamed; and that they were not to be heard, who should say to me, "How
knowest thou those Scriptures to have been imparted unto mankind by the
Spirit of the one true and most true God?" For this very thing was
of all most to be believed, since no contentiousness of blasphemous
questionings, of all that multitude which I had read in the
self-contradicting philosophers, could wring this belief from me,
"That Thou art" whatsoever Thou wert (what I knew not), and "That the
government of human things belongs to Thee."
This I believed, sometimes more strongly, more weakly otherwhiles; yet I
ever believed both that Thou wert, and hadst a care of us; though I was
ignorant, both what was to be thought of Thy substance, and what way led
or led back to Thee. Since then we were too weak by abstract reasonings
to find out truth: and for this very cause needed the authority of Holy
Writ; I had now begun to believe that Thou wouldest never have given
such excellency of authority to that Writ in all lands, hadst Thou not
willed thereby to be believed in, thereby sought. For now what things,
sounding strangely in the Scripture, were wont to offend me, having
heard divers of them expounded satisfactorily, I referred to the depth
of the mysteries, and its authority appeared to me the more venerable,
and more worthy of religious credence, in that, while it lay open to all
to read, it reserved the majesty of its mysteries within its profounder
meaning, stooping to all in the great plainness of its words and
lowliness of its style, yet calling forth the intensest application of
such as are not light of heart; that so it might receive all in its open
bosom, and through narrow passages waft over towards Thee some few, yet
many more than if it stood not aloft on such a height of authority, nor
drew multitudes within its bosom by its holy lowliness. These things
I thought on, and Thou wert with me; I sighed, and Thou heardest me; I
wavered, and Thou didst guide me; I wandered through the broad way of
the world, and Thou didst not forsake me.
I panted after honours, gains, marriage; and thou deridedst me. In these
desires I underwent most bitter crosses, Thou being the more gracious,
the less Thou sufferedst aught to grow sweet to me, which was not Thou.
Behold my heart, O Lord, who wouldest I should remember all this, and
confess to Thee. Let my soul cleave unto Thee, now that Thou hast freed
it from that fast-holding birdlime of death. How wretched was it! and
Thou didst irritate the feeling of its wound, that forsaking all else,
it might be converted unto Thee, who art above all, and without whom all
things would be nothing; be converted, and be healed. How miserable was
I then, and how didst Thou deal with me, to make me feel my misery on
that day, when I was preparing to recite a panegyric of the Emperor,
wherein I was to utter many a lie, and lying, was to be applauded by
those who knew I lied, and my heart was panting with these anxieties,
and boiling with the feverishness of consuming thoughts. For, passing
through one of the streets of Milan, I observed a poor beggar, then, I
suppose, with a full belly, joking and joyous: and I sighed, and spoke
to the friends around me, of the many sorrows of our frenzies; for that
by all such efforts of ours, as those wherein I then toiled dragging
along, under the goading of desire, the burthen of my own wretchedness,
and, by dragging, augmenting it, we yet looked to arrive only at that
very joyousness whither that beggar-man had arrived before us, who
should never perchance attain it. For what he had obtained by means of a
few begged pence, the same was I plotting for by many a toilsome turning
and winding; the joy of a temporary felicity. For he verily had not the
true joy; but yet I with those my ambitious designs was seeking one much
less true. And certainly he was joyous, I anxious; he void of care, I
full of fears. But should any ask me, had I rather be merry or fearful?
I would answer merry. Again, if he asked had I rather be such as he was,
or what I then was? I should choose to be myself, though worn with cares
and fears; but out of wrong judgment; for, was it the truth? For I ought
not to prefer myself to him, because more learned than he, seeing I
had no joy therein, but sought to please men by it; and that not to
instruct, but simply to please. Wherefore also Thou didst break my bones
with the staff of Thy correction.
Away with those then from my soul who say to her, "It makes a difference
whence a man's joy is. That beggar-man joyed in drunkenness; Thou
desiredst to joy in glory." What glory, Lord? That which is not in
Thee. For even as his was no true joy, so was that no true glory: and
it overthrew my soul more. He that very night should digest his
drunkenness; but I had slept and risen again with mine, and was to sleep
again, and again to rise with it, how many days, Thou, God, knowest. But
"it doth make a difference whence a man's joy is." I know it, and the
joy of a faithful hope lieth incomparably beyond such vanity. Yea, and
so was he then beyond me: for he verily was the happier; not only for
that he was thoroughly drenched in mirth, I disembowelled with cares:
but he, by fair wishes, had gotten wine; I, by lying, was seeking for
empty, swelling praise. Much to this purpose said I then to my friends:
and I often marked in them how it fared with me; and I found it went ill
with me, and grieved, and doubled that very ill; and if any prosperity
smiled on me, I was loth to catch at it, for almost before I could grasp
it, it flew away.
These things we, who were living as friends together, bemoaned together,
but chiefly and most familiarly did I speak thereof with Alypius and
Nebridius, of whom Alypius was born in the same town with me, of persons
of chief rank there, but younger than I. For he had studied under me,
both when I first lectured in our town, and afterwards at Carthage, and
he loved me much, because I seemed to him kind, and learned; and I him,
for his great towardliness to virtue, which was eminent enough in one of
no greater years. Yet the whirlpool of Carthaginian habits (amongst whom
those idle spectacles are hotly followed) had drawn him into the
madness of the Circus. But while he was miserably tossed therein, and
I, professing rhetoric there, had a public school, as yet he used not my
teaching, by reason of some unkindness risen betwixt his father and me.
I had found then how deadly he doted upon the Circus, and was deeply
grieved that he seemed likely, nay, or had thrown away so great promise:
yet had I no means of advising or with a sort of constraint reclaiming
him, either by the kindness of a friend, or the authority of a master.
For I supposed that he thought of me as did his father; but he was not
such; laying aside then his father's mind in that matter, he began to
greet me, come sometimes into my lecture room, hear a