Confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo (Abridged Student Edition) - St. Augustine Preparatory School

Confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo

St. Augustine Preparatory School Abridged Student Edition

Chronology of Augustine’s Life (Taken from What Are They Saying About Augustine?

by Joseph T. Kelley [Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2014], xiii-xiv.)

354 Augustine is born on November 13 at Thagaste, modern Souk-Ahras in Algeria.

366-69 Studies grammar at Madauros, modern Mdaourouch, Algeria 369-70 Returns from a year of idleness to Thagaste.

370-73 Studies rhetoric in Carthage, near modern Tunis, Tunisia; birth of Adeodatus; reads Cicero’s Hortensius; joins Manichean sect 373-74 Returns to teach in Thagaste 374-83 Teaches in Carthage; meets Faustus, a Manichean 383-84 Teaches in Rome; falls ill; wins chair of rhetoric in Milan 384-86 Serves as Imperial Rhetor at court in Milan; Monica joins Augustine and his family; Augustine meets Ambrose; reads Books of the Platonists; hears about Christian monasticism 386 Conversion in garden at Milan 386-87 Prebaptismal retreat at Cassiciacum, probably modern Cassago Brianza, Italy 387 April 26/27 baptized at Easter Vigil by Ambrose in Milan along with son Adeodatus and friend Alypius; Monica dies at Ostia in August 387-88 Second stay in Rome 388-90 Returns to Thagaste to establish monastic retreat; Adeodatus dies 391 Visit to Hippo to found monastery; ordained a priest by Bishop Valerius of Hippo 391-95 Priestly ministry at Hippo, modern Annaba, Algeria 395 Ordained co-adjutor bishop; succeeds Bishop Valerius

396 Re-reads St. Paul and begins to develop a theology of grace 397-400 Writes Confessions 403 Council of Carthage 411 Conference between Donatists and Catholics at Carthage 416 Councils of Carthage and Milevis condemn teachings of Pelagius and Caelestius 418 Beginning of feud with Julian of Eclanum 427 Appoints the priest Eraclius to succeed him 430 Dies at Hippo on August 28 during third month of Vandal siege The Roman Empire During The Life Of Augustine 350 The Huns invade Europe; Constantius II persecutes non-Arians 361-63 Constantine’s nephew, Julian the Apostate, reigns as emperor 375 Valentinian I, the last great emperor in the West, who took control in 364, dies 378 Eastern Emperor Valens is defeated by the Goths, dies at Adrianople 380 Theodosius I makes Christianity the state religion 383-84 Rome suffers a famine; Symmachus appeals for the re-recognition of paganism 391 A general edict against paganism is issued, and Theodosius orders all pagan temples closed 395 Theodosius, who took the throne in 379, dies; the Empire is re-divided, and the Huns invade the Eastern Empire 402 The Goths are defeated in Italy 410 Roman rule in Britain ends, and Rome itself is sacked by Alaric and the Goths 417 Pope Innocent I condemns Pelagius 429 The Vandals invade North Africa 430 The Vandals besiege Hippo

Book One: The Early Years 1.

Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised! (Psalm 145:3). Great is our Lord and mighty in power; to His wisdom there is no limit (Psalm 147:5). Man desires to praise You, even though he is only a tiny part of all that You have created. He carries with him his mortality, his sinfulness, and the evidence that God resists the proud. Yet this tiny part of all that You have created wants to praise You. You excite him so much that to praise You is his joy. You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You. Help me, Lord, to know what the soul does first – does it call on You for help or does it praise You? Do I have to know You before I can call upon You? It seems clear that no one can call upon You without knowing You, because if he did he might be calling on someone other than You. Does he have to call on You to know You? Scripture says, “How shall they call on Him in Whom they have not believed…and how can they hear unless there is someone to preach?” (Roman 10:14). The Psalmist says, “They who seek the Lord shall praise Him” (Psalm 22:27). Therefore, let me seek You, Lord, by praying for Your help. I will pray to You believing in You, for You have been preached to us. In faith I will cry out to You, the faith that You have given to me through the humanity of Your Son and through the ministry of Your preacher (Bishop Ambrose of Milan).

2.

But how can I call upon my God and Lord? When I call upon Him, I am calling Him to myself, and how can I contain the God Who made the entire universe? What is in me that can contain You? The heavens and earth contain You because You made them. Nothing can exist without You; therefore, You must be in everything that exists. I exist, so You must also be in me. and since You are already in me, why do I keep asking You to enter into me? Even if I were in hell, You would be there. The Psalmist says, “If I sink to the nether world, You are present there.” (Psalm 139:8). Therefore, O Lord, I would be nothing unless You were in me or rather, unless I were in You, of Whom, by Whom, and in Whom all things are. So it is Lord. Since I am in You, to where shall I call You? From where will You come to me? Do I have to go beyond heaven and earth so there my God might come to me? You have said, “Do I not fill both heaven and earth?” (Jeremiah 23:24).

3.

Since You fill the heavens and earth, do they contain You? Or do You fill them so much that they overflow because they cannot contain all of You? If they cannot contain You and You overflow, into what do You overflow? Surely, You have no need of any place to contain You because You contain all things and You fill them just because you contain them. The vessels that 1

are filled with You cannot hold You, and if they were to be broken, You would not spill out.

When You spill Yourself out to us, You do not come down to us; instead You pull us up to You. You are not scattered, but we are gathered into one by You. When You fill all things, do You do it with Your whole being? And if these things cannot wholly contain You, do they contain part of You? Do they contain the same part of You at the same time, or do different parts of creation contain different parts of You – greater or smaller according to their capacity? Are there some parts of You that are greater and some parts of You that are smaller? Or are You wholly in every place, even though nothing can totally contain You?

4.

Who then is the Lord God? “For Who is God except the Lord?” (Psalm 18:32). You are the greatest and the best, almighty, merciful and just, hidden yet present, beauty and strength, mysterious. You do not change, yet You change everything. You are never new, never old but You make all things new. You humble the proud without their knowing it. You are active and always at rest, gathering yet needing nothing, fulfilling, protecting, creating, nourishing, perfecting, seeking yet lacking nothing. You love without involvement in passion. You are jealous and have no fear; You can repent and not be sorry, get angry and be undisturbed by anger. You can change Your work but never Your plans. You recover what You did not lose, never in need, but You rejoice at what You gain. You are not greedy but You exact interest. Men will pay You more than is necessary in order to win You over, yet who has anything that does not already belong to You? You owe nothing and yet pay as if in debt, and when You forgive what is owed, You lose nothing. After saying all of this, what have I really said, my God, my Life, my Delight? What can anyone say when he or she speaks about You? Yet woe to them who do not speak of You at all because that is dangerous as well.

5.

Who will give me rest in You? Who will enable You to come into my heart and fill it so that I will turn away from my sins and embrace You, the only good in my life? What are You to me? Have mercy on me so that I may speak. What am I to You that You demand my love and then if I do not love You, You become angry and make threats? Not loving You is already a great woe. Tell me what You are to me? “Say to my soul, I am your salvation” (Psalm 35:3).

Speak that I may hear You, O Lord, my heart is listening. Speak and say to my soul “I am your salvation.” Upon hearing that I will come running to lay hold of You. Do not hide Your face from me. Let me see it even if I die, before I die still longing to see it.

The house of my soul is too small to receive You; You will have to expand it. It is ruined; You will have to repair it. There are things in there than I know and confess to be offensive to Your gaze. But who will clean it? To whom else can I cry out, “Cleanse me from my unknown faults! From wanton sin restrain your servant” (Psalm 19:12-13). I believe and therefore I speak, Lord; You know how it is. Have I not confessed openly my wrongdoing? And You, my God, 2

“took away the guilt of my sin” (Psalm 32:5). I cannot fight against Your judgment, since You are the Truth; and I have no intention of deceiving myself lest my sins trip me up. Therefore, I cannot contend with Your judgment because “if You mark iniquities Lord, who can stand?”

(Psalm 130:3).

6.

Even though I am nothing but dust and ashes, allow me to cry out to Your mercy. It is to Your mercy that I speak and not to any other man’s, and even if You were to scorn me, You will return and have compassion on me.

What can I say to You, Lord, except that I do not know where I came from when I came into this life in death – or should I call it death in life? I do not know. I only know that the gifts that have come from Your mercy have sustained me from the very beginning – not that I remember it, but I have heard it from my parents, my father and my mother, by whom and in whom You brought me into being.

For my sustenance I had human milk, yet it was not my mother’s breasts that fed me, but it was Yourself using her to give me the food of my infancy since Your goodness operates at every level of creation. It was by Your gift that You gave me what I needed and no more, and others gave to me from the abundance You have given them. It was by Your gift that they so willingly give me that milk which flowed in their breasts. It was food for them to do this for me even though I received it not from them but through them, since all good things come from You, for from God is all my health. Since then I have discovered this, and You have made it abundantly clear, from what I have seen You give to me and to those about me. But at that time I only knew how to suck and lie quiet when I was content, and to cry when I was in pain. That was all I knew.

Later I began to smile, first in my sleep, and then when I was awake. Again, I only have this on the words of others because, naturally, I do not remember it. I believe it since I have seen other infants do the same thing. Gradually I began to notice where I was, and I wanted to make my wishes known to those who could satisfy them, but I was not able to do so. My wants were inside of me, and the people around me were outside of me, and they were not able to enter into my mind. So I would fling my arms and legs and utter sounds, making gestures that would express my wishes, but they were not very good. When I did not get what I wanted, because either my wishes were not clear or the things were not good for me, I went into a rage and took my revenge in screams. It was as if my parents or any other person had to serve me. Infants are like that, and I have learned this from watching other infants. I learned more about myself from these infants who did not know me than I did from my own nurses who did know me.

My infancy passed a long time ago, and I still live. But there is something I must ask You, Lord. Your life is forever, and in You nothing dies. Before the beginning of time and before anything can even be called “before,” You have existed. You are the God and Lord of all that You have created, changeless in the midst of change, reason in the midst of unreason.

Therefore, O God, tell me, I beg You, whether my infancy came after some earlier existence of 3

my life. Was the time I spent in my mother’s womb another age? I have learned about that from other pregnant women. So before that, O God of my joy, was I anywhere? Was I anyone? No one can tell me. My parents cannot tell me, nor can others tell me and of course I have no memory of my own. Are You laughing at me for wanting to know about this? Is it Your will that I adore and praise You for what I do know? I do adore and praise You for giving me life and for the infancy of which I remember nothing. You let people learn these things about themselves from others, and to accept much of what they know from the words of women.

Clearly then, I had life and had being, and toward the end of my infancy I tried to find ways of making my feelings known to others. Where can such a living being come from, Lord, except from You? Can a man be his own maker? Is there any other source through which being and life can come into us except from You? For You, being and being alive are the same thing because Your infinite Being is the same as Your infinite Life. You are infinite, and there is no change in You. Even the present does not pass away in You. Yet in another sense, it does pass away, because all things are in You; and there could not be anything to change unless You first brought about its being. And since Your years do not end, they make an endless day. It does not matter how many of our days or our father’s days there have been, because they have all passed through Your endless day and they have received their measure and being. The same thing will happen for all of those days yet to come, and You will still be the same. All of our yesterdays from the beginning of time and all of our tomorrows until the end of time are in Your day.

What is it to me if someone does not understand this? Let him be happy as he asks, “What is this?” Let him be happy, and let his preference be to find You even if he does not find out about his own being.

7.

O God, hear me! Woe be to men for their sins. When a man cries out in such a way, You have mercy on him because You made the man but not the sin that is in him.

Who can remind me of the sins of my infancy? For in Your sight there is no one without sin, not even the infant whose life on this earth is only one day old. But who can tell me? Perhaps it will be each tiny child in whom I can see what I do not remember about myself. What were my sins at that age? That I cried too loudly for the breast? If I were to do that today, not for breast but for adult food, I would be ridiculed and condemned. This means that what I did back then was reprehensible, but since I could not understand words of blame, neither custom nor common sense blamed me.

As we grow older, we seek out and reject such behavior. A man who is trying to remove evil will not knowingly throw out the things that are good. Even when I was an infant, it was not good for me to scream for the things that would have been harmful to me or to get angry at older people who would not wait on me and then strike out as hard as I could in order to hurt them because they did not give in to my demands and give me what would have been harmful to me.

The innocence of children is in the helplessness of their bodies and not in their state of mind. I have seen an infant become jealous and angry as it watched another infant at the breast. There is 4

nothing unusual about this. Mothers and nurses will tell you that they have their own way of curing these fits of jealousy. It is an odd kind of innocence when a baby cannot stand to see another baby share the mother’s milk even though his life depends on it and there is plenty of it to go around. We tend to tolerate this behavior not because they are only small faults, but because we know that it will be outgrown. This is true. We put up with infant behavior, and we know that it would not be tolerated in an older person.

O Lord, my God, You gave me life in my infancy, and You supplied my body with limbs and senses. You gave it shape, and for its wellbeing and security You gave it the instincts needed by a living being. And You, Lord, command me to praise You for these things, “to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praise to Your name, Most High” (Psalm 92:1). You are God, all powerful and good. Only You can do these things no one else can do them but You; You Who are all beautiful and who set all things in order according to Your law.

Lord, I do not remember living my infancy. I must take the word of others and conjecture how I spent it from watching other children of the same age. I do not want to count it as a part of my life. It is buried in the darkness of oblivion as is the time I spent in my mother’s womb. If I was conceived in sin, and in sin my mother nourished me in the womb, then where, O Lord, or when, O Lord, was I innocent? But now I move on from that time, for why should I be concerned about a time of which I cannot remember the slightest thing?

8.

From infancy I came to boyhood, or rather it came to me. My infancy did not go away, for where would it go? Simply it was no longer there. I was no longer an infant who was unable to speak, but now I was a boy who could speak. This I remember, and since then I have discovered through observation how I first learned to speak. I did not learn by my elders teaching me words in any systematic way, as they would later teach me how to read and write. But by using the mind that You, my God, have given me, I struggled with cries and different sounds and moved my arms and legs in order to get what I wanted. I did not always express the right meanings to the right people. So I began to think. I observed that my elders would make some particular sound, and as they made that sound, they would point at or move toward a particular object, and from that I came to realize that the thing they were pointing to was called by the sound they were making. That this was intentional was clear from the motions of their bodies. By using a kind of natural language common to all people, consisting of facial expressions, eye movements, gestures, and tones of voice, they expressed a mental attitude about something such as whether it should be sought after, kept, thrown away, or avoided. So I heard those same words again and again being used in different phrases, and I came to understand what they meant. I forced myself to make those sounds, and I began to use them to express what I wanted. In this way I learned to communicate with those around me. And so I took another step along the stormy way of human life in society, while still being subjected to the authority of my parents and at the beck and call of my elders.

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9.

O God, my God, what a hard life I had to experience as a boy. It was impressed upon me as right and proper to obey my teachers so that I might get on in the world, excel in language skills, gain honor among men, and obtain deceitful riches for myself. I was sent off to school, and unfortunately, I could not see the use of the things I was expected to learn. If I was not able to learn it, I was beaten. This procedure seemed wise to our ancestors and to the many others who followed them as they laid a course of grief and toil for the sons of Adam.

At that time, Lord, I observed men praying to You; and I learned to do the same thing, thinking of You as some great being Who, though not able to be seen, could hear me and help me. As a boy I began praying to You, my Help and my Refuge, and in those prayers I broke the strings on my tongue. I prayed to You, as small as I was but with great energy, that I might not be beaten at school. When You did not hear me, my elders, and even my parents, who did not wish to harm me, laughed at my bruises which were anything but a joke to me. Surely, Lord, there cannot be someone who is so strong in mind and intent on clinging to You who makes light of the racks and hooks and other instruments of torture, which men in every country pray so fervently to escape. Yet my parents seemed to be amused at the tortures inflicted upon me as a boy, and I continued my zealous prayers to you for deliverance from these beatings. Even though I was afraid, I continued to do wrong by not doing my reading, writing, or study assignments. It was not because I was lacking in mind or memory, for You had given me as much of these as I needed for my age, but because I wanted to play games, and for those I was punished by men who were doing the exact thing. They called their play “business,” but when boys did the same thing, they were punished, and no one feels sorry for either the boys or the men.

Would any unbiased person say that I was unjustly beaten for playing with a ball because it hindered my studies, the studies which would prepare me as a grown-up to play at games more degrading? And what about the teachers who beat me? When one teacher got into an argument with a fellow teacher and got the worst of it, he became more angry than I did when I lost a ball game to a better player.

10.

Yet in going against the commands of my parents and teachers, I did wrong, O Lord my God, Creator of all things except sin, for later on I might have made good use of those lessons that they wanted me to learn, no matter what their motives may have been in wanted me to learn them. I disobeyed, not because I had chosen better, but because I wanted to play. I loved the vanity of victory. I loved theater productions which tickled my ears and set them burning for more. My eyes burned to see the games and shows put on by the elders. Those who put on these shows are held in high esteem, and most people would be delighted to have their sons grow up and give the same kind of show. However, they also concur in the beatings of their sons if these shows hinder their studies, for it is through study that a person will achieve such a career. Look 6

down in mercy upon us, Lord, and set free those who call upon You. Not only us, but also those who have never prayed to You, that they may one day turn to You and be made free.

11.

As a boy I had heard of the eternal life that was promised to us through the Lord our God Who humbled Himself to come down on us in our pride. In fact, as soon as I was born, because of my mother’s great trust in You, I was signed with the sign of His Cross and sprinkled with the holy salt. When I was still a young boy, I became gravely ill with stomach cramps and nearly died. You saw, Lord, (for even then You were guarding me) with what strong faith I pleaded with my mother and the Mother of us all, Your Church, to receive the baptism of Your Christ, my Lord and my God. My mother was anxious about this and with a pure heart in Your faith, she was concerned about my eternal salvation. She would have proceeded without delay to have me consecrated and washed clean by the Sacrament of Baptism, to confess You, Lord Jesus, and be washed clean of my sins. But I made a sudden recovery. This caused my baptism to be postponed, the reason being that if I lived, I would fall again into sin, and if I were baptized it would be more dangerous to my soul because the guilt for sin would now be greater. At that point I was a believer, as well as my mother and all of our household. Everyone believed except my father, and he did not try to pressure my mother to tell me not to believe in Christ because he did not.

I wanted to know, Lord, if You will tell me, why my baptism was postponed? Was it for my good that the reins were slack so that I could sin, or were the reigns not loose at all? Why do we constantly hear such things as, “Let him alone; let him keep on with what he is doing: he is not yet baptized?” With regard to one’s health we do not say, “Let him be wounded some more; he is not yet cured.” It would have been far better had I been made whole at once, because through my own efforts and with the help of my friends, the health of my soul would have been safer in Your keeping, You Who gave it to me in the first place. Far better, I say. There were many mighty waves of temptation that threatened to break over me as I grew out of boyhood. My mother knew this, and she thought it would be better to let these words crash upon the clay before it was molded into the image of Christ than to let the clay be molded and then be broken.

12.

But continuing with my boyhood, which was in less danger of sin than my adolescence, I disliked my studies and hated being forced to study. But I was forced to study, and good did come out of it, even though I did not do it on my own. If I had my way I would not have learned.

No one does well when he goes against his will, even if the thing he does is a good thing. Those who urged me to study do not deserve any credit either, for the benefits that I received came from You, my God. They could care less about how I would later put to use what they forced me to learn. They taught me to satisfy that insatiable desire of man for wealth and glory. But You, Lord, Who have numbered the hairs on our head, used for my good the wrong motivation of 7

those who urged me to study; and You used my error of not being willing to study to punish me.

This punishment was rightly deserved by a small boy who was so great a sinner. Thus, You brought good to me from the ill of others, and You justly punished me for the wrong I did to myself. You have ordained that every disorder of the soul is its own punishment.

13.

To this day I do not understand why I hated the Greek language. I really liked Latin, not just the grammar that we learned at first, but also the literature that we learned later on. Those lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic were as hard and hateful as Greek. This could only come from sin and vanity of life, because I was “flesh, a passing breath that returns not” (Psalm 78:39). Those first lessons were good enough because they taught me how to read what is written, and how to write what I want to express. In those later studies I was forced to memorize the wanderings of Aeneas – whoever he was – while overlooking my own wanderings, and to cry for Queen Dido who killed herself for the love of this man. All the while I was dry-eyed about my own pitiful state and the way these studies were causing me to become dead toward You. Nothing is more pitiful than a man who cannot pity himself but cries over the death that Dido suffered through her love of Aeneas and does nor cry for the death that he himself suffers through not loving You, my God, the Light of my heart, the Bread of my soul, and the Power Who joins my mind with the depths of my thought. I did not love You, and I turned away from You in fornication, and all around me I heard: “Well done! Well done!” “A man is marked out as God’s enemy if he chooses to be the world’s friend” (James 4:4). Yet the world cries “Well done” so loudly that one is ashamed not to do it. For all of this I did not cry, but for Dido I did, because she killed herself to end her woe. I, too, deserted You and followed after the lowest of Your creatures. It was the earth going back to the earth. And if I were kept from reading, I would become upset because I was not able to read what upset me. This kind of stuff was considered higher and richer than the studies that taught us how to read and write.

But now, my God, cry out in my soul; and let Your truth assure me that it is not so, that the earlier studies were far better. I would rather forget about the wandering of Aeneas and his men than forget how to read and write. Let those who would speak out against me hold their tongues. I confess to You, my God, the desire of my soul, to find rest in You so that I may turn away from any evil ways and turn to the good. Let those who buy and sell books hold their tongues as well. If I ask them if it is true, as the poet says, that Aeneas went to Carthage, the ignorant will have to answer that they do not know, while the more educated will say that he did not. Yet if I asked them how the name Aeneas was spelled, those who had gone to school would answer correctly, according to the conventional use of the alphabet. Or again, if I were to ask which would be more damaging to society, the loss of reading and writing or the loss of poetic imagination, there could be no question, if the person had not already lost his mind, what the answer would be. Therefore, as a boy I was wrong in liking the inane studies over the useful. I thought it was repulsive to recite: “one and one makes two; two and two makes four”; but things 8

such as the Wooden Horse and its armed men, Troy being on fire, or Creusa’s ghost really caught my interest.

14.

So why did I hate Greek literature, which is filled with the same kind of stories? Homer has the same charm and the same unreality, yet as a boy I could not get into it. I guess that boys in Greece hate Virgil’s Latin as much as I hated Homer’s Greek. I did not know a word of the language, and in order to get me to learn, my teachers threatened me with punishments. When I was an infant, I did not know Latin either, yet I learned it without threat or punishment. Simply I kept my eyes and ears open, and I listened to the words of the nurses and the laughter of those who played with me. I learned it without the fear of punishment because I had the desire to express what was on my mind, and that would have been impossible unless I learned the words. I learned them not by people teaching me but by people talking to me as I tried to tell them of my feelings. All of this goes to prove that free curiosity is of more value in learning than harsh discipline. But by Your law, O Lord, free play must be controlled, whether it is through the teacher’s cane or through the suffering of the martyrs, or through works that are both bitter and sweet, we are called back to You and away from those pleasures that took us away from You in the first place.

15.

Because I learned these stories willingly, and sinfully delighted in them, I was considered to be a youth of much promise. Allow me, Lord, to speak of my mind, Your gift, and of the stupid way in which I wasted it. I was given an assignment that I did not like but had to do.

There was the promise of glory if I won, and disgrace and a beating if I lost. I had to recite the words of Juno as she complained in rage and grief about not being able to keep the Trojan prince from coming to Italy. I had learned that Juno never said these words, but we were compelled to follow in the footsteps of the poet who had invented them. We were told to put into our own prose what he had said in verse. In this exercise a boy could win the most applause by reenacting the passions of grief and anger by using a language that was suitable to the person being represented.

What could all of this mean to me, my God, my true Life? Why was much more applause given to my performance than to other boys of my own age? Was this whole exercise not just so much wind and smoke? Surely they could have found some other way to exercise our mind and tongue. Your praises, Lord, might have held up the young branches of my heart, so that it might not have been snatched away by this empty stuff and turned into prey for the vultures. For there is more than one way of sacrificing to the fallen angels.

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16.

It is no surprise that I got caught up in vanity and moved far away from You, my God. Men were held up as models for me to imitate, who appeared to be covered with shame if, in telling their stories in no evil way, they made some grammatical error. Yet they were praised, and were delighted in this praise, when they told of their sexual conquests by using the right words in the right way. You see all of these things, Lord, yet You stay silent, because You are patient and full of mercy and truth. But will You always stay silent? Even now You are pulling out of this pit of destruction someone who is searching for You and who thirsts for Your joys, “of You my heart speaks; You my glance seeks; Your presence, O Lord, I seek” (Psalm 27:8). I was far away from Your face, and my heart was dark. It is not by moving our feet or by changing location what we move away from You. The Prodigal Son did not use horses or chariots or boats or even move his own two feet to take him to that country where he squandered everything that You gave him from the start. You loved him when You gave to him, and You were more loving when he returned to You poor and stripped. To be lustful and darkened in heart is to be far away from Your face.

Patiently see, O Lord, my God, with what care men observe the rules of language and syllables that they have learned from those who spoke the language before them yet neglect the eternal rules of everlasting salvation taught by You. The teacher or the student of the traditional rules of pronunciation who drops an “h” and says “uman being” instead of “human being,” this breaking the rule of grammar, is considered to be more offensive than the person who hates his fellow man, thus breaking a law of Yours. It is strange that we do not realize that no enemy could be more dangerous to us than the hatred that we build up within ourselves, and when we strike out against him we do less damage to him than we do to our own hearts. Obviously the knowledge of language skills is not more deeply engraved in our hearts than the law of conscience that tells us to avoid doing to someone what we do not want done to us. How hidden You are, O Lord, the Great One, Who dwells in the silence of the heavens. By an untiring law You send blindness as the punishment for illicit desires. A man who stands before a human judge, being surrounded by a crowd, will bring charges against his enemy and because he wants to have a reputation for eloquence, will be very careful not to make a slip of the tongue and murder the words “human being.” Yet, he will not be concerned that because of the anger in his heart, he may bring about the murder of a real human being.

17.

This was the way the world was, and I stood at the threshold of this world. I was more concerned about avoiding a grammatical error than I was avoiding envy when I did slip up and another boy did not. I say this, and I confess to You, my God, that I was praised by those whom I wanted to impress; yet I did not see the whirlwind that was taking me away from Your eyes. For who was more unclean than I, I who did not even gain acceptance by my peers? I told endless lies to my teachers, my masters, and to my parents, because I wanted to play games and I wanted 10

to see stage shows and imitate what I saw done in these shows. I stole from my parents’ cellar and table, sometimes because I was a glutton and sometimes because I wanted to have something to trade with other boys for playthings that they wanted to sell, even though they loved them as much as I did. Even in games when I was outplayed, I tried to win by cheating, because I had a desire to be in first place. Yet, at the same time, when I caught someone else cheating, I became indignant and argued furiously. But when I was caught cheating, I would start an argument rather than say I was wrong.

Is this the innocence of boyhood? It is not, O Lord. I cry out for Your mercy. As we grow into adulthood, we continue to commit these same kinds of offenses. We leave behind our teachers and masters, as well as our playthings, and we come to deal with governors and kings and the getting of gold and land and slaves. One stage of life takes the place of the other, and the greater punishment of the law now takes the place of the schoolmaster’s whip. Therefore, O God and King, when You said, “Unless you become like little children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 18:3), it could have only been the humility of a child, symbolized by his small stature, that You were commending.

18.

Even if it had been Your will that I would not live beyond boyhood, I should still owe You thanks, my God, the most excellent Creator and Ruler of the universe. Even then I was, I lived, I felt, and I had an instinct to take care of my own being. There was a trace within me of that profound Unity from which I came. My interior sense kept guard over the integrity of my external senses, and in my small thoughts upon small matters, I was able to delight in the Truth. I hated to be wrong. I had a good memory, and I spoke with a good vocabulary. I took delight in my friends, and I avoided pain, ignorance and meanness.

In such a small person, was not all of this admirable and worthy of praise? Yet all of these were a gift of my God, for I did not give them to myself. All of these were good and together; they made up what I was. Therefore, He Who made me is good. He is my Good; and I shall thank Him for all of these good qualities that I had as a boy. But here was my sin: I sought pleasure, nobility, and truth, not in God but in the beings He created, myself and others; and so I fell into sorrow, confusion, and error. Thanks be to You, my Joy, my Glory, my Hope, and my God; thank You for Your gifts. Will you please sustain them in me? In this way You will preserve me , and the things You have given to me will increase and will be made perfect, and I will be with You because even my life is Your gift.

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Book Two: A Time Of Adolescence 1.

Now I will look back at the past, my past, my messed-up life with all the physical corruption that took place in my heart, not because I like to reflect on these bad things, but because I love You, my God. Reliving such behavior is a difficult task, but it is done so that I might see Your great love for me. Your love is a love that is safe, secure, and will never let me down. So now You, the Great Unifier, must show how You have put together my broken life after I ran from Your love.

As an adolescent raising hell was what I did best. I ran wild in a disgusting, self-centered pit of destruction, and my beauty was consumed like a wild, hate-filled creature in Your eyes.

2.

The only thing I really wanted was to love and be loved. But I never set up a real relationship that could establish a friendship. Instead, from the desires of the flesh and my adolescent imagination, there arose a mist that clouded my heart which prevented me from knowing the difference between real love and the want to fulfill my desires. I was confused between both of these feelings, and together they caused me to act out my sexual desires in shameful ways. Your anger was growing against me, and I did not even know it. The clanging chains of my immorality caused me not to hear Your call. So further and further away from You I went, and You let me go. I was thrown around, wasted and boiling over in my fornication, and You were still silent. Why so late in coming, O my Joy? You stayed silent while I, being conceited and depressed, tired and alone, kept running from You into a pit of sin and sorrow.

If only someone could have stopped my wicked condition and turned what little good there was in those experiences into happiness. then the waves of my youth might have rolled in on the shore of marriage. This would have calmed my sex drive and satisfied me with having children, as Your law prescribes, Lord.

I could have paid more attention to Your Scriptures: “Those who marry shall have tribulations in the flesh.”… “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.”… “The unmarried cares for the things of the Lord, how he can please the Lord, but the married cares for the things of the world, how he can please his wife.” (1 Corinthians 7) I should have listened to those voices, I could have even unsexed myself for the kingdom of heaven, so that I could wait for Your loving embrace.

But, being the fool that I was, I followed my untamed impulses, forgot about You and broke all Your laws. However, I did not escape Your whip. What mortal can? You were always by me, angry yet merciful, making my illicit behavior have a bitter taste, so that I would look for pleasures that would not offend You. And where was I to find these pleasures except in You, 12

Lord? You Who uses sorrow to teach, wounds us to heal us, and kills us so we may not die away from You. Well, that is how my life stood in my sixteenth year, banished from the pleasures of Your house and given into the madness of lust. I was wild and brought into disgraceful conduct, and my behavior was opposed to Your laws. This lust took complete control of me, and I gave myself over to it. While all this was going on, my family did nothing to save me through marriage; their only concern was that I learn to be the best orator and make the finest and most persuasive speeches possible.

3.

In that year my studies were interrupted. I had come back home from Madaura, a neighboring city where I had been sent to study grammar and rhetoric. The money was being put together by my father to send me to Carthage. He was set on sending me there even though he was not a wealthy man. In fact, he was just a poor citizen of Thagaste. But to whom am I telling this? Not to You, my God, but in Your presence I am telling it to my fellow man, the human race, to that small group of people who may come across these writings of mine. And why do I tell it? Simply that I, and anyone else who reads this, may realize what we must do to lift our voices to You. What is more certain to be heard by You than a confessing voice crying out to You and a life in Your faith? My father should be praised for going beyond his means in providing the expenses to send me far away to school. Many richer citizens failed to do this for their children. Yet my father never took any interest in how I was growing toward You or where I was morally. As long as I grew in eloquence, it did not matter what my religious life was like.

O Lord, You are the one true God Who fills my heart now!

During my sixteenth year, because of my parents’ lack of money, I was forced to drop out of school and live at home with nothing to do. There the thoughts of sex and the temptations that go with them were so great that I was buried within them, and no one was able to pull me out. In fact, one day in the public bath, my father saw me naked and realized that I had reached the age of puberty and was showing the signs of adolescence; his reaction was quite a happy one. Filled with excitement, he went home and told my mother about it, and he began looking forward to grandchildren. It is at times like this that the world forgets You, its Creator, and rejoices in what You have created instead. But in my mother’s heart You had already laid the foundations of Your temple and filled her with Your Spirit, whereas my father was just beginning to learn about You. My mother was filled with fear and trembling for me. She knew that I did not know You yet, and she was afraid that I would follow in the steps of those who walk with their backs toward You and not their faces.

I guess that I should not claim that You had nothing to say while I kept running away from You. Were You really silent? Whose words were they that my mother kept filling my ears with, if not Yours? Not that any of them had any effect on me. I remember her speaking with me 13

in private and expressing her concern that I should not be having sex, and most especially that I should never have sex with another man’s wife. But this sounded like a mother talking, and to conform to it would be giving in.

Of course, they were Your words, but I did not know it. I thought that You were being silent and she was doing the talking, but now I knew differently; You were speaking through her.

So that when I ignored her, I was really ignoring You. But I did not realize any of this and went ahead with my own destruction. I was ashamed to be less scandalous than my friends; I heard them bragging about their disgusting adventures and I always had to top them. So I did the same things as they, not for the pleasure of doing it, but for the praise I received from them. There is nothing worse than a lying braggart. I made myself out to be worse than I really was just so that I would be praised for it. And when I did not go as low as they did, I would pretend to have done what I did not do. In this way I would avoid being called a coward or accused of being chaste, which at the time I really was. The friends with whom I used to roam the streets of Babylon were nothing to brag about. We wallowed in its filth as if it were some great and expensive perfume.

To make sure that I would stay in the heart of the city, my invisible enemy pushed me down and seduced me, and it was so easy to seduce.

But this time my mother moved away from the center of Babylon and lived on its outskirts. She continued urging me not to be sexually active, as she had forgotten what my father had told her about me. She knew that my sexual drives were creating problems for me now and for the future. She thought that a good way for me to control my desires would be for me to get married, but she knew that this was not the right time for that. She did not want me to get married because she saw marriage as a stumbling block to my career – not to those hopes of a future life in You, Lord, but to her hopes for me academically.

Both of my parents wanted me to be successful in my studies, my father because he had no thought of You and only a vain ambition for me, and my mother because she thought that my studies would not hinder me but actually help me in finding my way to You. To the best of my recollection, that is how I remember my parents at that time. Anyway, I was free to do what I wanted without any restraints, so I fell into loose habits and got knocked around. And in all of this, O God, a mist clouded my view of You, while my sins ballooned into fatness.

4.

Your law, O Lord, punishes robbery. This law is written in the hearts of men, and it cannot be blotted out no matter how hard the effort. What is more, a thief cannot stand being robbed by another thief, even if he happens to be richer than the one doing the stealing. I chose to steal, not because I was in need, but because I was filled with sin and contempt for justice. I stole things that I already had plenty of, and what I had was in better condition. I did not enjoy the things that I stole; I just enjoyed the stealing and the sinning.

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There was as pear tree near our yard which was loaded with fruit. Late one night, a group of us went out and pulled all the fruit off the tree and carried it away. We carried off a large load of pears, not to eat, but to throw at the hogs. The only thrill we got from doing this was that it was not allowed. Such was my heart, O Lord, such was my heart; but You had pity on me even when I was at my lowest. Let that heart now tell You what I was looking for; I would become involved in wrongdoings just for the sake of sinning. The things that I did were terrible, and I loved it. I loved the evil, and I loved the failure – not the act of failing, but the failure itself. I was a kid who wandered away from Your security and plunged toward disaster. I looked for nothing in my dishonorable conduct but the dishonor itself.

5.

There is an attractiveness in beautiful things, in gold and silver and other things. The sense of touch has its own powerful pleasure; the other senses find enjoyment in things suited to them. Worldly success has its glory as well as the power to command and to overcome, and from this comes the thirst for revenge. But in reaching for all of these, we must not depart from You, Lord, or stray from Your law. The appeal of this life we live here on earth is based on the beauty and harmony it has with other elements of beauty. The bond of human friendship is admirable, as it makes many hearts beat as one. But in the enjoyment of these things we are led to sin if, by overstressing them, we forget about life’s higher and better qualities and even abandon You, Lord, God, and Your Truth and Your Law. These lower things have their good side, but they cannot compare to You Who made them.

Now when we investigate the reason an evil act was done, it is fair to assume that it could not have been done to gain some of these “lesser things” or even for the fear of losing them.

Beautiful and fascinating as these things are, they cannot be compared to the higher value of heaven. But what about a man who commits murder? Why did he do it? Did he want the other man’s wife or property? Did he feel he had to steal to live? Was he afraid of losing something to the victim, or had he been wronged and full of vengeance? Would any man commit murder for any reason, just for the sheer thrill of murdering? Incredible! Even in the case of Catilina (Lucius Sergius Catilina was an officer in the Roman army who was a part of the conspiracy to assassinate the governing consuls and to plunder Rome) a motive was provided. He had the reputation of being a cruel man without really having any reason. And what did he have in mind?

To take the city of Rome by his criminal deeds; to achieve honors, wealth, and the empire; and to escape the fear of the law. He was trying to avoid financial difficulties for his family and to erase the awareness of his crimes. Even Catilina did not love his crimes but something else that made him commit them.

6.

Why was the theft of the pears so appealing to fifteen-year-old me? The pears that we stole were beautiful because they were created by You, Creator of all. Yes, the pears were 15

appealing; but it was not the pears that my empty soul was looking for, because I had all the beautiful pears I wanted in my own yard. I picked those pears only for the thrill of stealing. For once I stole them, I threw them away. The only pleasure I took in eating them was tasting my own sin and savoring it with delight; for if I took even one bite of those pears, it was the sin that sweetened them. And now, Lord, my God, I ask what was it that attracted me to that theft? There was no beauty in it. To be quite honest, this act of mine did not even have the false show of beauty which vice so often uses to deceive us.

Human pride wears the mask of lofty spirit, although You alone, O God, are the only loftiness there is. In the same way human ambition looks for honor and glory, yet only You are to be honored and glorious forever. The great seek to create fear by being cruel, but who is to be feared but God alone? What can be taken from His power? When? Where? How? By whom?

The caresses of the prostitutes are an attempt at love, but what can compare with the caresses of Your love? Nor is there anything healthier than the love of Your charity and truth.

Curiosity may be regarded as a desire for knowledge, whereas You are all knowledge in Yourself. Under the names of ignorance and stupidity, one often finds the names of simplicity and innocence; yet no being has simplicity like Yours; and no one is more innocent than You, because it is his or her own deeds that harm the wicked. Laziness pretends that it wants rest, but what rest is there outside of You, O Lord? Luxury would like to be called abundance and satisfaction, but You are the fullness and abundance of incorruptible delight. Wastefulness tried to look like generosity, but you are the infinitely generous giver of all good. Avarice wants to have everything, but You already have it all. Envy tires to excel, but what can excel before You? What can separate You from that which You love? Where is there security except in You? Thus the soul is like a whore when it turns away from You. It looks for things that cannot be found in pure and untainted form until it returns to You. Even those of us who turn from You and exult ourselves against You are still imitating You. But by the mere fact of their imitation, they say that You are the creator of everything, and there is nowhere for them to go where You are not.

So I come back to the question: What was it that made me want to steal those pears? In what strange way was I trying to imitate You, O Lord? Was it the thrill of breaking one of Your laws, even though I was powerless to do it? Maybe that was it; I wanted the thrill a prisoner would get by dreaming he was a free man and that he had broken the law and not gotten caught.

What a terrible trap to be in. I was the fool who ran away from God but chased after His shadow.

Why did I have to find pleasure in forbidden things only because they were forbidden?

7.

What shall I give to the Lord, that I can remember these things and still not be afraid? I will love You, Lord, and I will give thanks to You and confess Your name because You have forgiven my sins and evil deeds. It is only by Your grace and mercy that my sins have melted 16

away. Your grace is also the reason why I did not get involved in other evil things, for who knows what else I would have done? I loved evil just because it was evil. I must say that You have forgiven everything – the sins I committed on my own accord and the sins I would have committed had it not been for Your grace.

Would anyone dare say that his innocence or chastity was due to his own strength? It would not only make him love You less, it would make him appear to be less in need of Your mercy than those who return to You after they have sinned. If anyone has heard Your voice and Your will and has done nothing about it, let him or not put me down, because I am held by the same doctor that has kept him from becoming sick himself. He should love You all the more because I have been rescued from the sickness of sin, and he has saved himself from falling into sin, by the one and same Savior.

8.

What profit was there in those things of which I am now ashamed? I am thinking about the theft of the pears in which I loved nothing but the thrill of the theft itself. As I think back on the event, I am quite sure that I would not have done the act by myself. What I really loved was the companionship of those with whom I did it. If this is true, then it was not only the act itself that I loved, but in a sense, it was because neither amounted to anything. What is the truth here?

Who will show it to me: - the One Who lights up my heart and brings me out of the darkness of sin? What am I trying to get at? If I had liked the pears that I stole and wanted to enjoy eating them, I might have committed the offense alone and what would have been enough to get me the pleasure that I wanted and I would not have needed the comradeship for my friends. But since the pleasure I got was not in the pears, it must have been in the crime itself and put there because I had others to sin with.

9.

What exactly was this feeling of pleasure? I was depraved and the worst part is that I had that feeling. But what was it? Who can understand sin? We laughed together because of the joke we were playing on those who had no idea of what we were doing and who would be angry later on when they found out about it. But what fun did I get out of it that I would not have gotten alone? Is it because nobody likes to laugh alone? That is not exactly true because sometimes a man will start laughing when he is by himself if something very funny happens or goes through his mind. Yet I would not have done it by myself. My pleasure was not in what I stole but in that I stole. If I were alone, it would not have been any fun, and I never would have done it.

Sometimes “friendship” can be unfriendly because it seduces the mind in a way that we do not understand, and it cannot wait to get us into trouble for “the hell of it.” Someone says, “Come on, let’s do it!” and we are ashamed not to be shameless.

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10.

Who can untangle such a mess of knots? It is so fouled up that I hate to look at it or even think about it. I want Justice and Purity, who are beauty and loveliness to eyes that can truly see.

I want them with an unquenchable desire because in them is real rest, life, and peace. Whoever enters into them enters into the joys of his Lord and shall not fear because he will achieve the best in the Lord Who is the best.

In my youth I deserted You, my God. I strayed too far from Your sustaining power, and I became like a barren land.

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Book Three: The Late Teenage Years 1.

I came to Carthage and found that it was a vat of sexual immorality. I was not yet in love but was in love with love, and I was looking for someone to love. I hated security, and I did not want a life that was problem free. Inside of me there was a deep longing for You, my God, but I was not aware of it. I had no desire for that spiritual food, not because I had plenty of it, but because the more I did without it, the more I seemed to hate it. Because of all this my soul was sick, with its ulcers dripping, whose itch I wanted to scratch with the contact of sexual things.

Even though my soul was in this kind of condition, it sought to satisfy its hunger for love. To love and to be loved was my main concern in life, especially when I was able to enjoy the body of the one who loved me.

So I gave in to my desires, and I polluted the stream of friendship with the filth of unbridled sex. And as vile and unclean as I was, I was concerned about keeping up the image that I was refined and courtly. Finally it happened: I fell in love. O God, my God, what great bitterness You sprinkled on that sweet experience! I was in love, and our love brought us to that secret sexual act. Those chains that brought me joy also brought me anguish; for I was beaten by the red hot irons of jealousy, fear, suspicion, anger, and quarreling.

2.

The dramatic plays in the theater excited me because they acted out my miseries and started my fires. Why is it that a man likes to be saddened by those tragedies that he cannot stand in his own life? Yet the spectator likes to feel sorrow, and the feeling of sorrow gives him pleasure. This is crazy! That more a play affects him, the more a man comes to feel the sufferings in himself.

When someone suffers, it is called misery; when a person shares the suffering of someone else, it is called compassion. So what is it called when someone sees suffering played out on the stage? Is it compassion? The spectator is not moved to help the sufferer, only to feel sorry for him; and the more the author makes the audience feel sad, the better they like it. If the tragedies that affect the characters (whether they come from ancient history or from the mind of the author) are poorly portrayed and do not move the spectator to tears, the person goes away disgusted and becomes critical; but if he is saddened, he stays to the end and is happy about the whole thing. So it seems that tears and sorrow are things to be sought.

Is compassion then something to be ignored? Certainly not! The sorrows of others move us to love. But my soul must be aware of uncleanness and stay under the protection of my God, the God of our fathers, whose Name is to be praised and exalted forever. I have not lost my compassion. But when I went to the theater, I was happy for the lovers when they sinfully enjoyed each other, even though it was fictitious; and when they lost each other, I cried; but 19

either way I enjoyed the play. However, today I have more pity for the man who gets enjoyment for his sin than I do for the man who suffers from the loss of pleasure which will ultimately lead to destruction and misery. This pity is true compassion, but the sorrow I feel for him does not make me feel good. A person who has compassion for an unhappy person deserves credit for his compassion, yet that compassionate person would also prefer to find nothing in other people that would need his compassion. Compassionate sorrow is good, but we should not be happy to feel it. Lord, God, You love our souls with a greater purity than we ourselves can, for You are truly compassionate and sorrow cannot injure You. And “who is qualified for this?” (2 Corinthians 2:16) During that time, I loved to be made sad, and I went out of my way to look for something to be sad about. Another man’s misery (even though I knew that it was fake and on stage) was pleasing to me, and the better the acting, the more I would cry. So there I was, a sheep who stayed from Your fold, and it is no wonder that I became infected with a scabby disease. I loved being sad, but I did not want the sorrow to cut too deep because I really did not want to suffer the sorrows that I looked upon. I just wanted to scratch the surface of my heart by what I saw on stage. Unfortunately, the fingernails that did the scratching produced a swelling with sores and pus. Such was my life, but was that a life, my God?

3.

Even though Your faithful mercy was with me all the time, I became involved in misguided activities, and I followed a path that led away from You and took me to the depths of unbelief. I was caught up by the activities of the devil, but while I was in his service You kept chastising me. One day, when I was in church, I got involved in a lusty piece of business while Mass was going on. You punished me for it but not as much as I should have been punished. O God, You are the Refuge from those dangers which I so arrogantly pursued. And so I got farther and farther away from You because I loved my ways and not Your ways. It was as if I had the “freedom” of a runaway slave.

The courses that I was taking in school were preparing me for a distinctive career in civil law. My thought was, the more crooked I became, the greater my distinction would be. In a short time I was at the head of the school of rhetoric, and this fact gave me great pleasure and immense arrogance. I was more quiet than some of the other students, and I separated myself from some of the student groups such as the “Overturners,” the most popular group on campus. I lived among them with my own kind of shame because I did not get involved in their activities. I liked being friends with them, but I did not like the things they did. One of their favorite tricks was to pick on the incoming freshman and mistreat them for no reason at all, except to feed their own warped sense of humor. They were a bad group. “Overturners” was the right name for them because they were perverted and their morals were turned upside down. Their form of fun was to pick on others and give them a bad time. They were being mocked by the same demons that they sought to serve.

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4.

Living in this type of atmosphere, I studied the literature of eloquence because I really wanted to excel in that field. This was because of my own human pride. During the course of my studies I came across a book written by Cicero, whose language everyone admired. The book was entitled Hortensius, and it was an exhortation to philosophy. The book had a deep effect on me, and it caused me to change the way I prayed to You; it gave me a new aim and purpose in life. All of a sudden all my vain and earthly ambitions seemed worthless, and my heart was burning for immortal wisdom. This was the start of the long journey that brought me back to You. I was now eighteen years old. My father had been dead for two years and now I was getting money from my mother so that I could continue to study rhetoric. By my reading of Hortensius I did not sharpen the eloquence of my tongue, but I was impressed by the subject matter of the book. My God, how I burned to leave this earth and come soaring back to You, even though I had no idea what You would want with me. “With him are wisdom and might.”

(Job 12:13) Hortensius kindled in me a “love of wisdom,” which is what the word philosophy means.

There are many pseudo-philosophers who claim the title of philosopher only as a front so that they can add prestige or color to their writings and lead some people astray. Almost all of them are named in Cicero’s work, and he exposes them for what they are. In this work you can almost hear that warning of Your Spirit as spoken by Your servant, Paul: “See to it that no one captivates you with an empty, seductive philosophy according to human tradition, according to the elemental powers of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells the whole fullness of Deity bodily.” (Colossians 2:8-9) At that time in my life, the writings of the Apostle Paul were still unknown to me. But the thing that excited me about Cicero’s exhortation was that it told me that I should not go running around after this philosophical group or that, but that I should pursue wisdom itself, that I should love it, seek it, win it, clasp it, and hold onto it, whatever it might be. This book really excited me. The only thing I found lacking about the book was that the name of Christ was not in it. For as an infant, O Lord, the name of Your Son was taken into my heart along with my mother’s milk and was held deep down inside of me. Any literary piece that omitted the name of Christ, no matter how learned or well written it was, never really caught my attention.

5.

Then I decided to study Holy Scripture to see what it was like. But what I found was something that could not be understood by the proud or by children, but something that we veiled in mystery, humble, and sublime in the doing. I did not have the disposition to enter into it or go out of my way to follow it. When I read those Scriptures, I did not feel as I do now; it 21

seemed that they were unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Cicero. My conceit shrank from its literary style and my mind was not able to understand its meaning. They were designed to grow in Your little ones, but I could not think of myself as a little one. Being puffed up with pride as I was, I thought of myself as a great man.

6.

I came to join a group of inflated crackpots, the Manicheans, who talked with highsounding words and were of loose habits. The words of the devil were in their mouths as they tried to trap souls by mixing the syllables of Your Name and of the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit. These Names were always in their throats, but only as guttural sounds, because their hearts were empty of truth. They kept saying “truth, truth!” to me, but I found that the truth was no in them. They were always telling lies about You, Who are really the Truth, and about the elements of the world which You created. O Truth, how I longed for You in my inmost being.

Time and time again, in so many different ways and tomes, these men sounded out Your Name to me, but it was only wind and words. As I was becoming hungry for You, they did not serve You, instead they served platters containing the sun, moon, and all of Your beautiful creations, but they served only Your creations and not You. Fantasies are what they were serving on those platters. Instead of loving these false illusions, it would have been better if I loved the sun, at least it was real and I could see it. All of these things were material fantasies and false bodies, and it was on this empty stuff that I was feeding, even though I was not being fed.

Where were You at that time? How far away from me were You? I wandered so far away from Your presence that I was like the Prodigal Son who was not even allowed to eat what he fed to the pigs. The stories of the poets and the other writers were much better that the soul traps that these men set. Verses and poems turned out to be real food for my mind, even though I did not believe them. But the fantasies of the Manichees I did believe. I was brought down to the deepest of depths, and I brought upon myself unnecessary turmoil as I tried to find the truth in You, my God. I did not confess it to You. I tried to find You with my senses and not with my mind, yet You were always in me, deeper than my deepest self and higher than I was able to reach.

7.

I did not know that spiritual reality which exists, and I let myself be taken in by those who deceived me. They would ask questions like: Where does God come from? Does God have a shape? Does God have fingernails and hair? Were those Old Testament patriarchs righteous men even though they had many wives, killed people, and sacrificed animals? These questions bothered me, and I thought they were bringing me closer to the truth when actually they were taking me away from it. At that time I did not know that evil was the absence of good. How could I learn this when the only things that my eyes saw were material things, and the only things that my mind saw were the images of these things. I did not discover that God is spirit, 22

having no bodily parts, having no bulk. Every form has parts, and every form is less in its parts than it is in its whole; therefore, it cannot be wholly itself in every place as God is. I did not know that Scripture taught that the spirit within us is formed in the image of God. Nor was I familiar with the inner sense of justice that does not judge by custom, but the excellent law of Almighty God. By that law the customs of different counties are shaped to meet their needs, though the law itself is always the same, not different places and changing with time.

According to that law, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and all of those others who were praised by God were just men, although they were judged not to be by others who render a verdict according to their own experiences and measure the conduct of the entire human race by their own custom. These critics are like a man who goes to an armory to put on his armor and does not know what part of the body each piece is for, so he puts a shin guard on his head and a helmet on his foot and then complains that they do not fit. Or they are like the shopkeeper, when on a legal holiday is not permitted to sell things in the afternoon, complains that he cannot sell his goods as he did in the morning. Or they are like the butler who can pick up something that another servant is not allowed to touch, or like the man who does something behind the barn that is not permitted in the dining room. The point is that in one house and in one family, the same things are not allowed to every member of the household and in all parts of the house. In the same way, people become offended when they hear that something was permitted to those just men in olden days and it is not permitted today. God gave a command to one man and a different command to another, as the times required; but they both served the same cause of justice. It is the same that in one house, on any day, different things are fitting for different members. Or an act may be lawful now but not lawful an hour from now, or an act may be permitted in one corner but forbidden and punishable in another. Does this mean that justice is unstable and changeable? No, it means that the times over which justice presides are not the same. Because of their short life span on earth, men are not able to compare the conditions of past ages and foreign nations, which they have not experienced, with the conditions of their own age that they have experienced. In the matter of one body or day or family, they can easily see what is necessary for this member or that, for this moment or that, for this part of the house or that. They accept these differences, because of their own experiences, yet take exception to the differences shown in Scripture.

I did not know or realize all of these things at the time. Even though they were beating on me, I did not see them. When I was composing verses, I was not free to put any foot where I wanted. I had to put the poetic feet in different places according to the meter I was using, and in one line I could not use the same foot in every position. The art of poetry did not have a different law for different places, but the same law throughout. Yet I was not able to see that justice, which is obeyed by all good and holy men, contains in itself all of its precepts and it never changes. It did not order and prescribe the same things to each age but gave to each age what was necessary for each. In my blindness I blamed those holy patriarchs not only for what they dud under the command of God, but also for foretelling the future as God revealed it to them.

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8.

It is right for a man to love God with his whole heart and mind and soul and to love his neighbor as himself, no matter where he is or what the circumstances are. In the same way it is wrong for a man to commit an offense that goes against nature. He should be punished for his detestable act, no matter where it was done or when he did it. That is the way it was with the Sodomites. Even if other nations engaged in such behavior, they should all be judged equally guilty of breaking God’s law, because God did not make men in order for them to abuse each other. The friendship that should exist between God and man is violated when the nature that God created is defiled by lust and perversion. Actions which violate the customs of human societies ought to be avoided according to the laws of those customs. Those laws that are agreed to by custom or by law should not be broken at the mere pleasure of any citizen or alien. For every part that is not in harmony with the whole is defective.

When God orders something that goes against the custom of a state, even though it has never been done, it must be done; and if it was not a law, it must be made a law. In the same way, a king or a ruler of a country can command something that neither he nor anyone before him commanded, and to obey that law would not be going against the public interest. In fact, to disobey him would be going against the principles of the society because it is the general agreement of all societies that people obey their king. That being the case, consider God’s being the Ruler of the universe; His commands are to be obeyed without hesitation. In the human chain of command, the higher authority outranks the lower, and the lower person has to obey the commands of the higher person. Therefore, God, Who outranks us all, is entitled to the obedience of us all.

In any criminal act there is the intent to injure someone, whether by insult or by violence.

In either case the crime is being committed for the sake of revenge (as when one enemy attacks another) or to gain something (as when a thief mugs a traveler) or to escape some danger (as when someone is afraid of another) or from envy (as when a poor person attacks a wealthy person or when a wealthy person attacks his rival who threatens to become his equal) or for enjoying another person’s suffering (as the spectators do at gladiator games, or those who are always mocking and laughing at other people). There are the roots of evil that spring from the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, or from any combination of them. Because of these we sin against the ten-stringed harp, the Ten Commandments given by You, O God most high and most gracious.

What kind of personal acts can offend You, You Who are beyond corruption? What crimes can injure You, You Who are above their reach? Even though people sin against You, You punish the sins that they commit against themselves because they are hurting their souls and making their lives out to be a lie. These people corrupt and pervert their own nature which You have created and set in order. Either they make wrong use of the things You have allowed, or they develop a burning desire for those that are not permitted and go against nature. When they 24

are found guilty, they lash out against You in thought and word, and they go around kicking things, or they develop a bad attitude about what is right, and they go creating agreements or feuds according to their own likes or dislikes.

These are the things that happen to us when we turn away from You, the Fountain of Life, and the true Creator and Sovereign of the universe. All of this happens when, through our own selfish pride, an individual part is loved as if it were the whole. Therefore, we must return to You with humble hearts and let You cleanse us from every evil habit. You forgive the sins of those who confess to You. You hear the cries of those who are chained in sin, and You free them from the fetters they have made for themselves. You do all this for us unless we raise up an arrogance against You, and in our desire to have more, we lose what we have because we desire our own private good more than we desire You, Who are the good of all.

9.

Among these vices and countless iniquities, are other sins that people fall into even though they are good people and are on the right track. There are also those crazy activities of young people that adults will always say are immature, but the persons themselves may be praised for their promise of better things yet to come, as the blade gives way to the growing corn.

There are also some actions that look like sins but are not sins because they neither offend You, my God, nor any part of society. An example of this may be when people set aside things for their ordinary living needs, we cannot be sure that this is done because they like to hoard things.

Or if an authority figure punishes people for certain kinds of behavior, we cannot be sure that this was done because there was desire to cause pain. Many actions that appear to us to be wrong are approved by You, and many actions that are praised by us are condemned by You. Many times the appearance of an act may be different from what the person had in mind, and many times we do not know all of the facts that surround the act. When You issue a command dealing with something that is unusual and unforeseen, even though You have reason for Your command, and it may be against the order of human society, but a society is just only if it obeys You. Happy are they who know that it was You Who commanded them. For those who serve You do things either to give what is needed for the present moment or to tell about things yet to come.

10.

Of course I knew nothing of this, and so I made fun of Your holy servants and prophets.

And what did I gain by making fun of them? Nothing. I only found that I was being made fun of

by You. Slowly I was being led to believe all kinds of crazy things such as the idea that a fig cries when it is plucked from the tree, and the mother tree cries tears of sap. If a Manichean saint should eat it, digest it in his stomach, and moan and groan in prayer, he might breathe out some angels; or he might even breathe out some particles of God. These particles of God may have remained trapped in that fruit if they were not set free by the teeth and belly of some holy one. I 25

was stupid enough to believe that more mercy was shown to the fruits of the earth than to men, for whom the fruits were created. And if any hungry man asked me for food and he were not a Manichean, I would have preferred to be put to death instead of giving him a mouthful of food.

11.

“Great has been your kindness toward me: You have rescued me from the depths of the nether world.” (Psalm 86:13) My mother, Your faithful servant, kept crying to You for me with more tears than a mother would shed at the funeral of her child. Because of her faith in You, she saw that I was spiritually dead; and You heard her, Lord. You did not ignore those tears that fell and watered the earth every time she prayed to You. What else could be the cause of the dream she had in which You relieved her mind so much that she allowed me to live with her and eat at the same table with her? Before this she refused to share the table with me because she detested the way I was living my life.

In her dream she saw herself standing on a wooden ruler, and she was crying and heavy with grief. A laughing, cheerful young man came up to her and asked her why she was crying.

She said that she was crying for the loss of my soul. The young man told her to be at peace and that if she looked carefully, she would see that she and I were standing in the same spot. She looked, and she saw me standing next to her on the ruler. How could she have had this dream if You did not hear her calling and prepare her heart? O omnipotent God, You care for each one of us as if each one were Your only concern, and You look after us as if we were one person.

When my mother finally told me about her dream, I told her not to lose heart because it means that one day she would be like me, a Manichean. She sharply said, “No, it was not said that ‘Where he is, there you will be,’ but, ‘Where you are, there he will be.’ I must confess to You, O Lord, that if I remember correctly (and I have often spoken of it since), I was more impressed by the answer that You gave through my mother than by the dream itself. She was not really disturbed by my interpretation of the dream, because she knew what it meant, but I did not understand it until she spoke. The joy that was to come to that holy woman many years after the dream was foretold to her as a way of relieving her of her present anguish.

For the next nine years I was tossing about in the mud of that dark pit, and I was wandering around in false darkness. Many times I tried to pull myself out of the pit, but I always fell back in. Meanwhile, this devout, gentle, modest widow (whom You loved) was cheered up with hope. She never stopped her weeping and mourning while she was praying for me at all hours of the day and night. I know You heard her prayers, yet You allowed me to continue to run around in the darkness.

12.

I have skipped over many things of the past because I want to get to those matters which I am most urgently pressed to confess to You and also because I have forgotten much of it.

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However, I do remember one answer that You gave to my mother’s prayers. You gave it to her through the mouth of a certain bishop who was brought up in the Church and was well educated in Your Holy Scriptures. My mother went to him and asked if he would be kind enough to talk to me, to refute my errors, to show me where I went wrong, and to teach me what was good.

Apparently he used to do this sort of thing when he came across people who were open enough to listen to him. However, he refused to talk to me. As I think about it now, I have come to believe that he was right. He told her that I was not yet ready to learn because I was all caught up in the newness of the Manichean heresy and because I had already upset a number of immature people by the questions that I asked. “But,” he said, “let him alone. Keep praying to the Lord for him. Through his reading he will discover what his error is and how great his impiety.”

The bishop then went on to tell her that his mother had been a Christian but she was won over by Manichean ideas while he was still a boy. He read almost all of their books, and he even copied some of them. But then he came to realize, without anyone having to argue or to convince him, that he had to leave the sect. and so he left it. When he had told her all of this, my mother would not leave him alone; she kept crying and pleading, urging him to see me and talk to me.

Finally, he lost his patience and he said, “Go on your way. As sure as you live, it is not possible that the son of these tears should be lost.” In later conversations, she often told me she accepted the answer as if it had come from heaven.

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Book Four: A Man Of Rhetoric 1.

During a nine year period, from my nineteenth year to me twenty-eighth, I was completely off course and I managed to take others with me. Deceiving and being deceived, I got myself involved in a number of ambitious projects, some publically through the teaching of what are called the liberal arts, some secretly under the false name of religion. I was proud of myself in one, superstitious in the other, and in all things I was vain. In public I went after the emptiness of popular glory and the applause of the theater. I entered contests with my poems, and I competed for quickly fading crowns, for the vanity of stage shows, and for the unbridled pleasure of sex. However, privately, I wanted to be set free of these things by bringing food to those who were called the “elect” and “saints.” When these holy individuals ate the food, they were to digest it, and their intestines would turn the food into angels and gods that would set people free.

This type of behavior continued to grow in me and in my friends who were being deceived both through me and with me. Let the arrogant laugh at me, as well as all of those who had never been brought low and broken by You, my God, that they may be saved. I will confess all of my wrongs to You and praise Your name forever. I only ask that You stay with me and give me the ability both to recall my past errors and to offer You a sacrifice of thanksgiving. For without You I am a guide to my own destruction. Even at best I am but an infant who is sucking on Your milk and feeding on You, the Food that never goes bad. And what kind of man is he who is only a man and nothing more? Let the strong and mighty laugh and mock; but I, in my weakness, will confess my need for You.

2.

During those years I taught the art of rhetoric. Being driven by the desire to make a lot of money, I sold a skill in speech that would master others. You know, Lord, I preferred good and honest students, and without tricks I taught the trickery of speechmaking, not that it may be used against the life of an innocent man but sometimes to save the life of a guilty man. And You, God, saw me from far away, stumbling on that slippery path, and sending up a tiny spark of faith in the middle of all my smoke. I showed You that spark by the way I honestly did my best for those who love vanity and told lies, and I was one of them.

At that time I had a mistress. We were not married; she was just someone I picked up.

Nonetheless, she was the only one and I remained faithful to her. I found out by my own experience that there was a difference between the marriage covenant, which is entered into for the sake of children, and a free-sex arrangement. When children are born of a free-sex arrangement, they come into this world unwanted; yet once they are both, they compel us to love them.

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I decided to enter a poetry contest that involved reciting your poem from the stage, and some fortuneteller (I do not remember his name) sent me a message asking me how much I would be willing to pay to guarantee that I would win the prize. It seems that he would have killed certain animals and offered them up as sacrifices in order to invite the demons to support me. I hated and despised this type of hocus-pocus and told him: “Even if the victor’s crown were pure gold that would last forever, I would not permit a fly to be put to death to help me win it.”

My God, it was not any act of purity toward You that caused me to reject this evil thing. I really did not know how to love You, since I could not imagine the existence of anything that was not material. A soul that chases after such figments of the imagination, such as fortunetelling, is one that goes whoring from You; it trusts in what is fake and feeds on hot air. Yet, while I would not have this fortuneteller sacrificing to devils on my behalf, I was actually doing the same thing by being involved in my superstition. For what else is it to feed on the wind, if not to feed on wrong and so become the sport and plaything of the devil?

3.

However, I did not waste any time in consulting those imposters who are called astrologers. They appealed to me because they made no sacrifices and offered no prayers to any spirit to aid their divination. Yet the true Christian faith rejects and condemns their art. It is good to confess to You and say: “have pity on me; heal me, though I have sinned against you.” (Psalm 41:5). It is not good to abuse Your mercy as a license to sin, but it is good to remember the words of the Lord: “…you have been cured. Give up your sins so that something worse may not overtake you.” (John 5:14). The astrologers try to destroy this truth when they say that the cause of sin is in the heavens and that it is the doing of Venus, Saturn, or Mars. Therefore, man, despite his flesh and blood and rotting pride, is not at fault, because the fault lies with the Creator or Sustainer of the stars and heavens. And He is none other than our God, the source of Justice and Delight, Who renders to every man according to His words and does not dispose the broken and the contrite heart. (Psalm 51:19).

There was at that time a wise man who lived in Carthage whose skill in medicine had won him fame in the region. As the Roman representative he placed upon my head the victor’s crown when I won the poetry contest. He was not my doctor, because You alone can cure men like me when You resist the proud and bestow Your favor on the lowly. (James 4:6). Yet You did not fail to help me through that old man and use him for the healing of my soul. As I got to know him, I began to listen to his words. His speech was simple; yet it was full of thought, grave but happy; and the very life of his thought kept me fascinated. In our conversations I told him that I enjoyed reading the astrologers, and in the kindest, most fatherly way he told me to throw their books away. He suggested that I not waste my time and energy on that trash but rather spend it on more useful things.

He told me that when he was younger, he studied astrology and he considered entering the field professionally. Since he was able to understand the teachings of Hippocrates, he found 29

it easy to understand the literature of astrology. Later her forgot this idea and started practicing medicine, because he found astrology to be false, and as an honest man he had no desire to earn his living by cheating others. “But you,” he said, “can support yourself by your rhetoric, and you are pursuing this astrology nonsense voluntarily and not through financial need. You should believe me, because I intended to make my living by it, so I studied the subject at length in order to master the material.” I asked him how he explained why it was that astrology was able to accurately predict many events. He answered, very reasonably, that it was due to the force of chance which has to be allowed for in the order of things. He also said that if a man were to randomly open a poetry book and found a verse that seemed very timely and relevant to the business at hand, even though the author was thinking of something else, it was only by chance or by some powerful instinct from the unconsciousness that he would find that verse. It was either from him or through him that You gave my memory the hint of the answer that I would arrive at later on.

At that time neither he nor my best friend Nebridius, a young man of great worth and high moral character who laughed at the whole idea of divination, could persuade me to stop it.

The authority of the astrological writings impressed me more than my friends did, and I did not have any proof to satisfy my curiosity that the events that the astrologers predicted were nothing more than coincidence or mere chance and had nothing to do with stargazing.

4.

During that time I started teaching grammar in the town of Thagaste, where I was born. I had a very close friend there who had also arrived at the flower of young manhood. We studied the same things and shared many outside interests. We grew up together as boys, and we went to the same school and played the same games together. However, back then he was not an intimate friend, nor did he become one later on. That is because true friendship exists only when You weld it together and when human hearts stay together in love that “has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5) Nonetheless, our friendship was special because we shared common interests. I managed to turn him away from the Christian faith, which he really did not accept, and got him caught up in all of the superstitions and destructive stories that had my mother in tears over me. Together our minds wandered into error, and I soon found that I could not get along without him. All the while You were standing behind us because You are a God of vengeance and a fountain of mercy. You convert us to Yourself in wonderful ways. So when our friendship was not even a year old, You took him away from me by calling him out of this life, and You cut off what I valued more than anything else in existence.

My friend became ill with a fever and was unconscious for a long time. Then one day, without his being aware of it, he was baptized. I did not pay any attention to it because I thought that he would retain what he had learned from me and would not be affected by something that 30

was performed on his body while he was unconscious. But things turned out differently. He began to recover his health, and as soon as I was able to speak to him (which I was able to do right away because I never left his side; in fact we hung onto each other too much for our own good), I started to joke with him. I thought that we would be able to laugh about the baptism that he just received, but instead, he drew away from me horrified as if I were an enemy. Using words that startled me, he warned me that if I wanted to remain his friend, I should never talk to him that way again. I was shaken up by this outburst, and I decided to keep my feelings to myself until he would be well enough for me to tell him what was on my mind. But he was soon taken away from my rantings. A few days later the fever returned, and at a time when I was not by his bedside, he died.

My heart was now overcome with grief, and everywhere I looked I saw death. My native town was a prison, and in my own home there was unhappiness. I continued to do the things that we used to do together, but they became sheer torment without him. My eyes were always looking for him, but he was not there. I hated to go to the places where we used to meet because I knew that no one would say, “Look, here he comes.” I became unhappy with myself, and I was constantly asking, “Why are you cast down, my soul? Why groan within me?” (Psalm 43:5) My soul did not have an answer. If I said, “Hope in God,” my soul would ask why should it hope in God? The person whom I loved and lost was far more noble and real than the deity Whom I asking it to hope in. My tears were real to me, and only my tears were able to take the place my friend held in my heart.

5.

But now Lord, all of that has passed, and my wounds have healed. I must listen to You Who are the truth. Let my heart listen to Your words so that You may tell me why tears are so sweet to the sorrowful. Have You, Who are always present, placed our troubles away from You? You live within Yourself, but we move from one difficult experience to the next, and if we were not able to tell You our troubles and fears, what hope would be left? How is it that from the bitter experiences of our life we can pick fruit that has a sweet flavor? Does the sweetness come from the hope that You are listening and will hear us? Obviously, when we pray, I would answer yes because prayers are said with the sole purpose of reaching You. But, is it not also the case when someone is filled with grief and pain over something lost, as I was? I had no hope of bringing him back to life, and I did not ask for it. I just grieved and cried because my joy was gone and I was heartbroken. Weeping is a bitter thing that makes us feel better because it helps us to get rid of the tension that was created by sorrow.

6.

But why talk about that now? This is not the time to ask questions but to make my confession to You. I was a terrible mess, along with everyone else who was hooked on the pleasures of this life. When we lose one of these pleasures, we can be torn to pieces, but then we 31

realize that we were not really happy even when we had them. That is the way it was with me. I wept bitterly and found comfort in the bitterness. Torn apart as I was, I was still able to put my own life ahead of my friend’s. Even though I was willing to change my life, I was not willing to lose it even for him. Whether or not it is true, they say that Orestes and Pylades were ready to die for each other because life without the other would have been worse. But I had an odd kind of feeling, it was the exact opposite of theirs. I was tired of living yet very much afraid of dying. I guess that it was because of the great love which I had for my friend that I hated and feared death as a cruel enemy which had taken him away from me. I was filled with the thought that it might destroy everyone just as it destroyed him. I can still remember thinking this way.

Look deeply into my heart, my God, and see the things that I remember. You are my hope, and you cleanse me of impurities such as these. “My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for He will free my feet from the snare.” (Psalm 25:15) I was amazed that other people kept on living when my friend was dead, because I loved him as if he would live forever. What amazed me even more was that I could go on living after his death. Someone once described a friend as “the soul’s other half.” I thought of his soul and mine as one soul living in two bodies, and my life became a horrible thing to me because I did not want to live as half a soul. It may be that I feared death so much because in my own death, he would die wholly.

7.

What madness is this that does not know how to love men as men? What do you think of an ignorant man who cannot deal with what every man has to put up with? I went wild; I sighed; I wept; and it became so distracting that I could not think or sleep. I could not find a place to lay down my cut-up and bleeding soul. I could find no rest in shady woods and hills and fields, nor in song and laughter, nor in the fresh smell of a garden in springtime, nor in the fun and formality of a banquet, nor in the pleasures of bed, nor in books and poetry. I hated everything, and when I finally stopped crying, a huge weight of misery kept me depressed.

This misery could only have been lifted by You, O Lord, but I did not have the strength or the willpower to ask for Your help. What made things even worse was that I could not even think of You as being real. I had some kind of vain fantasy as my God, and it was not You, my Lord. When I tried to unload my troubles on my God, they fell through and landed right back on me. I could not stand my life, yet I could not get out of it. Where could I go to hide form myself?

Where could I go to leave myself behind? Finally, I left the city of my birth. I thought that if I moved to unfamiliar surroundings, I would not be looking for my missing friend. So I decided to leave Thagaste and move to Carthage.

8.

Time never takes a break. It is constantly moving and affects our senses and does strange things to our minds. Time came and went, from one day to the next, and I found new hopes and 32

memories. A little at a time my soul was healing as I returned to the pleasures that I enjoyed. The pain began to ease and the place of sadness was not filled by other sorrows, but by the seeds from which new sorrows would spring. My first grief hurt me so easily and deeply because I spilled out my soul on the sand by loving a mortal as though he would never die. What helped was the consolation of my other friends with whom I continued to love the things I once loved instead of loving You. It was one big lie, a fable; and by its adulterous caressing, my soul was utterly corrupted. My playing around did not die because one of my friends did.

In Carthage I was overtaken by the company of new friends. I loved the talk, the laughter, the kind of things done toward each other, the sharing of information found in books, the companionship that was both serious and funny, the differing opinions that left no bad feelings, and the rare disagreements that simply seasoned the normal feeling of agreement. We took turns listening to and teaching each other. If someone was absent we became impatient for his return and we welcomed him back with joy. All of these things came from our hearts as we gave and received affection; shown by face, voice, eyes, and many other pleasing ways, kindling a flame which fused our souls and made us one.

9.

This is the type of thing that people value in friends. They value it so much that they would feel guilty if they did not meet this friendship with friendship and expect nothing in return except true affection. That is why we get so upset at the death of a friend, and become sad and cry. Such an occasion turns joy into bitterness and we feel that our heart is breaking. Life becomes a total loss – a living death because of the death of the living. Blessed is the man that loves You, O Lord, and his friends in You, and his enemies for You. This is the kind of man who never loses those whom he loves, for they love You, and You are the God Who is never lost.

You made heaven and earth and fill them with Your presence, for it was by filling them that You made them. The only way a man can lose You is to turn his back on You, and if he does that where does he turn to? He can only run from Your pleasure to Your wrath. Where will he find Your law not filled with Your punishment? Your law is truth, and You are truth.

“O Lord of hosts, restore us; if Your face shine upon us, then we shall be safe.” (Psalm 80:7) Any way a man’s soul turns, it bumps into trouble unless it turns to You. Even though the things of life that attract us are beautiful, if they are outside of You and the soul, they spell misery. These things would not even exist if they did not come from You. They rise and set: in their rising they begin to be, and then they grow towards perfection, and when they reach that point they grow up and die; not all of them grow old, but they do all die. When they rise they set a course for the length of their existence, and the faster they reach it, the faster they die. That is the way it is. You made them that way because they are a part of a whole picture of life. They do not all exist at the same time, but are coming and going all the time, and so they make up the whole universe of which we are all a part.

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Our use of language follows the same rule. We hear the sounds of speech, one after the other, but our mind looks at the whole sentence from the start. I praise You for all of these things, O Lord, because You have created it all; but do not let me become hooked on them based on physical attraction. They run their course and then end. If we insist on loving these things then we will only be ripped apart by unhealthy forces. There is no peace here, because the appeal of the physical does not last. It simply leaves the picture. Why should one chase after it when it goes past the reach of our senses? Who, for that matter, can hold onto it while it is right here in front of us? Our physical senses are slow because they are physical senses, and they are limited by their own character. They can do what they are made to do; but they have no power to make things transient as they run their course from beginning to end. It is by Your word that they are created, they follow Your law from this point and no further.

11.

Do not be foolish, my soul. Do not let your pride cause a commotion that is so loud that it deafens the ear of the heart. Listen! The Word Himself is calling you to return. Here is a place of rest that is never disturbed and a place of love that never deserts a man unless he deserts it first.

In this physical world one thing dies and another is born, so that the entire physical universe is made up of all the parts. “But do I ever pass away?” asks the Lord. My soul must live in Him. Are you becoming fed up with lies? Then give all that you have back to Him. Whatever He has given you, commend it back to Him and you cannot lose. Every part of you that has died will come back to life, and everything that is sick will be made well, and your body will be made whole and complete, when it does it will not drag you down with it to the grave, rather you will stand before God, Who stands and lives forever.

Why follow temptation? Why not turn around and let it follow you? Whatever pleasures you have from your senses is only a small part of the whole picture. You enjoy the different parts, but you have not experienced the whole thing. This gives more delight than the separate parts could ever give. And even better than this is our God, Who made all, and can never die because there is no one to take His place.

12.

If physical things appeal to you, my soul, praise God for them because He gave them to us. Remember that in making yourself happy you should not displease God. If you love people, love them in God because without Him they are nothing. Love all people in Him and bring as many to Him as you can.

My soul, say to my fellow men, “Let us love God for He created all of us and he is not far away.” He did not create the souls of men so they could leave Him. Tell me, where is truth the best? In the inner heart? Not really. Unfortunately the heart has drifted away from God. Go back and hold onto Him Who created you. Stand with Him and you will stand strong. Rest in Him and 34

you will find peace. What are you doing walking around in the wilderness? Where do you think you are going? All the good things you love come from God, and they are pleasant and good only as they relate to Him. Once you stop loving Him things turn sour. What is the point of your constant walking on the rocky path? There is no rest on that path. You look and look, but it is just not there. You look for happiness in the land of death, but it is nowhere to be found. How can you have a happy life when there is no life at all?

That is why our Life came down to earth and took away our death. Jesus killed death with His own life. He came from the Virgin’s womb so He could become one with us so that our mortal flesh may live forever in Him. He came to us strong and healthy. He did not waste time as he spoke to us with His words, deeds, death, life, and rising. He disappeared before our eyes so that we would look for Him in our hearts. He left us and behold, He is here. He would not stay with us, yet He never left us. My soul confesses to Him and He heals me because I have sinned against Him. Why are you so heavy-hearted? Now that Christ has come down to you why do you not rise to Him to start living? On the other hand, how can you climb any higher when you are already standing on the mountain top and touching heaven? First you will have to come down so that you can go back up, this time climbing for God. For you have been running away from Him, and you have fallen on your face.

Tell this to the souls you bring with you, my soul, and let them do their crying in the valley of tears. Then you will be able to take them with you to God, because it is by His Spirit that you speak to them, if when you speak you burn with the fire of love.

13.

I did not know all of this then because I was in love with a lower form of beauty, and as a result I hit rock bottom. I would ask my friends: “Do we love anything that is not beautiful?

Then what is beautiful? And what is beauty? What entices and wins us over to the things we love? For unless there was something splendid and beautiful about them, they would hardly attract us.” And the more I looked at these things, the more I saw there was a distinction between the beauty of a thing itself, and the beauty that is found in a happy relationship between different things. An example of this would be the way a body related to its parts, and a shoe to a foot, and so on. And this thought filled me so much that I wrote a book called Beauty and Harmony.

14.

Lord, God, why did I dedicate my book to Hierius, the Roman orator? I did not even know him by sight, though I had admired his good reputation for scholarship, and was very impressed by what he said. I was even impressed by the high opinion in which he was held by others. People were amazed that a man born in Syria and educated in the Greek language could turn into such a great speaker in Latin, and become so knowledgeable of things related to 35

philosophy. This is how a man wins praise and admiration even at a long distance. Can it be that love goes from the mouth of the speaker to the heart of the listener? Literally speaking that is absurd, but it is true that enthusiasm is contagious. We are drawn to a man that is being praised as long as we are sure that those praising him are being honest and not putting us on.

I started to love people on the basis of other people’s judgment, and not Yours, O Lord. I did not love Hierius for the qualities I admired in a famous charioteer or a gladiator who was popular with the crowd. I admired these men in a different way and for different reasons, for I praised them in the way that I wanted to be praised by others. Yet I had no desire to be praised like an actor, though I liked actors and did not mind praising them myself. The fact is that I would rather be a total unknown then to put up with their kind of fame. I would rather be hated than loved as they are.

How can someone hold all of these different views in a balance? Just because a man likes a horse does not mean that he wants to be one. Can I not admire something in an actor without wanting to be one? But an actor is a man, not a horse; and a man is a great being whose hairs have been numbered by You, Lord. So that not even one is lost without Your knowledge. It is easier to count the hairs on a man’s head than the moods and emotions of his heart.

So while that speaker was the kind of man I wanted to be, my big head blew me off course and caused me to be carried about with the wind. Yet somehow You kept steering me in the right direction. Today I know, and to be perfectly honest, I admired Hierius more for the applause that he received than for the things people praised him for. How do I know this? If they put him down instead, and spoke the same words in a condescending way, my enthusiasm would not have been so great. Obviously a soul that does not hold onto a rock of truth will find itself laid out flat and helpless. Those who think they know everything just fill the air with hot air, and they are caught in the middle going back and forth, until they see that the light and the truth can be found. Yet there it was in front of us all of the time!

It seemed really important that my writings and my studies be brought to the attention of this man. If he had approved of my work, I would have been thrilled; and if he disapproved, I would have been deeply hurt, because I did not have the knowledge of Your dependable guiding hand. But I had a good time working on my book, which I dedicated to him. Even though no one else liked my book, I liked it myself.

15.

I could not see that the main point in any discussion of beauty and harmony is that You made all of it. You are the Great One Who does wonderful things. My mind was only on the physical forms of life. I defined beauty as that which contained beauty in itself, the peaceful as that which received beauty through others things. I used physical examples to illustrate my point.

I also thought about the nature of the soul, but the false ideas I held kept me from seeing the truth, even though the truth was forcing itself into my line of sight. So I changed my thoughts to 36

matters of line and color and shape, since I could not see these characteristics in the soul, I concluded that the soul could not be seen. Since I loved the peace brought on by virtue and hated the discord that was caused by corruption and dishonesty, I saw unity in virtue and divisiveness in corruption. It seemed clear to me that this unity was made up of the rational mind, the heart of truth, and the supreme good, while in corruption I thought that there was a vital principle of irrationality and a mess of evil that was not just substance but had a life of its own. But in my ignorance I did not think that this evil came from You, my God. I called the unity a “monad,” a sort of sexless mind, and the disunity a “dyad” which causes us to hurt others and causes sexual degeneracy. But I had no idea what I was talking about. Nobody ever told me that evil was not a real substance, or that man’s reason is not the never ending good.

Violent acts against others happen when the soul is driven by harsh attitudes that get out of control. Sins of self-corruption are committed, on the other hand, when all that is good is pushed aside by erotic sexual behavior. In the same way, if a rational mind turns to evil it makes opinions and judgments that ruin life, and that was how it was with me. I did not know that my mind had to see the Light if I was to share the Truth. “You indeed, O Lord, give light to my lamp; O my God, You brighten the darkness about me.” (Psalm 18:28) But while I was struggling to get to You, You pushed me away so that I could experience being close to death, for “God is stern with the arrogant but to the humble He shows kindness.”

(1 Peter 5:5) What could be prouder than my foolish thought that You and I were made if the same stuff. I knew that I could change because I wanted to learn to be a better person. So I thought that You too were changeable, rather than believe that You were different. That is what pushed me back; You kept pushing away my conceit. So my imagination kept playing with material ideas, my flesh, and my spirit became like a blowing wind that was unable to get back to You. In my drifting I headed toward fancy ideas of non-existent things which I made up out of physical things.

When I met with those who believed in Your Word, I would go on with stupid remarks like, “If God made the soul, why did He permit it to make mistakes?” and I would not let anyone answer with “Why does God Himself make mistakes?” I was content to think that Your unchanging nature was forced into mistakes by necessity. I did not want to admit that my own changeable character drifted from the Truth of its own free will, and what started out as an error became a punishment.

When I wrote that book I was twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. In my mind I carefully went over the different qualities of the feelings that were eating my heart; and the whole time I was trying to catch Your beloved Truth. I meditated on my book, but I really wanted to be like “The groom’s best man who waits there listening for him, and is overjoyed to hear his voice.” (John 3:29) But I could not. The voices of my own evil ways pulled down at me, and I was thrown down by the weight of my pride. You would neither fill me up with gladness nor let my broken bones rejoice.

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16.

When I was about twenty years old I read Aristotle’s treatise on the “Ten Categories.”

My teacher of rhetoric in Carthage and some other teachers proclaimed how great the book was, saying its title with great pride, so that I looked upon the name of Aristotle as though he were some kind of great master or god. However, once I started to read it for myself I was able to master it – though today I wondered why I even bothered. Talking to other students I found out that some of them had a hard time reading it even with the help of teachers, who not only talked about it but also drew diagrams in the sand for them. I found that they could not tell me anything that I had not already figured out for myself.

The meaning of the book seemed clear to me. It defined substances, such as man, and the “accidents” or qualities of a substance, such as the shape of a man, how tall he is, how he relates to others such as his brother, and his position in society, and when and where he was born, and whether he prefers to stand or sit. It identified possessions as one attribute, whether he wears shoes or is armed. It also defined what he does and what is done to him. I have talked about these ten categories but I could have talked about many more.

What did I gain from all of this? Nothing! The fact was that it held me back. I tried to understand You, my God, Who are so uncomplicated and unchanging, by putting everything into Aristotle’s “Ten Categories.” Imagine thinking of You as a substance and of Your greatness and beauty as “attributes” as they would be in a man. The truth is that both of these are Yourself! A body is not great or beautiful because it is a body; if it were not so great or beautiful would it not still be a body? My picture of You was unfounded, false, a figment of my own misery, and hardly a good foundation for Your gift of happiness. You ordered the earth to give me trouble, and it did. You ordered me to eat bread in the sweat of my face, and I did.

What did I get out of reading all the books I could find on the liberal arts when I became a person that had no character, a dropout from society and a man addicted to sex? I liked the books, but had no clue as to where the truth and certitude came from. I faced away from the light and looked at the things that it lit up. It was easy for me to understand everything I read in the fields of rhetoric, logic, geometry, music, or math, even without a teacher. You know this, Lord, my God, because a keen perception and quick intelligence are Your gifts, but I did not use them for Your good as a result, they did not help me, but instead, helped to ruin me. I fought to keep the gifts and talents You gave me to myself, but instead I left You and went wandering into a far country where I abused Your gifts in partying and wild sex.

What good was knowing this if I did not use it? Actually, I did not know my ability because I was not aware that these subjects were difficult until I tried teaching them to my students and they could not follow me. but what value was it all to me, Lord, my God, as long as I thought of You as a large mass of radiation and me a piece of You? What a fallacy! But that is the way it was and I do not hesitate to confess to You in public the mercies You have given me, 38

or to ask You for help, any more than I was ashamed at that time to speak about my blasphemies, and to bark at You like a dog.

What was the good of my intelligence, which moved very easily from subject to subject and figured out so many tough questions without the help of any teachers? Because the whole time I was caught in the worst error of all; turning my back to You. I do not think that it was so bad for Your faithful ones that they were much slower than I. They did not run from You. They remained faithful to You and Your Church where they grew and their love was strengthened on the food of a healthy faith.

O Lord, our God, give us hope in You. Guide and protect us, lift us up. Hold us up like babies and hold us up like old men. When You are our strength we are strong, when we are left to our own we are helpless. When we are with You our good will last; without You our aversion becomes a perversion. Let it be that we return to You, Lord, and not fall away from You. With You our good will continues because it is You Yourself. If we do not keep up our homes they fall apart, but it is not the same with the soul, which is Your eternity.

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Book Five: A Man Of Curiosity 1.

A heart that is locked up cannot keep You out. No matter how hard it may be, it cannot resist the touch of Your hand. You unlock it whenever You want to.

Let my soul praise Your mercy so that it may praise You. Every creature in Your universe joins in the unending chorus of praise. People praise You by word of mouth, and animals and other forms of nature praise You through the mouth of those who watch them. When our souls become depressed, they find support through the things You have created, and so they get lifted up to You. You make us new and You give us refreshment and strength.

2.

Even though the wicked and evildoers try to escape from You, Your eye follows them and picks them out in the darkness. Everything around them is beautiful, but they are wicked.

Where do they go when they try to run from You? Where can they hide so that You cannot find them? They do not realize that You are everywhere and that You are not bound by any limits or by space. You are present to them even when they try to get far away from You. Let them turn back and look for You. You have not deserted them, they have deserted You. Let them discover that You are in their hearts just as You are in the hearts of all those who confess to You as they turn from their evil ways. As You wipe away their tears, they cry all the more because they realize that it is You Who give them comfort.

But where was I when I was looking for You? You were right there in front of me, but I did not see You. I was running away from myself, and I could not find myself, much less find You.

3.

Now I would like to tell You about the twenty-ninth year of my life. At that time a Manichean bishop named Faustus arrived in Carthage. He had the devil’s tongue, and he managed to attract many people by the way he spoke. At first I was taken in by him, but soon I was able to tell the difference between the truth and what he served. I was not interested in the type of dish he used to serve his teachings on, but I was really interested in the type of food he served. According to his reputation, he was an expert in many fields of higher learning, and he was especially skilled in the liberal arts. I read some books that dealt with astronomy and natural philosophy, and I still remembered much of what I read. I decided to compare these writings with the far-fetched ideas of the Manichees. I found that the scientists made more sense because they were able to make better judgments about the universe even though they were not able to pierce through to its Lord. With the mind You have given them they were able to investigate and accurately predict the day and time of future eclipses of the sun and moon. Their calculations 40

were correct, and it happened as they foretold. They put these rules into writing, and they still hold true today. By these rules one can predict the year, month, day, and hour of the next eclipse; and it will happen.

Because of my pride, many people are turning away from You and are losing Your light.

They can see the eclipse of the sun long before it happens, yet they cannot see their own eclipse, they do not see the source of their intelligence which enables them to do their research. They do not know the way. They do not know Your Son, Jesus, by Whom You made all things, including the brains that they use. Your wisdom is beyond all measuring; but Your only begotten Son was made our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification and redemption. He was one of us even to the point of paying His taxes to Caesar.

They do not know how to come down from their own self-importance and find their way to Your Son. They do not know how to do this, yet they consider themselves to be high and mighty and shining among the stars. Unfortunately, these people fall to earth and their minds become dark. Much of what the philosophers and scientists say about the universe is true, but they are not interested in looking for the Truth Who put the universe together. Therefore, they do not find Him; or if they do find Him, they do not know Him as God or give Him thanks; but instead they become false in their thinking and claim to be wise and so giving to themselves what is really Yours, thus projecting their own qualities onto You. They exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling humans or animals and further exchange the truth about God for a lie so that they can worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator.

I remembered many of the things they said about the created world; and I saw that their theories were justified by numbers, the order of time, and the visible evidence of the stars. I compared these things with the writings of Mani, who also wrote about these things at length.

However, I did not find in his writings an explanation of the eclipse of the sun or the moon or of other things that I had learned from other books. I was ordered to believe in what Mani wrote, yet it did not coincide with what I had already learned through mathematics and my own observations.

4.

Who asked Mani to write about these things, when piety can be achieved without knowing them? You have said, “The fear of the Lord is wisdom.” Mani could have been without wisdom even though he knew these things perfectly, but his problem was that he decided to teach what he did not know, and it was obvious that he could not know fear of the Lord. He had a lot to say about these things, and he was accused of being ignorant by those who knew what was right. He did not want people to think badly of him; so he tried to persuade people that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter and Enricher of Your people, was living in him personally with full authority. It was apparent that he did not know what he was talking about when he spoke about the sky, the stars, and the movement of the sun and moon. Even though these things do not 41

pertain to religious doctrine, his sacrilegious audacity was clear in that he did not know what he was talking about and all these things were false. Yet in the swollenness of his pride he gave himself credit as being a divine person.

When I see that a fellow Christian is ignorant of these things and is confusing one thing with another, I can be patient with him when he gives his opinion. It does not hurt him to be ignorant of the place or condition of material things as long as he does not hold any beliefs that go against You, O Lord. But it does hurt him if he thinks that these things are pertinent to religious doctrine. Mani dared to set himself up as a teacher, a guide, and a leader of all those whom he could convince about these matters; so that those who followed him believed that they were following not a man, but Your Holy Spirit. When people found out that he was wrong, they should have utterly rejected such madness. But at that time I had not yet discovered that the length of days and nights, the eclipses of the sun and moon, and others things which I had read about in astronomy books could be explained along his lines. Even if they could be explained and even if it could not be proven whether these things were true or not, I was ready to trust in his authority because of his reputation.

5.

After listening to the Manichean teachings for close to nine years, I was looking forward to the long-awaited arrival of this man Faustus. Some of the Manichees whom I happened to meet were not able to answer my questions, and they promised that when Faustus arrived, he would be able to answer these questions and any others that I might ask.

Finally he came, and I found that he was a pleasant man who had a delightful manner of speech. He spoke in the usual Manichean way, but he was more personable than the others. In my thirst for knowledge, I was not too concerned about the looks of the cupbearer or the value of the cup. My ears had already been filled with all the stuff that he taught. Just because it was expressed with grammar, it did not sound better, nor did it make it any more true. An attractive face and becoming speech did not guarantee wisdom, and those who promised me wisdom by him did so because they liked his manner of speaking.

My eagerness to meet Faustus was more than repaid. I was impressed by the way he handled himself in a disagreement and by the words he used to clothe his ideas. I was pleased with him, and I praised him along with the others. In fact, I probably praised him more loudly than the others. But I was soon disappointed because, with all of the people flocking around him, I was not able to talk to him and ask him the questions that I needed to ask. Finally I had the opportunity, and some of my friends and I were able to engage him in a discussion. I mentioned some of those things that concerned me, and I quickly found out that his knowledge of the liberal arts was non-existent. Even his literary skill was the kind that was common to public speakers.

He had read some of Cicero’s speeches and some of the books of Seneca as well as some poetry and some of the Latin writings of the Manicheans. Because of his reading and his daily speaking 42

schedule, he had a good command of the language, and he became more appealing because of his personal magnetism and the way he used his intellectual powers.

This is the way I remember it, Lord, my heart and my memory are open before You. You were acting in me by the hidden secret of Your Providence in order to bring my faults and errors before my eyes so that I could see them and hate them.

6.

When I realized that he was ignorant in those areas in which I thought he was strong, I lost all hope of getting answers to those questions that bothered me. The Manichean books were filled with long-winded nonsense about the sky, the stars, and the sun and the moon; and I wanted him to show me that the Manichean explanations of these things were better than, or at least as good as, any other interpretations that I had studied. When I asked him to talk about these things with me, he would excuse himself from the discussion. He knew that he did not know these things, and he was not afraid to admit it. He was not ignorant of his ignorance. He did not want to get caught up in a discussion that he could not win or walk away from gracefully, and for this I liked him. The mind that knows its limitations is more attractive than the one that simply reaches out for knowledge. I found that he reacted in the same way to all difficult and obscure questions.

Because of this encounter, I lost my enthusiasm for the Manichean writings. However, I started to see Faustus on a regular basis because of his keen interest in literature. We would read books together, either the ones he wanted to read (because he heard of them) or the ones I thought were suited to his intelligence. Once I got to know this man, my interest in advancing in this sect fell apart. I did not separate myself from them entirely because at that time I could not find anything that was better, so I decided to stay with them until something better came along.

So, Faustus, who had been a snare that brought death to many, without knowing it, began to release me from the trap that I was caught in. This was because Your hand, O Lord, did not desert my soul. My mother prayed for me day and night through her tears, and You dealt with me in a marvelous way. It was You Who guided me, O Lord, because “By the Lord are the steps of a man made firm, and He approves his way” (Psalm 37:23). How else can we be saved unless Your hand remakes what it made?

7.

It was by Your action that I was persuaded to go to Rome and teach the same subjects that I taught in Carthage. I went there not because my friends said that I would receive higher pay and greater recognition, even though these things did have some bearing on my decision; I went there because I heard that Roman students were quieter and better disciplined. For example, they were not permitted to go rushing into the school of someone who was not their teacher, nor were they allowed to go in unless the teacher gave them his permission.

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By contrast, the students in Carthage were out of control and took many liberties. They would invade a classroom like a pack of wild men and do all kinds of crazy things that deserved to be punished by law, but custom protected them. Your eternal law, O Lord, could never sanction such behavior. They think that they go unpunished, yet their blindness to their actions is their punishment. When I was a student, I never would have done such things, but as a teacher I was forced to go to a place where, according to others, these things were not done. But You, O Lord, my Hope and portion in the land of the living, forced me to leave Carthage for the salvation of my soul. You did things to drive me out of Carthage, and then You set before me certain attractions that would draw me to Rome. You used these crazy students and my own vain desires to help me reform my ways. I detested my misery in one place and hoped for unreal happiness in the other.

You knew, O God, why I left one country and went to the other, but You did not tell me or my mother. She was upset by my going, and she followed me right down to the docks. She clung to me, and she was determined to either bring me home or to go to Rome with me. But I lied to her. I told her that I had a friend on board the ship with whom I wanted to spend some time before we sailed off. In this way I lied to her so that I might get away from her. She would not go home without me, so I persuaded her to spend the night in a chapel near the ship that was built in memory of St. Cyprian. She was in the chapel all night crying and praying. And what was she praying for with all of those tears? That You would not allow me to sail. You did not grant what she asked for at that time because Your plan was to fulfill her other prayers. That night I sailed away from her. The wind filled our sails, and the shoreline dripped away from our sight. The next morning she discovered the deception, and she was filled with grief. She filled Your ears with moaning and complaints because You took her tears so lightly. Like most mothers, she wanted to have me with her, but at that time she did not realize the joy that would come to her by my going away. She continued to cry and lament, but after rebuking me for my cruel deception, she resumed her prayers for me. She went back home, and I went to Rome.

8.

While I was in Rome, I became severely ill and almost died. I would have gone to my eternal judgment carrying all those sins that I committed against You, myself, and other people.

You had not yet forgiven my sins nor did the cross of Christ heal the break between You and me.

How could the crucifixion of a phantom (which at that time I thought He was) heal my sins? The death of my soul was as real to me as the death of His body was to Him. The fever grew worse, and I was close to death.

My mother, being far away, did not know that I was sick, but she continued to pray for me. You heard her prayers and had compassion on me and healed me, even though my heart was still ill. Yet, despite the grave danger I was in, I did not ask to be baptized because over the years I sank more deeply into my shame. I have no words to describe the love my mother had for me.

Had I died, there would have been no way of healing her broken heart. And what would have 44

happened to all of her prayers and pleadings? You were not able to ignore those tears which begged for the salvation of my soul. You were always there to hear her as You carried out Your plan.

9.

Eventually, You brought me out of that sickness and healed the son of Your handmaid so that I might live a better life. In Rome I started to associate with the Manicheans again, not only with the Healers, like the man whose house I was sick in, but also with the Elect. I still believed that it was not me who sinned but rather some other nature that sinned in us. I was pleased to know that it was not my fault and that when I did something wrong, I did not have to confess it. I liked to excuse myself and blame the other thing that was in me but was not me. The truth was that I was myself and my divided nature was brought about by my wickedness. My sin was harder to heal because I thought I was not a sinner.

I gave up all hope of profit from the Manichean doctrine, and I started to slack off and become careless about those ideas that I thought I would firmly hold until something better came along. Then it occurred to me that the philosophers whom they call “Academics” were wiser than all the others because they believe that we should doubt everything and that there is no truth that we could understand. I felt at ease in the company of these men, but I did not defend their views with the same enthusiasm as I had defended Manicheanism. There were many of them in Rome, and their friendship made me slow to look for another religion since I had given up hope of finding the truth in Your church, O Lord. They turned me away from Your Church because I found it hard to believe that You had and were confined by a human body. When I thought of my God, I thought of a shapeless mass, and this was the principal cause of my error. I also thought that evil had its own hideous and shapeless form; and because of this, I believed that the good God could not create evil and that there were two opposing powers, both infinite, with the good one being greater than the evil one. All my other false ideas stemmed from this fatal mistake.

When I turned to find help in the Catholic faith, I was taken back because the Catholic faith was not what I thought it was. It seemed to me to be more reverent to think of God as infinite in all His parts than to imagine Him being contained in a human body. I thought of the source of our salvation, our Savior, Your only-begotten Son, as a mass coming from Your divine light, and I found it difficult to believe if I could not picture it in my mind. I argued that such a thing could not be born of the Virgin Mary unless it were a part of her flesh, and if it came from God, it could not have come from her body without being defiled. So I was afraid to believe in the Word made flesh because I would be forced to believe in the Word defiled by flesh. I have no doubt that spiritually mature people smiled at me because of these mixed-up thoughts, but that’s the way I was.

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10.

The Manichees would criticize certain things in the Bible that I thought were impossible to defend. I did, however, want to discuss these things one by one with someone who knew the Bible so that I could get his opinion on them. While I was still in Carthage, I was impressed by the public speaking of someone named Elpidius who would debate the Manicheans and produce arguments from the Scriptures that were not easy to answer. The answers that the Manicheans gave were pretty weak; in fact, most of the time they preferred not to give their answers in public but mentioned them only among themselves in private. Their answer was that the New Testament had been doctored by some unknown people who wanted to incorporate the Jewish Law into the Christian faith, yet they were not able to produce any undoctored copies to prove their point. Despite all this, I was still caught up on the masses of good and evil because I could not get my thinking out of the physical plane. I was gasping for the clean air of Your truth, but I was not able to breathe it in.

11.

I quickly got down to teaching Rhetoric, which was why I went to Rome. I had a small group of students at my house, and through them I became known around town. Then I learned that there were problems in Rome that I did not have to deal with in Africa. Some people warned me that even though the students did not riot in Rome, they had other tricks like cheating the teacher of his pay by moving as a group to another teacher. They were not concerned about justice or doing the right thing; their only concern was the love of money. I hated them, not because of what they did to other teachers, but because of the suffering they caused me. I still despise such people yet I love them more because they are people who can change; they can learn to love instruction more than money, but more importantly, come to love You, O God, the Truth, and the fullness of goodness and peace. But at that time I was more interested in seeing that they did not cheat me than I was in wanting them to become good for Your sake.

12.

A message from Milan was sent to the prefect of Rome asking for a rhetoric teacher to be sent there at public expense, and I applied for the job through my Manichean connections. My real purpose for wanting the job was to get away from my Manichean friends, although at that time neither they nor I realized it. The Roman prefect Symmachus approved of the speech that I gave at the contest, and he sent me off. So I went to Milan, and I came across Bishop Ambrose, a devout servant of God who was known around the world. His preaching gave to the people “the richness of Your wheat, the joy of Your oil, and the sober intoxication of Your wine” (Psalm 4:7). At that time I did not know that You were leading me to him so that he might lead me to You.

46

That man of God received me and welcomed me in a fatherly way, as any good bishop would, and so I came to love him, not as a teacher of truth (which I had given up hope of finding in Your Church) but as a man who was kind to me. I went to church every time he preached, though not for the right reason, I just wanted to see if his eloquence was what it was reported to be and if it was more or less than what I expected. I listened to every word with the greatest of care, but the subject matter did not interest me at all. He spoke quite well, but his delivery was not as pleasing and captivating as that of Faustus. I am referring only to their speaking here, because in comparison, Ambrose was the better educated of the two. Faustus wandered about among the fallacies of the Manichees, but Ambrose taught a healthy doctrine of salvation. But salvation is far from the wicked, which I was then. And so I was gradually being drawn closer without knowing it.

13.

As I said, I did not pay attention to what Ambrose said, but only to the way he said it.

That empty interest was the only thing I had left since I lost all hope of finding my way to You. Nonetheless, as I listened to the words, which I admired, my mind could not avoid their meaning, which I decided to ignore. As I remained open to what Ambrose could teach me about eloquence, I slowly began to absorb the truth of what he was saying. I came to realize that his arguments could be defended and that the Catholic faith, which I thought could not stand up to the attacks of the Manicheans, could stand its own ground. I began to believe this when I heard him explain some passages of the Old Testament which were a cause of death for me when taken literally. I did not feel that I should follow the Catholic way just because some learned men were able to defend its positions and answer objections with some amount of sense. Nor did I think that what I believed should be condemned because both views were equally defensible. It seemed to me that the Catholic position had not been demolished, yet it was not clearly victorious. I then took it upon myself to see if I could find some proofs to show that the Manicheans were wrong. If I had only been able to conceive of a spiritual substance, all of their arguments would have been broken down and thrown out of my mind, but I was not able to do so.

As I continued to think about the physical body and what could be learned through the senses, and as I thought about it over and over and made my comparisons, I came to realize that the views of the philosophers were probably right. So I decided to follow in the footsteps of the Academics by doubting everything and wavering from one opinion to another. I decided to leave the Manicheans because I did not think that it was right to stay with them while I preferred the views of the philosophers. Yet I refused to entrust the care of my soul to the philosophers because they did not use the saving name of Christ. I was determined, then, to go on as a catechumen in the Catholic Church, the Church of my parents, and stay that way until some kind of light should appear by which I could direct my life.

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Book Six: Internal Struggles 1.

O God, the hope of my youth, where were You all of this time? Did You not set me apart from the beasts of the field and make me wiser than the birds of heaven? I walked in dark and slippery places and went out of my way to find You, but I did not find You. I sank to the depths of the ocean, and I lost faith and hope of ever discovering the truth.

By this time my mother came to me in Milan. With courage she traveled over land the sea, and when things went wrong, she put her trust in You. One time when the ship was in danger of sinking because of a storm, she instilled valor in the hearts of all the sailors. She promised them that they would arrive safely because You had promised it to her in a vision, and the promise was kept – they did arrive safely.

When she arrived, she saw that I was very upset because of my despair of ever finding the truth. I told her that while I was not yet a Catholic, I was no longer a Manichean. She was impressed. At least she saw that I removed myself from heresy even though I did not find the truth. Calmly, and with a heart full of confidence and faith in Christ, she told me that she believed that she would see me a Catholic before she died. She cried and prayed all the more earnestly that You would hasted Your help and bring me out of my darkness. She hastened to church where she hung upon the words of Ambrose “as a fountain leaping up to provide eternal life” (John 4:14). She loved that man as if he were an Angel of God because she knew that it was because of him that I was brought to this state of uncertainty.

2.

Shortly after she arrived in Milan, my mother took up her ritual practice of burning bread and wine to the shrines of the saints as she used to do in Africa, but the caretakers would not let her. When she learned that this custom was forbidden by Bishop Ambrose, she willingly abandoned this practice. However, it seems to me that she would not have abandoned this practice if it were forbidden by someone she did not love as she loved Ambrose. It was because of my salvation that she loved Ambrose; and it was because of her fervor, her church going, and her good deeds that he loved her. Sometimes when he saw me, he would sing her praises and congratulate me for having such a mother, even though he did not know what kind of a son she had. I was the one who doubted everything, and I believed that the way of life could not be found.

3.

I did not ask You for Your help in prayer. I was filled with questions and was always eager for an argument. I thought of Ambrose as a lucky man, by worldly standards, because he was honored by so many important people; but I thought that his celibacy was a heavy burden. I 48

had no way of knowing what hopes he had, what struggles and temptations went along with his office, what gave him comfort in times of trouble, and what gives joy to his heart.

In the same way, he knew nothing of my emotional state. Because of the many people who came to see him with their problems, I did not have the opportunity to meet him face-to-face and ask him the many questions I needed to ask. In the small amount of time he had to himself, he would refresh his body by eating and his mind by reading. No one was forbidden to see him, nor did they have to be announced. When we came, we often found him reading; and not wanting to disturb him, we would sit there in silence; and after a while we would get up and leave. At those times we thought that he wanted to be free from distractions, so we did not call him away from what he was doing. Anyway, I had no chance of asking the questions that I needed to ask this holy man of Yours, unless it was something that he could answer briefly. For me to pour out all my problems to him would require a large amount of time, and this he never had. Every Sunday I heard him preach the word of truth to the people, and I became more convinced that those knots and clever attacks against the Holy Scriptures by those who wanted to deceive me could be resolved.

I also came to learn that the phrase “God created man in his own image” (Genesis 1:27) was not taken by Your spiritual children to mean that You are limited to the shape of a human body. I did not have the foggiest notion of what a “spiritual substance” was; yet I was happy to discover, much to my embarrassment, that all of those years I had been ranting not against the Catholic faith but against some figment of the imagination. I was rash and irreverent in making accusations without doing my research.

4.

I did not understand this spiritual image of You. I should have knocked at the door and questioned how to believe it instead of making fun of someone who believed it in one way or another. I was filled with so many falsehoods, and it was only later on that I found out that they were false. I was certain that many of these things were uncertain, but I took them for certain as I blindly attacked Your Church. At that point I did not know that She was teaching the truth, but I also found out that She did not teach the things I accused her of. And so I rejoiced, my God, that Your Church, with Her sound doctrine, had no intention of packing You into a human body.

In his preaching, Ambrose often told the congregation and urged them believe that the letter of the law kills while the spirit of the law gives life. He would remove the veil of mystery and put forth the spiritual meaning of many things that, when taken by themselves, would appear to be false. Nothing of what he said struck me as being false; only at that time I did not know if what he said was true. I held back from accepting anything because I was afraid that I would fall once again. I wanted to be certain about everything, even things unseen, just as I am certain that seven and three make ten. I wanted to keep my mind clear so that it could be directed toward Your truth. But as it often happens, the man who has tried a bad doctor is often afraid to trust a 49

good one. That is the way it was with the health of my soul. The only way that it could be healed was by believing, and I refused to be healed that way because I was afraid of believing something false. And so I resisted You and Your hands that prepared the medicine of faith.

5.

From this time on I preferred the Catholic teaching which required that certain things be accepted on faith even though they cannot be proven. Your hand then worked on my heart, Lord, and fixed it in the most gentle and merciful way. I started to think of the many things that I believe that I had not seen, things that have happened without my being there. Such things would be historical events, facts about places and cities that I have never visited, and things that I believe that have been told to me by friends or doctors or someone else, things that we need to believe in order to get along in life. It also struck me how firmly I believed what others told me.

I came to the realization that it was not those who believed the Bible, which You set over all people with such authority, but those who did not believe it who were wrong. I also came to realize that I should not pay attention to those who ask, “How do you know that the Scriptures were given to the human race by the Spirit of the one true God?” This was one thing that I had to believe above everything else.

Sometimes my faith was strong, and sometimes it was weak, but I held onto the truths that You exist and that You care for us, even though I did not know what to believe about Your substance. Since men do not have the strength to discover the truth by reason alone, we need the authority of the Holy Scriptures. I started to believe that You would not have given authority to the Scriptures if it were not Your will that people should believe in You and find You in them.

Now that I had heard the Scriptures explained in a clear and believable way, I saw that many of those passages that I thought were absurd really belonged to the deep mysteries of faith.

The authority of Scripture seemed to be heightened because it was a book that could be easily read yet it carried a profound mystery. It uses plain words and simple expressions, but it also demands that close attention of serious minds.

As I thought about these things, You were near me. I sighed and You heard me; I was uncertain and You guided me; I was going the way of the world and You did not abandon me.

6.

I was looking forward to making money, getting married, and becoming famous; and You laughed at the whole thing. I suffered many disappointments, and even in these You were with me because You stopped me from enjoying anything that did not lead to You. Look into my heart, Lord, because it was by Your will that I remember all of these things and confess them to You. Let my soul cling to You now that You have freed it from the holds of death. At that time my soul was in misery, and it turned to You to be healed.

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There was a day when You drove home the point of my misery. I was working on a speech that I had to deliver in praise of the Emperor (Valentinian II). The speech was filled with lies that would bring the applause of people who knew they were lies. My heart was sick and filled with shame because of this. My friends and I were walking down a street in Milan when I saw a beggar. He was laughing and making jokes, so I gathered that he was drunk. When I saw this, I started to feel bad, and I remarked to my friends about the troubles and sorrows that our behavior brings and how we drag this load of unhappiness through our lives. The father we drag it, the heavier it gets. Our aim in life is to achieve some sort of peace and happiness with as little care as possible. The beggar had already reached this goal, and it looked as if we never would.

The happiness and temporary pleasure that he got by begging a few pennies from people was something that I was looking for around every corner of my life.

It was certain that he did not find true happiness, and the happiness I was looking for was just as shallow. Anyway, he was cheerful and had no worries while I had nothing but worries. If anyone asked me if I preferred to be cheerful or fearful, I would answer cheerful; and if anyone asked me if I would prefer to live the life of the beggar or my own life, I would choose my own life even though I had so many problems. I know this sounds absurd, but I should not prefer my own life over his just because I was better educated. I received no joy from my education; I only used it to please others. It did not do any good for someone to say, “It makes a difference what one is happy about. The beggar found his joy in being drunk; you find yours in glory.” But what kind of glory was it, Lord? A glory not in You. My glory was no better than his joy. He would sleep off his drunkenness, but I would go to bed with my problem and wake with it, go to bed and wake up with it, day after day.

Now I know that it does make a difference in what brings happiness and that there was a difference between him and me. He was the happier man, not because he was happy on the outside while I was torn to pieces on the inside, but because he got his wine by wishing good luck to those around him and I was getting praise by telling people lies.

I spoke about this with my friends, and I found out that they felt the same way. This did not make me very happy; so I started to worry; and in turn, my worrying only added to my unhappiness.

7.

I discussed the problem with Alypius and Nebridius. Alypius and I came from the same town. His parents were people of nobility. He was younger than I was, and he studied under me when I taught in our home town and later on when I taught in Carthage. He liked me because he thought that I was kind as well as educated, and I liked him because I thought that he was a youth full of great virtue. However, he had a great passion for gladiatorial games. But the time he started to show interest in the games, I already had a school established and was teaching rhetoric. At that time he was not one of my students because of a problem between his father and 51

me. I found out that he was devoted to the games, and I started to worry because I felt that so much talent was being wasted. But I had no way of steering him away from the games. I just took it for granted that he felt about me the same way his father did. However, he did not. He had his own opinion that was different from his father’s and he would greet me when he saw me and would sometimes come into my school, listen for a while, and then be off.

But You, Lord, did not forget him. It was in Your plan that he was to be counted among Your children and one day serve Your Church as a priest. You brought this about through me, and I was not even aware of it. One day, when I was sitting in class with my students surrounding me, he came into class, greeted me, sat down and paid attention to what was being discussed. I was holding in my hands a passage that I was explaining, and it came to me that I could easily make my point by making a comparison to the games, a point that involved a biting mockery of those who were addicted to that form of entertainment. He immediately applied it to himself and thought that I did that on purpose. Someone else might have used that lesson as a reason for being angry with me, but he was honest enough to use it as a reason for being angry at himself, and he used it to enhance our relationship. As a matter of fact, my comments were not directed at him; but You, Lord, used my mind and my tongue to turn him around. As a result of what I said, he decided to clear his mind and not to go to the games anymore.

After that, he convinced his father to let him be one of my students, and his father gave in. He began to take lessons from me, and he started to believe the same things I believed.

8.

I have also mentioned Nebridius. He left Carthage, his hometown, where he lived all his life. He left his rich family, his house, and his mother to come to Milan to be with me. He was in the same state of uncertainty as I was, and he was also looking for truth and wisdom. And so there we were, three needy souls who confessed their spiritual poverty to each other while waiting for You to give us our food in due season. Through all of our lives’ disappointments, darkness covered our souls as we tried to figure out why these things happen to us. We kept on asking, “How long will these things last?” This question was forever on our lips, yet we did not give up our worldly ways because we saw that there was nothing worth changing our lives for.

9.

I thought about how many years had passed since I was nineteen years old and began to search for true knowledge. I decided that when I found it, I would give up all my empty hopes and vain desires. At this point I was thirty years old, and I was still stuck in the same rut of enjoying the pleasures of life. I would always say to myself: “Tomorrow I will find it. It will be quite clear, and I shall hold onto it.”

“When Faustus arrives, he will explain everything.”

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“What about those Academics? Is it true that there is nothing for certain that we can hold onto to guide us through life?”

“No, we must continue to look and look harder. The things in Scripture that used to seem stupid to me are no longer stupid; they can be clearly understood.”

“I will continue to walk the path my parents set me on until I find the truth. But where shall find it? When shall I find it?”

“Ambrose is very busy, and I am too busy to read. Anyway, where would I get the books?

Who has them? When can I borrow them? I must set aside a few hours of each day for the health of my soul.”

“I had great hope. The Catholic Church does not teach what I thought it did. Catholic scholars say that it is blasphemy to believe that God is limited to the shape of the human body.

Should I further investigate this?”

“My pupils take up the morning hours; what do I do with the rest of the day? Why not study the Church’s teaching? If I do, when will I have the time to visit my powerful friends whose help I need for the future? When do I prepare the lessons that my students pay for? When do I relax and clear my mind of my heavy concerns?”

“Forget all of this. Let me get this out of my mind and devote myself solely to the search for truth. Life is a poor thing and death comes at any time. Am I ready to die? Where will I learn what I have neglected? Will I be punished for my neglect? Does death cut off our caring feeling?

I must look into this. God forbid if it is true. God would not let all of those wonderful things happen to us if the soul ended with the death of the body.”

“But wait, these worldly pleasures are not so bad; they have a charm all of their own.

One should not cut oneself off from them so readily.”

“It would not be too hard for me to win a place of honor. What more could I want? I have plenty of important friends, and it would be easy for me to pick up a governorship. Then I could marry a woman with some money of her own so that she could help take care of the extra expenses. Then I would be set. There are many great men who are married and have devoted themselves to the pursuit of wisdom.”

All of these things kept going through my mind and the wind tossed my heart one way and then another. Time was moving on and I put off turning to the Lord. Day after day I postponed my decision to live in You, yet I did not put off the daily death I was dying in myself.

I lived the idea of being happy, but I was afraid of where it was, so in my search for it I ran away from it. The truth of the matter is that I thought that life would be impossible if I had to give up the embraces of a woman. I felt that self-discipline was a matter of our own strength, and I knew 53

that I did not have it. You would have given me this strength if I asked for it and put my faith in You.

10.

Alypius was the one who kept me from getting married. He would use the argument that if I got married, we could not live together and search for wisdom as we planned. He was someone who was chaste. As a teenager he had had the experience of sexual intercourse, but he took no interest in it. In fact, he regretted having done it, and from that point on he lived in complete chastity. I mentioned that there are many people who were married who pursued wisdom, served God, and faithfully kept in touch with their friends. But I was far away from their spirit. I was caught up in the needs of the flesh, and so I rejected his words and pushed away the hand that would set me free.

11.

Every effort was made to get me married. I proposed to a girl and we became engaged.

My mother was in favor of this because she felt that if I got married, my baptism would soon follow. She looked upon this as an answer to her prayers and that Your promises to her were being fulfilled. Through my request and her own desire she prayed to You and asked You to show her something about my future marriage in a vision, but You never did. The plans for the marriage went on. The girl was two years under the legal age for marriage, but I liked her and agreed to wait for her.

12.

In the meantime I kept on sinning. The woman with whom I lived with for so long was taken away from me because she was looked upon as a hindrance to my marriage. As a result of that my heart was left racked, wounded, and bleeding. She sailed back to Africa, swearing that she would never know another man, and she left me with the son I had by her. In the meantime, I could not wait for two years for the girl I was to marry; and being a slave to sex, I took another woman. I really was not interested in marriage; I was just interested in sex. In this way my soul was nourished and was kept alive until I was able to get married. But the wounds that my heart received from my earlier affair remained unhealed; and in time, as the sharp pains grew duller, I only grew more helpless.

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Book Seven: The Anatomy Of Evil 1.

My unmentionable days of adolescence were at an end. I was now in young manhood, in bad moral and spiritual shape and getting worse. As a man (such as I was) I tried to think about the one true Almighty God. From the bottom of my heart I believed You were incorruptible; that You can never be hurt; and that You never change. I could not explain why I believed it, but I was dead certain that something corruptible is inferior to something incorruptible. That which can be violated I also unhesitatingly put beneath that which is inviolate; and that which is unchanging I placed above that which undergoes change.

2.

But while I firmly believed that You, our Lord, the true God, are free from defilement and change and are the Creator of everyone and everything, I still had difficulties with the problem of evil. But I did come to see that whatever the solution might be, it did not help to believe that God was changeable.

I tried to understand what I had been told, that we do evil of our free will, and the suffering that results is only just and right and comes from You. Somehow I failed to get it through my head. I tried to pull my mental process out of the run in which it was mired, but it slipped back again and again. One thing did lift me up toward Your light; as sure as I lived, I knew that I possessed a will, and that when I willed to do something or willed not to do something, nobody else was making the decision. I was at the point of perceiving that here was the cause of my sin. But when I did do something against my will, it seemed to me that it was something done to me rather than something I did. So I considered it not my fault, but rather a punishment; and since I knew You to be a just God, I had to admit that the punishment was just.

Then I would ask, “Who made me? Not my God, Who is not only good but Goodness itself. For if He did, how is it I will to do evil and bypass the good, and so earn punishment for myself? Who gave me this will? Who planted this seed of bitterness in me when all I am is what God made me, and He is Sweetness itself? If the devil is to blame, where did the devil come from? Suppose the devil was a good angel who by his own contrary will became the devil, where did his evil will come from? Did not the Creator, Who is all good, make His angels all good?” I continued to be depressed and stultified by such thoughts, but at least I was not brought to the hellish state in which a man will not confess to You, but prefers to believe that You permit evil rather than that man commits it.

3.

I was searching for the origin of evil, but was unaware that there was evil in my methodology. I brought into perspective the whole universe, both that which is visible such as 55

earth, sea, air, stars, trees, and animal life; and that which is invisible such as heaven, the angels, and spiritual beings. For I still thought of spiritual things in a physical sense, and imagined they had a geographical environment. So I made of all creation one glorious mass of bodies. It was as if there were a vast sea, and within it a sponge that was penetrated in every part by the sea. I said, “Here is God and here is what He has created. Since God is good, then that which He made is good.”

“Now, where does evil come from? How did it get here? What is its root? What is its seed? Is there any such thing in fact as evil? Was there something evil in the material from which God created the universe? When he formed it, did he leave something in it that was not converted to good? If so, why? Did he not have power to change it, since He is omnipotent? Why did he not just annihilate it? Could it exist against His will?”

Such thoughts kept revolving in my unhappy mind, which was aggravated by the fear that I might die before I ever found the truth. Yet in my heart I still clung to faith in Christ our Lord and Savior, as the church trained me to do. I was not clear on many points and was unsound on others, but my mind did not entirely let faith go; rather, I kept drinking in more and more day by day.

4.

By now, my Helper, You had unshackled me from the chains of divination and astrology, but I was still looking for a solution to the problem of evil and finding none. My God, what torment my heart went through. How I cried out for relief. But You were there listening, unknown to me. Even when I was quiet, my silent agony became a strong voice calling for Your mercy. Nobody knew the trouble I felt – nobody but You. I could not seem to communicate it even to my closest friends. There was no time; there were no words to share it with them. But as I “roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart,” all my desires were laid before You.

5.

Truly, Lord, You are eternal, and You are not angry with us forever, for You take pity on us who are dust and ashes. You looked me over and were pleased to shape what was misshapen in me. You kept on pricking at my heart, keeping me unsettled until I could see You clearly. The secret touch of the Great Physician’s hand restored the disturbed and darkened sight of my mind’s eye and the slave of sorrow gradually brought it to health and keenness of vision.

6.

You wanted first of all to make clear to me that You oppose the proud man but “give grace to the humble.” What great mercy You showed when You took the path of humility as the Word became flesh and dwelt among men! You used an intellectual stuffed shirt to obtain for me some of the books of the Platonists that had been translated from Greek into Latin. I found the 56

gospel in them – not the exact words, but the same meaning, and wrapped by powerful reasoning: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All these things were made through Him…In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

In those same books I learned that the soul of man testifies to the light, yet it is not that light; that the Word, God Himself, is “the true light that enlightens every man coming into the world.” But I did not read in them that “He came to His own home, and His own people received Him not. But to all who received Him and who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God.” In the same way I read that the Word, God, was “born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” But that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” – that I failed to find in the works of the Platonists.

The books taught me in a variety of different ways that the Son of God was divine like the Father, but neglected to add that He humbled Himself and took the nature of a slave, and made himself of no reputation, and became obedient unto death, even the death of a cross. They said the Son lives forever with You in eternity, but there was no word to the effect that He died for us sinners. It seems some people get so high up on their doctrinal stilts they cannot hear the Lord saying “Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls.”

7.

These Platonic writings did advise me to return to myself, and You then led me into my inner consciousness. I was able to do so because You helped me. The eye of my soul – such as it was – saw the Unchanging Light shining over it. This was no ordinary light of day, visible to the naked eye; nor was it an intensifying of that light to the next degree. It was not floating over my mind as oil floats above water, or as the sky is over the earth. Rather, it was something altogether different. It was over me because it made me, and I was beneath it because I was made by it. But everyone who knows the truth knows that Light, and he who knows it knows it forever. It is the light of love.

Eternal truth, truth of love, love of eternity! That is what You are, my God, and that is why day and night You form the breath of my being. When I first knew You, You lifted me up and I realized there was something to see, but I was not quite capable of seeing it. My vision was too weak to stand the radiance of Your glory, and I trembled with a combination of love and dread. I seemed to be a long way from You, in a far country, listening to Your voice as it spoke to me from above, “I am the flood of real men. Grow up and feed on me. But you will never change Me into yourself as your digestion changes its food; rather, you will be changed into My likeness.”

Then I understood that “You correct man for immorality and like a moth you consume what he holds dear.” So I said to myself, “Is truth nothing at all, since it is spatially neither finite 57

nor infinite?” And I heard a voice calling as from afar, “I AM WHO I AM.” I heard You as one hears a voice speaking to his heart, and I had no reason whatever to doubt. It would have been easier for me to doubt my existence than to doubt the reality of truth; for it is “clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.”

8.

Then I reflected on the orders that are lower than Yourself, and saw that they are not altogether real in themselves, yet they are not totally unreal either. They draw their reality from You, and are unreal to the extent that they are not what You are. For only that truly exists which remains unchangeable. So for me it is good to draw near to God and cleave to him; for unless I remain in Him I cannot remain in myself. But God, Who remains in Himself, renews all things.

He is my God, and has no need of my goodness.

9.

It was shown to me that things which undergo corruption are themselves good. If they were supremely good, of course, they could not be corrupted; but neither could they be corrupted if they were no good in the first place. So either corruption does no harm, which is impossible, or everything that is corrupted is stripped of its good – which is quite certain. But that which is deprived of its good no longer has any being. We conclude that all those things that are divested of goodness cease to exist; but as long as they exist, they are good. Therefore, whatever is, is good; and evil, whose source I had been tracking for so long, is not a substance at all. For if it were a substance, it would be good.

10.

For You, Lord, evil has no existence, and not only for You but for Your whole created universe, because there is nothing outside creation that can come crashing into it and so disrupt the order You have imposed on it. Yet in parts of Your creation there are certain things which are thought to be evil because they do not relate harmoniously to other things. But there are still other things to which they do relate, which makes them good; and in fact they are good in themselves.

11.

My soul did not dare to be displeased with my God, and so it would not attribute to You things that it found displeasing in creation. That is why it adopted the theory of two substances (good and evil). But unknown to me, You stroked my head and closed my eyes so I would not behold vanity, and I slept away some of my crazy ideas. When I woke up in You, I saw that You were infinite, but infinite in a way different from what I had thought; and it was not with the eye of flesh that I reached this conclusion.

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12.

I looked about at other things and saw that they, too, owe their existence to You: They were all contained by You, not spatially or geographically, but in a unique way. You hold in truth the whole universe in the hollow of Your hand, and all things are true insofar as they exist.

Falsehood is nothing but the supposed existence of that which never was. I saw, too, that everything that exists agrees not only with its proper place, but with its proper time; because You, Who alone are eternal, did not wait until countless ages of time had elapsed before You began to operate. You are the one Who makes time come and go, and in fact, without You there is nothing to operate.

13.

From my own experience I know it is not surprising when bread that tastes good to a healthy man becomes uninviting to him when he is sick. Light that is pleasant to sound eyes is painful to eyes that are sore. In the same way evildoers find Your justice hard to take, harder in fact than the existence of snakes and worms. But snakes and worms You created good. So when I asked what evil was, I found that it was not a substance but a perversion of the will when it becomes bloated with desire for the externals of life and is diverted from You, God, the Supreme Reality.

14.

It seemed strange to me that while I now loved You, rather than some phantasm substituting for You, I did not consistently enjoy my God. Your beauty ravished me, but I was soon snatched away again by the sheer weight of the world and its ways, to collapse dismally in its muck. Yet the memory of You remained with me, and I became convinced there was one to Whom I ought to cleave, though I was not yet capable of doing it.

By now I was inquiring into an appraisal of earthly and heavenly bodies, and by stages I passed from bodies to the soul, as it operates through the senses, and then to the soul’s inner faculty of receiving sense impressions from external objects. That is the limit of animal intelligence. The next stage is the power of reason which judges the facts submitted by the bodily senses. But realizing that this power was subject to change led me to consider the source of its undertaking. My mind withdrew from the contradictory fantasies that played upon it, in order to explore the light that bathed it. For without any question the mind cried out that the Unchangeable was superior to the changeable. But how did it know that, unless it knew the Unchangeable? Thus at one trembling flash it arrived at the vision of reality: that which is. I saw the invisible nature of God Himself.

However, I had not the strength to keep looking; in my weakness I recoiled and fell back into my old habits, taking with me nothing but a loving memory, as though I had sniffed the fragrance of eternity but was not able to eat of it.

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15.

So I looked for a way to obtain the strength I needed to enjoy You, but never found it until I laid hold of that mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, Who is God over all things and blessed forever. He called me and said to me, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” He combined our flesh with the spiritual food I was too weak to eat; for the Word was made flesh in order that Your wisdom, by which all things were formed, might be able to provide milk for us who are spiritual infants.

Still I was not humble enough to take the humble Jesus as my God; nor did I know what his taking our weak nature was supposed to teach us. Your Word, the eternal truth, overtops the highest peaks of Your creation and He lifts up those of low degree to Himself. Yet He stooped to this human clay of ours and built Himself a humble habitation that He might win to Himself all who are willing to surrender their own selves. He would heal men of the tumors of their pride.

He would nurture their love so they would not become overconfident of their strength, but would recognize their own weakness when they saw before their eyes Divinity Himself in His weakness. He shared our coats of skin, so that we would wearily throw ourselves upon His humanity, and so find ourselves lifted up by his resurrection.

16.

But I was thinking along other lines. I considered Christ my Lord to be a man of remarkable wisdom whose nativity put Him in a class by Himself. I took it that His humble birth was a demonstration of the way our loving God holds worldly goods in contempt as compared with the prize of immortality. Christ seemed to me to have great authority as a teacher; but of the mystery of “the Word became flesh,” I had not the slightest clue. From what had been handed down to us in Scripture I gathered that Christ ate, drank, slept, walked, talked with people, had His good days and bad days; thus to me any joining of Your Word with human flesh meant joining with a human soul and a human mind. Your Word is unchangeable; but as everyone knows, in the properties of a human soul and a human mind there is continual change. Limbs, emotions, speech – all are characterized by motion. If the biblical record did not indicate such things to be true of Christ’s life, the whole Bible would be in danger of being branded false, and the human race would no longer find saving faith in it.

Since I considered the Scripture to be true, I conceded that Christ was a complete man: not merely dwelling in a man’s body or having human soul and body without a human mind, but a man in the full sense of the word. I judged that he was to be preferred over all other men, not because He personified Truth but because of the superb characteristics of His human nature and His access to the fount of wisdom.

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17.

By reading the books of the Platonists I was taught to look for truth as something immaterial and nonphysical. I saw that the “invisible things” are “understood by the things that are made.” And though I was foiled in my ongoing attempt to find the truth, I was able dimly to perceive what the darkness of my mind would not permit me to examine clearly. I became convinced that You existed, and that You were infinite, though not necessarily in spatial terms; and that You were unvarying either in parts or in motion. I was certain that all things derive from You on the strongest possible basis of proof – the fact that they existed.

But as positive as I was about these matters, I was still too puny to enjoy You. I chattered away as though I were quite the expert, but I had not sought Your Way in Christ our Savior, so my “expertise” became my “demise.” The reason was that I had now begun to put on a face of wisdom; instead of regretting my condition, I swelled with pride over the new knowledge I had acquired. But where was the love that builds on the foundation of humility in Christ Jesus? And when would these books teach it to me? I believe it was Your will that I should come across the Platonists’ books before beginning to study Your Scriptures, so that I might remember how they affected me. Afterward, when I had been tamed by Your texts and my wounds had been touched

by Your healing fingers, I would be able to discern between presumption and confession; between those who know where they want to go but not how to get there, and those who not only see the way that leads to the land of blessing but who make it there and live in it.

18.

So I snatched at the time-honored writings inspired by Your Spirit, and especially at the letters of the Apostle Paul. The places in which he seemed to contradict himself and to go against the testimony of Moses and the prophets no longer existed. I looked upon the holy eloquence of Your Word as having one face, and like the Psalmist I exulted with trembling. After I began reading, it became clear that whatever truths I found in the Platonists were contained there also, along with the praise of Your Grace. For it is by Grace that a man is taught not only to look upon You, Who are forever the same God; but is also given enabling power to take hold of You. A man may “delight in the law of God in my inmost self,” but as Paul says, there is “in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.” What shall man do? For You are just, Lord, and we have sinned; we have done wrong and acted wickedly. Your hand is heavy on us. We have been turned over (and justly so) to the ancient power of evil, the prince of death, who has persuaded our wills to become like his will, because he does not stand in Your truth. What shall man do in his misery? Who shall deliver him from the body of this death? No one but the Grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who was begotten by You to be eternal with You, and was created in the beginning of Your ways. The prince of this world found nothing in Him worthy of death yet killed Him; and the handwriting of the decree against us is thereby whipped out.

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None of this is found in the Platonists’ books. Their pages do not reveal the face of devotion, the tears of confession. They never mention that “the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit” or that “a broken and contrite heart the Lord will not despise.” They are mute on such subjects as the redemption of men, the city prepared as a bride, the pledge of the Holy Spirit, the cup of our salvation. In them no one sings, “Truly my soul waits upon God: from Him comes my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defense; I shall not be greatly moved.” Nor does anyone hear a voice calling, “Come unto Me, all you that labor.” They reject the teaching of Him Who was meek and lowly of heart; for You have hidden all this from the learned and wise, and have revealed it to the simple.

It is one thing to climb above the timber line to the summit and catch a view of the land of peace, then to fail to find a trail leading to it, and so have to struggle through uncharted country, waylaid and beset by fugitives and deserters. It is quite another to move steadily down the posted highway to it, convoyed by the security troops of the King of Heaven, unmolested by deserters who avoid the road like the plague. These truths amazingly worked their way into my viscera as I studied the letters of “the least of the apostles,” and I looked upon Your works and trembled.

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Book Eight: Tolle Lege 1.

My God, I want to think back over all Your mercies toward me and tell the world about them with a thankful heart. Let my bones be soaked in Your love until all my being cries out, “Lord, who is like You? You must open the chains that bound me. I will offer to You the sacrifice of praise. How You broke my fetters I am about to tell so that everyone will adore You and say, ‘Blessed is the Lord in heaven and on earth; great and marvelous is His name.’”

Your words took root in my heart, and You hemmed me in on every side. I was now certain of Your eternal life, though I saw it only as in a glass darkly. I was no longer bothered with doubts about an incorruptible substance from which every other substance takes its being.

My aim now was not to become more certain of You, but to become more faithful to You, for in my everyday life I was still wobbling badly. My heart had to be purged of the old leaven. The Way, the Savior Himself, charmed me, but I was still unwilling to tread the narrow path. So You put it in my mind, and made it seem a good idea to me to get to see Simplicianus. I considered him to be a good servant of Yours, for something of Your Grace shone in him. For his youth, I had heard, he had lived a life of devotion to You. Now he was getting on in years and had gained a great deal of experience. I wanted to talk over my problems with him and learn how a person in my situation could best walk in Your Way. I saw that the church was full of people going this way and that, but I was dissatisfied with the way I was following the world. The drive for wealth and honors no longer inflamed me, and since my life was now left without hope or ambition, it had become routine. The things of the world no longer delighted me by comparison with Your sweetness and the beauty of Your house which I loved. But I was still caught in the clutches of sex. The Apostle Paul did not forbid my taking a wife, though he did suggest that there was something better and wished that all men might live as he did. But I was made of weaker stuff, and chose an easier way, and for this reason I was unable to decide about other matters. The whole business exhausted me and kept me in a continuing state of anxiety, for there were many reasons why I was unwilling to face the kind of married life I had promised to enter. I had found the pearl of great price, and I ought to have sold everything to buy it, but I still doubted.

2.

So I went to Simplicianus who years before had been given Grace to lead Ambrose to Christ. I knew that Ambrose, who had since become the Bishop of Milan, still loved him as his spiritual father. I told Simplicianus the story of my circuitous wanderings and mentioned that I had read some of the books of the Platonists which Victorinus, the teacher of rhetoric at Rome, had translated into Latin. (Victorinus, so I had heard, afterward died a Christian.) Simplicianus congratulated me on not having been exposed to the writings of other philosophers that were full 63

of misleading fallacies drawn from the “elements of this world.” In the Platonists, he felt, God and His Word were implied all the way through.

Then to encourage me toward the humility of Christ which is hidden from the wise and revealed to children, he told me the story of Victorinus, whom he had known very well when he lived in Rome. I repeat the story here for the praise of the glory of Your Grace. Here was an old man, learned and wise, skilled in all the liberal sciences, who had read many philosophical writings and read them with discrimination, the speech instructor of leading senators and one who, as a tribute to his distinguished service, had been voted a statue in the Forum – something the citizens of the world consider an exceptional honor. For years Victorinus had worshiped the traditional idols of Rome and had taken part in the sacrilegious rites that were then popular among the Roman nobility. With thundering eloquence he had defended these practices and yet now, as an old man, he was not embarrassed to be the child of Your Christ, submitting His neck to the yoke of humility and bowing His head before the offense of the cross.

O Lord, Lord, Who tilted the heavens until they slid, and Who touched the mountains and made them smoke, how did You snake Your way into his heart? Victorinus read the Holy Scriptures, Simplicianus told me, and made a thorough investigation of the available Christian literature. Then he said to Simplicianus, not openly but privately as a friend, “You ought to know I am now a Christian.” Simplicianus replied, “I will believe it when I see you in the church of Christ.” Victorinus laughed and then asked, “Does simply walking through the hole in a church wall make a man a Christian?”

He often repeated his claim that he was a Christian to his friend, and each time he got the same reply, and Victorinus would then make a joke about the church wall. He was afraid of offending his proud, demon-worshiping friends. However, after more serious study he gathered some inner fortitude, and now he became even more fearful lest Christ should deny him before the holy angels, should he be too timid to confess His Lord before men. So he became brazen toward vanity and sheepish toward the truth, until suddenly and unexpectedly he said to Simplicianus, “Let us go to church. I want to be made a Christian.” Simplicianus, unable to contain his happiness, went with him.

The time came for Victorinus to make public confession of his faith in Christ. At Rome it was the custom for one giving such a testimony for the first time to mount a platform in the Forum and repeat before the congregation a set form of words committed to memory. The church elders, however, told Victorinus they would make an exception in his case, as they sometimes did, and allow him to give his testimony in private. But Victorinus preferred to declare his salvation in full view of the holy assembly. He said there had been no saving power in the rhetoric he had taught, yet he had expounded it openly. He had not been afraid to speak his own word before the hostile crowds of Rome. Why should be now hesitate to profess Your Word before a gentile flock?

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So when he mounted the platform and began to speak, all who knew him (and who did not?) began nudging each other and whispering in congratulatory tones. A suppressed sound went through the gathered multitude: “Victorinus! Victorinus!” At the sight of him there was an outburst of loud applause; then they quieted down so they could heard him. He pronounced with clear confidence his belief in the true faith, and everyone wanted to reach out and take him into their hearts. And that, in fact, is just what they did.

3.

Good God, what affects men that they should get more excited over the salvation of a soul everyone had given up for lost, or one narrowly delivered from danger, than over a soul that was never beyond either hope or rescue? You, too, merciful Father, rejoice more “over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” We shout for joy to hear that the shepherd has brought back on his shoulders the sheep that strayed, and that the lost drachma is returned to Your treasury while the neighbors celebrate with the woman who found it. The happy festivities in Your home bring tears to our eyes as we listen to the story of how Your younger son was dead and came to life, was lost and found again. It is a fact of experience that the greater the happiness, the greater the trouble that preceded it. But why is this, Lord my God, when You are eternal, when You are joy itself, and are surrounded by those who are always delighting in You? It is too much for me! You are too high in the heights and too deep in the depths. You never leave us, but it is hard to come back to You.

4.

When Your man Simplicianus told me this story about Victorinus, I burned to imitate him – which of course is why Simplicianus had related it. He also said that in the reign of the emperor Julian a decree was issued prohibiting Christians from teaching literature and oratory, and Victorinus obeyed the law by giving up his school of rhetoric rather than forsaking Your Word which makes even a child eloquent. In doing so, Victorinus, as I viewed it, was making not so much a show of bravery as a happy choice, for it enabled him to devote himself wholly to You. That is what I too was pining for, but I was bound – not by somebody else’s irons but by my own iron will. The enemy had taken hold of my will; he had clamped a chain on it and shackled it. For my will had been perverted and had manufactured lust; the more I gave in to lust, the more it developed into a habit, and when I failed to check the habit it became a necessity.

These were all links in the chain that held me enslaved. The new will that had begun in me – and made me want to be free to worship and to enjoy You, God, the only certain joy – was not yet strong enough to overpower the old will that had become tough with age. So there were now two wills battling it out inside me, one old, one new; one carnal, one spiritual; and in the conflict they ripped my soul to pieces.

From my own experience I know, therefore, what Paul meant when he said, ‘The flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.” I was on both sides, but mostly I was on 65

the side that I approved in myself, rather than the side I disapproved. When I did things that I knew were wrong I did not act willingly, but just endured them; but habit had been reinforced by that part of my will that had deserted to the enemy, so it was by my own will that I found myself in a spot I did not want to be in. And what point is there in complaining when a sinner gets what is coming to him? I used to excuse myself by saying I had no clear concept of truth, and that was why I still followed the ways of the world rather than serve You. Now, however, I was quite certain about the truth; and still I kept myself grounded and refused to enlist in Your service. I was more afraid of getting rid of my frustrations than I was of being frustrated.

Thus I was put under pressure by the oppressions of the world, but I took it all with a light heart, like a man sound asleep. When I did think about You, my meditations were like the feeble struggles of a man who is trying to wake up but is overcome with drowsiness and falls back to sleep. I had no answer when you said, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.” You used every possible means to communicate to me the truth of Your words. You had me under conviction so that I could give no reply except a lazy and drowsy, “Yes, Lord, yes, I will get to it right away, just do not bother me for a little while.” But “right away” did not happen right away; and “a little while” turned out to be a very long while.

In my inmost self I delighted in the law of God, but I perceived that there was in my bodily members a different law fighting against the law that my reason approved and making me a prisoner under the law that was in my members, the law of sin. For the law of sin is the force of habit, by which the mind is carried along and held prisoner against its will, deservedly, of course, because it slid into the habit by its own choice. Messed-up creature that I was, who was there to rescue this doomed body? God alone, through Jesus Christ our Lord!

5.

How You delivered me of the desire for sensual pleasure that held me chained, and from the tyranny of the things of this world, I will now describe and give praise to Your name, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. As I went about my usual tasks I became increasingly uneasy, and this was reflected in my daily prayers to You. I went to church whenever I had leisure for my work, which had become an increasing drag on me.

Alypius was staying with me, having been released from his legal post after a third term as assessor. One day when Nebridius was absent (for a reason I cannot recall) a man named Ponticianus came to visit us. He was a fellow countryman from Africa who held a high position in the imperial palace. I had no idea what he came to see us about, but when we sat down to talk, he noticed a book lying on a game table in front of us. He picked it up, opened it, and found to his astonishment that it contained the letters of the Apostle Paul. My friend had imagined it would be one or another of my textbooks on rhetoric that wore me out as a teacher. He studied me intently, then smiled and expressed his surprise and delight at discovering this book – and only this book – there before me.

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Ponticianus was a solid Christian who would often be found in church kneeling before You, our God, and praying at some length. When I indicated that I was giving considerable attention to the Scriptures, a discussion arose among us about the Egyptian monk Anthony, whose name was held in high regard among Your servants, although until Ponticianus told Alypius and me about him we had never even heard of him. When our African friend discovered our ignorance, which was hard for him to believe, he proceeded to fill us in with some detail. We were surprised, too, to hear a testimony of Your mighty works performed so recently as to be practically in our own time, within the life and fellowship of the believing church. So we all wondered – we, to hear that such great things had taken place, and he, that we had never learned of them.

As Ponticianus continued to chat with us, he told about going for an afternoon walk with three companions during a visit to Trier, where the emperor was taking in the chariot races at the circus. It seems the route the four strollers took led to some gardens near the city wall, where they divided into pairs, Ponticianus accompanying one friend while the other two went off by themselves. The latter pair apparently wandered aimlessly until they came to a little cottage where some servants of Yours live who are poor in spirit but rich in the Kingdom of Heaven.

There the visitors found a book containing the life of Anthony. One of them began reading it and became so fired up and gripped by it that before he finished, he began to consider the possibility of taking up such a life as Anthony’s and leaving his government career to serve You. Both men, it seems, were members of the imperial secret police.

The one who had been reading about Anthony was filled with a love of holiness and a corresponding sense of shame and anger at himself. He fixed his eyes on his friend and said, “Look, what is all this energy we are expending doing for us? Do you have any idea? What do we expect to achieve in government service? Anything higher than ‘friends of the emperor’? So what is that? A flimsy and risky proposition at best if you ask me. It means landing in one hot spot after another, and each one more dangerous. Who knows whether we will ever make it to the top? But if I want to, I can become a friend of God right this minute!”

As the man finished speaking, it was evident to those listening that he was in the throes of the new life generating within him. He turned back to the book and continued to read. The interior change taking place was one that You alone could see, for his mind was starting to put aside the world and its ways. As he went on reading his heart seemed to be turning over, and at one point he cried out involuntarily as he made his decision for a different kind of life. As he was now Yours, he told his friend, “I have dropped all my old ambitions and hopes and have decided to serve God, beginning here and now in this place. You may not want to imitate me, but please do not get in my way.” His friend replied that he would stick with him so that together they would share the reward of such a life. Both men now being Yours, they set about building a tower after counting the cost, which meant giving up everything they had to follow You.

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6.

That was the substance of what Ponticianus told us. While he was still speaking, Lord, You were turning me around toward myself, taking me from behind my own back where I had hid myself so I would not have to look at me. You set me before my own face so I could see how rotten I was, how warped, cheap, and shabby. I saw it all and became disgusted because there was no way I could run away from myself. If I tried to divert my thinking so something else, there was Ponticianus sitting there going on and on with his story. You used him to force me back once more to confront the sin that I loathed. I had known about my sin all right, but had been in the habit either of overlooking it, or pretending it was not there, or forgetting it.

But my heart warmed up to those two men as I heard of the saving change that had taken place in them, and the way they had surrendered themselves completely to You and had been made whole. When I compared myself to them it made me curse myself in a fit of revulsion.

Many years had gone downstream (twelve, I believe) since my nineteenth year when I had first read Cicero’s Hortensius and had been inspired to devote my life to the study of wisdom and philosophy. Yet here I was, still putting off the rejection of this world and its pleasures which would have freed me to take up such an investigation. I know now that not only the finding of wisdom, but even the seeking of it, tips the scales on balance against all the kingdoms and treasures of this world and all the voluptuous delights the human body has to offer. But as an adolescent I had prayed a pitiful prayer for a clean life, saying, “Give me chastity and give me control over myself, but not yet.” I was afraid You might answer me too quickly and straighten me out before I was ready; for what I really wanted was not to be cured but to be fulfilled.

I felt the reason I had stalled from day to day, and refused to give up the hope of this world in order to follow You only, was because it was unclear to me what course I should pursue. Now the time came when I stood stripped naked before myself, and my conscience chided me, “Where are you, tongue? Did you not say you would never throw off your load of vanity as long as the truth was uncertain? Well, here is your certainty; now why are you still toting it around? Here are others who have freed their shoulders and received wings instead, and they did not have to wear themselves out for ten years searching out truth and trying to make up their minds.” So this thing kept gnawing at me all the time Ponticianus was speaking, and I was flung into shame and confusion. He brought his story so close, wound up the purpose of his visit and went away, leaving me to deal with myself. And what did I not have to say? How I beat myself with words, and tried to lash my soul into following me as I endeavored to follow You! But it fought back. it refused to obey, yet offered no excuse. By now every argument had been worn threadbare and exposed, but my soul remained fearful and silent. What really bothered it was giving up the habits that were killing it.

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7.

A first-class uproar now broke out in the house of my inner self, as I began brawling with my soul in our common meeting place – my heart. Agitated in mind and expression, I turned upon Alypius and cried, “What is the matter with us? What is this we have been hearing? These half-learned men rise up and seize heavenly by force, and we pusillanimous cowards, with all our education, lie here wallowing in our flesh and blood! Are we ashamed to follow just because someone else has led the way? Is it not a greater shame not to follow at all?”

I did not know what I said really, but it was something like that. My emotional excitement caused me to break away from Alypius while he gaped at me thunderstruck. I could not talk in a normal voice. My forehead, cheeks, eyes, color, and tone of voice all spoke of what was going on in my mind more eloquently than the words I used. There was a small garden adjoining the quarters where we stayed, and we had the use of it as well as of the whole house while the owner was away. To this point the commotion in my heart drove me.

Here, it seemed, no one could interrupt the heated quarrel I was pressing against myself until it should resolve itself in some way I did not know – but You did. I was out of my mind with a severe malady that would bring health to my soul. I was dying to the world that I might live in You. The evil in me I knew all about, but the good that was soon to come I was not familiar with. So I slipped into the garden with Alypius at my heels, for what secrets did I have that he did not know about? And how could he have deserted me in such a state of mind? We sat down as far as we could from the house. My spirit was roaring in indignation because I had not entered into an agreement and pact with You, my God. It was something for which all my bones cried out, praising the idea to the skies. But this is not something men sail into aboard their ships, or ride into their chariots, or walk into on their feet, even the little distance from the house to where we were sitting. To set out and to arrive there, nothing more is required than the will to get going. But it had to be a resolute will, and a single-minded will, not something half-crippled and divided, not a will that twisted and tossed and wrestled with itself, with one part moving ahead and the other part sagging and collapsing.

In the emotional excitement created by my hesitation, I engaged in various random actions. I tugged at my hair and pounded my forehead and locked my fingers and hugged my knees, each bit of behavior resulting from a specific act of will. But to will is not always the same as to be able. I might have willed these things and still not have done them – as would be the case if my limbs had been unable to respond. And what I longed to do above everything else, I now found impossible. Had I brought a single-minded will to the problem, I could have done it at once, for in that case the will to do it and the power to act would be the same thing. When my mind tried to force itself to will the one thing it wanted most to do, it floundered.

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8.

Why does this monstrosity occur? The mind gives an order to the body and it is obeyed on the spot; it gives an order to itself and is rebuffed. It will not carry out its own command! The reason is that it does not fully will to do it. There are actually two wills in us, and neither one is the whole will by itself.

9.

When I vacillated about my decision to serve the Lord my God, it was I who willed and I who willed not, and nobody else. I was fighting against myself. As the Apostle Paul would say, “It was no longer I that was doing it, but the sin which dwells within me.” Such was the penalty of a sin committed in conditions of greater freedom by Adam, whose son I am.

10.

And such was my psychological condition. I kept condemning myself bitterly while twisting and turning in my chains, trying to break them, because it was a very small matter that still held me. Yet hold me it did; and in the secret recesses of my heart, Lord, You never let up the pressure. I kept saying to myself, “Now! Now!” and had myself just about talked into it; but not quite. I took a deep breath and tried again, and each time came a little closer, and a little closer, so I could almost reach out and take hold of it. But I could not hold it or even touch it, because I hesitated to take the step that would make me die to death and live to life. I was too accustomed to the worst in me and too unaccustomed to the better. The closer it got to the time when I was to become something else, the more terror it aroused in me. But the approaching whatever-it-was did not hit back or turn me off, it just kept me in suspense.

I was held back by trifling nonsense – old loves that plucked softly at my robe of flesh and murmured, “Are you going to send us away? From this moment, forever and ever? It means you will never be allowed to do this and that again.” And what were they suggesting by what I call “this and that”? My God, let Your mercy keep the soul of Your servant from such actions!

Now I could only half hear these voices, for they were not openly contradicting me by opposing me face-to-face, but were muttering behind my back and secretly tugging at my sleeve, trying to get me to turn around and look their way. And they did manage to slow me down, so that I hesitated to tear myself away and shake them off and leap across to where I was called to be. The pull of habit was still too much for me when it asked, “Do you think you can live without these things?” This controversy in my heart was entirely between me and myself; meanwhile Alypius stayed at my side, silently awaiting the outcome of this strange emotional crisis.

11.

My introspection plumbed the secret depths and brought together all my misery in plain sight of my heart, so that a great storm broke, bringing s shower of tears. In order to pour out the 70

whole tempest without holding back, I got up and walked away from Alypius, as it seemed to me that solitude was the best climate for the business of crying. I went to a corner of the garden where I would not be bothered by his presence. He sensed what my feelings were, for I probably said something in which the choking in my voice told that I was on the verge of tears. So I left, and he sat there more dumbfounded than ever.

In some way, I am not just sure how, I threw myself down under a fig tree and let the tears gush freely. These were the streams that proved a sacrifice acceptable to You, my Lord.

Not in the exact word of Scripture but in some similar vein I talked with You for a long time. I asked, “And You, Lord, how long will You be roused to such fury? Do not remember the sins of former times” – for I felt they were still holding me. I ended on a dismal note: “How long, how long? Tomorrow and tomorrow? Why not now? Why not put an end to my sin right this hour?”

I was going on like this, weeping, in bitter dejection of spirit, when I heard a voice coming from the house next door. Whether it was a boy’s or a girl’s I do not know, but it was singing over and over in a kind of chant, “Tolle Lege, Tolle Lege” (Take up and read, Take up and read). Immediately my demeanor changed. I thought back over the children’s games I knew, trying to recall whether I had ever heard such an expression used. I knew of no such game.

Stanching the flow of tears, I stood up, for I could only interpret the words as a kind of divine command to open the Scriptures and read the first passage I came across. I had heard how Anthony once dropped in unexpectedly at a church service during a reading of the gospel, and was inspired by what he heard as if it were addressed to him personally: “Go and sell what you have and give it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me” (Matthew 19:21). By this word from the Lord he was converted to You right on the spot. So I returned quickly to the bench where Alypius was sitting. When I had moved from there I had left behind a copy of the letters of the Apostle Paul. Now I grabbed up the book, opened it, and read silently the first portion of Scripture on which my eyes lighted: “Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provisions for the flesh” (Romans 13: 13-14). I had no need or wish to read further, for when I came to the end of the sentence, instantly, it seemed, a light of certainty turned on in my heart and all the fog of doubt disappeared.

Then marking the place by inserting a finger between the pages or in some way or other, I shut the book and in the tranquil frame of mind told Alypius what had happened. He confided something of what had been occupying his own thoughts – which I knew nothing about. He asked to see what I had just been reading and I showed him. He then looked beyond the passage.

I had no idea what followed, but it was this: “As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him” (Romans 14:1). Alypius told me he applied those words to himself. They provided motivation for him to strengthen his determination to resolve his own situation and – without stalling and without making waves – to join me in a good purpose. It was just like him to do it, for his moral character had been better than mine for a long, long time.

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We went into the house and gave my mother the news and she was overjoyed. When we explained to her how it had all come about, she was exuberant and triumphant and gave thanks to You Who are “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.” She saw that You had given her, on my behalf, far more than she was used to asking for in all her sobbing and groaning and wailing. You had converted me to Yourself on the same rule of faith You had revealed to her too many years before, and had turned all her mourning into gladness.

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Book Nine: Genius Afire 1.

Who am I? What am I like? Of what evil am I not capable, in either deed or word or will?

But You are good and merciful, Lord. Your right hand reached to the bottom of my heart and emptied out its dregs of death and corruption. All You asked was that I cease to want what I willed, and begin to want what You willed. But where had my free will been hiding during all those years? From what secret cranny did You summon it at a moment’s notice, so I might bend my neck to Your easy yoke and my shoulders to Your light burden, Christ Jesus, my strength and my redeemer? How good it felt to be done with the delectable trifles of life! Those things I had been afraid to let go, it now became a joy to dispense with. You drive them away from me, You Who are the true and highest joy. You drove them away and came in Yourself with a sweetness beyond all pleasure (though not to flesh and blood), brighter than every light (though the most hidden of all lights), and higher than every honor (but not to those who build up their own). My mind was free at last from the corroding anxiety of running around trying to get somewhere, and continually scratching the itch of lust. I talked to You freely as a child talked to its father, Lord my God, my light, my treasure, and my salvation.

2.

As I began to read the Psalms of David, those hymns of faith and devotion that break the pompous spirit, they made me literally cry out to You, my God. I was a raw beginner, new to Your love, and now the Psalms were setting me on fire and making me want to shout them to the whole world, to counteract the pride of the human race. The truth is, of course, that they are sung throughout the world, and none can escape Your burning heat. When Your Spirit spoke to us through the Psalmist, “Mortal men, how long will you pay me not honor but dishonor, or set your heart on trifles and run after lies?” I alternately shuddered with fear and waxed warm in the hope that exults in Your mercy, Father. It showed in my eyes and could be heard in my voice, for I had done just that: set my heart on trifles and run after lies.

But You, Lord, had already magnified Your Holy One. You raised Him from the dead and seated Him at Your right hand, where He kept His promise by sending to us the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth. He sent the Holy Spirit and I did not even know it! So the Prophet cries out in the Fourth Psalm, “How long?” and he warns, “Hear this!” and when I heard those words I trembled, for I remembered that I was just the kind of person he was talking about. The phantasms I once believed in were trivialities and lies. No wonder I cried out in sorrow over the past! I wish some of those today who love such lies could have heard me. Perhaps they would be disturbed enough to repent of their mistakes. I know this: If they did, You would listen to them when they called upon You. For when Christ died in the flesh, He truly died for us, and He lives today before You to make intercession for us.

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3.

In due time we were baptized, and all anxiety over the past life fled from us. I never tired in those days of thinking about the wonders of Your love and the profundity of Your plan of salvation for the human race. When I listened to Your hymns and songs it made me weep, for I was cut to the quick by the melodies of the singing church. As its voices flowed into my ears, and the truth was distilled in my heart, my feelings of devotion bubbled over and the tears ran down. I was happy.

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