The Confessions of St. Augustine
believe Thee to have the shape of human flesh, and to be bounded by the
bodily lineaments of our members. And because, when I wished to think on
my God, I knew not what to think of, but a mass of bodies (for what was
not such did not seem to me to be anything), this was the greatest, and
almost only cause of my inevitable error.
For hence I believed Evil also to be some such kind of substance, and
to have its own foul and hideous bulk; whether gross, which they called
earth, or thin and subtile (like the body of the air), which they
imagine to be some malignant mind, creeping through that earth. And
because a piety, such as it was, constrained me to believe that the good
God never created any evil nature, I conceived two masses, contrary
to one another, both unbounded, but the evil narrower, the good more
expansive. And from this pestilent beginning, the other sacrilegious
conceits followed on me. For when my mind endeavoured to recur to the
Catholic faith, I was driven back, since that was not the Catholic faith
which I thought to be so. And I seemed to myself more reverential, if I
believed of Thee, my God (to whom Thy mercies confess out of my mouth),
as unbounded, at least on other sides, although on that one where the
mass of evil was opposed to Thee, I was constrained to confess Thee
bounded; than if on all sides I should imagine Thee to be bounded by the
form of a human body. And it seemed to me better to believe Thee to have
created no evil (which to me ignorant seemed not some only, but a bodily
substance, because I could not conceive of mind unless as a subtile
body, and that diffused in definite spaces), than to believe the nature
of evil, such as I conceived it, could come from Thee. Yea, and our
Saviour Himself, Thy Only Begotten, I believed to have been reached
forth (as it were) for our salvation, out of the mass of Thy most lucid
substance, so as to believe nothing of Him, but what I could imagine in
my vanity. His Nature then, being such, I thought could not be born
of the Virgin Mary, without being mingled with the flesh: and how that
which I had so figured to myself could be mingled, and not defiled, I
saw not. I feared therefore to believe Him born in the flesh, lest
I should be forced to believe Him defiled by the flesh. Now will Thy
spiritual ones mildly and lovingly smile upon me, if they shall read
these my confessions. Yet such was I.
Furthermore, what the Manichees had criticised in Thy Scriptures, I
thought could not be defended; yet at times verily I had a wish to
confer upon these several points with some one very well skilled in
those books, and to make trial what he thought thereon; for the words
of one Helpidius, as he spoke and disputed face to face against the
said Manichees, had begun to stir me even at Carthage: in that he
had produced things out of the Scriptures, not easily withstood, the
Manichees' answer whereto seemed to me weak. And this answer they
liked not to give publicly, but only to us in private. It was, that the
Scriptures of the New Testament had been corrupted by I know not whom,
who wished to engraff the law of the Jews upon the Christian faith: yet
themselves produced not any uncorrupted copies. But I, conceiving of
things corporeal only, was mainly held down, vehemently oppressed and
in a manner suffocated by those "masses"; panting under which after the
breath of Thy truth, I could not breathe it pure and untainted.
I began then diligently to practise that for which I came to Rome, to
teach rhetoric; and first, to gather some to my house, to whom, and
through whom, I had begun to be known; when lo, I found other offences
committed in Rome, to which I was not exposed in Africa. True, those
"subvertings" by profligate young men were not here practised, as was
told me: but on a sudden, said they, to avoid paying their
master's stipend, a number of youths plot together, and remove to
another;--breakers of faith, who for love of money hold justice cheap.
These also my heart hated, though not with a perfect hatred: for
perchance I hated them more because I was to suffer by them, than
because they did things utterly unlawful. Of a truth such are base
persons, and they go a whoring from Thee, loving these fleeting
mockeries of things temporal, and filthy lucre, which fouls the hand
that grasps it; hugging the fleeting world, and despising Thee, Who
abidest, and recallest, and forgivest the adulteress soul of man, when
she returns to Thee. And now I hate such depraved and crooked persons,
though I love them if corrigible, so as to prefer to money the learning
which they acquire, and to learning, Thee, O God, the truth and fulness
of assured good, and most pure peace. But then I rather for my own sake
misliked them evil, than liked and wished them good for Thine.
When therefore they of Milan had sent to Rome to the prefect of the
city, to furnish them with a rhetoric reader for their city, and sent
him at the public expense, I made application (through those very
persons, intoxicated with Manichaean vanities, to be freed wherefrom
I was to go, neither of us however knowing it) that Symmachus, then
prefect of the city, would try me by setting me some subject, and so
send me. To Milan I came, to Ambrose the Bishop, known to the whole
world as among the best of men, Thy devout servant; whose eloquent
discourse did then plentifully dispense unto Thy people the flour of Thy
wheat, the gladness of Thy oil, and the sober inebriation of Thy wine.
To him was I unknowing led by Thee, that by him I might knowingly be
led to Thee. That man of God received me as a father, and showed me an
Episcopal kindness on my coming. Thenceforth I began to love him, at
first indeed not as a teacher of the truth (which I utterly despaired
of in Thy Church), but as a person kind towards myself. And I listened
diligently to him preaching to the people, not with that intent I ought,
but, as it were, trying his eloquence, whether it answered the fame
thereof, or flowed fuller or lower than was reported; and I hung on his
words attentively; but of the matter I was as a careless and scornful
looker-on; and I was delighted with the sweetness of his discourse,
more recondite, yet in manner less winning and harmonious, than that of
Faustus. Of the matter, however, there was no comparison; for the one
was wandering amid Manichaean delusions, the other teaching salvation
most soundly. But salvation is far from sinners, such as I then stood
before him; and yet was I drawing nearer by little and little, and
unconsciously.
For though I took no pains to learn what he spake, but only to hear how
he spake (for that empty care alone was left me, despairing of a way,
open for man, to Thee), yet together with the words which I would
choose, came also into my mind the things which I would refuse; for
I could not separate them. And while I opened my heart to admit "how
eloquently he spake," there also entered "how truly he spake"; but this
by degrees. For first, these things also had now begun to appear to
me capable of defence; and the Catholic faith, for which I had thought
nothing could be said against the Manichees' objections, I now thought
might be maintained without shamelessness; especially after I had heard
one or two places of the Old Testament resolved, and ofttimes "in a
figure," which when I understood literally, I was slain spiritually.
Very many places then of those books having been explained, I now blamed
my despair, in believing that no answer could be given to such as hated
and scoffed at the Law and the Prophets. Yet did I not therefore then
see that the Catholic way was to be held, because it also could find
learned maintainers, who could at large and with some show of reason
answer objections; nor that what I held was therefore to be condemned,
because both sides could be maintained. For the Catholic cause seemed to
me in such sort not vanquished, as still not as yet to be victorious.
Hereupon I earnestly bent my mind, to see if in any way I could by any
certain proof convict the Manichees of falsehood. Could I once have
conceived a spiritual substance, all their strongholds had been beaten
down, and cast utterly out of my mind; but I could not. Notwithstanding,
concerning the frame of this world, and the whole of nature, which the
senses of the flesh can reach to, as I more and more considered and
compared things, I judged the tenets of most of the philosophers to have
been much more probable. So then after the manner of the Academics (as
they are supposed) doubting of every thing, and wavering between all, I
settled so far, that the Manichees were to be abandoned; judging that,
even while doubting, I might not continue in that sect, to which I
already preferred some of the philosophers; to which philosophers
notwithstanding, for that they were without the saving Name of Christ,
I utterly refused to commit the cure of my sick soul. I determined
therefore so long to be a Catechumen in the Catholic Church, to which
I had been commended by my parents, till something certain should dawn
upon me, whither I might steer my course.
BOOK VI
O Thou, my hope from my youth, where wert Thou to me, and whither wert
Thou gone? Hadst not Thou created me, and separated me from the beasts
of the field, and fowls of the air? Thou hadst made me wiser, yet did I
walk in darkness, and in slippery places, and sought Thee abroad out of
myself, and found not the God of my heart; and had come into the depths
of the sea, and distrusted and despaired of ever finding truth. My
mother had now come to me, resolute through piety, following me over sea
and land, in all perils confiding in Thee. For in perils of the sea, she
comforted the very mariners (by whom passengers unacquainted with the
deep, use rather to be comforted when troubled), assuring them of a safe
arrival, because Thou hadst by a vision assured her thereof. She found
me in grievous peril, through despair of ever finding truth. But when
I had discovered to her that I was now no longer a Manichee, though
not yet a Catholic Christian, she was not overjoyed, as at something
unexpected; although she was now assured concerning that part of my
misery, for which she bewailed me as one dead, though to be reawakened
by Thee, carrying me forth upon the bier of her thoughts, that Thou
mightest say to the son of the widow, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise;
and he should revive, and begin to speak, and Thou shouldest deliver him
to his mother. Her heart then was shaken with no tumultuous exultation,
when she heard that what she daily with tears desired of Thee was
already in so great part realised; in that, though I had not yet
attained the truth, I was rescued from falsehood; but, as being assured,
that Thou, Who hadst promised the whole, wouldest one day give the rest,
most calmly, and with a heart full of confidence, she replied to me,
"She believed in Christ, that before she departed this life, she should
see me a Catholic believer." Thus much to me. But to Thee, Fountain
of mercies, poured she forth more copious prayers and tears, that Thou
wouldest hasten Thy help, and enlighten my darkness; and she hastened
the more eagerly to the Church, and hung upon the lips of Ambrose,
praying for the fountain of that water, which springeth up unto life
everlasting. But that man she loved as an angel of God, because she knew
that by him I had been brought for the present to that doubtful state of
faith I now was in, through which she anticipated most confidently that
I should pass from sickness unto health, after the access, as it were,
of a sharper fit, which physicians call "the crisis."
When then my mother had once, as she was wont in Afric, brought to the
Churches built in memory of the Saints, certain cakes, and bread and