1.1. "You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised. Great is your power, and of your wisdom, there is no measure." And (yet) man wants to praise you—man, some part of your creation. You arouse us so that it delights us to praise you. For you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

1.2. And how shall I call—in my God, my God and my Lord? For surely, I will call Him into myself when I invoke Him. (A. is playing on words here—invoke in Latin can mean also "call in".) And what room is there in me into which my God might come? Into which God might come into me, the God who made heaven and earth? Is it so, Lord my God, is there anything in me that can contain you? Or do the heaven and the earth—which you made, and in which you made me—do they contain you?

1.4. What then are you my God? What, I ask, except the Lord God. For who is the Lord besides God? Or who is God besides our God?—Most high, most good, most powerful, most omnipotent, most merciful and most just, most secret and most present; most beautiful and most strong; most stable and incomprehensible; unchangeable (yet) changing all things; never new, never old; making all things new, and bringing the proud to (the collapse of) old age; ever acting, ever at rest; gathering, and not needing; carrying and filling and protecting (all things); creating and nourishing and perfecting; seeking, though you lack nothing.

You love, but are never disturbed; you are jealous, and secure; you regret, and you do not grieve; you are angered, and tranquil; you change your works, but do not change your plans; you regain what you find, and you never lose. Things are given in abundance to you, so that you are (our) debtor—and who has anything that is not yours? You repay debts, though owing to no one. You remit debts, losing nothing.

1.5. What am I to you that you order me to love you, and unless I do it, you are angry with me, and threaten immense miseries? The house of my soul is narrow—may you enlarge it. It is in ruins; remake it. It has things that offend your eyes, I confess and I know. But who will cleanse it? Or to whom besides you shall I cry: "From my hidden faults cleanse me, O Lord"?

1.6. But yet, permit me to speak before your mercy—me, who am dust and ashes—yet permit me to speak. For lo! it is your mercy—not man who laughs at me—to which I speak.

What is it that I wish to say, Lord, except that I know not from where I have come here—should I say into this mortal life, or life-giving death, I know not. And the consolations of your mercies received me, as I heard from the parents of my flesh, from whom and in whom you formed me in time—for I remember not. So then the consolations of human milk received me. Neither my mother nor my nurses filled their breasts of themselves. But you, Lord, you gave me though them the food of infancy, according to your providence, and the riches arranged to the depth of things.

You also ordained that I should not want more than you gave, and that those who nursed me should want to give what you gave them. For they wanted to give to me in virtue of the well-ordered attitude in which they abounded from you. For my good from them was good for them—which (yet) was not from them, but through them.

And lo! Bit by bit I began to sense where I was. And I was wanting to show my desires to those by whom they could be fulfilled, and (yet) I was not able to manifest them, for those desires were within—those (who could fulfill them) were without (outside of me). Nor by any sense could they enter into my soul. And so, I tossed about my limbs and my voice—signs like to my desires—the few I could make, such as I could make. And when they did not obey me—either because they did not understand, or so as not to do something bad for me—I was indignant at my elders for not being subject to me, and at children who did not serve me. And I got revenge on them by crying. Such have I learned infants are—the ones I have come to know—and they, without knowing, have revealed to me that I was such, more than my nurses who do know.

The little body learns to talk.

1.8. Did I not, in moving this direction, come from infancy into boyhood, or rather, boyhood came to me, and replaced infancy? For I was not an infant (Latin means non-speaker) who could not talk, but now I was a speaking boy. And I remember this, and later I noticed how I learned to speak. For my elders did not teach me this by giving me words in some set teaching order, as they later did with letters. But I myself, with the mind you gave me, my God, with groans, and various vocal sounds and movements of my limbs wanted to express what was in my heart, so my will might be obeyed. And I was not able to make clear all I wished. I grasped it in memory when they named some thing, and when they moved their body to something after a certain word. I used to see and to retain what sound they employed when they wanted to indicate a thing. It was evident that they meant this from the movement of their body, as by the words natural to all nations, words which consist in facial expressions, movements of eyes, and the actions of other limbs, and by the sounds of the voice indicating their attitude in seeking, having, rejecting, or fleeing things. And so little by little I gathered what words stood for, when put in their places in various meanings, which I heard frequently. And by controlling my mouth to make these signs, I now was expressing what I wanted. And so I communicated the signs of my wishes to those among whom I was, and I entered more deeply upon the stormy society of human life, depending on the authority and nod of my parents and older persons.

1.9. O God, my God, what miseries and mockeries I experienced there (in school). For when I was a boy, right living was presented to me as obeying those who advised me, so that I might flourish in this world, and excel in wordy arts, that serve for the honor of men, and false riches. So then I was sent to school to learn letters, whose value I, wretch, did not know. And yet, if I was slow in learning, I got a beating. for the elders approved of this. And many before this, going through this life, constructed weary ways through which we were forced to go, suffering and grief being multiplied for the sons of Adam.

We found, moreover, Lord, men who prayed to you. And we learned from them, as we could, that there was some great One who could—even though He did not appear to our senses—hear us, and help us. For as a boy I began to ask you, my help and my refuge, and I broke the knots of my tongue to invoke you, and I kept asking you, as a little one, with no little feeling, that I might not get a beating in school.

And when you did not hear me—which was not to teach me folly (A. interprets Psalm 21.3 in this way: The refusal of his prayer was to avoid letting him become foolish)—my blows were laughed at by older persons, and even by my parents, who wanted no evil to happen to me—though these beatings were then a great and grave evil in my eyes.

Is there anyone, Lord, so great a soul, adhering to you with so great a love—is there, I ask, anyone who by adhering devoutly to you is so greatly affected thereby that he thinks little of racks and hooks and other varied torments of this sort—which men pray to you all over the earth to escape, with great fear—as did our parents who laughed at the torments with which we boys were afflicted by our teachers? For neither did we fear these things less, or pray less to you to escape these. And yet we sinned, writing less or reading less or thinking less about letters than was demanded of us.

And yet, I sinned, Lord my God, ruler and creator of all the things of nature, but only the ruler of sins: I sinned, O Lord my God by acting against the precepts of my parents and those teachers. For later I could make good use of the letters that they wanted me to learn, whatever was their attitude in wanting it. For I was disobedient not because I chose better things, but out of love of playing, loving proud victories in contests and loving to have my cars tickled by false fables, so that they might itch more ardently.

See these things, Lord, mercifully, and free us who now call on you. Free also those who do not yet call on you, so that they may call on you and you may free them.

1.11. I had heard, when still a boy, about the eternal life promised us through the humility of your Son, our Lord and God, who descended to our pride. And I was already signed with the sign of the Cross, and was seasoned with his salt already from the womb of my mother, who hoped much in you.

You saw, Lord, when I was still a boy, and one day from abdominal trouble I suddenly fell into a fever and was close to death. You saw, my God, since you were already then my guardian, with what emotion and what faith I begged for the baptism of your Christ, my God and Lord, from the devotedness of my mother, and the devotedness of the mother of all of us, your Church. And the mother of my flesh was disturbed—since she very dearly was in labor for my eternal salvation and with chaste heart in your faith—and would have taken care hurriedly that I be initiated in the saving sacraments and be washed, confessing you, Lord Jesus, for the remission of sins, had I not been restored to health suddenly. And so my cleansing was delayed, as if it were necessary that I become still more filthy, if I lived. For, that is, after that bath (Baptism) the guilt of sins in filth would be greater and more dangerous.

So I already believed, and she believed, and the whole house, except my father alone. He however did not cancel out in me the right of my mother's devotedness so as to prevent me from believing in Christ, as he had not yet believed. For she strove that you should be a father to me, my God, rather than he. And in this you helped her to overcome her husband whom she served, though she was better than he, because in this surely she served you who commanded that she act thus.

I ask you, my God, I would like to know, if you also will it, for what purpose I was put off so as not to be baptized then. Was it for good to me, as if then the reins of sin were let loose, or not let loose? On this count even at present there sounds on all sides in our ears about various other persons: "Let him go. Let him do what he wants. for he is not yet baptized." And yet in the case of health of the body we do not say: "Let him go. Let him be wounded more. For he has not yet been healed." How much better it would have been then that I be quickly healed, and that it be provided for me, by my diligence and that of my people, that the health of my soul after being regained would have been safe under the protection of you who would have given it.

1.12. In boyhood itself—there was less fear for me about it than about the time of adolescence—I did not like letters. And I hated to be pushed to them. Yet I was pushed, and it was well for me, but I did not do well. For I would not have learned if I had not been forced. Yet they who forced me did not do well. But it turned out well for me as a result of you, my God. For they (who forced me) were not concerned about what use I would make of letters—except to satisfy insatiable desires of rich neediness and shameful glory. But you, for whom "the hairs of my head are numbered" made use for my advantage, of the error of all those who pressed me to learn. But you made use of my error—I who did not want to learn—for my punishment, of which I was not unworthy—so little a boy, and so large a sinner! And so you did well for me by means of those who were not doing well. And you justly repaid me for my own sin. For you have ordered it, and it is so, that every disordered soul is its own punishment.

1.13. I still do not know even now why it was that I hated Greek literature in which I was steeped as a boy. For I fell in love with Latin letters—not the kind the elementary teachers teach, but what those who are called grammarians teach. For those first stages, in which one learns to read and write and count, I considered not less burdensome and penal than all Greek letters. And yet, what does this too come from, if not from sin, and the vanity of life? For I was flesh, "a spirit that walks, and does not return." For certainly those first letters were better, because more certain, in which it was happening and has happened, and still is true that I can read whatever I find written and that I myself can write, if I wish—the first letters were better than those letters in which I was driven to weep for the wanderings of someone called Aeneas—forgetting my own wanderings—and to bewail the death of Dido, who killed herself out of love—while meanwhile with dry eyes I could bear myself—most miserable!—dying to you in these things, O God, my life.

For what was more miserable than miserable me, not pitying myself, and crying over the death of Dido, which happened because of her love for Aeneas, while I did not weep over my own death, which came from not loving you, O God, light of my heart, and inner bread of the mouth of my soul?

But now may my God, and your truth, cry out and say to me in my soul: "It is not so, it is not so." Better definitely was that first teaching. For behold, I am more ready to forget the wanderings of Aeneas and all that sort of thing than to forget how to write and read.

But veils hang at the thresholds of the schools of the grammarians—standing not more for the honor of a secret, than as a cover-up of error. Let those whom I no longer fear not shout against me, when I confess to you what my soul wants to confess, my God, and acquiesce in the rebuke of my evil ways, so that I may love your good ways.

So I sinned as a boy when I loved those empty things more than these more useful things, or rather, I hated the one, and loved the other. For "one and one are two. Two and two are four" had been a hateful sing-song to me—but the wooden horse, full of armed men, and the burning of Troy had been a most sweet sight of vanity.

1.14. Why then did I hate (to learn) Greek letters, which sing of such things? For Homer too is skilled at weaving such fables, and is most sweetly vain—and yet he was bitter to me as a boy. I suppose that Virgil is that way to Greek boys too, when they are forced to learn him as I was forced to learn Homer—with difficulty, that is. The difficulty of learning a strange language completely sprinkled as if with gall, all the sweetnesses of Greek fabulous tales. For I knew no (Greek) words and there was pressure on me, vehemently, with savage terrors and penalties, so that I might learn. For at one time as an infant I had known no Latin words; and yet by taking note I learned them, without any fear and torture, amid the enticements of my nurses, and the jokes of those who smiled at me, and the joys of those playing with me. I learned them without the penal burden of people pressing on me, since my heart addressed me, in order to be able to express its concepts—which I could not do without learning some words, not from teachers but from those who spoke, in whose ears I tried to bring forth whatever I felt. So it is quite clear that free curiosity has greater power for learning these things, than fearful necessity.

He must impersonate June in a speech.

1.17. Allow me, my God, to say something also about my ability, your gifts (to tell) in what madness it was being worn down. For an assignment was given me, quite troublesome to my soul—with praise as reward, or under fear of disgrace and a beating—that I should speak the words of Juno when she was angry and grieving because she could not "turn aside the king of the Trojans from Italy"—which I had never heard that Juno said. But we were forced in our wandering to follow the tracks of poetic fictions, and to say in prose something of the sort which the poet might have said in verse. And that student spoke with greater praise in whom, in accord with the dignity of the person represented, a more likely attitude of anger and grief stood out, with suitable words clothing the thoughts.

What good was it to me, my true life, my God, that there was more applause for me in this recitation than for many fellow students of my own age? Behold, are not all these things smoke and wind? Was there no other matter on which my mind and tongue could have been trained? Your praises, Lord, your praises through your Scriptures could have supported the vine shoot of my heart, and it would not have been carried off in empty trifles, a shameful prey for birds. For there is more than one way of sacrificing to the fallen angels!

2.1. I want to recall my past foulnesses, and the carnal corruptions of my soul—not that I love them, but that I may love you, my God. Out of love of your love I do this, recalling my most wicked ways, in the bitterness of my thought, so that you may become sweet to me, a sweetness that is not deceptive, a happy and secure sweetness. For I was ablaze to get my fill of hell in my youth, and I dared to grow wild in varied and shadowy loves. I became rotten before your eyes, while being pleasing to myself, and desiring to please the eyes of men.

2.2. And what was it that delighted me, except to love and be loved? But I did not hold to the right measure, and so did not distinguish the serenity of love from the mist of lust. Both boiled confusedly together, and carried off my weak age through the steep paths of desires, and sank me in the whirlpool of crimes. But miserably I raged, following the onrush of my flow, leaving you. And I went beyond all your lawful bounds—nor did I escape your scourges. For who of mortals can? For you were ever present, mercifully raging, and sprinkling with most bitter unpleasantness all my illicit pleasures, so that I might seek to find pleasure without unpleasantness, and where I could, I should not find anything but you, Lord.

Where was I, and how far was I in exile from the delights of your house in that sixteenth year of my flesh, when luxury gained the sceptre over me, and I gave my hands to it fully, to the insanity of licentious lust? And my own family did not take care to snatch me out by marriage as I rushed on. But they cared only that I should learn to make the best possible speech, and to persuade by my words.

2.3 In that year my studies were interrupted after I returned from Madaura—the neighboring city in which I had begun to stay to learn literature and oratory—while funds were prepared for a longer trip to Carthage, more by my father's spirit than by his finances, for he was a citizen of Thagaste of rather slender means.

To whom do I tell these things? For I do not tell them to you, my God, but in your presence, I tell these things to my kind, the human kind, whatever part of them may happen on these writings.

But when, in that sixteenth year during the necessary interruption I was on holiday with my parents, the brambles of lusts went over my head, and there was no hand to uproot them. Woe to me. And do I dare to say that you, my God, were silent, when I went far from you? Were you then silent to me? And whose words were they, if not yours, those words through my mother, your faithful one, which you sang in my ears? Yet nothing of them went down into my heart, to carry them out. For she wanted, and I remember how secretly she warned me with immense solicitude, that I should not commit fornication, and especially that I should not commit adultery with anyone's wife. But these seemed to me just womanly warnings, which I would blush to obey. Yet they were your warnings, and I did not know, but thought that you were silent, and that she was speaking, through whom you were not silent to me, and in scorning her I scorned you, I, her son, your servant, the son of your handmaid.

But I knew not, and I kept going headlong with such blindness that when among my peers I was ashamed of having done something less disgraceful, when I heard them boasting of their sins, and boasting the more, the more shameful they had been. And I enjoyed doing these things, not just out of lust for doing them, but also out of desire for praise. What is worthy of blame but vice? But I, so as not to be blamed, became more vicious, and whenever there was nothing I had done equal to these wretches, I pretended I had done what I had not done, so I might not seem lower by being more innocent, and so I might not seem the more vile, the more chaste I was.

2.4. Your law, Lord, surely punishes stealing, the law written in the hearts of man, which not even iniquity itself wipes out. For what thief calmly puts up with a thief? Not even a rich thief endures a thief who is driven by neediness. Yet I wanted to steal, and I did steal, driven by no need, but by the lack of and disdain for justice. For I stole that of which I had plenty and much better. Nor did I want to enjoy the thing which I desired to steal, but I enjoyed the stealing and sin themselves. There was a pear tree near our vineyard, loaded with fruit that was not enticing in shape or taste. We, most wicked youths, went to shake it down, and to carry off fruit in the middle of the night—we had prolonged our play that long out of evil custom. And we took large fruits, not to eat, but to at least throw to the pigs—even though we did eat some of it—we just wanted to do that which pleased us precisely because it was illicit. Behold my heart, O God, behold my heart, which you took pity on in the depth of the abyss. Let my heart now tell you what it was seeking there—so that it was evil without cause, and there was no cause for my malice but malice.

2.6. What then did I, wretch, love in you, O my theft, O evil deed of night of the sixteenth year of my age? For you were not beautiful, since you were a theft...Those fruits were beautiful, but my miserable soul did not really desire them: I had a supply of better fruits, but I picked those merely in order to steal. For I threw away what I picked, and ate out of them only the iniquity, which I rejoiced in. For whatever of those fruits entered into my mouth, it was seasoned by the evil deed.

2.8. And yet I would not have done that alone—thus I recall my soul then—I would not at all have done it alone. So I loved in it also the fellowship of those with whom I did it. So I did not love solely the theft—or rather, I really did love nothing else, for that fellowship (in crime) is nothing. But since there was no pleasure for me in the fruit, there was pleasure in the deed itself, pleasure which the fellowship of others sinning with me produced.

2.9. What was that attitude of soul? Surely it was simply shameful, but yet what was it? Who understands sins? It was a lark for our itching heart, as it were, that we were deceiving those who did not think we would do it, and strongly objected to our doing it. O too unfriendly friendship, and greediness for sport and joke and desire for harming another—without gain to myself, without a desire for revenge, just done when they said: "Let's go, let's do it". And we were ashamed not to be shameless!

3.1. I came to Carthage, and there crackled about me on all sides the frying pan of wicked loves. (A word play here between Carthage and sartago, "a frying pan".) I did not yet love, and I loved to love, and out of a more secret need, I hated myself when I needed less. I sought something to love, loving to love, and I hated security and a path without traps. For I had an inner hunger for an interior food, you my God, and I did not feel that hunger, but I was without desire for incorruptible food—not that I had my fill, but the more empty I was, the more finicky I was towards it.

And so my soul was not well, and being full of sores, it cast itself outside of me, being pitifully eager to be scratched by the touch of things of sense. To love and to be loved was more sweet to me if I could also enjoy the body of the lover. So I befouled the spring of friendship, and defiled its clear waters with the hell of lust; and yet, though foul and dishonorable, I enjoyed being refined and urbane, out of brimming vanity. I rushed into love, desiring to be captured by it. My God, my mercy, with how much gall you sprinkled that sweetness, and how good you were to do it. For I was loved, and came to bond of enjoyment, and I was gladly bound in troublesome bonds, and so I was beaten with the hot iron rods of jealousy and suspicion and fear and anger and quarrels.

3.2. The spectacles of the theatre laid hold of me, full of images of misery, and tinder for my flame. Why is it that man wishes to grieve there, when he sees grief-filled and tragic things, which yet he himself would not wish to suffer? Yet he, the spectator, wishes to suffer grief from them, and the very grief is his pleasure. What is this but pitiful insanity? Are tears then loved, and pains? Surely, every man wishes to be happy. Or is it that although no one likes to be miserable, yet he is pleased to commiserate others, and for this reason alone—since commiseration cannot be had where there is not pain—he loves grief?

3.3. And there hovered over me at a distance your faithful mercy. Into what iniquities I wasted myself, and followed with sacrilegious curiosity, so that in my desertion of you it led me down to faithless depths, and deceitful service of demons, to whom I immolated my evil deeds—and in all these your scourged me! I dared even during the celebration of your mysteries with the walls of the church to desire and arrange an affair to procure the fruits of death. As a result, you whipped me with heavy penalties, but nothing in comparison to my fault, O you, my exceedingly great mercy, my God, my refuge from the fearfully harmful things in which I wandered, with proud neck, to go far from you, loving my ways, not yours, loving the freedom of a runaway slave.

The goal of my studies, which were called honorable, was law, so that I might excel in them and be the more praiseworthy, the more crafty I was. Such is the blindness of men who even boast of blindness. And I was the leading student in the school of the rhetor, and I was proudly glad, and swollen with smoke, though much more restrained, Lord, you know, and remote by far from the wreckings that the "Wreckers" did—this savage and devilish name is as it were the badge of urbanity. I lived among them with shameless shame, because I was not such. I was with them, and at times enjoyed their friendship, but I always abhorred their deeds, that is, the "wreckings" in which they boldly attacked the shyness of new students.

3.4. Among them at that time, in my immature age, I was studying books of eloquence, in which I desired to be eminent—with a damnable windy purpose, through the joys of human vanity.

In the regular course of studies I have come upon the book of a certain Cicero, whose tongue practically all admire—but not so his heart. But that book of his, called Hortensius, contains an exhortation to philosophy. That book changed my attitude, and turned my prayers to you, Lord, and made my wishes and desires different. For suddenly all vain hope seemed cheap to me, and I desired the immortality of wisdom, with incredible ardor of heart, and I had already begun to rise to return to you.

For I did not use that book to sharpen my tongue—a thing I seemed to be buying at my mother's expense, when I was nineteen (my father had died two years before)—not to sharpen my tongue did I use that book. For it impressed me not with its style, but with its teaching.

How eager I was, my God, how eager I was to fly away from earthly things to you. And I did not know what you were doing in me. For wisdom is yours. But the love of wisdom has the Greek name philosophy, for which that book made me eager. There are those who seduce people through philosophy, coloring and disguising their errors with that great, beautiful and honorable name. Almost all such men, from the time of Cicero and before, are presented and explained in that book. And that salutary admonition from your spirit through your good and devout servant becomes clear there: "See that no one deceives you through philosophy and empty seduction according to the tradition of men, and not according to Christ. For in Him there dwells all the fullness of divinity in a bodily way."

And I at that time—you know it, light of my heart—since I did not yet know these words of the Apostle, yet I was pleased with that exhortation (of Cicero) in that I was strongly aroused and on fire and kindled to love and seek, not some particular sect, but philosophy itself (whatever it might be). And only this checked me, in such great ardor, that the name of Christ was not there. For my tender heart according to your mercy, Lord, had drunk in this name of my Savior, your Son, in the very milk of my mother, and retained it deeply. Whatever lacked this name, however literary and polished and true-speaking it was, it did not entirely capture me.

3.5. And so I decided to turn my mind to the holy Scriptures, to see of what sort they were. And behold, I saw a thing not revealed to the proud nor laid bare to children, but humble in its walk, lofty in its outcome, and veiled in mysteries. And I was not such as to be able to enter into it, or to incline my neck to its steps. For when I turned to that Scripture, I did not feel as I now speak, but it seemed to me unworthy to compare with the dignity of Cicero. For my swelling pride shrank from its moderation, and my eye did not penetrate to its interior. Yet it was such as to grow with little ones, but I disdained to be a little one, and swollen with pride, I seemed great to myself.

3.6. And so I fell in with men proudly erring, very carnal and wordy, in whose mouth were the snares of the devil and a very birdlime made of a mixture of the syllables of your name, and even the Lord Jesus Christ and the Paraclete, our consoler, the Holy Spirit. For these names were ever in their mouth—but only as far as the sound and noise of the tongue went. As for the rest, their heart was empty of the truth. And they kept saying: "Truth and truth". And many kept saying that to me, and it was nowhere in them, but they were speaking false things, not only about you, who are Truth, but even about the elements of this world, your creation, in regard to which I should out of love of you have even gone beyond those philosophers who speak true things, my Father, supreme good, beauty of all things. O truth, truth. How intimately even then did the marrow of my soul sigh to you when these men sounded your name to me frequently and in many ways—but only with their voice—in many huge books. And they are the trays in which in place of you, they served me in my hunger the sun and moon, your beautiful works, but yet, only your works, and not you, nor were they the first works. For the earlier things were your spiritual works, before those bodily things, even though they be lucid and heavenly.

3.7. For I did not know that other reality which truly is, and I was as it were subtly moved to accept the views of these deceivers, when they asked me: Whence is evil, and whether God is bounded by a bodily form, and does He have hairs, and fingernails, and whether they are to be considered just who have many wives at once, and kill men, and sacrifice animals. Being ignorant I was disturbed by these things, and though I was going away from truth, I seemed to myself to go towards it, since I did not know that evil is nothing but the privation of good, even to the point of non-being. How could I have seen it, I whose bodily vision was confined to bodies and whose spiritual sight was limited to phantasms? For I did not know that God is a spirit, not having members in length or width, not having mass...And what is in us, according to which we are, and are called by the Scripture the image of God—I did not know this at all.

3.10. Gradually and little by little I was led to such nonsense as to believe that a fig weeps when it is picked, and that its mother tree sheds milky tears. But if some (Manichean) Saint would eat that fig—plucked not by his, but by another's—he would mix it with his entrails, and breathe forth from it angels, or rather, particles of God as he groaned and burped in prayer. These particles of the supreme and true God would have remained bound in that fruit, unless set free by the tooth and stomach of a Holy Elect one. And I, wretched, believed mercy should rather be shown to the fruits of the earth, than to men, for whose sake the fruits are born. But if someone who was not a Manichee in hunger would ask for the fruit, it was like condemning it to capital punishment to give it to him.

3.11. And you sent forth your hand from on high, and from this deep mist delivered my soul, when my mother wept to you for me, your faithful one, more than mothers weep for bodily death. For she saw my death to faith and the spirit, which she had from you, and you heard her, Lord. You heard her, and did not despise her tears, when they flowed forth and watered the earth beneath her eyes everywhere she prayed, and you heard her. For where else did that dream come from in which you consoled her, so that she would consent to live in the same house with me and to share the table with me—a thing she had begun to refuse, turning aside and detesting the blasphemies of my wandering? For she was (in the dream) herself standing on a certain wooden rule, and a splendid, joyful, smiling youth coming to her, when she was grieving, and worn with grief. And he, when he had asked the reason for her grief and daily tears—to teach her as is usual, not to learn—and when she had answered that she was weeping over my loss, he told her, so that she might be secure, and said she should look and see: where she was, I was also.

When she looked, she saw me standing on the same rule beside her. Whence is this, except that your ears were turned to her heart, O you good Almighty One, who take care of each and every one of us as if we were the only one to care for, and who take care of all as if they were just one?

Whence also was this: that when she had told me the vision, and I tried to twist it so that she should rather not despair of being what I was, at once, without any hesitation, she said: "It was not said to me that where he is, you will be, but: Where you are, there he will be." I confess to you Lord, what I remember, as much as I remember—often I have spoken of it—that I was more shaken by that, your response through my vigilant mother—for she was not disturbed by a false interpretation that was so plausible, and so quickly saw what needed to be seen, which I surely had not seen before she spoke—I was more shaken even then by the reply than by the dream itself, in which the joy of the devout woman, to come so much later, was predicted so far in advance for her present consolation.

For almost nine years followed, in which I wallowed in that mud of the deep and darkness of falsehood, in which I often tried to rise, and was thrust down more heavily; while that chaste, pious, sober widow—the kind you love—now, to be sure, more eager because of hope, but not slower in weeping and groaning, did not cease, at all hours of her prayers, to wail to you for me. And there entered into your sight her prayers, and yet you permitted me still to roll and roll deeper in that mist.

3.12. And you gave a second response that I recall—for I pass over many things, because I am hastening to those things that press me the more to confess and praise you, and many things I do not remember—you gave then a second reply through your priest, a certain bishop nourished in the Church and trained in your books. When that woman asked him to be willing to speak with me and refute my errors, and to unteach me evils, and to teach good—for he used to do this whenever he happened to find persons fit for it—he was unwilling—prudently for certain, as I realized later. For he answered that I was still unteachable, because I was puffed up with the novelty of that heresy and had upset many inexperienced people with my little questions, as she had told him. "But let him be there, " he said, "and just pray to the Lord for him. By reading he will find out what an error that is, and how great an impiety."

At the same time he also told how he when young had been given over to the Manichees by his own mother, who was deceived, and that he had read and even copied out almost all their books; but that it had become clear to him, though no one argued with him and refuted him, how much he ought to flee that sect: and so he had fled.

When he had said this, and she was not willing to acquiesce, but pressed the more, in begging and weeping copiously, so he might see me and discuss it with me, he, now a bit irritated with weariness said: "Go, and live this way. For it cannot happen that the son of those tears of yours should perish." And this she often recalled in talking with me: that she had received it as if it had sounded forth from the sky.

4.1. Throughout that same time of nine years, from my nineteenth year to my twenty-eighth, we were seduced and seducing; deceived and deceiving, in various desires—openly through those teachings which they call liberal, in a hidden way however those under the false name of religion—here we were proud, there superstitious: everywhere, vain. We taught in those years the art of rhetoric, and I sold a victorious wordiness, conquered by desire. Yet I preferred—Lord you know it—to have good students, as they are called good. And without guile I taught them guile—not so that they could act against the life of an innocent person, but at times for the head of a guilty one. And you, O God, saw me from afar, slipping in a slippery place, and my faith glowing under much smoke, a faith which I showed in that teaching I gave to those who loved vanity and sought a lie.

But in those days I had one woman, not known in what is called lawful wedlock, but one whom my wandering ardor, devoid of prudence, had hunted up. And yet, only one, and I was faithful to her bed. In this I learned by my own experience what a distance there is between the moderation of a conjugal pact, which is joined together for the sake of begetting offspring, and a pact of lustful love, in which an offspring is born even contrary to one's desire—though once born, it forces one to love it.

4.4. During those years in which I first began to teach in the town in which I was born, I had acquired a friend, very dear to me in an association in studies, of my own age, flowering along with me in the bloom of youth. He had grown up with me as a boy, and together we had gone to school, and together we had played. But in childhood he was not a friend in such a way—and even later not—as true friendship goes, because there is no true friendship unless you glue it together between those who adhere to you, "with your love diffused in our hearts, through the Holy Spirit who is given to us." For I had turned him from the true faith, which he as a youth did not hold faithfully and fully, into the superstitious and dangerous fables because of which my mother wept over me. That man was now wandering in spirit with me, and my soul could not be without him. And behold you, pressing on the back of your fugitives, at once God of vengeance and fount of mercies, who convert us to you in marvelous ways—behold, you took that man from this life when he had scarcely completed a year in my friendship, sweet to me above all the sweetnesses of this life.

Who can recount all your praiseworthy deeds which he alone by himself has experienced? What did you then do, my God, and how unsearchable the abyss of your judgments! For when he was struggling in fevers, he lay long unconscious in a deathly sweat. And when hope was given up for him, he was baptized—I did not know it, I did not provide for it, but presumed that his soul rather retained what he had received from me, and not what was done on his body when he was not aware of it. But it was quite otherwise. For he recovered and became better. And at once, as soon as I could speak with him—I was able as soon as he could, since I did not leave him, and we depended so much on each other—I tried to laugh, in his presence, as if he would join in laughing, at the baptism he had received when absent in mind and senses, but yet which he learned he had received. But he shrank from me as from an enemy, and with marvelous and sudden freedom warned me that if I wanted to be his friend, I should stop saying such things.

I, however, stunned and upset, put off expressing my feelings, so that he could get well first, and then would be fit in health and strength so that I could do what I wanted with him.

But he was rescued from my insanity, so that he might be kept with you for my consolation. After a few days, when I was absent, the fever attacked again, and he died.

With what sorrow was my heart darkened! And whatever I looked at was death, and my home land a punishment, and my father's house strange unhappiness, and whatever I had shared with him, without him turned into immense torture. My eyes sought him everywhere, and he was not there. And I hated all places, because they did not have him, nor could they say to me: "Yes, he is coming" as they used to do when he was alive and away.

4.7. But when my soul was taken away from these, a great burden of misery weighed me down. It should have been lifted up to you, Lord, and cured. I knew, but I did not want to, nor was I able—all the more because you were not something solid and firm to me, when I thought of you. It was not you, but an empty phantasm: and my error was my God. If I tried to put my soul there to rest, it slipped down into emptiness, and again it rushed upon me. And I remained an unhappy place to myself, where I could neither be, nor get away. For where could my heart flee from my heart? Where could I flee from myself where I would not follow myself? And yet I did flee from my home place. For my eyes sought him less where they were not accustomed to see him. And so I came from the town of Thagaste to Carthage.

5.3. Let me speak in the sight of my God about that twenty-ninth year of my age. There had already come to Carthage a certain bishop of the Manichees, Faustus was his name, a great snare of the devil; and many were caught in it by the enticement of smooth speaking—which, though I praised it, yet I distinguished from the truth about the things which I was eager to learn. For I considered not on what a tray of speech, but what knowledge that Faustus, famed among them, put before me to eat. For his reputation had told me in advance that he was most experienced in all honorable teachings, and especially educated in the liberal arts.

And since I had read many works of philosophers and retained them in my memory, and had compared certain things of theirs to those long fables of the Manichees, and the former had seemed more likely to me, which they spoke who were even able "to speculate about the world, although they did not find its Lord. For you are great, Lord, and you look upon the lowly, but you know the exalted from afar." Nor do you draw near to any but the contrite of heart, nor are you found by the proud, not even if they with diligent skill can count the stars and the sand, and measure the starry regions, and search out the paths of the stars.

For with that mind and ability which you gave them they have discovered many things, and announced years in advance the eclipses of the lights of the sun and moon—on what day, at what hour, and to what extent they would be. And the reckoning did not deceive them, and so it happened that they did predict. And they wrote down the rules they discovered which are read today from which it can be predicted in what year, and what month of the year and on what day of the month and at what hour of the day, and to what percent the moon or sun will be eclipsed. And it will be as predicted. And men admire these things, and those who do not know are amazed, and those who do know exult and are extolled, and through impious pride go away (from you) and suffer an eclipse of your light: so far in advance do they foresee the eclipse of the sun, but do not see their own present eclipse.

Yet I remembered many things they said rightly about creation itself, and there came to my mind the calculations and the order of times, and the visible testimony of the stars; and I compared these with the words of Mani who in his raving had written abundantly many words about these things. But there did not meet me (in the Manichean books), I was ordered to (just) believe, and it (what Mani said) did not agree with those reasons I had explored by calculations and by my own eyes—it was far different.

5.5. He (Mani) did not want to be thought of small account, but tried to convince people that the Holy Spirit, the Consoler and Enricher of your faithful, was personally present in him (in Mani) with plenary authority. And so when he was caught saying false things about the sky and the stars and the movement of the sun and moon, even though these things were not part of religious teaching, yet it was quite clear that his attempts were sacrilegious, since he not only said things he did know, but even things false, with insane vanity of pride, in such a way that he tried to attribute them to himself as if to a divine person.

5.6. And through those almost nine years, in which I listened to them (Manichees) with erring mind, I kept waiting for that Faustus with extremely intent desire. For the other (Manichees) whom I happened to meet, who failed on questions I proposed on such things (astronomy), promised him to me, (and I said that) by his coming and by talking with him all these things would be most fully solved—and even other greater things if I should ask.

So when he came, I found him a pleasing man, pleasant of speech, and saying more persuasively the very same things that they (ordinary Manichees) usually say. But what good was that cup-bearer of precious cups to my thirst? My ears had already been filled with such things, and they did not seem better to me because they were said in a better way, nor did they seem true because they were eloquent, nor did his mind seem wise because his face was pleasant looking and his speech becoming. They however who used to promise him to me were not good judges of reality; and so he seemed to them prudent and wise because he delighted them with his speech.

So my eagerness, in which I had looked forward to him so long a time, was delighted with his manner and attitude as he discussed, since his words were fitting, and came readily to clothe his thoughts. I was, moreover, delighted along with many—or even more than many, I praised and extolled him. But I was irked that in the crowd of listeners I was not allowed to go in to him, and to share with him the care of my questions in personal conference, offering and receiving thoughts.

When I had the opportunity, and began to besiege his ears, along with my friends, at a time when it was not out of place to discuss alternately, and when I presented certain things that disturbed me, the first thing I found was that the man was unskilled in the liberal arts, except for grammar, and even in that he had only ordinary training. And because he had read some orations of Cicero, and a very few books of Seneca, and some works of poets, and whatever books of his sect were well written in Latin, and because he had daily practice in speaking—from this came his eloquence, which became the more acceptable and the more seductive because of the guidance of his mind and a certain natural charm. Is it thus as I recall it, my Lord God, Judge of my conscience? Before you is my heart and my memory, you who then were dealing with me in the hidden secret of your providence, and were already putting my dishonorable wanderings before my face, so that I might see and hate them.

5.7. For after it became quite clear to me that he was inexperienced in those arts in which I had thought he excelled, I began to despair that he could open up and solve the problems that were troubling me. Someone ignorant of these things could still hold to the truth of piety—provided he were not a Manichee. For their books are full of very long fables about the sky and the stars and the sun and the moon, which I no longer thought he could explain subtly to me...When I nonetheless presented these things to him to consider and discuss, he was modest for certain, and did not dare to take up the burden. For he knew that he did not know those things, and was not ashamed to admit it. He was not of that loquacious kind, of whom I suffered from many, who tried to teach me these things, and said nothing. For he had a heart that, though not turned to you, was not uncautious about itself. For he was not altogether ignorant of his ignorance, and he did not want, by rash discussing, to put himself into a tight spot from which there would be no way out for him, nor a way to turn back. On this count he pleased me more. For more beautiful is the temperance of an honest soul, than the things I wanted to know. And in all the more difficult and more subtle questions I found him such.

So although my eagerness with which I had applied myself to Manichean literature was stopped, and despairing of their other teachers, since this famous one appeared such in the many things that disturbed me, I began to associate much with him because of the interest with which he glowed for those works of literature which I was already then teaching young people as a professor at Carthage. As for the rest, all my efforts, in which I had decided to make progress in that sect collapsed completely when I got to know that man—not in such a way that I broke off with them completely, but as though not finding anything better than that into which I had somehow rushed, I decided for the time being to be content, unless something more worthy to be chosen should appear.

And so that Faustus, who had been a snare of death for many, had then begun to loosen the snare in which I had been caught, though he did not intend it, nor even know it. For your hands, my God, in the hiddenness of your providence, did not desert my soul. And in the blood of the heart of my mother, through her tears day and night, sacrifice was being offered to you. And you acted with me in marvelous and hidden ways. You did that, my God, for by the Lord are the steps of a man directed. Or what provision for salvation is there except your hand, making anew what you made?

5.8. You brought it about that I was persuaded to go to Rome, and to teach there as I had at Carthage. How this came about I will not omit confessing to you, for in these things are your most profound depths, and your mercy, most present to us, should be thought of and proclaimed. I did not want to go to Rome because my friends who convinced me to go held out greater income and dignity—though these things also influenced my mind. But the greatest, almost the sole reason was that I had heard that young people there studied more quietly, and that they were controlled by a more orderly coercion of discipline so that they did not at random and wantonly rush in the school of a teacher with whom they were not studying, and that they are not admitted at all unless he permits it.

On the contrary, at Carthage there is a foul and intemperate license on the part of students. They break in boldly, and with almost a mad look, disturb the order that each teacher has set up for the development of his students. They do many harmful things out of strange dullness, and things that should be punished by law—except that custom supports them. They are clearly the more wretched, the more they are allowed to do what your eternal law never will permit. And they think they act without being punished—although they are being punished by the very blindness in which they act, and they suffer incomparably worse things than they do.

And so I was forced, when I taught, to put up with practices in others that I did not want to follow when I was a student. And so I decided to go where everyone indicated such things were not done. But you "my hope, and my portion in the land of the living" applied incentives to me to change my place of living for the salvation of my soul, incentives to take me from Carthage, and to attract me to Rome. You did this through men who loved a dead life—here doing insane things, there promising vain things; and to correct my steps you secretly made use of both their and my perversity. For those who disturbed my rest were blind with foul madness; and those who invited me elsewhere had an earthly attitude. I however who detested here (at Carthage) real misery, there (at Rome) desired a false happiness.

But you knew, my God, why I went from here to there. Nor did you tell me, nor my mother, who wept dreadfully about my departure, and followed me to the sea. But I deceived her as she tried to hold on to me by force so that I should either return, or that she should go with me. And I pretended I did not want to leave a friend until he would sail when the wind was right. And I lied to my mother—to that mother—and I escaped. You forgave me even this, mercifully saving me from the waters of the sea, me full of detestable filth, for the waters of your grace so that, being washed, the rivers of my mother's eyes might be dried, with which daily she watered the earth under her feet.

And finally, when she refused to return without me, I barely persuaded her to stay that night in a place near our ship, a chapel in honor of St. Cyprian. But I secretly set out that night, while she remained, praying and weeping. And what was she asking of you, my God, with such great tears, except that you would not let me sail? But you, forming deep plans, and hearing what she really desired, did not take care of what she was asking then, so that you might do in me what she was always begging.

The wind blew, and filled our sails, and took the shore from our sight, in which in the morning she was beside herself with grief, and filled your ears with complaints and groans, while you rejected them, and her fleshy desire was justly scourged with the whip of sorrows. For she loved my presence with her, as mothers do, but much more than many mothers. And she did not know what joys you were going to make from my absence. She did not know, and hence she wept and wailed, and by these torments proved in herself the inheritance of Eve, with groaning bewailing what she had brought forth with groaning. And yet, after blaming my cruel deception, she turned again to begging you for me. She went to her usual practices, and I to Rome.

5.9. And behold! There I was caught by the scourge of bodily sickness, and I was already on my way to hell, carrying all the evils that I had committed against you, and against myself, and against others—many and grave things, in addition to the bond of original sin, in which "all die in Adam." For you had not "forgiven me anything in Christ" nor had He "loosed the enmity in His flesh, " which I had contracted toward you by my sins. For how could He loose that on the cross of a phantasm—as I believed about him? So, as false as the death of His flesh seemed to me, so true was the death of my soul. And so, as the fevers grew worse, I was already going, and perishing. Where would I have gone, had I departed then, except "into fire and torments worthy of my deeds" in the truth of your order?

And she did not know this, and yet, while absent, was praying for me. But you, present everywhere, heard her where she was, and where I was, you had mercy on me, so that I should recover the health of my body, though still insane in a sacrilegious heart. For in so great a danger I did not desire your baptism, and I was better as a boy, when I asked for it from the devotedness of my mother, as I have already recalled and confessed. But I had grown more disgraceful, and in my insanity laughed at the plans of your healing, you who did not allow such a one to die twice. Had the heart of my mother been struck with such a wound, it would have never been healed. For I cannot say enough what love she had for me, and with how much greater anguish she was bringing me forth in the spirit, than she had done in the flesh.

And so I do not see how she could have been healed if such a death of mine had pierced the heart of her love. And where would such great prayers have been, so frequent, and without interruption, always directed to you? Would you, "God of mercies" have spurned "the contrite and humbled heart" of a chaste sober widow, frequenting alms, following and serving your saints, never omitting the offering at your altar any day, coming to your church twice a day, morning and evening without ceasing, not for vain fables and old-womanly talkativeness, but that she might hear you in your words, and you might hear her in her prayers?

These tears of hers, by which she asked of you not gold or silver, not anything changeable, no transitory good, but the salvation of the soul of her son—could you, by whose gift she was such, have scorned and repelled them without giving help? By no means, Lord. In fact, rather, you were present, and you did hear, and you did act. Far be it from you that you could have deceived her in those visions and responses of yours, which I have already mentioned, and those I have not mentioned, which she held in a faithful heart, and ever praying, presented them to you as written promises of yours. For you see fit, "since your mercy is forever" to even become a debtor by your promises to those to whom you forgive their debts.

5.10. So you restored me from that sickness, and you "saved the son of your handmaid, " then, for that moment (only) in body, so there would be one to whom you could give a better and more certain health.

And I joined myself even then at Rome to those deceived and deceiving "Saints, " not just to their Hearers only, to whom he belonged in whose home I had grown sick and gotten better, but even to those whom they call the Elect. For it still seemed to me that it was not we who sinned, but some sort of other nature in us that sinned. And it pleased my pride to be free of fault, and when I did anything wicked, not to confess that I had done it, so that "you might heal my soul, since it had sinned against you" but I loved to excuse my fault, and to blame something or other that was with me, but was not I. However, I was that one whole—my impiety had divided me against myself—and my sin was the more incurable, by the fact that I did not think myself a sinner. And my iniquity was the more accursed.

So "you had not yet put a guard about my mouth, and a door of restraint about my lips, so that my heart should not decline into evil words, so as to make excuses in sins with men who worked iniquity" and therefore, I still "associated with their elect" while yet despairing of making advance in their false doctrine. I had decided to be content with those very things—for I found nothing better, though I now held on to them more loosely and negligently.

For this thought came also to me: that those philosophers whom they call the Academics were more prudent, in that they decided we should doubt everything and had determined that man could grasp no truth. For thus, as people in general judge, did they seem to me too to think for neither did I yet understand their intention.

Nor did I in pretense omit trying to hold that same host back from excessive credulity, which I saw he had about the fabulous things with which the Manichee books are full. Yet I used their friendship more closely than that of other men who had not been in that heresy. But I did not defend it with my former spirit. However my close association with them—for Rome hid many of them—led me to seek an alternative more sluggishly, especially since I despaired of finding the truth, from which they had turned me aside, in your Church, Lord of heaven and earth, creator of all things visible and invisible.

It seemed very shameful to me to believe that you had the shape of human flesh and were bounded by the lines of the limbs of our bodies. And since, when I tried to think of my God, I could think of nothing other than the mass of bodies—for there did not seem to me to be anything that was not such (bodily)—this was the greatest, and almost the sole cause of my inescapable error.

Hence too I thought that evil was some such substance, and that it had its own mass, foul and deformed, either gross (which they called earth), or thin and subtle, as the body of the air, which they imagine is a malignant mind creeping through the earth. And because some sort of reverence forced me to think that a good God could have created no evil nature, I supposed there were two masses, opposite one another, each infinite, but the evil one more narrow, the good one larger. From this pestilential beginning other blasphemous things followed me. For when my mind tried to come back to the Catholic faith, I was repelled, because what I thought was the Catholic faith, was not really it.

Even our Savior, your Only begotten, I thought was so put forth for our salvation from the most lucid mass, that I could not conceive of anything about Him except what my vain imagination could picture. For I thought that such a nature could not be born of the Virgin Mary without being mixed with flesh—and I did not see that He, such as I conceived Him, could be mixed, and not defiled. And so I feared to believe He was born in the flesh so I would not have to believe He was defiled with flesh—Now your spiritual ones will in a kindly and loving way laugh at me, if they read these my confessions. But yet I was such.

5.12. So I began to apply myself diligently to that for which I had come, to teach rhetoric at Rome, and first to gather at my house some to whom and through whom I had begun to be known. And behold, I learned that different things happened at Rome, which I did not suffer in Africa. For really, those wreckings that are done by debased youths are clearly not done there (at Rome). Yet without warning many youths conspire to avoid paying the teacher, and transfer to another—deserters of their pledged word, people to whom justice is cheap because money is dear. My heart hated them too, although not "with a perfect hate."

5.13. And so, after a message was sent from Milan to Rome to the prefect of the city, asking him to obtain a teacher of rhetoric for that city, I tried, through those same Manichees, drunk with vanity—I was going to go to get free from them, but neither of us knew it—to gain approval by giving a trial discourse and so Symmachus, who was then Prefect, sent me there.

And I came to Milan, to Ambrose the Bishop, renowned among the best in the world, your devout worshipper, whose vigorous speeches then were providing "the richness of your grain" and the gladness of oil, and "the sober drunkenness of wine" for your people. You led me to him, though I did not know it, so that I might be led knowingly to you. That man of God received me in a fatherly way, and welcomed my travel as a bishop.

And I began to love him at first not as a teacher of the truth—which I completely despaired of in your Church—but as a man kind to me. And I used to eagerly listen to him as he preached to the people, not with the intention I should have had, but as trying out his eloquence, to see if it was up to his reputation, or whether it would flow forth in a greater or lesser way than the reports about him. And I hung intent on his words, not caring about the content, and stood there scorning that. And I was delighted with the persuasiveness of his speech, which was more learned, but yet less pleasing and alluring than that of Faustus, as far as style of language is concerned. As for the rest, there was no comparison in the content. For the one (Faustus) was erring in Manichean fallacies; but the other (Ambrose) most wholesomely was teaching salvation. But "salvation is far from sinners, " such as I was then. And yet I was gradually drawing near, and I knew it not.

5.14. For though I did not try to learn what he was saying, but only wanted to hear how he said it—that empty interest remained for me, though I despaired that a way was open for man to come to you—there came into my mind along with his words, which I loved, also the content, which I was neglecting. For I could not separate them, and when I opened my heart to take in how eloquently he spoke, there entered at the same time how truly he spoke—though gradually. At first it began to be clear to me that what he said could be defended. And I now judged that the Catholic faith, for which I had thought nothing could be said against Manichean attacks, could be maintained without being ashamed of it—especially after hearing one another and still more problems of the Old Scriptures solved, in which, when I took them literally, I was killed. And so when many of those passages were explained spiritually, I now criticized my own despair in which I had believed no resistance could be made to those who detested and laughed at the law and the prophets. However I did not feel that the Catholic way should be followed on the grounds that it too could have teachers and defenders who could copiously and not absurdly refute objections. Nor did I think that that which I held (Manicheism) should be condemned because the defenders seemed equal. For the Catholic faith seemed to me to be not conquered in such a way that it was not yet conquering.

But then I strongly applied my mind to see if I could convict the Manichees of falsity by any certain proofs. If I had been able to conceive a spiritual substance, at once all their machinations would have been dissolved and cast out of my mind. But that I could not do.

However, as to the makeup and entire nature of this world which bodily senses reach, by thinking further and comparing, I judged that many philosophers held much more probable views. And so, as the Academics are supposed to think, doubting about everything, and wavering about everything, I decided I ought to leave the Manichees, not believing that at the very time of my doubts I should stay in that sect to which I already preferred many philosophers. But I completely refused to entrust the cure of the sickness of my soul to those philosophers, because they were without the saving name of Christ. Therefore I decided to be a catechumen in the Catholic church which had been commended to me by my parents, until something certain showed up by which I could direct my course.

6.1. "My hope since my youth" where were you for me? And where had you withdrawn? Or had you not made, and distinguished me from the four-footed animals and birds of the sky? You had made me wiser, and "I was walking in darkness" and a slippery place, and I was seeking you outside of me, and I did not find the God in my heart. And I had come into the depth of the sea, and I lost confidence, and despaired of finding the truth.

My mother had now come to me, strong in her devotedness, following me on land and sea, and secure because of you in all dangers. For in the dangers at sea she comforted the very sailors—who normally comfort inexperienced travelers when they are upset, for she promised them they would come through safely, since you had promised her that in a vision.

And she found me in grave danger because of despair of finding the truth. But yet when I had told her that I was no longer a Manichee, though not a Catholic Christian, she did not exult with joy as if she had heard something unexpected, for she was already secure in regard to my misery, in which she was weeping for me as dead, but going to be restored to life by you, and on the bier of her thought she was carrying me out, so that you might say to the son of the widow: "Young man, I say to you arise" and he would revive and begin to speak, and you would give him back to his mother. So her heart did not tremble with any disturbed exultation when she heard that so large a part had already been accomplished of what she daily wept for: that I had not yet reached the truth, but had already been rescued from falsehood. Rather, because she was certain that you would give what was still remaining, you who had promised it all, most calmly, and with a heart full of confidence, she answered she believed in Christ that before she departed from this life, she would see me a faithful Catholic.

And this she said to me. But to you, Fount of mercies, she sent more frequent prayers and tears that you might hasten your help and "illumine my darkness" and she more eagerly ran to the church, and hung on the mouth of Ambrose, on "the fount of water that leaps up into eternal life." For she loved that man "as an angel of God" because through him she had learned that I had at the time been brought to that wavering doubtful state through which she was confident I would be led from sickness to health, though with a keener danger intervening, as if through what the doctors call the crisis.

6.3. Nor did I yet groan in prayer that you might help me, yet my mind was intent to seek, and restless for discussion. I considered Ambrose a happy man according to worldly standards, whom the civil powers honored so. Only his celibacy seemed laborious to me. But as to what hope he bore, what struggles he might have in temptations against his very excellence, what consolation in adversity, and what savory joys his secret mouth (which was in his heart) dwelt on from your bread—I did not know how to guess, nor had I experienced (such things). Nor did he know my upheavals nor the pit of my danger. For I had not been able to ask of him what I wished, since the crowds of busy men, whose infirmities he served, kept me from his ear. When he was not with them—which was a very short time—he either was restoring the body by necessary sustenance, or his soul with reading.

But when he was reading, his eyes went over the pages, and his heart examined the content, but his voice and tongue were silent. Often when we were present—for no one was forbidden to enter, nor was it the custom that one coming be announced to him—we saw him thus, reading silently, and never otherwise. And after sitting in long silence—for who would burden someone so intent?—we used to depart, and conjecture that he, during that short span of time that he found to refresh his mind in getting away from others' cases did not wish to be distracted to something else, and that he was taking care so he would not have to explain something less clear that he might read to a listener who would be absorbed and intent, and so he would cover less of the books. and yet to save his voice, which easily became hoarse, could have been a more reasonable cause for reading silently. But whatever may have been his purpose, it was surely a good one.

But certainly, I was given no chance to inquire about what I wanted of that so holy an oracle of yours, his heart, unless the matter could be done quickly. But my disturbances needed to find him quite at leisure, to pour things forth to him, but never found him such. And I was listening to him every Sunday "treating the word of truth rightly" for the people, and it was more and more assured for me that all the knots of calumnies which those deceivers of us wove against the divine books could be loosed.

6.6. I was eager for honors, financial gains, and marriage, and you laughed at me. I suffered in these desires most bitter difficulties, while you were the more kind, the less you allowed whatever was not you to become sweet to me. Look at my heart, Lord, you who willed that I recall this and confess to you. Now let my soul adhere to you, which you pulled out of so sticky a snare of death. How wretched was my soul. And you stung the nerve of my wound so that I might leave all and be converted to you, you who are above all, without whom no things would be.

How wretched then was I, and how you acted that I might feel my misery on that day on which I was preparing to recite the praises of the Emperor, in which I would tell many a lie, and would receive favor for lying from those who knew I was lying. My heart was pounding with these cares and boiling with wasting fevers, when in passing through a certain section of Milan I noticed a poor beggar, drunk, I believe, and joking and feeling good. And I groaned, and spoke with my friends who were with me about the many sorrows of our insanity, because with all our attempts of that kind, in which I was then laboring under the spurs of desire and dragging about the burden of my unhappiness, and making it worse by dragging it, we wanted nothing more than to come to the secure joy which that beggar had reached ahead of us—and which we might never reach. That which he had already attained by means of a very few begged coins, for this I was striving by such troublesome twists and round-around ways—that is, the joy of a temporal happiness. For he did not have a true joy, but I too in those ambitions was seeking much more falsely—and certainly he was happy, and I was anxious. He was secure, I was trembling. And if anyone asked me whether I would prefer to be happy or to fear, I would reply to be happy. If he should ask me again whether I would prefer to be such as that man, or such as I was then—I would have chosen myself, worn out with cares and fears, but perversely. Surely not truly. For I ought not to have preferred myself because I was more learned, for I did not get joy from that, but in that way I sought to please men, not to teach them, but just to please them. For that reason you also, with the rod of your teaching "were crushing my bones."

Let them therefore depart from my soul who say: "It makes a difference what one is happy over. That beggar was happy with drink. You wanted to be happy from glory." What glory, Lord? That which is not in you. For just as his was no true happiness, so neither was mine true glory, but it turned my mind the more. And he that very night was going to wear off his drunkenness. But I had slept with mine, and gotten up, and was going to sleep and get up again—see how many days! "But it makes a difference what one is happy over." I know. And the joy of faithful hope is incomparably distant from that vanity. But at that time there was an even greater distance between him and me. For he was the happier, not only in that he was drenched with cheerfulness, while I was being tormented with cares, but also that he, by wishing people good luck, had acquired wine—while I, by lying, was seeking vanity. At the time I said many things of this sort to my dear ones, and I often remarked how it was with me in these matters and I found it was ill. And I grieved, and doubled the evil itself; and if any good fortune came, I was too weary to grasp it, because almost before I could, it flew away.

6.7. Those of us who lived together as friends used to lament over these things, and especially, I spoke of them most familiarly with Alypius and Nebridius.

Of these Alypius was from the same town as I, of parents who ranked high in the town; he was younger than I. For he had studied under me when I began to teach in our town, and later at Carthage. And he loved me much, because I seemed to him to be good and learned; and I him, because of his great natural virtue which stood out especially in a youthful age. Nevertheless the whirlpool of Carthaginian customs, with which foolish spectacles boil, had swallowed him up into the madness of the circuses. But when he was miserably caught up in this, and I was teaching rhetoric there, in a public school, he did not yet listen to me as a teacher, because of a certain hostility that had arisen between his father and me. And I had learned that he had a deadly love for the circus, and I was greatly disturbed because it seemed that he was going to lose such great promise or even had already lost it. But I had no opportunity to warn him or to restrain him either by the love of friendship or the authority of a teacher. I was thinking he had the same attitude towards me as his father, but he actually did not. And so, putting aside his father's wishes in the matter, he had begun to greet me, coming into my classroom, to hear something, and then to go.

For I had forgotten to speak with him so that so good a talent might not be destroyed by the blind and headlong eagerness for vain shows. But you, Lord, you who preside over the rudders of all things that you have created, had not forgotten him, who was going to be a Bishop of your sacrament, among your sons. And so that his correction would be attributed clearly to you, you brought it about through me when I did not know it. For on a certain day when I was sitting in the usual place and my pupils were before me, he came, greeted me, and sat down, and paid attention to the things we were discussing. And it happened that a lesson was at hand such that while I was explaining it, it seemed opportune to me to use a comparison of the circuses so that that which I was teaching would be clearer and more enjoyable, and I did it with a biting ridicule of those whom that insanity had captivated. You know, our God, that at the time I was not thinking of healing Alypius from that bane. But he took it for himself and believed I had said it only for his sake. And that which another would have taken as reason to be angry at me, that noble youth took as reason to be angry at himself, and to love me the more ardently. For you long ago had said, and had woven it into your letters: "Correct a wise man, and he will love you."

Yet I had not corrected him, but you, using all, those who know and those who do not know, in the order which you know. And that order is just. From my heart and tongue you worked "burning coals" by which you could burn the wasting-away mind of that man of good hope, and heal him. For after those words of mine, he snatched himself from so deep a pit, in which he was willingly sinking himself, and was being blinded with wretched pleasure, and he shook out his soul with brave temperance; and all the filth of the circuses left him, and never returned. Then he convinced his reluctant father that he should use me as a teacher. He gave in and granted it.

6.8. Not giving up the earthly way his parents had dinned into him, he had gone ahead to Rome to learn law. And there he was caught up incredibly with incredible passion by the gladiator shows. For although he shunned and detested such things, certain friends and fellow students of his, when they happened to meet him returning from a meal, led him—though he refused strongly and resisted—with friendly force into the amphitheatre on a day of cruel and deadly games, while he said this: "If you drag my body into that place and put me there, you cannot make my mind and eyes pay attention to those sights. So I will be absent while present, and thus I will conquer both you and the games." After this, they still led him with them, perhaps wanting to find out precisely if he could do what he said. When they came there and sat down where they could, everything was ablaze with savage pleasures.

He however, closing the doors of his eyes, forbade his mind to go to such great evils. And I wish he had blocked his ears too! For when during a fall in a fight a great shout of the whole people struck him strongly, he was overcome with curiosity, and as if he was ready to despise and conquer even that when he had seen it, he opened his eyes, and was struck with a more severe wound in the soul than that fighter whom he wanted to see sustained in his body. And he (Alypius) fell more wretchedly than the man whose fall caused the shout that entered his (Alypius') ears and opened his eyes, so there would be a means by which he could be struck and could fall. he was still bold rather than strong in mind, and the weaker, the more he had trusted in himself—he who should have trusted in you. For when he saw that blood, with it he drank in savagery, and he did not turn aside, but fixed his eyes on it, and drank in madness, and did not know what he was doing, and was delighted with the crime of the fight, and was drunk with cruel pleasure. And he was no longer the same man who had come, but just one of the crowd to which he had come, a real companion of those who had led him. Why say more? He looked, he shouted, he was on fire, he took his madness back with him which would stimulate him to return there, not only with those who had first dragged him, but even ahead of them, and dragging others along. And yet you pulled him out of it with a most powerful and merciful hand, and you taught him to have confidence not in himself but in you. But long afterwards.

Alypius as a public official.

6.10. I had, then, found him at Rome, and he adhered to me with a powerful attachment, and went to Milan with me, so that he might not desert me and yet do something about the law career which he had begun, more because of his parents' wishes than his own. And he had been assessor three times already with an integrity that was a marvel to others, while he marveled the more that they would prefer gold to innocence. His character was also tempted not only by the snare of greed, but also with the whip of fear.

At Rome, he had been assessor to the Count of the Italian Treasury. At that time the Count was a certain very powerful senator, to whose benefits many were under obligation, and subjected by fear. He wanted permission for something or other for himself, as was usual for a man of his power, but which was illegal. Alypius resisted. A bribe was promised. He laughed in his heart at it. There were threats: he trod them under foot while others wondered that he would neither want as a friend, nor fear as an enemy, so great a man, famed for having countless ways of helping or harming. In fact, the very judge whose assessor Alypius was, although he did not want it to happen (what the Count asked), yet he did not openly refuse, but transferred the case to him (Alypius), saying Alypius would not let him do it—for actually, if the judge had done it, Alypius would have left.

Nebridius too, who had left his own place near Carthage and Carthage itself, where he used to be so much, gave up his fine ancestral estate, gave up his home, and though his mother would not follow, came to Milan for no other reason than to live with me in a most ardent desire for truth and wisdom. Together with me he sighed, together he wavered, being a most ardent seeker for a happy life, and a most keen examiner of difficult questions.

So there were three mouths of needy ones, sighing over their neediness to each other, and expecting of you "that you would give them food at the opportune time." And in every bitterness that followed our worldly actions, out of your mercy, as we wanted to know why we suffered these things, darkness met us; and we turned aside groaning and said: "How long will this be?" And we kept saying this frequently, and in saying it we did not leave those things, because nothing certain appeared which we could take and leave all else for it.

6.11. And I especially wondered, striving, and recalling how long a time it had been from the nineteenth year of my life in which I had begun to ardently desire wisdom, planning, when I found it, to leave behind all empty hopes of vain desires and lying insanities. And behold, I was now in my thirtieth year, and still sticking in the same mud out of a desire to enjoy present things, which were fleeting and wasting me as I said: "Tomorrow I will find it. Behold, it will appear clearly, and I will take hold of it. Behold, Faustus will come and explain everything. O let us seek more diligently, and not despair. Behold, the things that used to seem absurd in the books of the Church are no longer absurd, but can be understood in a different and good way. I will set my feet on that step in which as a boy I was placed by my parents, until the clear truth is found. But where will it be sought? When will it be sought? Ambrose has no time, there is not enough time to read. Where will we find books? From where, and when will we get them? From whom? Let time be assigned, let the hours be laid out for the salvation of our soul. A great hope has dawned. The Catholic faith does not teach what we used to think and vainly accused it of. Its learned men consider it wrong to believe God has the lines of a human body; and do we hesitate to knock, so that other things may be opened? My students take up the morning hours. The rest of the day, what do we do, why do we do not do this? But when will we pay calls on our more important friends, whose help we need? When will we prepare what our students pay for? When will we refresh ourselves, relaxing the mind from application to cares? Let us give ourselves only to the search for truth. This life is miserable, death is uncertain: if it should creep up suddenly, how will we go from this world? And where should we learn what we have neglected here? Will we not rather have to pay the penalty of this neglect? What if death itself cuts off and puts an end to all cares along with consciousness? This too needs to be investigated. But far be it that it be so! It is no vain or empty thing that so eminent a peak of Christian authority is spread in the whole world. Surely such great and such things would not be done for us by the Divinity if the life of the soul ended with the death of the body. Why hesitate then, to give up hope of the world and to apply ourselves completely to seeking God and a blessed life?

But wait. These things are pleasant too, they have no little sweetness. I should not readily give up trying for them, for it is disgraceful to (give up and then) turn back to them again. Look, how much is to be done to get a post of honor? And what more is there to be desired in these things? I have many powerful friends: without rashly attempting too much, even a governorship can be had. And I can marry a wife with a lot of money, so expenses will not be too heavy, and to put a limit to my desire. Many great men, very worthy of imitation, have given themselves to wives, along with the pursuit of wisdom.

As I kept saying these things, and the winds kept shifting, and driving my heart this way and that way, time was passing, and I was delaying to be converted to the Lord, and I put off from day to day living in you. But I did not put off daily dying in myself. Though I loved a happy life, I was afraid of it in its own abode, and sought it in fleeing from it. For I thought I would be very miserable if deprived of the embraces of a woman, and I did not know the medicine of your mercy to heal that same weakness, because I had not experienced it, and I thought that continence depended on one's own strength—which I was not aware I had, since I was so foolish as not to know that, as it is written, no one can be continent unless you give it. Surely you would have given it, if with interior groaning I had beaten on your ears, and with strong faith had cast my care on you.

6.12. Alypius kept stopping me, to be sure, from marrying, dinning into me that we could in no way live in secure leisure in the love of wisdom, as we had long desired, if I did that. For he himself was at the time most chaste in that matter, so that it was a marvel, because he had even begun to experience concubinage at the start of his youth, but had not continued, and rather had grieved over it and spurned it, and now was living already most continently. but I kept resisting him with examples of those who had cultivated wisdom while married, and had deserved well of God, and had most faithfully kept and loved their friends. I, to be sure, was far from their greatness of soul, and being bound by the disease of the flesh with its deadly sweetness, was dragging about my chain, being afraid to get loose from it. I repelled his very persuasive words as if they touched a wound when his hand was trying to loose my chain.

Besides, the serpent was speaking through me to Alypius himself, and was weaving and spreading out sweet snares in his way through my tongue, by which his honorable and free feet might be caught. For since he admired me, he too had begun to desire marriage, not at all because overcome with lust for such pleasure, but out of curiosity. He often said he wanted to know what that was without which my life, which so pleased him, would seem not life but punishment to me.

6.13. Strong pressure was put on me to marry. Already I was asking (for a girl's hand), and already she was promised, especially since my mother was working so that I, once married, might be washed by saving baptism, for she rejoiced I was steadily becoming fit for it, and she was noticing that your promises and her prayers were being fulfilled in my faith. When, at my request, and her great desire, with a loud cry of her heart she was daily asking you to show her in a vision something about my future marriage, you were never willing. And she did see certain vain fantasies to which the drive of her spirit, striving for this, impelled her, and she used to tell them to me, but not with her usual confidence which she had when you showed them to her. Instead she scorned these fantasies. For she kept saying she could distinguish by some sort of sweetness, which she could not explain, what difference there was between your revelation, and the dream of her soul. Yet she urged, and the girl was asked for, who was still about two years under marriageable age. And because she pleased me, we were waiting.

6.15. Meanwhile my sins were multiplying, and when she, with whom I was accustomed to lie, was torn from my side as an impediment to marriage, my heart, where it had stuck (to her) was cut and torn, and trailed blood. And she had already returned to Africa, vowing to you she would never know another man, leaving with me my natural son by her. But wretched I, not a lover of marriage but a slave of lust—had already obtained another woman, not as a wife, but as one by which the disease of my soul could be sustained and brought into the kingdom of marriage, even though the disease of my soul was still full blown and even greater. Nor was that wound of mine healed, that had been caused by cutting off the previous woman, but after becoming feverish, my very keen pain was rotting, and was hurting as it were more coldly, but more despairingly.

7.8. But you, Lord, remain forever, and are not angry with us forever, for you took pity on dust and ashes, and it was pleasing in your sight to reform my deformity.

7.9. And first, wanting to show me how you resist the proud but give grace to the humble, and how mercifully your way of humility has been shown to men, you obtained for me, through a certain man swollen with immense pride, certain Platonic books translated from Greek into Latin. And in them I read, not, to be sure, in these words, but yet it was argued in many and varied ways that "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him there was made nothing that was made. In Him is life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it." And that the soul of man, although "it bears testimony to the light" yet was not itself "light" but the Word of God is (light). For God is "the true light, that illumines every man coming into this world." And that "He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him." But that "He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him, but He gave to as many as received Him power to become sons of God, who believe in His name"—this I did not read there.

7.16. And I asked what iniquity was, and I found, not a substance, but a perversity of will twisted down toward lower things from you, God the supreme substance.

7.17. And I marveled that now I loved you—not a fantasm in place of you. And I did not stop to enjoy my God, but I was snatched to you by your beauty, and soon I was torn away from you by my own weight, and I kept falling into these things with a groan—and my weight was my fleshy habit. But with me there was the memory of you, and I did not doubt that you were the one to whom I should adhere, but I was not yet one to adhere, since "the body that is corrupted, weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling pulls down the mind that dwells on many things."

8.2. So I went then to Simplicianus, the father from whom the present Bishop Ambrose received grace, but he loved Ambrose as a father. I told him of the circlings of my wanderings. But when I mentioned that I had read certain books of the Platonists, which Victorinus, once a rhetor of the city of Rome (who I had heard died a Christian) had translated into Latin, he congratulated me that I had not fallen on writings of other philosophers, full of fallacies and deceptions. For in these books, he said, God and His Word were introduced in many ways.

Then to exhort me to follow the humility of Christ which is hidden to the wise but revealed to little ones, he recalled Victorinus himself whom he had known closely when he was at Rome, and told something about him which I will not keep silent. For it provides great praise for your grace—which should be confessed to you—how that most learned old man, most expert in all liberal teachings, who had read so many works of the philosophers and had judged them and cast light on them, the teacher of so many noble senators, who because of the outstanding character of his teaching—which citizens of this world think outstanding—had earned and received a statue in the Roman forum, being up to that time a worshipper of idols and partaker in sacrilegious rites. Yet he did not blush to become a servant of your Christ, to be newborn from your font, to bend his neck to the yoke of humility and to lower his brow before the reproach of the cross.

O Lord, Lord, you who "did incline the heavens and come down; you touched the mountains and they smoked"—in what ways did you wend your way into that heart? He used to read Sacred Scripture, as Simplicianus said, and he was investigating all Christian writings most eagerly and was examining them, and he kept saying to Simplicianus, not openly, but in secret and as a friend: "You should know that I am already a Christian. And he (Simplicianus) always answered: "I will not believe it, nor will I count you among Christians unless I see you in the Church of Christ." But he (Victorinus) used to laugh at him saying: "So do walls make Christians?" And he used to say this often, and often repeated that mockery about the walls. For he feared to offend his friends, the proud worshippers of demons.

But later through reading and longing, he drank in strength, and he was afraid he would be "denied by Christ before the holy angels, if he feared to confess him before men." He seemed to himself to be guilty of a great crime by being ashamed of the sacraments of the lowliness of your Word, and not being ashamed of the sacrilegious rites of proud demons which he, a proud imitator, had taken on, and so he stopped being ashamed of vanity, and became modest before the truth, and suddenly and unexpectedly he said to Simplicianus, as he himself related: "Let us go to the Church. I want to become a Christian." He, beside himself with joy, went with him. But when he had been given the first rites of instruction, not long after, he turned in his name so that he might be reborn by baptism—as Rome marveled, and the Church rejoiced. The proud "saw and were angry, they gnashed their teeth and melted away." But for your servant, the Lord God was "his hope, and he did not look to vanities and lying insanities."

They, when the hour came for professing the faith, which is usually done in set words, memorized, from a high place in the sight of the faithful of Rome, by those who are going to approach your grace, Simplicianus said that the priests offered Victorinus the chance to profess secretly, as is usually done for some who are likely to tremble in fear. But he preferred to make the saving profession in the sight of the holy throng. For what he used to teach in rhetoric was not salutary, and yet he had professed it publicly. How much less then should he fear your meek flock, when he pronounced your Word, he who had not feared to pronounce his own words before the crowds of insane men.

So when he went up to make his profession, all who knew him spoke his name in a sound of congratulation. For who was there who did not know him? And the suppressed sound came from the mouths of all those rejoicing together: "Victorinus! Victorinus!" Quickly did they sound forth in exultation, because they saw him, and quickly did they grow silent to hear him intently. He professed the true faith with outstanding confidence, and all wished to snatch him within into their heart, and they did take him in love and in rejoicing—these were the hands of those who took him in.

8.3. O good God, what goes on in man, that he rejoices more over the salvation of a soul that had been despaired of, and is delivered from greater danger than if there had always been hope for him, or less danger? For you too, merciful Father, rejoice more "over one penitent, than over ninety-nine just who do not need penance." And we also hear with great pleasure when we learn how the sheep that had strayed is brought back on the shoulder of the exultant shepherd, and the drachma is put back into your treasury, as the neighbors of the woman who found it rejoice with her. And the joy of the solemnity of your house shakes out the tears when it is read in your house about the younger son "that he was dead and came back to life, he was lost, and is found." For you rejoice in us, and in your angels, holy with holy love. For you are always the same, who always know in the same way things that are not always the same.

What then goes on in the soul when it is more joyed because those that it loved are found or brought back, than if it had always had them?

The victorious general celebrates a triumph, and he would not have conquered had he not fought, and the greater the danger was in battle, the greater joy in the triumph. A storm tosses those who are sailing, and threatens shipwreck: all grow pale at the nearness of death. The sky becomes calm, and the sea, and they exult greatly since they had feared greatly. A dear one is sick and his pulse brings evil tidings. All who want him well are sick with him in heart. He grows better and does not yet walk with normal strength, and yet there is joy such as there was not when previously he did walk in good health and strength. Everywhere greater joy is preceded by greater trouble.

8.4. Come, Lord and act. Arouse us and call us back. Enkindle us and carry us off. Be fragrant and sweet, let us love and run. Do not many return to you from a deeper hell of blindness than Victorinus, and approach and are illumined, receiving your light, and if they receive it they obtain from you "the power to become your sons." But if they are less known to the people, even they who know them rejoice less. For when many rejoice, even in each individual there is more abundant joy, since they warm each other and are inflamed from each other. Then, because they are known to many, they lead many to salvation, and go ahead of many who will follow. And so there is much joy over them, and over those who went before them, because there is not joy over just one. Far be it that in your tabernacle there be preference for the rich over the poor, or for the noble over the ignoble, when rather "you have chosen the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and the ignoble things of this world you have chosen, and the contemptible and the things that are not, as if they are, so as to bring to naught the things that are." And yet that very least of your Apostles, though whose tongue you sounded forth those words, when Paul the proconsul, his pride being conquered by his (Saul's) service, was sent under the light yoke of your Christ, and became a provincial of the Great King, he who was once called Saul, loved to be called Paul as a mark of so great a victory. So, the more pleasant the thought of the heart of Victorinus that great and keen weapon with which he had destroyed so many—so much more abundantly should your sons exult.

8.5. But when your man Simplicianus told me these things about Victorinus, I grew eager to imitate him. For that is why he (Simplicianus) had told it. But afterwards he added this, that at the time of the Emperor Julian, a law was passed by which Christians were forbidden to teach literature and oratory. But he, embracing that law, preferred to desert the wordy school instead of deserting your Word, by which "you make the tongues of infants eloquent—and so he seemed to me the braver, the happier he was because he found occasion for taking time for you. I sighed for that, but was bound, not by another's chain but by my iron will. For the enemy held my will, and had made of it a chain, and had bound me. For from my perverse will there came lust, and when I was a slave to lust, it became habit, and when I did not resist the habit, it became a necessity. And so a hard slavery held me bound by these, as it were, links, interwoven with each other—which is why I called it a chain. The new will that had begun to arise in me, to worship you freely and to enjoy you, O God, the only sure pleasure, was not yet fit to overcome the old will, strengthened by its long duration. And so my two wills, the one old, the one new, the one carnal, the other spiritual, fought with each other, and by their discord wasted my soul.

Thus I understood by my own experience that which I had read, how "the flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh." To be sure, I was in both, but more in that which I approved in me than in that which I disapproved of in me. For there it was more not I since in great part I endured it unwillingly instead of acting willingly. But yet habit had become more pugnacious as a result of myself, since I had willingly come where I did not want to be. And who could rightly contradict, since a just penalty pursues the one who sins? And no longer did I have that excuse that I formerly seemed to have, namely that I did not yet scorn the world and serve you because it was uncertain where truth was to be found. For now it was certain. But I, bound to the earth, still refused to serve you, and I feared to be loosed from all obstacles in the way in which I should have feared to be enmeshed in them.

And so I was sweetly weighed down by the burden of the world, as one is in sleep; and the thoughts by which I meditated on you were like the attempts of a person who tries to wake up, but is yet overcome by sleep and is sunk more deeply in it. And just as there is no one who would want to sleep always—to be awake is better in the judgment of every sound person—yet a man often puts off shaking off sleep when a heavy sluggishness is in his limbs, and he very gladly takes sleep even though it displeases him (to continue), even though the time for getting up has already come. So I judged it certainly better to give myself to your love, than to give in to my desire.

But that pleased me, yet it did not win. This pleased me, and bound me. For I had no answer to give when you said to me: "Arise, you who sleep, and get up from the dead, and Christ will illumine you." And I had no answer to give you when you showed you were speaking the truth on every point, being convicted by the truth, except for some slow and sleepy words: "Right away, right away, wait a bit." But that "right away" went on and on. And "wait a bit" went long. For in vain "I was delighted with your law according to the interior man, while another law in my limbs fought against the law of my mind and led me captive in the law of sin which was in my limbs." For the law of sin is the force of habit, with which the soul, even when unwilling, is held and dragged along, deservingly, inasmuch as it slipped into it willingly. Therefore: "Wretched me, who would deliver me from the body of this death—unless your grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord?"

8.6. I was going about things as usual, but with my anxiety growing, and daily I sighed to you. I was frequenting your Church, as much as the business under whose weight I lived permitted. With me was Alypius, at leisure after his third term as assessor, waiting to see to whom he could again sell his advice, as I was selling the ability to speak—if that can be given by any teaching. Nebridius moreover had given in to our friendship so as to teach under Verecundus, a good friend of all of us at Milan, and a fellow citizen and grammarian, who by the claims of friendship had asked a faithful helper from our circle, which he needed very much.

It was not profit that had drawn Nebridius there, for he could have done better from teaching had he wished. But as a mild and sweet friend, out of the claims of the kindness of friendship, he did not want to turn down our request. He was doing that most prudently, taking care not to become known to people of importance "according to this world, " seeking to avoid thus all disturbance of soul, which he wanted to have free, and at leisure as many hours as possible to seek or read or hear something about wisdom.

So on a certain day on which Nebridius was absent—I do not recall the reason—behold, there came to us, to Alypius and myself, at my house, Ponticianus, a certain fellow citizen of ours, inasmuch as he was an African, serving outstandingly in the palace. He wanted something or other from us. And we sat down to talk, and he happened to notice a book on the game table before us. He picked it up, opened it, found it was the Apostle Paul—surprisingly. For he had thought it was one of the books whose profession was wearing on me. But then smiling, and with a look of congratulation to me, he said he was surprised that he, by chance, found this book, only this book. For he was a Christian and a faithful one, and he used to prostrate himself often to you, our God, in the Church, in frequent and long prayers. When I told him that I was studying Scripture most of all, a conversation arose in which he told about Anthony the monk of Egypt, whose name shone so brightly among your servants, but was unknown to us even to that time. When he found that out, he dwelt on the subject, telling us who did not know about such a great man, and marveling at our lack of knowledge.

We were amazed in hearing that so recently, and practically in our own times, there were perfectly attested wonders of yours in the right faith and the Catholic Church. We all marveled—we because these things were so great; he, because we had not heard of them.

From there his conversation came to the flocks of the monasteries, and the sweet odor of your ways, and the fruitful deserts of the wasteland, of which we knew nothing. There was at Milan a monastery, full of good brothers, outside the walls of the city, under the guidance of Ambrose. And we had not known. He continued and spoke further, and we were in intent silence. And as a result it happened that he told how once he and three other companions, at Trier, when the Emperor was occupied with an afternoon Spectacle of a circus, had gone to walk in the gardens near the walls and that it happened that they walked in pairs, one with him, and the other two by themselves. He said that the latter, in wandering about, had come upon a certain hut in which there lived servants of yours, "poor in spirit, of such as is the kingdom of heaven, " and that they had found there a book in which was written the life of Anthony.

One of them began to read it, and to marvel, and to be set on fire, and as he read to consider quickly taking up such a life, and leaving the service of the world, to serve you. He was one of those who are called special agents. Then suddenly he was filled with holy love

and sober shame, and, angry at himself, he cast his eyes on his friend and said to him: "Tell me, please where do we hope to get by all these labors of ours?" What are we seeking? For what purpose are we in office? Can our hope in the palace be any more than to be friends of the Emperor? And what is not fragile there, and full of dangers? And through how many dangers does one come to still greater danger? And when will that be? But if I want to be a friend of God—behold, I am becoming that now."

He said this, and in the turmoil of bringing forth new life, he cast his eyes on the pages again, and he read and was changed inwardly, where you saw him. And his mind put off the world, and was soon clear. For while he read and churned over the waves of his heart, he raged at himself for awhile, and made a decision, a decision for better things, and, already being yours, he said to his friend: "I have already torn myself from that hope of ours, and have decided to serve God, and to do it beginning this very hour, in this place. If you are too sluggish to imitate me, do not oppose me." His friend answered that he was adhering to him as a companion for so great a reward and so great an office.

At that point Ponticianus and the other who was with him, walking through other parts of the garden seeking them, came to the place, and when they found them reminded them to come back, for the day was far along. But they told of their decision and resolve, and how such a will had arisen and become firm in them, and asked them not to bother them if they refused to join them. They (Ponticianus and friend), not changing from what they were before, yet wept over themselves, as he said, and devoutly congratulated them, and commended themselves to their prayers. And dragging their heart on the earth, they went back to the palace. But the others, fixing their heart on heaven, remained in the hut. And both had fiancées, who after they heard this, dedicated their virginity to you too.

8.7. Ponticianus was telling these things, but you, Lord, as he spoke forced me to turn to myself, taking me from behind my back, where I had put myself, in not wanting to see myself, and you were putting me before my face, so that I could see how shameful I was, how twisted and dirty, besmirched and ulcerous. And I looked and was horrified, and there was no place to flee from myself. And if I tried to turn my gaze aside—he kept on telling what he was telling, and you still kept putting me before myself and thrust me into my own eyes, so that I might find out my iniquity and hate it. I had known it, but was covering over, and holding back and forgetting.

But then, the more ardently I loved those whose salutary attitudes I had heard, by which they gave themselves completely to you to be healed, the more contemptuously I hated myself compared to them. For many years of mine I was fired with the zeal for wisdom, yet I delayed putting off earthly happiness to get time to search for it—though not only its finding, but even the mere search for it should have been preferred to finding treasures, and the kingdoms of the nations, and pleasures of the body surrounding one at will.

But I, wretched youth, so miserable at the very beginning of youth, had even asked chastity of you and said: "Give me chastity and continence—but not now." For I was afraid you might hear me at once and quickly heal me from the disease of concupiscence, which I preferred to have satisfied instead of extinguished. And I had gone "through wicked ways" with sacrilegious superstition, not being sure in it, but as it were preferring it to the other things, which I was not seeking devoutly, but was fighting against, as an enemy.

And I had thought I was putting off, from day to day, scorning the hope of the world and following you because nothing certain appeared to me by which I could direct my course. And the day had come in which I was naked to myself, and my conscience reproached me: "Where are you, O tongue? For you used to say that because of the uncertainty of truth you did not want to cast aside the burden of vanity. Behold, now it is certain." And that vanity still weighs you down—while with free shoulder they take wing who were not so worn out in seeking, nor for ten years and more meditated on it."

So I was gnawing at myself inwardly, and was vehemently confounded with horrible shame while Ponticianus was telling such things.

When the conversation and the reason for which he come were finished, he went back, and I went to myself. What did I not say against myself? With what whips of thoughts did I not scourge my soul, so it would follow me as I tried to go to you? And it was struggling backwards, and refusing, and not excusing itself. For all the arguments were used up and refuted. There remained mute trembling, and my soul feared like death to be restrained from the flow of habit in which it was wasting away even to death.

8.8. Then in that great strife of my interior house, which I had strongly stirred up with my soul in our chamber, my heart, disturbed as much in face as in mind, I come to Alypius and exclaim: "What are we enduring? What is this that you have heard? The unlearned rise up and seize heaven—and we, with our learning without a heart—behold: how we are wallowing in flesh and blood! Or because they have gone first, are we ashamed to follow, and not ashamed not even to follow?" I said some things of this sort, and the boiling within me snatched me from him, while he was silent in astonishment as he looked at me. For I did not sound as usual, and my forehead, cheeks, eyes, color, quality of voice spoke my soul more than the words I said.

A garden belonged to our lodging which we used, as did the whole house. For the host, the master of the house, did not live there. The tumult of my breast had carried me there where no one might hinder the hot strife that I had begun with myself, until it would have the outcome you knew, but I did not. So I went into the garden, and Alypius followed step by step: for I did not lack secrecy where he was. Or when would he desert me in such a state? We sat, as far as we could from the building. I was raging in spirit, indignant with most turbulent indignation that I was not entering into a covenant and pact with you, my God for which all my bones cried out, and praised it to the sky. One does not reach that point by ship or chariot or on foot, as far as I had gone from the house to the place where we sat. For not only to go, but also to arrive there was nothing other than to will to go—but to will strongly and fully, not to toss hither and thither a half-wounded will, struggling, with one part rising up, the other falling down.

Finally, I was doing so many things with my body in the very tides of hesitation, which sometimes men want to do, but are not able if they lack the limbs themselves, or if they are bound with chains, or weakened by sickness, or blocked in any other way. If I pulled my hair, if I struck my brow, if with locked fingers I held my knee—I did it because I willed to. I might have willed it and not done it if the free movement of limbs would not obey me. So I did so many things in which willing was not the same things as being able to do—yet I did not do that which pleased me with incomparably greater love, and as soon as I would will it, I would be able—because as soon as I would will, I would will. For in this (deciding within myself to be converted) the ability and the will were the same thing, the very willing was already doing. And yet it did not happen, and my body more easily obeyed the slightest will of my soul, so that my limbs would move as I willed, than the soul itself obeyed itself towards that great decision, which was to be done in the will alone.

8.9. Whence this monstrous thing and why? Let your mercy shine out, and let me ask, in case the hiding places of the penalties of man can answer me, and the dark crushings of the sons of Adam. Whence this monstrous thing and why? The soul commands the body and is obeyed at once. The soul commands itself, and there is resistance. The soul commands that a hand move, and such is the facility, that one can scarcely distinguish the command from the execution of the command—and the soul is the soul—but the hand is part of the body. The soul commands that the soul will—and it is not another (than itself), yet it does not do it. Whence this monstrous thing and why? It commands, as I say, that it will, and it would not command unless it (already) willed—and yet the will does not do what the will commands.

But it does not completely will—and so it does not completely command. For it commands to the extent that it wills, and what it commands is not done, to the extent that it does not will. For the will commands that it will, and does not command another. But it does not fully command—and so what it commands is not done. For if it fully willed, it would not command that there be a decision—there would already be a decision. So it is not a monstrous thing, this partly willing, partly not willing—but it is a sickness of the soul because it does not completely rise: it is lifted by the truth, but weighed down by habit. And so there are not two wills, since one of them is not complete, and that is lacking to the one, which is present in the other.

8.10. Let those perish before your face, O God, as the vain-speakers and seducers of minds perish, who, since they notice the two wills present when one deliberates, assert that there are two natures of two minds, the one good, the other evil. They themselves are the real evils, when they have these evil thoughts. And these same men will be good themselves, if they think truly, and agree with the true, so that your Apostle may say to them: "Once you were darkness, but now light in the Lord." For they want to be light, not in the Lord, but in themselves, thinking the nature of the soul is the same as God, and so they became the denser darkness, since they went farther from you, in dreadful arrogance, leaving you, "the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world." Notice what you are saying, and blush, and "approach to Him, and be enlightened, and your faces will not blush." I, when I was deliberating about serving the Lord my God, as I had long planned, I was the one who willed, I was the one who did not will. It was I, I. I neither fully willed, nor fully was unwilling, and so I strove with myself, and was scattered from myself, and that very scattering took place when I was unwilling, to be sure, yet it did not prove the nature of another mind (was in me) but it was my punishment.

8.11. Thus I was sick and tormented, accusing myself more bitterly than usual, and I twisted and turned myself in my chain till it would be completely broken—the thin chain with which I was still held. But yet I was held. And you kept pressing on in my secret interior, Lord, with severe mercy, doubling the scourges of fear and shame so I would not stop again, and that slender thin chain that remained might not be broken, and would grow strong again, and bind me the more strongly. For I kept saying interiorly: "Behold, now let it be done, now let it be done." And at that word I was already on the way to deciding. I was almost doing it—and not doing it. Yet I did not slip back to the former things, but I stood nearby, and caught my breath. And I was trying again, and was almost there, and almost touching it, and grabbing it, and yet I was not there, nor did I touch it nor hold it—hesitating to die to death and to live to life, and the worse that was familiar in me carried more weight than the better that was unfamiliar. And the very point of time at which I was to change, the closer it came, the more horror it struck in me, but it did not drive me back, nor turn me aside, but left me in suspense.

Trifles of trifles held me back, and vanities of vanities, my old girl friends, and they pulled at my fleshy garment and murmured softly: "Are you sending us away? From this moment will we be with you no more forever? And from that moment will this and that never be allowed you forever." And what things they suggested in that which I said "this and that!" What things they suggested, O my God! Let your mercy turn aside from the soul of your servant the filths, the improprieties they suggested! And I heard them now far less than halfway, not as though they were freely contradicting and openly coming towards me, but as if muttering from behind my back, and as if by stealth pulling at me as I tried to depart, so that I might look back. Yet they held me back, as I hesitated to snatch myself away and shake them off, and to go to where I was being called, as that violent habit kept saying to me: "Do you think you can do without these?"

But now it (habit) was saying it very tepidly. For there opened up from that direction to which I had turned my face, and to which I trembled to cross over, the chaste dignity of continence, serene, not dissolutely smiling, but honorably enticing me to come and not to hesitate, and stretching out devout hands to take and embrace me, hands full of the flocks of good examples. There were so many boys and girls, there were numerous young people, and every age, and serious widows, and virginal old women. And in all was continence herself, not at all sterile, but the fruitful mother of the sons of joys from you, her husband, O Lord. And they smiled at me with an encouraging smile, as if to say: "Cannot you do what these men and women do? Or can these do it in themselves, and not in the Lord their God? The Lord God of these gave me to them. Why do you stand by yourself—and fail to stand? Cast yourself on Him. Do not fear, He will not pull back and let you fall. Cast yourself forward securely. He will catch and heal you."

And I blushed greatly, because I still heard the murmur of these trifles, and hung hesitant. And again she (continence) as it were said: "Turn a deaf ear to those unclean limbs of yours on the earth, so that they may be mortified. They tell you of delights, but not like the law of the Lord your God." This struggle in my heart was only myself against myself. But Alypius, sticking close to my side, awaited in silence the outcome of my unusual disturbance.

8.12. But when deep reflection had gathered up and heaped together from the hidden deep all my misery, in the sight of my heart, there arose an immense storm, bringing in immense rain of tears; and so I might pour it all out with its voices, I got up from Alypius. For solitude suggested itself to me as more fit for the matter of weeping. And I withdrew too remotely for even his presence to be burdensome to me. Thus was I then, and he sensed it. For I had, I suppose, said something or other in which the sound of my voice seemed already pregnant with tears, and then I had gotten up. So he stayed where we had been sitting, greatly amazed. Then I prostrated myself under a certain fig tree, I know not how, and I released the gates of tears and the rivers of my eyes broke forth, an acceptable sacrifice to you. And not in these words, but to the same effect I said to you: "And you, O Lord, how long? How long, Lord? Will you be angry forever? Do not remember our old iniquities." For I felt I was held by them, and I tossed forth pitiful words: "How long, how long, tomorrow and tomorrow? Why not now? Why may not the end of my shamefulness come this hour?"

I kept saying these things, and was weeping with most bitter crushing of my heart. And behold, I hear a voice from the neighboring house, saying in song and often repeating, as the voice of some boy or girl: "Take it and read; take it and read.&q