Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 1

THE THIRTEEN BOOKS. BOOK ONE. Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised: great is Thy power, and of Thy wisdom there is no number. And man desires to praise Thee, man who is but a portion of Thy creation, man who bears about with him his mortality, who bears about with him the testimony of his sin and the testimony that Thou dost resist the proud: and yet man, this portion of Thy creation, desires to praise Thee. Thou dost stir him up, that it may be a delight to praise Thee, for Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it rest in Thee. Grant me, O Lord, to know and to understand whether it is first to call upon Thee or to praise Thee, and whether to know Thee comes before to call upon Thee. But who calls upon Thee not knowing Thee? For one not knowing might call upon another instead of Thee. Or rather, art Thou called upon that Thou mayest be known?

But how shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe without a preacher? And they that seek the Lord shall praise Him. For they that seek Him shall find Him, and they that find Him shall praise Him. Let me seek Thee, O Lord, in calling upon Thee, and let me call upon Thee believing in Thee: for Thou hast been preached unto us. My faith calls upon Thee, O Lord, the faith which Thou hast given me, which Thou hast breathed into me through the humanity of Thy Son, through the ministry of Thy preacher. And how shall I call upon my God, my God and my Lord, since indeed when I call upon Him I am calling Him into my very self? And what room is there within me, into which my God may come? Into what place may God come into me, the God who made heaven and earth? Is it so, O Lord my God, that there is anything in me which can contain Thee?

Or do heaven and earth, which Thou hast made and in which Thou hast made me, contain Thee? Or, because without Thee whatever exists could not be, does it come to pass that whatever exists contains Thee? Since therefore I too exist, why do I beg that Thou shouldst come into me, who would not be unless Thou wert in me? For I am not yet in hell, and yet even there Thou art. For though I should descend into hell, Thou art present. I should not therefore be, my God, I should not be at all, unless Thou wert in me. Or rather, should I not be unless I were in Thee, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things? Even so, O Lord, even so. Whither do I call Thee, since I am in Thee? Or from whence wouldst Thou come into me? For whither could I withdraw beyond heaven and earth, that from thence my God might come into me, He who said: I fill heaven and earth?

Do heaven and earth then contain Thee, since Thou fillest them? Or dost Thou fill them, and yet there remains over, since they do not contain Thee? And into what dost Thou pour back whatever of Thee remains over when heaven and earth are filled? Or hast Thou no need to be contained by anything, Thou who containest all things, since what Thou fillest, Thou fillest by containing? For the vessels which are full of Thee do not make Thee stable, for though they be broken Thou art not poured out. And when Thou art poured out upon us, Thou dost not lie low, but liftest us up; nor art Thou scattered, but Thou gatherest us together. But Thou who fillest all things, dost fill them with Thy whole self. Or, because all things cannot contain Thee whole, do they contain a part of Thee, and do all things at once contain the same part? Or do single things contain single parts, the greater greater parts, the smaller smaller?

Is there then some part of Thee that is greater, some part that is lesser? Or art Thou everywhere whole, and does no single thing contain Thee whole? What then art Thou, my God? What, I ask, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? Or who is God save our God? Most high, most good, most mighty, most almighty, most merciful and most just, most hidden and most present, most beautiful and most strong, steadfast and incomprehensible, unchangeable yet changing all things, never new, never old, making all things new, leading the proud into decay though they know it not; ever working, ever at rest, gathering yet lacking nothing, bearing and filling and protecting, creating and nourishing and bringing to perfection, seeking though nothing is wanting to Thee.

Thou lovest, yet burnest not with passion; Thou art jealous, yet free from care; Thou repentest, yet grievest not; Thou art angry, yet calm; Thou changest Thy works, yet changest not Thy counsel; Thou receivest back what Thou findest, yet hast never lost; never in want, yet rejoicing in gains; never covetous, yet exacting interest. There is paid over to Thee more than is owing, that Thou mayest be debtor, and yet who has anything that is not Thine? Thou payest debts, owing nothing to any; Thou forgivest debts, losing nothing. And what have we said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? Or what does anyone say when he speaks of Thee? Yet woe to those who keep silence about Thee, since even those who speak much are as the dumb. Who will grant me to rest in Thee? Who will grant me that Thou shouldst come into my heart and intoxicate it, that I may forget my evils and embrace Thee, my one good? What art Thou to me? Have mercy, that I may speak.

What am I myself to Thee, that Thou shouldst command me to love Thee, and shouldst be angry with me if I do it not, and threaten me with vast miseries? Is it then a small misery in itself, if I love Thee not? Woe is me! Tell me, by Thy mercies, O Lord my God, what Thou art to me. Say unto my soul: I am thy salvation. So say it, that I may hear. Behold, the ears of my heart are before Thee, O Lord; open them, and say unto my soul: I am thy salvation. I will run after this voice, and lay hold on Thee. Hide not Thy face from me: let me die, lest I die, that I may see it. Narrow is the house of my soul, that Thou mayest enter into it: let it be enlarged by Thee. It is in ruins: do Thou repair it. It has within it things that offend Thine eyes: I confess it, and I know it. But who shall cleanse it? Or to what other than Thee shall I cry:

Cleanse me, O Lord, from my secret faults, and from those of others spare Thy servant? I believe, and therefore do I speak. O Lord, Thou knowest. Have I not confessed before Thee my transgressions against myself, my God, and hast Thou not forgiven the impiety of my heart? I do not contend in judgment with Thee, who art the truth; and I would not deceive myself, lest my iniquity lie unto itself. I do not therefore contend in judgment with Thee, because if Thou, O Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But yet suffer me to speak before Thy mercy, me who am but dust and ashes; suffer me yet to speak, since behold, it is Thy mercy, not man, my mocker, to whom I speak. And perhaps Thou too dost mock me, but turning Thou wilt have mercy upon me.

For what is it that I wish to say, O Lord, but that I know not whence I came hither into this—shall I call it a dying life or a living death? I know not. And the consolations of Thy mercies received me, as I have heard from the parents of my flesh, the one from whom and the one in whom Thou didst form me in time; for I myself do not remember. The consolations of human milk therefore received me, yet neither my mother nor my nurses filled their own breasts, but Thou through them didst give me the nourishment of infancy, according to Thine ordinance and Thy riches disposed even to the foundation of things. Thou also didst grant me to wish for no more than Thou gavest, and didst grant those who nursed me the will to give me what Thou gavest them: for by an ordered affection they were willing to give me of that wherein they abounded from Thee.

For it was a good to them, this my good which came from them, though not from them but through them: for from Thee indeed are all good things, O God, and from my God is all my welfare. This I have perceived since, while Thou criest aloud to me through these very gifts which Thou bestowest within and without. For then I knew how to suck and to take pleasure in delights, and to weep at the hurts of my flesh, nothing more. Afterwards I began to smile, first in sleep, then waking. For this has been told me of myself, and I believed it, since thus we see other infants; for of my own self I remember nothing.

And lo, little by little I began to perceive where I was, and I wished to make my desires known to those through whom they might be fulfilled, and I could not, because those desires were within, while they were without, nor by any sense of theirs could they enter into my soul. And so I tossed about my limbs and my voice, signs like to my desires, the few that I could, such as I could: for they were not truly like. And when I was not obeyed, whether because I was not understood or lest it should harm me, I was indignant at my elders for not submitting, and at free persons for not serving me, and I avenged myself upon them by weeping. Such I learned that infants are, those that I could observe; and that I myself was such, those who knew not, my nurses, showed me more than those who knew. And behold, my infancy is long since dead, and I yet live.

But Thou, O Lord, who ever livest and in whom nothing dies, since before the beginnings of the ages and before all that can even be called 'before' Thou art, and art God and Lord of all that Thou hast created, and with Thee stand the causes of all unstable things, and the unchangeable origins of all changeable things abide, and the everlasting reasons of all irrational and temporal things live—tell me, Thy suppliant, O God, and being merciful tell me, Thy wretched one, whether my infancy succeeded some other age of mine already dead. Was it that age which I passed within my mother's womb? For of that too something has been told me, and I myself have seen women with child. And what before that, my sweetness, my God? Was I anywhere, or anyone?

For who can tell me these things, I have no one; neither father nor mother could, nor the experience of others, nor my own memory. Dost Thou laugh at me for asking these things, and dost Thou bid me praise Thee and confess to Thee concerning that which I do know? I confess to Thee, O Lord of heaven and earth, giving Thee praise concerning my origins and my infancy, which I do not remember; and Thou hast granted to man to conjecture concerning himself from others, and to believe much concerning himself even on the authority of poor weak women. For I existed and lived even then, and at the very end of infancy I was already seeking signs by which I might make my feelings known to others. Whence comes such a living creature, save from Thee, O Lord? Or shall anyone be the maker of his own self?

Or is any vein drawn from elsewhere, by which being and life flow into us, save that Thou makest us, O Lord, to whom to be and to live are not one thing and another, because to be in the highest degree and to live in the highest degree is one and the same? For Thou art most high, and Thou changest not, neither is this present day brought to its end in Thee, and yet in Thee it is brought to its end, because in Thee are all these things too: for they would have no ways of passing on, unless Thou didst contain them. And since Thy years fail not, Thy years are this present day: and how many of our days and of our fathers' days have already passed through Thy today, and from it received their measures and somehow came to be, and yet others shall pass and shall receive and somehow shall come to be.

But Thou art the selfsame, and all things of tomorrow and beyond, and all things of yesterday and before, Thou wilt do today, Thou hast done today. What is it to me if anyone understand not? Let him too rejoice and say: What is this? Let him rejoice even so, and let him love to find Thee by not finding rather than by finding not to find Thee. Hear me, O God. Woe to the sins of men! And man saith these things, and Thou hast mercy upon him, since Thou madest him and madest not sin in him. Who reminds me of the sin of my infancy? For none is pure from sin before Thee, not even the infant whose life is but of one day upon the earth. Who reminds me of it? May not any tiny little one now do so, in whom I see what I do not remember of myself? What then was I sinning in then? Was it that I gaped after the breasts, crying?

For if I should now so gape, not indeed after the breasts, but after food suited to my years, I should most justly be laughed at and rebuked. Then therefore I did things deserving rebuke, but because I could not understand him who rebuked me, neither custom nor reason allowed me to be rebuked. For as we grow we root out and cast away such things. Nor have I seen anyone who, when cleansing something, knowingly throws away the good. Or were those things good even for that time—to seek by weeping even what would have been given to my hurt, to be bitterly indignant at free persons not subject to me, at elders, and at those by whom I was begotten, and at many others besides, wiser than they, not obeying the beck of my will, and to strive to do harm by striking, as far as I could, because I was not obeyed in commands which it would have been ruinous to obey?

Thus the weakness of an infant's limbs is innocent, but not the mind of infants. I myself have seen and known a little child that was jealous: it could not yet speak, and yet it gazed pale with a bitter look upon its foster-brother. Who knows not this? Mothers and nurses say that they expiate these things by I know not what remedies. Unless indeed this too is innocence, that where the fount of milk flows abundant and overflowing, one who is most in need of it and as yet sustains life by that one nourishment alone should not be suffered to have a partner. But these things are gently borne with, not because they are nothing or but little, but because with the increase of age they will pass away. And this thou mayest prove from the fact that these very same things cannot be borne with an even mind when they are detected in someone older.

Thou therefore, O Lord my God, who gavest life to the infant and a body, which, as we see, Thou hast furnished with senses, knit together with limbs, adorned with shape, and for its wholeness and well-being hast instilled all the impulses of a living creature—Thou commandest me to praise Thee in these things, and to confess to Thee, and to sing unto Thy name, O Most High, because Thou art God almighty and good, even hadst Thou done these things alone, which none other can do save Thou, the One, from whom is all measure, most beautiful, who givest form to all things and by Thy law dost order all things.

This age then, O Lord, which I do not remember having lived, concerning which I have believed others and which I have conjectured that I passed from observing other infants—although such conjecture is very trustworthy—I am loath to reckon as part of this life of mine which I live in this world. For as far as concerns the darkness of my forgetfulness, it is on a par with that which I lived in my mother's womb. But if I was conceived in iniquity, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb, where, I beseech Thee, my God, where, O Lord, was I, Thy servant, where or when was I innocent? But behold, I pass over that time: and what have I now to do with it, of which I recall no traces? Did I not, passing on from infancy, come hither into boyhood? Or rather did it come into me and succeed infancy? Nor did infancy depart:

for whither did it go? And yet it now was no more. For I was no longer an infant who could not speak, but already a boy who could speak. And I remember this, and whence I had learned to speak I afterwards observed. For my elders did not teach me by offering me words in some fixed order of instruction, as they did a little later with letters; but I myself, with the mind which Thou gavest me, my God, when I wished to express the feelings of my heart by groans and various sounds and various movements of my limbs, that my will might be obeyed, and could not utter all that I wished nor to all whom I wished, I weighed things in my memory: when men named some object and at that word moved their body toward something, I saw and grasped that the thing was called by them by the name which they uttered when they wished to point it out.

But that they meant this was made plain by the movement of the body, as it were by the natural words of all nations, which are made by countenance and the beck of the eyes and the action of the other members and the sound of the voice indicating the affection of the mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or fleeing things. Thus, by hearing words placed in their proper places in various sentences and repeated often, I gradually gathered of what things they were the signs, and having trained my mouth to these signs, I now uttered my wishes through them. So with those among whom I lived I shared the signs for expressing my wishes, and I entered more deeply into the stormy fellowship of human life, depending upon the authority of my parents and the beck of my elders.

O God, my God, what miseries and mockeries did I there experience, when as a boy it was set before me as right living to obey those who admonished me, that I might flourish in this world and excel in those skills of speech that serve the honor of men and false riches. Thereupon I was put to school to learn letters, in which, wretched as I was, I knew not what use there might be. And yet, if I was slothful in learning, I was beaten. For this was praised by the elders, and many who had lived this life before us had laid out toilsome paths, through which we were compelled to pass, with multiplied labor and sorrow upon the sons of Adam.

But we found, O Lord, men praying to Thee, and we learned from them, perceiving Thee, as best we could, to be some great One who, even without appearing to our senses, couldst hear us and come to our aid. For as a boy I began to pray to Thee, my help and my refuge, and to call upon Thee I burst the knots of my tongue, and prayed to Thee, little though I was, with no little affection, that I might not be beaten at school. And when Thou didst not hear me—which was not to my folly—my stripes were laughed at by my elders, even by my very parents, who wished no harm to befall me; and these were then my great and grievous evil.

Is there anyone, O Lord, of so great a soul, cleaving to Thee with so vast an affection—is there, I say, anyone—for a certain dullness can also do this—is there then anyone who, by piously cleaving to Thee, is so greatly affected that he counts as little the racks and hooks and other such various torments, for the escaping of which Thou art entreated throughout all lands with great fear, loving those who most bitterly dread these things, even as our parents laughed at the torments with which we boys were afflicted by our masters? For we feared those torments no less, nor did we beseech Thee less to escape them; and yet we sinned by writing or reading or thinking about our letters less than was required of us.

For I lacked not, O Lord, memory or wit, which Thou didst will us to have in sufficient measure for that age; but I delighted to play, and vengeance was taken upon me by those who were certainly doing the very same things. But the trifles of elders are called business, while when boys do such things they are punished by their elders, and no one pities the boys or the elders or both. Unless indeed some good judge of things approves of my having been beaten because I played ball as a boy, and by that play was hindered from learning my letters more quickly—those letters by which, when grown, I might play more disgracefully. Or did he do anything else, the very man by whom I was beaten, who, if he were worsted in some little dispute by a fellow-teacher, was tormented with more bile and envy than I, when in a contest of ball I was beaten by my playmate?

And yet I sinned, O Lord my God, Thou orderer and creator of all natural things, but of sins the orderer only, O Lord my God, I sinned by acting against the precepts of my parents and of those masters. For afterwards I could put to good use the letters which they wished me to learn, with whatever intent those elders of mine had. For I was disobedient not from choosing better things, but from love of play, loving in contests proud victories, and to have my ears tickled with false fables, that they might itch the more ardently, while the same curiosity flashed more and more through my eyes upon the shows and games of the elders;

yet those who put on these shows are so endowed with that dignity that almost all wish it for their little ones, whom nonetheless they willingly suffer to be beaten if by such spectacles they are hindered from the study by which they desire them to attain to the putting on of such shows. Look upon these things, O Lord, with mercy, and free us who already call upon Thee; free also those who do not yet call upon Thee, that they may call upon Thee and that Thou mayest free them. For I had heard, even while still a boy, of eternal life promised to us through the humility of the Lord our God descending to our pride, and I was already signed with the sign of His cross and seasoned with His salt from the very womb of my mother, who greatly hoped in Thee.

Thou sawest, O Lord, when, while I was still a boy, on a certain day I suddenly burned with a pressure of the stomach and was almost at the point of death—Thou sawest, my God, since Thou wast already my guardian, with what movement of mind and with what faith I begged for the baptism of Thy Christ, my God and my Lord, from the piety of my mother and of the mother of us all, Thy Church. And the mother of my flesh was troubled, since with a chaste heart in Thy faith she was travailing the more lovingly for my eternal salvation, and she would in haste have had me initiated and washed in the saving sacraments, confessing Thee, O Lord Jesus, unto the remission of sins, had I not straightway recovered.

And so my cleansing was deferred, as though it were necessary that I should be yet further defiled if I lived, because forsooth after that washing the guilt of the defilements of sin would be greater and more perilous. So I already believed, and so did she and all the household, save my father alone, who nonetheless did not prevail in me over the claim of my mother's piety, so as to prevent me from believing in Christ, even as he himself did not yet believe. For she labored earnestly that Thou, my God, shouldst be my Father rather than he; and in this Thou didst help her, that she might overcome her husband, to whom, though the better, she was subject, because in this too she was subject to Thee who commandest it.

I ask Thee, my God, I would fain know, if Thou also wouldst, with what counsel my baptism was deferred, that I should not then be baptized—whether it was for my good that the reins of sinning were as it were loosed for me, or whether they were not loosed. Whence then even now from this side and that there sounds about in our ears on every hand: 'Let him alone, let him do it; for he is not yet baptized.' And yet in the health of the body we do not say: 'Let him be wounded further; for he is not yet healed.' How much better then would it have been that I should be healed quickly, and that it should be brought about by my care and that of my own people, that the recovered salvation of my soul should be safe under Thy protection, who hadst given it. Far better indeed.

But how many and how great were the waves of temptation that seemed to hang over me after boyhood, my mother already knew them, and she chose rather to commit the earth, from which I might afterwards be shaped, than the very image itself already formed. In boyhood itself, for which less was feared on my behalf than for youth, I did not love letters and hated to be urged toward them; and yet I was urged, and it was done well for me, though I did not do well: for I would not have learned unless I had been compelled. For no one does well against his will, even if what he does is good. Nor did those who urged me do well, but it was done well for me by Thee, my God. For they regarded not to what end I might refer that which they compelled me to learn, save to glut the insatiable cravings of a wealthy poverty and an ignominious glory.

But Thou, by whom the very hairs of our head are numbered, didst use for my profit the error of all who urged me to learn; while of my own error, in that I was unwilling to learn, Thou didst use for my punishment, with which it was not unfitting that I should be smitten, so tiny a boy and so great a sinner. Thus out of those who did not do well Thou didst do well to me, and out of myself sinning Thou didst justly requite me. For Thou hast commanded, and so it is, that every disordered mind should be its own punishment. But what was the cause why I hated Greek letters, with which as a little boy I was steeped, is not even now sufficiently clear to me. For I had come to love Latin—not those which the first masters teach, but those which are taught by those who are called grammarians.

For those first letters, where one learns to read and write and count, I found no less burdensome and full of penalty than all the Greek ones. Yet whence was this, save from the sin and vanity of life, in that I was flesh and a spirit going forth and not returning? For surely those first letters were better, because more certain, by which there was wrought in me, and has been wrought, and I have it, that I both read, if I find anything written, and write myself, if I wish anything—better than those by which I was compelled to hold in memory the wanderings of some Aeneas, forgetful of my own wanderings, and to weep for Dido dead, who slew herself for love, while meanwhile, most wretched, I bore with dry eyes my own self dying through these things away from Thee, O God, my life.

For what is more wretched than a wretch who pities not himself, and weeps for the death of Dido, which came of loving Aeneas, but weeps not for his own death, which came of not loving Thee, O God, light of my heart and bread of the inner mouth of my soul, and the power that weds my mind and the bosom of my thought? I loved Thee not, and committed fornication against Thee, and to me committing fornication there sounded on every side: 'Well done, well done.' For the friendship of this world is fornication against Thee, and 'Well done, well done' is said, that one may be ashamed if he be not so. And these things I wept not, but I wept for Dido slain and seeking her last end by the sword, while I myself followed the last things of Thy creation, forsaking Thee, and earth going into earth: and if I were forbidden to read these things, I should grieve that I could not read what would grieve me.

Such madness! And these are accounted more honorable and richer letters than those by which I learned to read and write. But now let my God cry out in my soul, and let Thy truth say to me: It is not so, it is not so; far better is that former teaching. For behold, I am readier to forget the wanderings of Aeneas and all things of that kind than to write and read. But indeed curtains hang at the doors of the schools of grammar, yet these signify not so much the honor of secrecy as the covering of error. Let them not cry out against me, whom I now fear no more, while I confess to Thee what my soul wills, my God, and acquiesce in the reproof of my evil ways, that I may love Thy good ways.

Let not the sellers or buyers of grammar cry out against me, because if I propose to them, asking whether it be true that Aeneas once came to Carthage, as the poet says, the less learned will answer that they know not, while the more learned will even deny that it is true. But if I ask with what letters the name of Aeneas is written, all who have learned these things answer me truly, according to that compact and agreement by which men have established these signs among themselves. Likewise, if I ask which a man may forget with the greater inconvenience of this life—to read and write, or those poetic fictions—who does not see what he would answer, who has not utterly forgotten himself?

I sinned therefore as a boy, when I preferred those empty things to these more useful ones by my love, or rather hated these and loved those. For 'one and one are two, two and two are four' was to me a hateful chant, while the sweetest spectacle of vanity was the wooden horse full of armed men, and the burning of Troy, and the very shade of Creusa. Why then did I hate the Greek grammar also, which sang such things? For Homer too had skillfully woven such fables and is most sweetly vain, and yet to me as a boy he was bitter. I believe Virgil is so likewise to Greek boys, when they are compelled to learn him as I learned that one. Doubtless the difficulty, the very difficulty of thoroughly learning a foreign tongue, sprinkled as it were with gall all the sweetnesses of the Greek fabulous tales.

For I knew none of those words, and with savage terrors and penalties it was vehemently urged upon me that I should know them. For at one time, as an infant, I knew no Latin words either, and yet by attending I learned them without any fear or torment, amid the very caresses of nurses and the jests of those who smiled and the merriment of those who played with me. I learned those words, indeed, without the penal burden of those urging me, when my own heart urged me to bring forth its conceptions, which it could not do unless I had learned some words, not from those teaching, but from those speaking, in whose ears I too was bringing to birth whatever I felt. From this it shines forth clearly enough that a free curiosity has greater force for learning these things than a fearful necessity.

But the flow of that free curiosity Thy laws restrain, O God, Thy laws, from the rods of masters even to the trials of martyrs, Thy laws being mighty to mingle wholesome bitternesses, recalling us to Thee from the pestilent pleasantness by which we departed from Thee. Hear, O Lord, my prayer, that my soul faint not under Thy discipline, nor faint I in confessing to Thee Thy mercies, by which Thou hast plucked me out of all my most evil ways, that Thou mayest grow sweet to me above all the seductions which I followed, and that I may love Thee most mightily and embrace Thy hand with all my inmost heart, and that Thou mayest pluck me out of every temptation even unto the end.

For behold, O Lord, my King and my God, let whatever useful thing I learned as a boy serve Thee, let what I speak and write and read and count serve Thee, since when I was learning vanities Thou wast giving me discipline, and in those vanities Thou hast forgiven me the sins of my delights. For in them I learned many useful words; but these can be learned in things not vain as well, and that is the safe path in which boys might walk. But woe to thee, O torrent of human custom! Who shall resist thee? How long wilt thou not be dried up? How long wilt thou roll the sons of Eve into that great and fearful sea, which scarcely those pass over who have mounted the wood? Did I not read in thee both Jove thundering and committing adultery?

And surely these two things could not coexist; yet it came about that real adultery acquired authority to be imitated, with a false thunderclap playing the pander. But what cloak-wearing schoolmaster listens with a sober ear when a man, sprung from the very same dust, cries aloud and says, 'Homer invented these things and transferred what is human to the gods; I should have preferred that he had brought what is divine down to us'? Yet it is more truly said that he did indeed invent these things, but by attributing what is divine to disgraceful men, so that their disgraces might not be thought disgraces, and that whoever committed them might seem to be imitating not lost men but the gods of heaven.

And yet, O river of hell, into you are flung the sons of men, together with fees, that they may learn these things; and it is reckoned a great affair, when this is transacted publicly in the forum, in the sight of laws that decree salaries over and above the fees; and you dash against your rocks and resound, saying:

'From this words are learned; from this is acquired that eloquence so utterly necessary for persuading people of things and for setting forth opinions.' So then, we would never have come to know these words—shower and golden and bosom and deceit and the temples of heaven and the other words written in that passage—had not Terence brought on stage a worthless young man who set Jove before himself as a model of debauchery, while he gazes at a certain picture painted on the wall, in which this scene was depicted: how (so they say) Jove once sent a golden shower into Danaë's bosom, and so deceived the woman. And see how he rouses himself to lust as though by heavenly instruction: 'But what a god!' he says, 'who shakes the temples of heaven with his loftiest thunder. And shall I, a mere mannikin, not do the same?

Indeed I have done that very thing, and gladly.' By no means, by no means is it through this filthiness that those words are more conveniently learned; rather, through those words is that filthiness more confidently perpetrated. I do not accuse the words, as though they were choice and precious vessels; but the wine of error that was poured out to us in them by drunken teachers, and unless we drank, we were beaten, nor were we allowed to appeal to any sober judge. And yet I, O my God, in whose sight my recollection is now secure, gladly learned these things, and miserable as I was I took delight in them, and for this reason I was called a boy of good promise. Suffer me, my God, to say something about my talent, which is your gift, and on what follies it was worn away by me.

For there was set before me a task, quite disquieting to my soul, with the reward of praise and the dread of disgrace or of blows: that I should speak the words of Juno in her anger and grief, because she could not turn the king of the Trojans away from Italy—words which I had never heard Juno speak. But we were compelled to follow, as we wandered, the footsteps of poetic fictions, and to say in prose something such as the poet had said in verse. And he spoke with more praise in whom, befitting the dignity of the character there shadowed forth, a likeness of the emotions of anger and grief stood out more vividly, the words clothing the thoughts suitably. To what purpose, O true life, my God, was that to me? Why, as I recited, was applause raised to me above many of my fellows and schoolmates? Was not all that smoke and wind?

Was there really nothing else on which my talent and tongue might be exercised? Your praises, Lord, your praises through your Scriptures would have propped up the tender shoot of my heart, and it would not have been snatched away through empty trifles, a shameful prey to the birds of the air. For it is not in one way only that sacrifice is offered to the transgressor angels. And what wonder if I was carried off into vanities like this, and went away outward from you, my God, when men were set before me to imitate who, if they had recounted some deed of their own, not evil in itself, with a barbarism or solecism, were rebuked and confounded; but if they had narrated their lusts richly and orderly, in correct and duly-following words, they were praised and gloried in it? You see these things, Lord, and keep silence, longsuffering and full of mercy and true.

Will you keep silence for ever? And even now you draw up out of this most monstrous deep the soul that seeks you and thirsts after your delights, whose heart says to you, 'I have sought your face; your face, Lord, will I seek'; for far from your face I was in a darkened affection. For it is not by feet, nor by distances of place, that one goes from you or returns to you; nor did that son of yours seek horses or chariots or ships, or fly away on a visible wing, or accomplish his journey by moving his knee, that, living in a far country, he might lavishly squander what you had given him as he set out—you, his sweet Father, because you had given it, and sweeter still to him in his want as he returned. So then, in lustful affection—that is, in a darkened one—and that is to be far from your face.

See, O Lord my God, and patiently, as you do see, behold how diligently the sons of men observe the conventions of letters and syllables received from earlier speakers, yet neglect the eternal covenants of perpetual salvation received from you; so that one who holds or teaches those old conventions of sounds, if against the grammatical rule he should pronounce 'human' without aspirating the first syllable, displeases men more than if, against your precepts, he should hate a human being, though he himself is human. As though any enemy man could be more pernicious to him than the very hatred by which he is provoked against him; or as though anyone, by persecuting another, could lay him waste more grievously than he lays waste his own heart by his enmity.

And surely the knowledge of letters is not more inward than the conscience written within—that one is doing to another what he himself would not suffer. How secret are you, dwelling on high in silence, God alone great, who by an unwearying law scatter penal blindnesses upon unlawful desires; when a man, seeking a reputation for eloquence, standing before a human judge with a crowd of men surrounding him, while he pursues his enemy with the most monstrous hatred, takes most vigilant care lest by a slip of the tongue he say 'inter hominibus' (among men, ungrammatically), yet takes no care lest by the frenzy of his mind he take a man away from among men. On the threshold of these morals I lay as a wretched boy, and that was the wrestling-place of this sand, where I feared more to commit a barbarism than I guarded against envying, if I committed none, those who did not.

I say these things and confess to you, my God, the things in which I was praised by those whom to please was then for me to live honourably. For I did not see the whirlpool of foulness into which I had been cast away from your eyes. For in their sight what then was fouler than I, when even to such as those I was displeasing by deceiving with innumerable lies my tutor and masters and parents, out of love of play, eagerness to watch trifling shows, and a restless desire to imitate stage performances? I even committed thefts from my parents' cellar and table, either as gluttony commanded, or that I might have something to give to the boys who sold me their game—a game in which they too took equal delight—on these terms. In that game too I myself, vanquished by a vain craving for excellence, often hunted after fraudulent victories.

For what was I so unwilling to suffer, and what would I fiercely upbraid, if I caught someone at it, as that very thing which I did to others; and if, being caught, I was upbraided, I chose rather to rage than to yield? Is this the innocence of boyhood? It is not, Lord; it is not, I beg you, my God. For these very things which, from tutors and masters, from nuts and little balls and sparrows, pass on (as larger ages succeed) to prefects and kings, to gold, estates, and slaves—these very same things pass on entirely, just as harsher punishments succeed the rods. It was therefore the symbol of humility in the stature of boyhood that you, our King, approved, when you said, 'Of such is the kingdom of heaven.'

But nevertheless, Lord, to you, most excellent, the best Creator and Ruler of the universe, our God, thanks would be due even if you had not willed me to be more than a boy. For even then I existed, I lived and felt, and I had care for my own well-being, a trace of that most secret Unity from which I was; I guarded by an inner sense the integrity of my senses, and in those small thoughts about small things I took delight in truth. I was unwilling to be deceived, my memory was vigorous, I was furnished with speech, I was soothed by friendship, I fled pain, abjection, ignorance. What in such a living creature is not wonderful and praiseworthy? But all these are the gifts of my God; I did not give them to myself; and they are good, and all these together am I.

Good therefore is he who made me, and he himself is my good, and I exult to him for all the good things by which, even as a boy, I existed. For in this I sinned, that not in him, but in his creatures—in myself and the rest—I sought pleasures, sublimities, truths, and so rushed headlong into pains, confusions, errors. Thanks be to you, my sweetness and my honour and my trust, my God, thanks be to you for your gifts; but do you preserve them for me. For so will you preserve me, and the things you have given me will be increased and perfected, and I myself shall be with you, since that I exist at all you have given me. BOOK TWO. I wish to recall my past foulnesses and the carnal corruptions of my soul, not because I love them, but that I may love you, my God.

For love of your love I do this, recalling my most wicked ways in the bitterness of my reflection, that you may grow sweet to me—a sweetness not deceitful, a sweetness happy and secure—and gathering me back from the dispersion in which I was torn piecemeal, while, turned away from you the One, I melted away into the many. For at one time, in my youth, I burned to be sated with things below, and I dared to grow wild with various and shadowy loves, and my comeliness wasted away and I rotted before your eyes, pleasing myself and desiring to please the eyes of men. And what was it that delighted me, save to love and to be loved?

But the measure was not kept, from soul to soul, where lies the luminous boundary of friendship; rather, mists exhaled from the muddy concupiscence of the flesh and from the bubbling spring of puberty, and they clouded and darkened my heart, so that the serenity of love could not be distinguished from the murk of lust. Both seethed together in confusion and swept my feeble age over the precipices of desires, and plunged me into the whirlpool of disgraceful deeds. Your wrath had grown strong over me, and I knew it not. I had become deaf with the clanking of the chain of my mortality, the punishment of my soul's pride; and I went farther from you, and you let me be; and I was tossed about and poured out and dissolved and bubbled over through my fornications, and you kept silence. O my joy, too long delayed!

You kept silence then, and I went on, far away from you, into more and more barren seeds of sorrows, with proud dejection and restless weariness. Who might have set my misery to measure, and turned the fleeting beauties of these lowest things to good use, and fixed bounds to their sweetnesses, so that the waves of my age might surge as far as the marriage shore, if calm could not be in them, content with the end of begetting children, as your law prescribes, O Lord—you who also shape the propagation of our death, able to lay a gentle hand to temper the thorns shut out of your paradise? For your omnipotence is not far from us, even when we are far from you. Or at the very least I should have heeded more vigilantly the sound of your clouds:

'Such shall have tribulation in the flesh; but I spare you'; and 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman'; and 'He who is without a wife is anxious about the things of God, how he may please God; but he who is joined in marriage is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife.' These voices, then, I should have heeded more vigilantly, and, made a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, I should the more happily have awaited your embraces. But I boiled over, wretched man, following the rush of my own current, having forsaken you, and I transgressed all your lawful bounds, nor did I escape your scourges—for what mortal does?

For you were always present, mercifully raging, and sprinkling with most bitter offences all my unlawful delights, that so I might seek to take delight without offence; and where I might do so, I could find nothing except you, Lord—except you, who fashion sorrow in your precept, and strike that you may heal, and slay us lest we die away from you. Where was I, and how far was I banished from the delights of your house, in that sixteenth year of the age of my flesh, when the madness of lust took up its sceptre over me—lust licentious by the shamelessness of the human heart, yet unlawful by your laws—and I gave it all my hands?

My family took no care to catch me as I fell headlong into marriage; their only care was that I should learn to make a speech as good as possible and to persuade by oratory. And in that year indeed my studies were interrupted, while, after I had been brought back from Madaura—in which neighbouring town I had already begun to travel abroad for the sake of acquiring literature and oratory—the means for a longer sojourn at Carthage were being prepared, by the high spirit rather than the wealth of my father, a citizen of Thagaste of very slender means. To whom do I tell these things? For it is not to you, my God, but in your presence I tell them to my own kind, to the human race, however small a portion may chance upon these writings of mine. And to what end this?

Namely, that I and whoever reads these things may consider out of what depth one must cry to you. And what is nearer to your ears than a confessing heart and a life out of faith? For who at that time did not extol with praises that man my father, because, beyond the means of his household, he spent on his son whatever was needful even for one travelling far for the sake of studies? For many citizens far wealthier did no such business for their children; while meanwhile that same father took no pains about how I might grow up toward you, or how chaste I might be, so long as I was eloquent—or rather, deserted from your cultivation, O God, who are the one true and good Lord of your field, my heart.

But when, in that sixteenth year, leisure having intervened because of domestic necessity, I began to be free from all schooling and to be with my parents, the thornbrakes of lusts grew up over my head, and there was no hand to root them out. Nay rather, when that father of mine saw me in the baths, growing into manhood and clothed with restless adolescence, as though already from this he longed for grandchildren, he joyfully told my mother—joyful with that intoxication in which this world forgot you its Creator and loved your creature instead of you, drunk with the invisible wine of a will perverse and bent down toward the depths. But in my mother's heart you had already begun your temple and the beginning of your holy habitation; for that father was still only a catechumen, and that but recently.

And so she started up with pious trepidation and trembling; and although I was not yet a believer, she nevertheless feared the crooked ways in which those walk who set their back, and not their face, toward you. Woe is me! and do I dare to say that you kept silence, my God, when I went farther from you? Did you then keep silence to me? And whose were those words, if not yours, spoken through my mother, your faithful one, which you sang into my ears? Yet nothing of it went down into my heart, that I should do it. For she wished—and I remember it in secret—and warned me with enormous solicitude, that I should not fornicate, and above all that I should not commit adultery with anyone's wife. These seemed to me womanish admonitions, which I should have blushed to obey.

But those words were yours, and I knew it not, and thought you were silent and that she was speaking—she through whom you were not silent to me; and in her you were despised by me, by me, her son, the son of your handmaid, your servant. But I knew it not, and went headlong with such great blindness that among my coevals I was ashamed to be of less disgrace, since I heard them boasting of their wickednesses and glorying the more, the more shameful they were; and it was pleasing to do it, not only for the lust of the deed, but also for the praise. What is worthy of vituperation save vice?

I, lest I should be vituperated, became more vicious; and where there was no occasion by which, having committed it, I might be made equal to the lost, I pretended to have done what I had not done, lest I should seem more abject the more innocent I was, and lest I should be held more worthless the more chaste I was. Behold with what companions I made my way through the streets of Babylon, and wallowed in its mire as in cinnamon and precious unguents. And that I might cleave the more tenaciously to its very centre, the invisible enemy trod me down and seduced me, because I was easy to be seduced.

For she too—my mother according to the flesh, who had already fled from the midst of Babylon, yet went more slowly in its outskirts—just as she had admonished me to chastity, so she took care to restrain within the bounds of conjugal affection that which she had heard about me from her husband, and which she now perceived to be pestilential and dangerous for the future, if it could not be cut back to the quick.

She did not take care of this, because there was a fear lest my hope should be hampered by a conjugal fetter—not that hope which my mother had in you for the age to come, but the hope of letters, which both my parents too much wished me to know: he, because he thought almost nothing of you, but vain things of me; she, however, because she reckoned that those customary studies of learning would be not only no detriment, but even of some help, toward attaining you. For so I conjecture, recalling as I can the characters of my parents.

The reins were even loosened to me for play, beyond the temper of severity, unto the dissolution of various afflictions; and in all things there was a fog cutting off from me, my God, the serenity of your truth, and my iniquity came forth as if out of fatness. Theft your law certainly punishes, Lord, and the law written in the hearts of men, which not even iniquity itself blots out—for what thief patiently endures a thief? Not even a rich one endures one driven by want. And I willed to commit theft, and did so, compelled by no neediness except poverty of justice and surfeit of iniquity. For I stole that of which I had abundance, and far better; nor did I wish to enjoy the thing I sought by theft, but the very theft and sin.

There was a pear tree near our vineyard, laden with fruit attractive neither in form nor in flavour. To shake this tree and carry off its fruit, we worthless young fellows set out at the dead of night, having (as our pestilential custom was) prolonged our play in the open spaces; and we took thence huge loads, not for our own banquets, but rather to throw to the pigs—even if we did eat some of it—so long as there might be done by us that which pleased us for the very reason that it was not permitted. Behold my heart, O God, behold my heart, which you have pitied in the bottom of the abyss. Let my heart now tell you what it sought there, that I should be gratuitously evil, and that there should be no cause of my malice except malice itself. It was foul, and I loved it;

I loved to perish, I loved my own defect—not that toward which I was failing, but my very defect itself I loved: a foul soul, leaping away from your firmament into destruction, craving not some shameful thing, but shame itself. For there is beauty in fair bodies, and in gold and silver and all things; and in the contact of flesh agreeableness avails much, and to each of the other senses there is its own fitting modification of bodies. Temporal honour too has its grace, and the power of commanding and overcoming, whence also the appetite for vengeance arises; and yet, in attaining all these, we must not depart from you, Lord, nor turn aside from your law.

And the life we live here has its own allurement, because of a certain measure of its own comeliness and its congruence with all these lowest fair things. Human friendship too is sweet with a dear bond, because of the unity made of many souls. On account of all these things and the like, sin is admitted, while through an immoderate inclination toward these—which are the lowest goods—the better and highest goods are forsaken: you, O Lord our God, and your truth and your law. For these lowest things too have their delights, but not like my God, who made all things, because in him the just man delights, and he himself is the delight of the upright in heart.

So then, when it is asked concerning a crime, for what cause it was done, it is not usually believed, unless it appears that there could have been either an appetite for attaining some one of those goods which we have called the lowest, or a fear of losing them. For they are fair and comely, although in comparison with the higher and beatific goods they are abject and lowly. A man committed homicide. Why did he do it? He loved the other's wife, or his estate; or he wished to plunder, that he might live; or he feared to lose some such thing from the other; or, injured, he burned to avenge himself. Would he have committed homicide without cause, delighted by the homicide itself? Who would believe it? For even of a certain senseless and exceedingly cruel man it was said that he was evil and cruel rather gratuitously; yet a cause was named:

'lest,' he says, 'through idleness his hand or mind should grow numb.' Why that too? Why so? Namely, that by that exercise of crimes, the city once seized, he might attain honours, commands, riches, and be free from the fear of laws and from difficulty of affairs on account of the poverty of his household and the consciousness of his crimes. So not even Catiline himself loved his crimes, but rather something else, for the sake of which he was doing them. What did I, wretched, love in you, O my theft, O that crime of mine, that nocturnal deed of the sixteenth year of my age? For you were not beautiful, since you were a theft. Or are you indeed anything, that I should speak to you?

Fair were those pears which we stole, since they were your creature, O most fair of all, Creator of all, good God, God the highest good and my true good; fair were those pears, but it was not them that my wretched soul desired. For I had abundance of better; but those I plucked, only that I might steal. For once plucked, I threw them away, having feasted there only on iniquity, which I gladly enjoyed. For even if any of those pears entered my mouth, the seasoning there was the crime. And now, O Lord my God, I ask what it was that delighted me in the theft; and behold, there is no beauty:

I do not say beauty such as is in equity and prudence, nor such as is in the mind of man and in memory and the senses and the vegetative life, nor such as the stars are, fair and comely in their places, and the earth and sea full of offspring which by being born succeed those that pass away; not even such as is in a certain defective and shadowy beauty of beguiling vices. For pride too imitates loftiness, whereas you alone are God most high above all. And ambition—what does it seek but honours and glory, whereas you are to be honoured above all and glorious for ever? And the cruelty of the mighty wishes to be feared: but who is to be feared except the one God, from whose power what can be snatched or withdrawn, and when, or where, or whither, or by whom?

And the caresses of the wanton wish to be loved: but neither is anything more caressing than your charity, nor is anything loved more healthfully than that truth of yours, beautiful and luminous above all. And curiosity seems to affect a zeal for knowledge, whereas you supremely know all things. Ignorance too and stupidity is cloaked under the name of simplicity and innocence, because nothing simpler than you is found. And what more innocent than you, since to the wicked their own works are enemies? And sloth, as it were, craves rest: but what rest is sure except the Lord? Luxury desires to be called satiety and abundance: but you are fullness and the unfailing store of incorruptible sweetness. The lavishing of prodigality holds out a shadow of liberality:

but you are the most abounding giver of all goods. Avarice wishes to possess many things: and you possess all things. Envy contends over excellence: what is more excellent than you? Anger seeks vengeance: who avenges more justly than you? Fear shudders at unaccustomed and sudden things adverse to the things that are loved, while it takes precaution for security: but to you what is unaccustomed, what sudden? Or who separates from you what you love? Or where is firm security except with you? Sadness pines away over things lost, in which cupidity used to take pleasure, because it would have it so that, as from you nothing can be taken away, so neither from itself. Thus the soul fornicates when it is turned away from you, and seeks outside you the things which it does not find pure and clear, except when it returns to you.

Perversely do all imitate you who set themselves far from you and exalt themselves against you. But even thus, by imitating you, they declare that you are the Creator of all nature, and therefore that there is no place whither one may by any means recede from you. What then did I love in that theft, and in what did I imitate my Lord, even viciously and perversely? Did it please me at least to act against the law by deceit, since I could not by real power, so that, a captive, I might imitate a maimed liberty by doing with impunity what was not permitted—a shadowy likeness of omnipotence? Behold, that is the servant fleeing his lord and pursuing a shadow. O rottenness! O monstrous thing of life and depth of death! Could that be done freely which was not permitted, for no other reason save that it was not permitted?

What shall I render to the Lord, that my memory recalls these things and my soul is not afraid thereat? I will love you, Lord, and give thanks and confess to your name, since you have remitted to me such great evils and nefarious works of mine. To your grace I attribute it, and to your mercy, that you have melted away my sins as if they were ice. To your grace I attribute also whatever evils I have not done: for what could I not have done, who even loved a gratuitous crime? And I confess that all have been remitted me, both the evils I did of my own accord, and those which under your guidance I did not do.