heart and alwayes in her prayers presented and pressed as thy own hand-writing before thee For thou art pleased because everlasting are thy mercies not only to remit unto us all our debts but often with thy promises to become our debtor CHAP. X. Recovered he still consorts with the Manichees retaining many of their errors the chief of which was his imagining God a corporeall substance but with much more remisseness then formerly THus thou recoveredst me from that sickness and healedst the Son of thy handmaid first in body that afterward thou mightest conferr upon him a more excellent and permanent Sanity of his soul too And here also at Rome I usually conversed with the same sect of those deceived and deceiving saints not only with their Auditors as they are called in the house of one of whom I had this sickness and recovery but also with those whom for their holiness they call the Elect. With whom I also entertained the same conceit that it was not I that sinned but I know not what other forreign nature that was in me and my pride was much pleased thus to be faultless And when I committed any sin I was ready not to make confession thereof that thou mightest heal my soul because I had sinned against thee but to excuse my soul and lay the fault upon something else besides me which I granted indeed was joyned with me but was not Me. Yet alas the whole was nothing but me and my impiety only it was that had thus divided me against my self and this any sin was the more incurable because I conceited my self no sinner and much more execrable this my iniquity in that I blasphemously had rather that thou O omnipotent God shouldst be overcome by I know not what contrary principle in me to my destruction than that I should humble my self a sinner to be conquered by thee and thy grace to my salvation Ps 39.1.2 3 and Ps 141.3.4 see the Vulgar For thou hadst not as yet set a watch before my mouth and a door of caution about my lips that my heart might not decline to wicked speeches to excuse the excuses made for sins with the men that work iniquity and therefore I retained still a close combination with these Elect yet so as that I despaired of any further progress in that false doctrine and was very remiss in my present opinions resolving to keep them only if no better could be found and often reflecting on the prudence of those Philosophers who in all things recommended doubting and contended that nothing could be known certainly But from the great acquaintance contracted with this sect of whom Rome privately shelters not a few I was rendred somewhat lasier to seek truth elsewhere and lâ—st of all imagined that within thy Church O Lord of Heaven and Earth and Creator of all visibles and invisibles could be found that truth from the which they had long averted me For it seemed to me a thing too gross and unseemly to imagine thee to have as they had informed me that thy Church did teach the shape of our humane flesh and to be confin'd and girt up with the narrow lineaments of our members And indeed this very thing that when I went to form to my self an Idea of my Lord God I could fancy nothing but a certain corporeall substance and bulke for I supposed besides this nothing in nature and that what had no body had no being this I say was the greatest and almost the only cause of that my hence inevitable errour For from this I imagined a certain substance of evil to be the like and to have a corporeal bulke malignant and hideous and this either more gross which they call Earth or more tenuous and subtile as the body of the air is which they imagin to be a maligne mind or soul gliding every where through the other more Earthly matter And because the less piety I then had forced me to believe that the good God created no nature evill therefore I made two corporeal masses opposit to one another both infinit but the evil much straiter the good much 〈◊〉 And from this pestilentiall source issued all the rest of my sacrilegious opinions And when at any time I would have made a retreat to the Catholick faith I was repulsed by this fancy because indeed that was not the Faith Catholick which I thought to be so for I supposed it a much more reverend piety to imagine thee my God to whom thy mercies wrought in me do now confess it infinit on many sides though on one bounded with a contrary mass of evill than to be on every side confin'd and compassed-in by the form and lineaments of an humane body such as was supposed by me to be the faith of thy Church Again I thought it more honourable to believe that thou createdst not evill supposing it a substance corporeall for I acknowledged no entity but such and even mentals to be more tenuous bodies than to think it such a nature to flow from thee Aga n for thy only begotten Son our Saviour whom I fancied to be streamed forth from the lucid part of thy mass for our salvation I supposed that such a nature could not be born of the Virgin Mary without being coagulated with flesh and that in such a mixture flesh being a part of the substance of evill as I imagined such soveraign purity could not but be contaminated and stained and therefore I feared to believe him born in the flesh lest I should make him defiled by the flesh Thy spirituall ones will gently smile at this my folly when they shall read these my confessions Yet true it is that such a one then I was CHAP. XI Especially finding the Manichees not clearly to answer to the objections of Catholicks made out of the Scriptures YEt for all this though that which these objected against thy scriptures I thought could no way be defended I had a desire to conferr every particular with some person more excellently skilled in those holy books and to know the uttermost of the churches opinions And this the rather because one Helpidius disputing in publick with the Manichees at Carthage had not a little moved me in pressing many things out of the scriptures against which me seemed little could be said And that answer of theirs seemed very weak which they did not so frequently give in publick as privately to us namely that the Scriptures of the new Testament were much falsified by some I know not who that intended to insert the Jewish law into the Christian faith Yet themselves produced no other copies thereof which were unsophisticated But all this while that which chiefly oppressed and suffocated me was the conceit I had only of corporeall bulkes and magnitudes of all things under which mass I lay gasping after the free air of thy truth but could not as yet breath in the purity and simplicity thereof CHAP. XII Having set up a Rhetorick-School at
that I entertained of things spiritual permitted me not to discern truth And there was still flashing in my eyes the very power of truth and yet I averted my timorous mind from the cogitation of any thing incorporeal to lineaments and colours and swelling magnitudes And when I could not see these in my mind I thought that neither could I see or discern my mind And whereas I loved the harmony that is in vertue and loathed the discord of vice I noted an unity in the one and in the other a kind of division And I conceived the rational soul and the nature of truth and of the Summum Bonum the Chiefest Good to consist in this unity But in that division I sillily supposed that there was I know not what substance of an irrational vitality and the nature of summum malum which was not only a substance but also animate and yet was not at all from thee O my God from whom are all things And the one I stiled a Monade or Unity as if it were a soul void of all sex the other a Dyade or Duality namely the faculty * irascible in all malicious actions * concupiscible and lusting in all impure affections Not knowing what I said For I neither knew then nor had learnt that no substance at all was evill nor that our very soul was not the supream and incommutable good †The Manichean opinion that souls are particles of the Divine nature or of God Psal 18.28 Joh. 1.9 16. Jac. 1.17 For as our actions are Facinorous if that faculty of the soul which commands our force be vicious and behave it self insolently and unruly and again Flagitious if that affection of the soul wherewith carnal pleasures are entertained become intemperate so errors and false opinions are likewise a contamination of our life if so be the rational soul it self be any way vitiated As it was then in me not knowing that it was to be illuminated with another ray than its own to partake of Truth for that it self was not the very nature of Truth Because 'T is thou that shalt light this my candle O Lord my God thou shalt enlighten my darkness And of thy fulness have we all received For thou art the true light that enlightneth every man that cometh into the World for that in thee there is no variableness nor returning shadow But I aspired toward thee and was repelled from thee and confined unto the shadow of death Because the proud are alwaies resisted by thee And what thing prouder than I who by a strange madness maintained that my self was naturally what thou art For when I was a thing mutable which was from this apparent to me that I in coveting wisdom sought from somthing worse to become something better yet I had rather conjecture thee mutable also than my self not to be the same which thou wert Therefore was I repelled by thee and thou didst resist my stiff-swoln neck and I somniated corporeal forms and being flesh I notwithstanding accused the flesh Psal 78.39 being a wind that paseth I returned not unto thee but passing I passed unto those things which have no being nether in thee nor in me nor in any body else Neither were they created for me by thy truth but by my vanity devised out of a body And I said to the little ones thy faithful my now fellow-Citizens from whom then I lived an exile I said to them as arrogant as silly Why therefore erâ—s that soul which God had made Yet could I not endure it should be said to me again Why then errs the soul being God And I rather contended that thy immutable substance was necessitated to err than confessed that mine so mutable was spontaneously either erring or in danger of errour And I was of the age of six or seven and twenty when I penned those Volumes revolving within my self those corporeal fancies that continually buzzed about the ears of my heart which ears of mine were intent O thou sweetest Verity unto that interior melody of thine all the while I meditated on this Fair and Decorous subject longing indeed to stand quiâ—t and hear thee and with joy to rejoyce at the voice of the Bridegroom Jo. 3.29 and I could not because by the call of my errour I was with-drawn from thee and with the weights of my pride sunk down into the dungeon Psal 51.8 Nor didst thou then give to this my hearkning joy and gladness nor did the bones exult which had not yet been humbled CHAP. XVI Of his strange acuteness of Wit acquiring all the Liberall Sciences without a Teacher and yet so grosly erring in Religion ANd â–³ what did it profit me that being scarce twenty years old I read and understood alone a work of Aristotle's that fell into my hands called the Ten Categories which my Master a Rhetorician of Carthage and others accounted learned had commented on to other schollers with checks even bursting with pride and I also had with much admiration longed after as I know not what profound and divine piece And I afterward conferring with others who professed that they had much ado to comprehend these things though instructed by most learned Tutors not only expounding but in Sand-Tables demonstrating them they could add nothing to my former self-acquired knowledg â–³ What did this profit me Nay did it not harm me When likewise thou O my God so wonderfull simple and un-accidental whilst I thought whatever was was comprehended in these Ten Praedicaments Thou also wert so conceived by me as if thou also wert the subject to thy greatness or to thy beauty and that they inhered in thee as they do in bodies When as thy greatness and thy beauty are thy self but body is not by that great or fair by which it is a body For were it less great or less fair nevertheless a body it were For a falsity it was which I imagined of thee and not truth and those were figments of my wretchedness not the firmaments and stabilities of thy blessednesse For thou commandedst and so it came to pass unto me Gen. 3.18 that this my Earth should bring forth thorns and briars unto me and with labour I should earn my bread And again â–³ what profited it me that all the books I could procure of the Arts called Liberal my self mean-while being a slave to Lust were read over by me and by my self alone throughly understood And I took great delight in them for the Truth and certainty I found there yet knew not whence it was For I had my back upon the light and my face upon the things enlightned whence my face that beheld the things illustrated it self was not illuminated at all And whatsoever was said in them concerning the Art of speaking or of reasoning whatsoever of the Measures of figures of notes Musical or of numbers without much difficulty I understood and without any Teacher as thou knowest O Lord my God For both
away she departed into Africk vowing unto thee never to know any other man and leaving with me the Son I had by her But unhappy I not able to imitate a woman impatient of the two yeares delay in which time I might not enjoy her I made suit to and being not so much a lover of marriage as a slave of lust got me another though no Wife that so by the continuance of the same custome with her I might sustain and preserve in its vigour or also augment that disease of my soul till it might arrive to the kingdom of marriage And thus was the wound that was made in me by the cutting off of my former Concubine not now cured at all but after most acute and burning torments grown more putrified and corrupt and under a colder and less violent pain a more desperate sore CHAP. XVI Yet his lusts somewhat restrain'd from the fear he had * of death and * of the soules immortality and * of future judgements TO thee be praise To thee be glory Fountain of mercies thou camest still more near as I became more wretched And even very now was thy right hand ready when I was quite sunk to pull me out of this mire and to wash me clean and I knew nothing thereof Nor was there any thing that stayed me from yet-a-deeper stream of carnal voluptuousness save the fear of death and thy judgement to come which terrour by all my various opinions could never be quite defaced in my soul And often I reasoned with my friends Alipius and Nebridius * of the ends of good and wicked persons and * that Epicurus above all men with me should carry away the prize but that I believed the soul after death still lived and was treated according to its meritâ— a thing which Epicurus credited not And I asked whether if so be we might be immortal and might live in the perpetuated pleasures of the body without any fear at all of losing them any more whether I say this were not enough to be happy or whether some thing else were desirable to it not knowing that this also was a great part of my misery that so deeply plunged and blinded I could not cast my thoughts upon the fair light of vertue and honesty and that soveraign beauty interiorly by the soul discerned though not by the eye of flesh which is imbraced gratis and without any bodily pleasure issuing from it Neither considered I so wretched from what Principle it came that this was to me a great pleasure sweetly to confer with my friends even concerning these filthy pleasures and that without friends also I could not be happy according to my then opinion though in never so much affluence of those carnal delights Yet which friends I loved gratis without any interest of my corporal pleasure and so perceived my self gratis also of them beloved O crooked paths Wo to the audacious soul that departing from thee foolishly hopes elsewhere to find something better and when she hath turned and returned her self on back and sides and belly she finds all things hard and uneasie and thee only Rest And yet behold thou patiently stayest by us and freest us from these our miserable wandrings and puttest us into thy way and encouragest us and sayest Run and I will sustain you and I will conduct you through whither you desire to go and at your journeys end also I will sustain you LIB VII CHAP. I. His entrance now being thirty years old into mans estate His apprehension of God as inviolable incorruptible immutable every way infinite but yet corporeal * DEceased now was my youth so evil and so profane and I * entred into the state of manhood advancing in vanity as in age and imagining no substance but only such as with these our eyes we usually behold I indeed never thought thee O God to bear an humane shape since the time I had heard any thing of wisdom I alwayes avoided so grosse a conceit and was much joyed when I found the same also to be the faith of our spiritual Mother thy Catholick Church but what other thing I should think thee to be was not easily resolved And I a man and such a man yet endeavoured to know and apprehend thee the supreme and the only and the true God and from the bottom of my soul I believed thee to be incorruptible and inviolable and immutable because how and whence I know not but I plainly saw and was assured Ex l. 7. c. 4. â–³ that that which cannot be corrupted nor injured and hurt nor changed was doubtless more perfect and more excellent than what is capable of corruption or violation or mutation And then again â–³ that no soul ever was or shall be able to imagin any thing which should be something better than thee who art the very best and chiefest Good But since the incorruptible is most truly and certainly preferrable before the corruptible I could with my thought have ascended unto something that would have been better than my God unless thou wert incorruptible But still I was forced to imagin thee though not figured like a man yet as something corporeal having a certain space of being either infused into and through all the world or also diffused infinitely beyond it because what I abstracted from being in such space seem'd to me not to be at all I therefore conceived thy greatness O Life of my life to be such as to penetrate by an extension through an infinite space on every side the whole masse of the world and to flow to all immensity beyond it without any limit so that thee the earth had the heavens had thee all things had thee and they were bounded in thee but thou no where And as this body of air which floats above the earth hinders not the darting of a sun-beam through it which beam penetrates it not by cutting or breaking the parts but by filling the whole in such manner I conceived the bodies not only of the heavens or of the air or water but of the thicker earth also transpassable by thee and in all her least as well as greatest parts pierceable to receive every where thy presence thus with thy secret inspiration both intrinsecally and extrinsecally actuating and managing all those things which thou hast created So I conceited not able to think of any other way Though this was false For thus a greater part of earth would receive a greater part of thy essence and a lesser a lesse And in such a sense would all things be full of thee that the body of an Elephant would contain a greater quantity of thee than that of a Sparrow by how much it is bigger and possessing a greater space and so thou shouldest apply thy presence to the parts of the world by parcels a greater part of thee to the large and a lesser to the small But thou art nothing so Notwithstanding as yet thou hadst not so farre
satisfaction to me so long as remaining thy subject and also hadst subjected unto me these things which thou hadst created below me And this was the right temper and the middle region of my felicity and safety * to remain as I was created according to this thy Image and serving thee * to rule oâ—re these bodies But when I would by my pride rise up against thee and with the buckler of a stiffe neck make head against my Lord and Master even these lower things were made above me and pressed me down and there was no relaxation no taking breath under them but when I offered to return into my self and unto thee the bodies themselves rushing by troops unto my eyes and the images of bodies unto my fancy on every side way-laid and opposed me as if they had said Whither goest thou so unworthy so filthy To this height were my wounds increased and the tumour of my spirit kept me at distance from thee and my pride-swoln face closed-up my eyes CHAP. VIII BUt thou O Lord who abidest for ever yet art not angry with us for ever but hast compassion on this suddenly-perishing dust and ashes and it seemed good in thy sight to reform all those my deformities and with Internal and secret goads thou renderedst me still impatient until by a more inward sight diverted from corporeal phantasmes I came to have a true discovery of thee CHAP. IX Vpon recommendation he falls to reading the books of the Platonists and d scovers in them much concerning the Divinity of the Eternal Word but nothing of the Humility of his Incarnation ANd first to shew me * how thou resistest the proud givest Grace to the humble And * how great a mercy of thine it was that the way of humility was demonstrated unto man in thy Son 's being made flesh and dwelling amongst men thou procuredst me by a man much swoln with humane Science some books of the Platonists translated out of Greek into Latine And in these I read not in the same words indeed but the very same thing and that confirmed with great variety of reasons Joh. 1.1 * That in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God the same was in the beginning with God All things were made by him and without him was not any thing made that was made In him was life and the life was the light of men And the light shined in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not And * that the soul of man though it bear witness of that light yet is not it self the very light but the Word of God is It. For God is the true light that enlightneth every man coming into this world And that he was in this world and the world was made by him and the world knew him not But That he came unto his own and his own received him not But as many as received him to them gave he power to become the Sons of God even to them that believe on his name this there I read not Again I read there that God the Word was born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God But then That this Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us This I read not there For in those books I found frequently said and divers wayes expressed That the Son is in the form of the Father Phil. 2.6 and thinks it not robbery to be equal with God because really he is the same thing with him But then That he emptied himself and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the crosse wherefore God also hath highly exalted him from the dead and given him a name which is above every name That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth and that every tongue should confesse that Jesus Christ is Lord in the Glory of the Father This those books contain not For indeed that He before and above all times remains unchangeably thy Son only begotten and coeternal unto thee and that souls are made * happy only from the effusions they receive from his fulness and * wise as they are renewed by the participation of that self-subsisting wisdom is to be found there Rom. 5.6 Rom. 8.32 Mat. 11.25 Mat. 11.28 Psal 25.9 But that He in the fulness of time died also for the ungodly and that thou sparedst not thine only Son but gavest him up for us all is not to be found there For thou didst hide these things from the wise and revealedst them unto babes that there should come unto him those who laboured and were heavy laden and he might give them rest because he is meek and lowly in heart and the meek doth he guide in judgement and the humble he teacheth his wayes Looking upon our lowness and our travel and forgiving all our sins But those who are raised up aloft on the buskins of a seeming-more-sublime Science do not hear Him saying Learn of me meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls Rom. 1.21 and although they know God yet they glorifie him not as God nor are thankful but vanish away in their imaginations and their foolish heart is darkened and professing themselves to be wise they are made fools And therefore I read there also The glory of thy incorruptibleness changed into Idols and divers Images made like to corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things Egyptian food which I found also in those books and was not tempted with it But I took what was good and precious as thou causedst thy people to carry gold out of Egypt it self because thine it was where-ever it was Acts 17.28 And also thou saidest to the Athenians by thy Apostle That in thee we live and move and have our being as some also of their own had already said it from thee before From the same fountain therefore came doubtless what was good and true in these books CHAP. X. He now more clearly discovers divine matters That something might have a being and this not corporeal or extended in place HAving therefore out of these books extracted some wholsome advice to reflect and return into my self I entered into the innermost recesses of my soul to seek thee I entred and beheld with the eye of my soul such as then it was farre above the same eye and above my soul the immutable light of the Lord being not any greater degree of this vulgar light conspicuous to al flesh but farr farr different from it Nor beheld I it above my soul as oyl is above water or the heavens over the earth but thus superiour as being it that made me and I inferiour as made by
repast which they took at their parents table sh permitted them not though never so dry and thirsty to drink so much as a little water preventing an evil custome and adding a good advice Ye drink water now because wine is not in your power but when ye come to get husbands and are made mistresses of closets and cellars Water will grow contemptible to you but the custom of drinking will stick by you With such prudence of instructing and authority of commanding she easily suppressed the lustings of that yet tender age and moulded their very thirst into such a regular habit that it was no more affected by them what was not meet for them and what was not decent now was not grateful Yet notwithstanding this there afterward stole upon her as this thy hand-maid told me her son by litle and litle there stole upon her an affection to wine For she as a sober Maid being usually sent by her parents into the Cellar to fetch wine in taking it with a little scale out of the vessel before she poured it into the flagon used to put her lips to it and sip but a very little for she could do no more by the reluctance of her palat For this was not then at first done by her out of any lust to wine but out of the over-flowing excesses of that age which boyl up to many wanton tricks and experiments where they are not allayed in youth by the presence and gravity of the aged Therefore to this little she by adding daily more littles for whoever contemneth small things Ecclus. 19.1 shall fall by little and by little at length contracted such a custome that now she would greedily drink off almost a whole one of those little dishes Where now was that discreet old servant and those her zealous admonitions could they have had any vertue upon this conceal'd disease unless thy cure O Lord also watched over us At a time when her Father and Mother and other Overseers were all absent thou who art alwayes present who createst who convertest us who also procurest for the salvation of souls some good even from those who are evil what didst thou at that time for her O my God how didst thou heal her how didst thou draw out a rude and sharp taunt from the breast of another as it were a medicinall launcet out of thy hidden store and with one cut thereof let out all this corruption For another maid-servant that usually went with her to the cellar on a time quarrelling with her young Mistress as it often happens when they two were alone objected this thing to her with a most bitter insulting calling her Wine-bibber With which reproach she being notably stung reflected on the foulness of her fault condemned forsook it As flattering friends pervert so quarrellous enemies many times amend us Yet wilt thou repay them not according to thine by them but according to their own purposes For this angry servant intended only her reproach not cure and did this secretly only because the time and place of their brabbling happened to be such or else lest speaking it openly she should happen also to be chid for not disclosing such a thing sooner But thou O Lord the Guide of all Creatures in Heaven and in Earth who turnest the streams of the strongest torrents to thy uses and disposest the turbulent flux of sins to thy designs by the madness of one soul soberedst another That none well considering this may attribute it to his own power even when by his words such a one is amended whose amendment he design'd CHAP. IX Her dutiful deportment toward and at last conversion of her Husband Patricius THe thus chastly and soberly educated and rather by thee rendred dutiful to her parents than by them made so to thee When by her years she was now compleatly marriageable being matched to an husband served him as a master indeavouring to gain him to thy service and continually preaching thee to him in her excellent conditions wherein thou madest her very beautiful and reverently amiable and admirable to her Husband As for the misbehaviours violations of the marriage-bed she so patiently endured them as that she never had any controversie with her Husband about such matter For she still expected the descent of thy mercy upon him that being once made thy Convert he would also become continent Besides this he was as very amorous in his affection so very hot and hasty in his anger But well she knew to make no resistance to him when in his passion not only in deed but neither in word Only when he was re-calm'd and quiet upon an opportunity offered she gave him an account of her action if haply he had been without reason incensed And when as there were some other principal Dames who though matched to much gentler Husbands than hers yet carried about sometimes upon their very disfigured faces the marks of their Husbands fury and they in their familiar discourse together would ordinarily blame the naughtiness of their Husbands she blamed that of their own tongues as it were in jest soberly remembring them * that from the time they had first heard their matrimonial Contracts recited they were to account them as Indentures whereby they were made servants and so mindful of such their condition * that they ought not to grow haughty against their Masters And when they knowing what a choleri k Husband she endured wondred that it was never heard or any other way appeared that Patricius had beaten his Wife or that any other domestical dissensions even for one day had happened between them and familiarly enquired the reason thereof she acquainted them with her rule and practise set down above And those amongst them who observed the same upon their own experience returned many thanks those who observed it not kept still in slavery suffered much misery Her Mother in law also by the tales and whispers of malicious and naughty maid-servants becoming at their first living together much incensed against her she so overcame her by her observance and her perseverance in all long-suffering and meekness that of her own accord she disclosed to her Son whose intermedling tongues they were whereby the peace of the house between her and her daughter-in-law had been so disturbed and desired he would punish them And thus after he both in obedience to his Mother and care of the discipline of the family of the amity of the members thereof had corrected those complained-of as she desired and she also had promised the like reward to whoever should hereafter as to please her speak evill of her daughter in law none thenceforward daring to do it Very memorable was the sweetnesse of that perfect amity they ever after enjoyed Thou hadst also conferred this excellent gift on that thy good Servant in whose womb thou wast pleased to forme me O my God my Mercy that between dis-agreeing and dissenting parties in all things she could
she rendred herself such a peacemaker that when hearing mutually from both of them many bitter reproachings of one another such as a swelling and undigested choler useth to belch up when the crudities of hatred are exhaled and breathed forth in a soure discourse to som one present whom they affect concerning another absent whom they disrelish yet she never disclosed any thing of the one to the other but only what tended to their reconcilement A small vertue in her would this have seemed to me but that by sad experience I find innumerable multitudes I know not from what horrid contagion of sin very zealous not only * to disclose to enemies when in anger what is said by their enemies in their ang r but also themselves * to superadd things which were not said by such enemies Whereas for a mind endued with any humanity it is too small a kindnesse not to divulge and exagitate others quarrellings and reproaches or not to augment them also with their own speaking evill unlesse they do endeavour likewise by their own well-speaking to abate and extinguish them And such a one was she being taught by thee her interiour Master in the school of her heart Lastly she being such gained also her husband unto thee in the latter end of his temporal life and now at length no more lamented those disorders in him a Christian professour which she had so long patiently tolerated in him before it She was also a servant of all those who were thy Servants and there was none of them that knew her but that much praised thee and honoured thee and loved thee in her because they discovered thy presence in her heart 1 Tim. 5.4 9 10. by the testimony of the fruits of an holy conversation For she had been the Wife of one man had requited her parents had piously governed her own house was well reported of for good works had brought up Children so often labouring again in a new birth of them as she perceived them to stray from thee Lastly for all us O Lord thy Servants since thou permittest us to call our selves what thou hast made us who a little before her end lived now together associated and co-united in thee after our receit of the grace of thy baptism such care took she of us as if she had been the Mother to us all such services did she for us as if she had been the daughter to us all CHAP. X The discourses between Him and his Mother at Ostia some few dayes before her sickness concerning the felicities of the next life Her desire of Death ANd now the day near approaching that she was to depart out of this life which day Thou knewest though we were not aware of it it came to passe Thou through thy secret providence so ordering it that she and I stood alone leaning on a window that looked forth into the Garden of the house * where we lodged in that town of Ostia upon Tiber and * where retired from company and noise after the hard travell of a long journy we were repairing our Spirits for a Sea-voyage There we were discoursing together we two alone very sweetly and forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before we were enquiring between our selves in the presence of the Truth which thy self art O Lord What thing the eternal life of the blessed hereafter shall be 1 Cor. 2.9 Which eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor hath it entred into the heart of man But yet we gasped with the mouth of our heart directed toward the celestial streams of thy Fountain that Fountain of life which is with thee that watered from thence according to our present capacity we might in some measure contemplate so high a matter And after our discourse had f rst concluded thus much that there was no delectation of the senses of our Flesh what or in how great corporeal beauty and splendour soever it might be that seemed worthy I say not to be compared but at all to be mentioned in regard of the pleasure of that life to come elevating our selves yet higher than these with an ardent pursuit thereof we made a perambulation by several ascents through all corporeals and through heaven it self from whence the Sun and moon and Stars illuminate the earth And leaving thâ—se we yet ascended more interiourly in the sweet contemplation and speech of thee and admiration of thy works and came to consider these soules of ours and we mounted above and transcended these also that so possibly we might at length arrive at that Country of never failing fertility where thou feedest Israel for ever with the food of Truth and where the Life is that Wisdom by which are made all those things both that have been and that shall be but it self is not made but so is as heretofore it was and so shall be ever though indeed to have been heretofore or hereafter to be agree not to it but to Be only because it is eternal For to have been or hereafter to be is not eternal And behold whilst we thus talke and yearne after it we got some touch of it in a little measure with one whole spring and beat of the heart And we sighed See l. 7. c. 17. and left there the first fruits of the Spirit still fixed unto it and so our feebleness relapsed again to our former discourse and the exteriour noise of our mouth where the Wo d hath its beginning and hath its ending and what is there in it that bears any resemblance to thy Word which perpetually endures in it self without ever becoming old and by which all things are renewed And we said thus to one another If any soul could be stript and exempt from the impressions and enjoy a perfect * silence of the tumults of the flesh could enjoy * the silence of the images and appearances of all things of the earth and of the water and of the air * the silence of the heavens and * the silence of the soul it self to it self so that it could passe by it self without any thought of it self could enjoy the silence of dreams and all imaginary fancies the silence of every language and signe and of whatever hath its totall being only by a passing away of its parts if perhaps any soul can enjoy an Universal silence of them See l. 4. c. 10 11. because if any one will hearken to them in their passing by and away they all speak this to him We our selves have not made us but he made us who passeth not away but eternally remains But having only said this if now they become silent to us having directed our ears towards him that made them and so he alone should speak to us not by them but by himself that so we should hear his word not by a tongue of flesh nor by the voice of an Angel nor by the thunder of a cloud nor by
it is * no object of sense * no part of the visible world abroad no part or faculty within himself ANd first not with a doubting but a certain conscience I may confess O Lord that I do love thee Thou hast wounded my heart with thy Word and it is enamoured upon thee Yet also besides my heart the Heavens and the Earth and all the things which are in them on every side cry out unto me that I should love thee neither cease they to say the same to all that they may remain without excuse But yet in a higher way of revelation thou hast mercy on whom thou wilt have m rcy and shewest compassion on whom thou wilt shew compassion otherwise these Heavens and Earth do speak thy praises only to the deaf And what is it I love now in loving thee certainly not the beauty of bodies nor the decent order of times not the splendour of light so gladsom to this corporal sight not the melody of all sorts of song and musick not the fragant sents of floures oyles and spices not delicious Manna ard honey not fair limbs alluring to carnal embraces None of these things love I now when I love my God And yet I confess I love also a certain light and melody and fragrancy and deliciousness and embraces when I love my God who is the light melody fragrancy grateful sustenance and amorous embracements of my inward man where to my ravisht soul shines what is not terminable by place and sounds what is not measurable by time and smells what is not dissipable by expiring and tasts what no edacity diminisheth and is embraced what no satiety separateth Such thing is it I love when I love my God And what thing is this I demanded it of the Earth and it said I am not it And all things in the same they confessed likewise the same I asked the Sea and the Abysses and the living movables therein and they answered We are not thy God Seek thou higher than us I asked the fleeting air above and its vast region with all the guests thereof replyed Anaximenes is mistaken I am not God I enquired of the heavens the Sun the Moon and the Starrs neither are we said they God whom thou seekest Then I said unto all these things encamping round about my senses the doors of my flesh Ye have said unto me of my God ye are not Heâ— Tell me at lest some tidings of him And they all cryed out with a loud voice It is He that made us My asking was my observing of them and their answer was what I discovered in them At last I reflected my eye upon my self and said to my self And what art thou And I answered a Man And in this compound there presented themselves unto me a body and a soul the one more exteriour the other more retired And which of these should it rather be where I ought to seek my God Whom I had searched already through bodies from the earth even to heaven so farr as the raies of my eyes my spies abroad could make any discovery Certainly of the two Much the better part of man is that which is more interiour For all those corporeal Nuncio's returned their intelligence to this sitting on the tribunal and judging of all those answers from Heaven and Earth and from all things in them whilst they said We are not God but He it is that made us 'T is only the Inner man that knows these things by the Ministry and service of the Outer 'T is I within only that understand these things I the Mind by the senses of my Body Therefore thou art much my better part O my Soul who dost also Vegetate the lump of thy Body and who givest it life which no one body can conferr on another But yet thy God is also the Life of this thy life unto thee CHAP. VII Neither the Vegetative nor yet the Sensitive WHat therefore love I when I love God What is he who is advanced so high over the Head of my Soul By my soul it self will I ascend and climbe up unto Him And here I will passe beyond that Power by which I adhere to this Body and vitally replenish the model thereof For by this power I find not my God Else a Horse and a Mule which have no understanding would also find him since by the same vertue their Bodies also live Psal 32.9 A second power there is in me giveing not life but sense unto my flesh which the Lord hath variously organized for me commanding the eye not to meddle with hearing nor the ear with seeing but ordering the one only to see by the other only to hear with and so assigning their properties distinctly to the rest of my senses in their own seats and Offices which being very diverse are all acted in them by me one Soul But this power also I will dismisse for this also the Horse and Mule have being sensitive Creatures no lesse than my self CHAP. VIII Nor yet the more interiour and most admirable faculty of the memory The many wonders of which to the glory of the Maker thereof he most subtilly discourseth unto the 26. Chapter I Will passe over this Power also of my nature ascending by degrees to him that made it and me and next I come into the large fields and pallaces of my memory the Treasury of numberlesse formes and images conveied thither from such things as are perceived by sense as also the repository * of all our own cogitations and fancies which augment or diminish or any other way vary the discoveries of sence and * of what ever thing besides these enters in thither which is not as yet swallowed up and buryed in oblivion And when I have recourse thither I command to be produced whatever I please And â–³ some things appear presently â–³ others are searched for longer and as it were fetcht out from some more abstruse and remote corner â–³ some boult out of themselves and when another thing is searched and looked for start forth unto us as it were saying is it us perhaps you demand And these I put by with the hand of my soul from before the face of my remembrance untill that which I desire be unclouded and come forth into my sight out of those dark and misty Cells â–³ Other things are suggested as they are demanded in a facile and undisturbed order what goeth before still giving place to what follows and being reposed again as it thus gives place to be forthcomming another time when called for at my pleasure which is usually done when I repeat a thing by heart And there are all these things laid up distinctly and by their several kinds entering also in thither every one by their proper gate Lights and colours and forms of bodies through the glass of the eyes and through the vaults of the ears all kinds of sound all smels by the pipe of the nostrils and all savours by the
door of the mouth and by the sense of feeling spread through the whole body all that whatever is extrinsecally or intrinsecally perceived hard or soft hot or cold rough or smooth heavy or light All these are taken to be perused and reviewed when occasion is into that vast storehouse of the memory and into I know not what secret and unexpressable folds thereof and every one entering in at their severall ports are piled up and reposited in it Yet enter there not the things themselves but the images of them are there ready at hand to our thought when it will remind them * There are the Heaven and the Earth and the sea presented to me with all those things in them which I have ever perceived by sense excepting such only as I have forgotten * There also I do meet-with and do re-view my self when and where and what I have done and how affected when I did it * There are all things formerly experienced by me or related by others so far as I remember them and from the same store still other and other varyed resemblances of my said experiences or my deductions from them are added by me to the former and from these I conceit future actions and events and hopes and on all these I meditate as if present I will do this or that say I within my self in this great Gallery of my mind full of the images of so many and so great things and this or that will follow upon it Oh that this or such thing might be And God avert this or that Such things I say with my self and when I say so the images of all these are before me out of the formentioned treasury of my Memory neither could I have named any such things if they had been awanting Great is that power of the memory excessive great the folds and storehouses thereof vast and infinite who can sound the bottom therof And yet this is a faculty of my soul and belonging to my nature neither am I able to comprehend all that my self am Therefore is the soul too narrow to receive and contain it self so that where it is and what it is it comprehendeth not Is it without it self or not in it self Why then doth it not comprehend it self Great admiration and astonishment ariseth in me concerning this matter And men go to admire the altitude of mountains the swelling billows of the sea the long courses of Rivers the vastnesse of the Ocean the large circles of the Stars and leave themselves unadmired And yet now when I named all these things I saw them not with my eyes yet should I not have named them unlesse I had seen them in my Memory and there too with such great spaces as if seen abroad both Mountains and Waves and Rivers and Starrs which I have seen and the Ocean which I believe Yet did I not in seeing draw-in any of them neither are themselves with me but their images and I know through what sense I received their severall impressions CHAP. IX BUt not these things alone are lodged in the great capacities of my memory Here are laid up also all those rules of the liberal sciences which are not forgotten or as it were removed into some further corner thereof of all which I carry about me not the images but the things themselves and at what gate they entered into my memory I know not CHAP. X. FOR when I learnt them I Creditted not anothers judgment but ackowledged them in my own CHAP. XII HEre also are laid up the innumerable forms and rules of Mathematical figures and numbers none of which entered by sense being things much diverse from the sound of the words by which they are signified from the lines drawn by artificers though never so small and from all those sensible things which by these numbers we number CHAP. XIII ALL these things I retein in memory and retein in memory the manner how I learnt them And many false arguings against them have I heard and retein also in memory which although false yet is there no error in my remembring of those errours And my distinguishing between those truths and these falsities which are said against them this I also remember and I remember also how often I have compared and considered them and I repose in memory my present consideration of them that I may hereafter remember it Therefore I remember also that I have remembred them and if hereafter I shall call to mind that I cannot remember them 't is by the same faculty of memory I do it The same Memory also conteins the passions of my soul but not in the same manner as the soul hath them when she is affected with them but after a proper way of its own much different For I both remember my former joy not rejoycing and call to mind forepast griefs without sorrowing My former fears I reflect on without any fear and am mindful of my former desirings without any desire Nay sometimes on the contrary I remember now past sadnesses with joy and with sadness my now past joyes CHAP. XVI WHat when I name oblivion and know what I name whence knew I it unlesse I remembred it I mean not here the sound of the word but the thing it signifies which thing had I forgotten I could not apprehend what that sound meant Therefore when I remember Memory the Memory is by it self present to it self But when I remember at once both Oblivion and Memory as I can remember both these Oblivion also is present there too Memory by which I remember and Oblivion by which I do not remember yet what is Oblivion but the privation of Memory How then must it be present that I may remember it which when present I cannot remember Is therefore Oblivion when we remember it in the memory not by it self but by its image Because if it were present there by it self it would make us not to remember but forget And who can find this out Who can comprehend how it is Here O Lord I am at a great losse concerning my self and am made unto My self a soil of hard labour and much sweat Neither am I now quartering out the regions of the heavens Gen. 3. nor measuring the distances of Stars nor diving into the foundations and poise of the Earth but about my veriest self for 't is I that remember I the soul It were not so strange if it be never so farr off from my apprehension whatever I am not but what is nearer than my self to me And behold the power of my Memory is not comprehended by Me whenas I cannot so much as name my self without it for what shall I say when certain that I do remember Forgetting Shall I say that thing is not in My Memory which I remember Or shall I say that this forgetting is in My Memory that I may not forget it Both are most absurd CHAP. XVII GReat is the power of memory I know not