which those writings so enflamed me There are those that seduce through Philosophy with this smooth and noble and vertuous name palliating and colouring ore their errors and almost all who in those or in former times were such are in that book noted and set down And there likewise was expressed that salvifical admonition of thy spirit by thy pious and devout Servant Col. 2.8 Beware lest any Man spoil you through Philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of Men after the rudiments of the World and not after Christ for in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily And I for thou O Light of my soul knowest that the Apostolical advice was then unknown to me was much pleased with this in that exhortation of Cicero's that it excited and kindled and enflamed me not to this or that sect but to the affecting and pursuance and apprehending of wisdom it self whatever it were And in this great ardency of mine this one thing only cooled me that the name of Christ was not there Because this name according to thy mercy O Lord this name of my Saviour thy Son my tender heart with my very Mothers milk had piously imbibed and deeply apprehended and whatsoever wanted this name though never so learned polite or veritable yet did not wholly sway me CHAP. V. Not finding our Saviour in Philosophy he turns to the Scriptures Whose humble stile in comparison of Tullie's gives him distast THerefore now I designed my studies to the holy scripture to see what a writing it was And behold I find it not intelligible to the proud nor yet discovered and naked to Children but in its stile lowly lofty in its sense and veiled with mysteries Nor was I such as could enter into it or stoop my neck unto its humble pace for not as I judge now so fancied I then when I first looked upon that sacred book But to me altogether unworthy it seemed to be once compared to Tully's lofty stile for my swollen tumor abhorred its sober temper and my sight pierced not the inside thereof Yet such it was as would still have grown up higher together with those who were litle ones as they should grow higher but such a little one I scorned to be and swelled with pride me thought I was some great one CHAP. VI. In quest of wisdom he falls into the society and errors of the Manichees absurd pernicious ANd even therefore I fell among the proudly doting †The Manichees and too too carnal and yet great Talkers in whose mouths were laid the snares of Satan and a catching birdlime compounded of the commixture of the syllables of Thy name and also of that of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Comforter the Holy Spirit In their mouth were all these very rife but in the sound only and noise of the tongue with a heart void of truth And they spoke of Truth and Truth and many they were that named it unto me and no where was it in them but false things they spoke not of thee only who art the true Truth but also of those elements of the World thy Creatures Of which I found the Philosophers speaking truth yet those also I ought to have passed by for the transcending love of thee my Father the highest good and the beauty of all that 's beauteous O Truth Truth how intimately then did the very marrow of my soul suspire towards thee when they noised thy name unto me often and variously but in words only and in many and voluminous writings †Note that all that which follows thus marked the Reader if he please may omit as lesse pertinent to the Story And those were their dishes wherein to me hungring after thee were served up instead of thee the Sun and the Moon splendid works of thine but thy works though and not thee nor those the primest of them for thy spirituall works precede those corporeal though glorious and celestial But neither was it those thy primest Creatures but thy self Thou O Truth ‖ Jam. 1.17 in whom is no change neither shadow of turning whom I hungred and thirsted after In stead of whom those tables presented me yet with other glittering phantasmes when far worthier had it been to have pitched my admiration upon the sun to my eyes a real thing then on those other falsities wherein my mind through my eyes was deceived And yet taking them to be thee I fed upon them not so greedily indeed for what rellish had these like unto thee with which I then was fed or emptied rather Meat in a dream though not feeding us resembles that which we feed on waking but that food did not the least resemble thee as thy sweetness hath now appeared unto me for they were but corporeal phantasmes the counterfeits of bodies more real than which are those true ones which with our fleshly sight we contemplate whether Heaven or Earthly We together with the beasts and fouls gaze on these more real therefore they are than those we only imagine yet again more reasonably do we imagine those than conjecture and derive again from them yet more vast and infinit-nothings With which emptinesses I was then fed or rather was not fed at all But thou O my Love into whose arms I faint that I might there gain strength art neither those bodies above which we see though from Heaven thou comest nor art thou those we there see not for all them hast thou framed neither countest thou them the chiefest of thy works How much more remote then art thou from being those my phantasms the phantasies of bodies which are not more reall than which are the images of those bodies that are and yet the bodies themselves more certain than these which real bodies yet thou art not Neither yet art thou the soul which is the life of these bodies and this life of bodies is better stabler than the bodies but thou art the life of the souls the life of these lives living alwayes from thy self and never varying O thou life of my soul Where wert thou at that time and at how great a distance And I sojourned far from thee being deprived even of the husks of those swine whom I then fed with husks For how much better were the fables of the Grammarians and the Poets than these cheats For making a verse and a sonnet and a Medea flying in the air c. were more to purpose than five Elements colourably diversified to sute the five caves of darkness which are meer nothing in themselves yet mortal to those who believe them But my verses and my poetry I exercise on the Elements that truly are so And for Medea's flying I neither believe it sung nor sing it to be believed but the other I believed Alas alas by what stairs was I conveyed into the depths of hell Prov. 9.18 For toiling and sweating in quest of still-wanted truth whilst I sought thee O my God for to thee
heard do excite the heart of those who are such like not to sleep on in despair saying I cannot but to awaken themselves through a sense of the love of thy mercy and of the sweetness of thy grace by which whoever is weak becomes strong so soon as first by it he is made conscious to himself of his own weaknesse And again good men who are not such-like are also delighted to hear of the forepast ills of those who are now freed from them are delighted not because such evills were but because they have been only and now are not But now what fruit may there be O Lord my God to whom my conscience maketh confession daily much more secure in the hope of thy mercy than in the confidence of its own innocency What fruit I pray thee of this my confession also before men in this my writing what a one for the present I am not what a one in time past I have been For some fruit of that I have discovered and related But this also what a one I am now at this instant of my writing these my confessions many are desirous to know both of those who have been acquainted and who have not been acquainted with me of those who have heard any thing from or concerning me but yet their ear cannot be laid to my heart where I am what ever I am and therefore they desire to hear my outward confession of what I am within where neither their eye nor ear nor soul can penetrate And this they desire as ready to believe where they cannot know because that charity whereby themselves are honest perswades them also that I am no deceiver in these things I speak of my self and this charity in them gives credit to me CHAP. IV. BUt yet what fruit still of this their desires Is it because they would * congratulate me when they shall hear how far I proceed towards thee by thy Gift And again * pray for me when they shall hear how much still I am retarded in this journey by my own weight Surely to such will I freely reveal my self For this is no small fruit O Lord my God that thanks be given to thee by many cotcerning us and that prayer be made unto thee by many for us Let such a brotherly affection freely * love in me whatever thou instructest it ought to be loved and again * deplore in me what thou instructest it is to be deplored But let the mind of a brother do this not of a forreigner not that of strange children whose mouth is talking of vanity Psal 144.8 and whose right hand is a right hand of iniquity but that of a brother which where it approves me joyes concerning me and where it dislikes grieves for me because such whether in approving or in disallowing continues to love me Willingly to such will I reveal my self Let them utter praise in my good things sighs in my evils My good things are thy commands and thy gifts my evil things are my faults and thy judgements In those let them rejoyce and let them mourn in these and let such Hymnes and Elegies ascend up into thy sight from the censers of the hearts of those my brethren And thou O Lord well-pleased with this Incense out of those thy holy Temples have mercy on me according to thy great mercy and for thy names sake and not forsaking what thou hast begun consummate in me what is yet imperfect This fruit then there is of the confessions not of my past but present condition which moves me to confess the various things of it not only * before thee in a secret exultation with fear and again in a secret mourning with hope but also * in the eares of believing sons of men companions of my joy co-partners of my mortality my fellow-Citizens and my fellow-pilgrims who happen to go before or to come behind or to pace along with me in the road of this life These are thy Servants my Brethren whom thou wouldst have to be thy Sons therfore to be my Masters whom thou hast charged me to serve in what I am able if I would live with and on thee Nor had the command of thy Word to me been sufficient had it by speaking only directed me and not also by doing it self gone before me And now I also indeavour the same service both by my deeds and by my words I endeavour this under the shelter of thy wings in too much extremity of peril were it not that I am sheltered under thy wings My soul hangeth upon thee and my weakness is known unto thee I am but yet a little child but my Father now and alwayes liveth and my Governour is all-sufficient for me for it is the same who before begat me and who now governeth me and it is Thou thy self O Lord that art all my good thou the Omnipotent who wer 't with me also before I was with thee I will therefore now declare to those to whom thou commandest this my service in all things not what I have been only but what I now am and what only yet I am CHAP. V. Yet not able to see or confess all of himself which God seeth in him YEt do I not here undertake to judge aright concerning my self For thou O Lord art he that judgeth me For although no man knows the things of a man but the spirit of man which is in him 1 Cor. 4.3 yet something of a man there is which neither that spirit of man which is within him knoweth But thou knowest the total of him thou who madest him And I also though I abhor my self before thy presence and consider my self but dust and ashes yet may say that I know concerning thee something Job 42.6 which yet concerning my self I am ignorant of For notwithstanding I see thee yet as through a glass darkly not face to face and so long as I sojourn here so farr from thee 1 Cor. 13 12. I am more present to my self than to thee yet well know I concerning thee that thou canst by no meanes nor from no agent receive any hurt but for my self what temptations and assaults from abroad I am able or not able to resist I know not But my hope is that thou art faithful and wilt not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able but wilt with the tempation also make a way to escape that we may sustain it Let me confess therefore both what of my self I know and what things they are I yet know nor of my self because both what concerning my self I know I know from thy illumination and what I know not I shall so long be still ignorant of till my darkness be made noon-day from the light of thy countenance CHAP. VI. Description of his present condition in the state of Grace That he now truly loveth God Concerning whom he proceeds to examine what it is he loveth when he saith that he loveth God That
more did my glory overturn my reason than his drink did his and he that very night should dâ—gest his distemper but I had long time slept and rose again with mine and so was to do thou God knowest for how many dayes Some difference therefore indeed there is upon what grounds a man rejoyceth and no doubt a Christians hope in thee incomparably excells that vanity of his but the advantage in this point between us was on his side and he was much the happier of the two not only because his heart was swel'd with mirth when mine was shrunk with cares but that he with his praying for people had got some good wine I by lying to them sought for empty glory I said many things to this purpose to those my intimates and often on these occasions observed how my pulse beat and I found things were not well with me and I sorrowed and by it doubled my evill And if I sometimes light on some proâ—perous occurrent that pleased me I was almost loth to entertain or solace my self in it because when hardly yet seized on it flew away again from me CHAP. VII Of his friend Alipius his Scholler at Carthage whom he there reclaimed from the vain sports of the Circus but infected him with Manicheisme THese things were much bemoaned amongst a company of us that lived friendly together though I communicated my thoughts more familiarly with Alipius and Nebridius Alipius was born in the same town where I was and his Parents of the best rank there younger then I and before time my scholler both when I first set up school â—n my own Town and afterward at Carthage and he loved me dearly for my seeming piety learning and I him again for his great inclinations to vertue which in so slender an age were very eminent Yet had the stream of the licentious customes of Carthage extreamly given to those vain sports carried him away to an immoderate affection to the shâ—ws of the Circus †Which were chiefly all manner of raâ—es I then professed Rhetorick at Carthage and kept a publick School But by reason of some unkindness risen between his Father and me he at that time was none of my Auditors And I knew well that he was miserably bewitched with the Circus and was much afflicted that so great a hopefulness would be or rather was already lost but in this coniuncture found no means either of admonishing or of restraining him from the good will of a friend or from the authority of a Master For I imagined he had the same opinion of me with his Father though it was much otherwise and he neglecting his Fathers quarrell began kindly to salute me coming many times into my Auditory hearing some part of my Lecture and so erelong departing whence I still forgat to negotiate with him that he would not suffer a blind and precipitate affection to such vain sports to ruine so good a wit But thou O Lord who sittest at the helme and steerest the course of all things which thou hast created thou didst not then forget him that one day he should be numbred amongst thy Children and be a Bishop and dispenser of thy Holy Sacrament And that his reformation in this matter might be clearly attributed to thee thou effectedst it by me indeed but unknown to me For one day I being in the wonted place and my Schollers about me he came in saluted me sat down attended to my Lecture whilst for the illustrating the subject in hand to â—ender it both more pleasant and more plain I borrowed a very apt similitude as I thought from the Cirâ—ensian shews not without a tart derision of such as were fondly captivated with such a madness thou knowest O our God without any thought at that time of conferring any thing to the cure of Alipius his malady But he presently applied it to himself and thought it was aimed at him and whence another would have taken occasion to have been angry with me that good youth did * to be angry with himself and for it yet more dearly * to love me For thou hast said it long ago Pro. 9.8 Rebuke the wise and he will love thee Yet I then intended no rebuke toward him but thou employest us knowing and not knowing in thy designes according to the order thou hast appointed and that order is alwayes most just Thus from my heart and tongue thou applyedst burning coals whereby thou mightest scorch and awaken the stupified soul of that hopeful disposition and so mightest heal it Let him conceal thy praises who weigheth not thy mercies which from the bottom of my soul are confessed unto thee For Alipius presently upon those words recovered himself out of that deep ditch wherein he was willingly sunk and blinded with a miserable pleasure and he shook his mind with a resolute forbearance and all the Circensian filth he had contracted dropt off from it and he returned thither no more And after this he prevailed with his unwilling Father to become my Scholler again and beginning to be my Auditor became likewiâ—e involved in the same superstitions with me and much taken with the Manicheans extolled continency which he supposed to be sincere and true but it was indeed sophisticate and inveigling catching pretious souls who as yet knew not how to reach to the height of true sanctity and therefore were easily deceived by the resemblance of a shadowed and counterfeit vertue CHAP. VIII Alipius before him a Student of the law at Rome how seduced there though very averse to behold and there to delight in the bloody shews of the Gladiators HE pursuing the secular course of life which was pressed upon him by his parents was gone to Rome before me to study the laws there And there was again carried away to the Gladiatory shews with an incredible passion and after as incredible a manner For he being much averse from and detesting such sports some friends and fellow-students meeting him in the streets after dinner with a familiar violence would needs hurry him along with them though making much resistance and many excuses to the Amphitheater upon a day when those cruel and mortall sports were there exhibited He saying to them If ye do hale my body thither and fixe it there yet can ye force me to lend my mind or my eyes at least to such a loathed spectacle Therfore in my corporall presence there I will be absent and so triumph or'e both you and it They hearing this notwithstanding had him along perhaps to try whether he had power to do as he said whither so soon as they came and had gotten places presently these horrid sports began But Alipius shutting the doores of his eyes barred up also his soul from going forth to such mischeivous objects and would to God he had as well bolted his eares too For upon a certain accident in the fight a great shout being raised by the people he out of curiosity and
from a deceitful tongue could only more increase but not extinguish it Nevertheless because that by reason of thy name now so glorified through the world such our purpose and vow must needs find many commenders it seem'd * that it might appear to have some relish of vain-glory in me not to have patience till a vacation so near but to desert a Profession so publick and eyed by all before it and * that the mouths of all men reflecting on this my act and how near a breaking-up school I would yet prevent might say many things as if I affected to magnifie my self and seem some great one and yet what mattered it to me that men should divine and dispute my intentions Rom. 14.16 or that our good should be thus evil-spoken of But besides the opportunity of the Vintage-vacation so it was that in the heat of Summer my lungs began * to fail under the too much toil of my School difficultly * to fetch breath and by the pains of my breast to signifie their hurt and now * to refuse any very loud or long speaking which thing at the first had much troubled me because it would force me either they being incurable upon necessity to give o're so burdensome a profession or if curable yet to intermit it But after that a resolute will to attend only on thee and to see how that thou art the Lord was raised and confirmed in me thou knowest O my God my joy that I had this also no false excuse to sweeten the discontent of those men who for their childrens benefit envied my liberty Full of such joy I patiently therefore endured that interval of time till it should be run out I know not whither they were about some twenty dayes but they were endured not without some patience for I was already rid of those ambitions which formerly helped me to bear that heavy burden with which now therefore I should have been overlaid had not patience took their place Some of thy Servants my brethren may blame me for this that having a heart now fully resign'd to thy service I should any longer though but for an hour sit down in the chair of lies And for my part I do not oppose them But thou O Lord so full of mercy hast thou not pardoned and remitted this sin also unto me amongst many others so horrible and deadly in the holy water of my Baptism CHAP. III. Verecundus a Citizen of Millain offers his country-house for their retirement The death of Verecundus and of Nebridius not long after S. Austin's conversion being both first made Christians †See l. 8. cap. 6. VErecundus was much afflicted concerning this our purpose because thus he saw himself by reason of the many bonds wherewith he was most straitly tyed deprived of our society Himself not yet a Christian though his wife a baptized Professor of the faith and yet was he * retarded by her as one of his straightest fetters from following our intended course * and did deny to become a Christian upon any other termes than these he could not perform Truly he very courteously offered and lent us for the time of our abode in that place the use of his country-house Thou O Lord shalt recompense him at the resurrection of the righteous since the lot of the righteous is already happened to him Who though in our absence after we had removed to Rome being seized by a corporal sickness was in it made a Christian and a Fidelis and so departed this life In which thing thou hadst mercy not only on him but on us lest considering the great courtesies of this friend toward us and not able to number him amongst thy flock we should have been tormented with too disconsolate a sorrow Thanks be to thee our God thy care we are all thy exhortations and thy consolations sufficiently shew it faithful in all thy promises Thou shalt return to Verecundus for that his house at Cassiacum where from the tumults of the world we quietly reposed in thee Psal 68.15 16. Vulg. in in monte incascato monte tuo monte ube i. the amenity of thy eternally-green and flourishing Paradise because thou hast remitted unto him his sins here on earth in the mountain of fat pastures the Hill of God that fruitful Hill Thus was Verecundus afflicted but Nebridius as much joyed for although he not as yet a Christian had formerly fallen into the pit of that most pernicious errour to believe the flesh of thy Son only an empty apparition yet now reclaimed from it he was a most earnest inq isitor of truth though not as yet initiated in any Sacraments of thy Church Whom becoming also not long after our conversion and regeneration by thy baptism a faithful Catholick and serving thee in all continency and chastity amongst his Kindred in Afri k and having converted all his family to Christianity thou hast loosed from the flesh and now he lives unto thee in Abraham's bosom Whatever it is that is signified by that bosom there my Nebridius lives my sweet friend and thy adopted Son there he lives For what other place can receive such a soul In that place he lives concerning which he asked of me a poor unexperienced man so many questions He now layes his ear no more to my mouth but his spiritual mouth to thy fountain and there drinks wisdom to his fill endlesly happy Yet cannot I imagin him so inebriated therewith that he forgets me since thou also O Lord whom he drinketh art mindful of me Thus therefore it was with us at that time we comforting Verecundus much grieved yet without diminution of friendship for such our conversion and * exhorting him to a profession of the faith suting with his condition namely with a married life And * attending for Nebridius when he would run the same course of life with us which he might presently and was upon the point to do it every moment when behold those dayes were at last run out which seemed so long and many from the affection I had of a vacant liberty That I might sing from the innermost marrow of my soul Tibi dixit cor meum Psal 27.2 My heart hath said unto thee I have sought thy face and thy face O Lord will I seek CHAP. IV. His retiring in the Vacation after his School dissolved to the country-house of Verecundus His meditations on the fourth Psalm and his several writings there and the miraculous cure of his violent tooth-ach after he was rendred thereby speechless ANd now was the day come wherein I should actually be released from my Professorship in Rhetorick from which I was released before in affection And it was done and thou now freedst my tongue from what thou hadst before freed my heart And I blessed thee with much rejoycing and so retired to the Country Villa †At Cassiacum with all my nearest friends Where * what I did in my writings now
misery I presently meet with an excuse for it whether a iust one thou knowest O Lord for I do suspect it For because that thou * hast commanded us not only continency that is from what things we are to withdraw our love but also justice that is where we are to place it and * willest that not only thy self but also our neighbour be loved by us I often seem to My self * to be pleased with his proficiency or with the good hopes I have thereof when I am delighted with the commendations of one understanding things a right and again * to be grieved in his behalf when I hear one blaming what he is ignoraat of or what is praise worthy For indeed I find my self afflicted also with my own praises when either such things are commended in Me wherein I displease my self or when small or light good things in Me are more valued than they ought But yet on the other side how know I whether I am not thus affected for that I would not have another entertain an opinion concering me or concerning any thing mine different from My own and this not because his good or benefit moves me thereto but because those good things in me which please me please me much more when they also please another For in some sort it is not I that am commended when my judgment also concerning my self is not commended as when those things in me are commended which dislike me or those things more commended which less like me Am I not therefore in this ignorant of my self In thee O Truth I see and learn that not for my own sake but for my neighbours good I ought to take content in my praises But whether indeed it be so I am ignorant and less do I know of my self than of thee in this matter therefore I beseech thee O my God reveal thou my self unto me that I may confesse my discovered wounds unto my brethren who may pray to thee for me Let Me yet more diligently question my self in this matter If it be in respect of my neighbours benefit only that I am so touched with my own praises why than am I lesse moved in the injurious disparagement of another than if it were of my self And why am I much more netled with a contumely thrown upon My self than when it is so upon another in my presence with the same injustice Psal 141.5 Can I also plead my ignorance and uncertainty for this Or shall I endeavour here also to delude my self and nor confesse the truth before thee both in heart and tongue Lord such a folly put thou farr from me and let not mine own mouth go about to anoint and perfume my head with the flattering Oyl of sinners I am poor and needy and the best when with secret laments displeasing my self and invocating thy mercy until these my deficiencies be repaired and perfected into a full repose and peace a peace hidden from the eyes of the arrogant and self-conceited CHAP. XXXVIII â–³ Incurred also from the contemning of Praise as this also being a thing praise-worthy CHiefly speech that is eloquent and good actions that are publick and eminent cause in us a most perillous temptation from this our love of praise which subtility assayes to procure the applause of others to the advancing of my own private excellency even then also when such love of praise in me is censured by me and for that very reason because it is so censured and often doth a man more vainly glory of the very contempt of vain-glory and therefore now in truth the contempt of vain-glory is not gloryed-of by him For he utterly contemns it not so long as within himself he reteins still some glorying CHAP. XXXIX Incurred also from self-love and self-conceit without regard to praise from others THere is yet within us another disease in the same kind of temptation namely a vanity in men of self loving and pleaâ—â—ng themselves in themselves * whether it happen that they please or that they displease abroad and* wherein they affect not the pleasing of others But these men whilst thus pleasing themselves much do they displease thee not only in glorying in some things not good as in good but also in thy good things as if in their own or also in glorying in them as thine but as conferred on them for some merits of their own or also as in thine without any their meriting but yet not sociably joying in them but as envying the same graces of thine to others In all these and the like perils and travels thou seest the fears and tremblings of my heart and I rather perceive such wounds to be by thee continually cured within me than not to be at all received CHAP. XL. A recapitulation of the things formerly spoken in this Book S. Austin's sometimes extraordinary transportments in the contemplation and love of God O Truth where hast not thou walked along with me and been instructing me what I should avoid and what affect when I recounted unto thee my mental discoveries such as I was able to make and consulted thee concerning them I surveighed the world abroad with the senses serving me for that purpose and after this I reflected * upon the vegetable life of my own body and * upon those my senses From hence I entered further into the inner chambers of my memory those manifold capacities filled with an innumerable store of wonderful things I considered them and remained amazed at them and none of them could I discern without thee and yet I found none of them to be thee Neither yet wer 't Thou Me the discoverer himself who travelled over all these and endeavoured to distinguish and value each one according to their several dignity * receiving some from the messages of my senses * questioning about others more intimate and not ushered in by them whence they were and * numbring the several messengers whence I received them and then after thus having displayed in my memory all its treasure * handling and examining some part * laying-up-again others examined and * drawing-out others to be perused Neither I say was I my self who wrought all this that is my faculty by which I wrought it neither was this Thou my Lord For Thou art a light alway permanent and immutable which light I still consulted concerning all these whether and what and of what worth they were And I listened unto its instructing me and commanding me and this I still continue to consult This is my great delight and so often as I can be released from other necessary affairs I repair to this pleasure Neither find I in all these things which I run through and wherein I consult thee any place of settlement for my soul save only in thee whither all my dissipations finally may be recollected and from whence nothing of me may eyer again be strayed And sometimes thou dost admit me * into an affection very unusual within the
it is I now confess my faults who hadst pity on me before I confessed them unto thee whilst I sought thee not according to the higher reason of my understanding in which thou hadst pleased to advance me above beasts but according to the exterior sense of my carnality when as thou meanwhile wast more interior to me than what of me was most intimate and more superior then what was my highest I lighted upon that shameless Prov. 9.16.17 witless woman Salomons Emblem of errour sitting at the door of her house and saying Come eat ye secretly of my pleasant bread and steal ye a draught of my sweet waters Who easily seduced me because she found my soul inhabiting abroad in the eye of my flesh and chewing its cud upon such food as it had before received and swallowed by the senses CHAP. VII Their questions that stumbled him and the solutions of them in the three Chapters following FOr meanwhile that which was true in thy word was not truly understood by me and their seeming acutenesse moved me to assent to those silly deceivers when they put such questions unto me Whence came Evill †Supposed Ten en◠of Christianity See Gen. 1.26 27. Gen. 16.2 Gen. 22.10 And * whether God were concluded within a corporeal shape And had hair and nails And * whether they were to be accounted righteous men that at one time had many Wives and those who slew men and sacrificed living creatures With which things my ignorance was much troubled and travelling away from Truth thought still I marched toward it For ignorant I was that Evil was a privation of Good even to the furthest extent thereof any thing lesse than which good hath at all no real being Which how could I discern whose sight * of my eyes extended only to a body * of my mind to a phantasme Again I knew not God to be a Spirit and not such a thing whose parts were extended in length and breadth and whose being was bigness for a bigness is less in a part than in its whole and though supposed infinite is lesse in some portion of it included within a certain space than in its infinitude and is not all of it every where as a spirit as God is And what there could be in us like unto God and whether we were rightly said in the Scriptures to be made after his image I was utterly ignorant And again I knew not that true and interior iustice not judging out of customs but out of the perfect Law of the Almighty God by which were variously fashioned the manners of all Countries and times according to the exigence of those times and Countreys when as it meanwhile in all times and all places remaineth but one not at any time diverse or any where otherwise According to which Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David were righteous and commended by God though deemed ungodly by silly men judging according to their own short day and measuring by a little span of their own fashions 1 Cor. 4.3 the universal customes of all mankind As if one in an Armory not knowing what suted to every member would cover his head with Greaves and his feet with an Helmet and then murmur at his ill accoutrement Or when traffick is forbidden for an afternoon a shop-keeper should rage that he was not permitted to sell his wares because he might only do this in the morning Or a Servant in a house seeing another take something in hand which perchance the cup-bearer was forbid to meddle with or something done behind the stables not sufferable in the Dining-room should chafe that in one dwelling and one family the same thing to every one in every place was not allowed Even such are they who strange at it when they hear that righteous men in one age might do something which in another righteous men might not and that God had commanded one thing to these to those another for reasons temporal whilst still the same eternal justice is obeyed by both when as yet in one man and on one day and in one family they see several things sute to the several members something formerly lawful after an hour not so some thing in one corner permitted or also commanded that is in another forbidden punished Doth the rule of justice then swerve sometimes and vary from it self No. But the times over which it presides run not constant and even for they are fleeting times But men whose dayes are few upon the earth being by their short sense unable to connex reconcile the causes unexperienced of past ages and forreign Nations with those of their own tryed by them and yet well discerning in one body or day or house what members what minutes what roomes and persons every thing becometh are offended in those in these well satisfied These things then I knew not observed not on every side they beat upon my sight I regarded them not And I knew when I composed Sonnets I might not place every foot every where but in several kinds of verse in a diverse manner and in any one verse not in all places the same foot yet the art by which I composed in its capacity comprehended all these varieties at once And I did not behold that that justice which good and holy men obeyed did farr more excellently and more sublimely together at once in fold all those things which it had severally commanded and was in no part varied and yet through so varying times did distribute and enjoyn not all at once but to each their proprieties And thus Blind-man I censured those holy Patriarchs not only managing the present affairs as God commanded and inspired them but also thereby foreshewing the future as he revealed these unto them †Alluding to the Israelites sacrificing of Beasts and Abraham his Son and other ceremonies that were typicall CHAP. VIII BUt now since some Constitutions are changeable according to places and times becomes it then at any time or in any place unjust To love God with all ones heart with all his soul and with all his mind and his neighbour as himself No. △ Those infamous crimes which †Flagitia are against nature it self are in every time in every place to be abhorred to be detested such as those of the Sodomites were which-like should any other Nation at any time commit they should incur the same guilt by the divine Lawes which made not men so as to use themselves in such manner For by this is violated that society which we ought to have with God when the nature whereof he is author is polluted by the perversion of lust contrary to the Authors design △ Likewise those infamous crimes which are against the civil society of men according to the diversity of their several usages and practice are to be avoided and forborn As a covenant which is ratified by a custom or law made amongst those of any City or Nation
baptized IN those years likewise when first I began to teach in the Town where I was born I had a friend grown by the society of our studies too too dear unto me my co-aâ—â—anean co-flourishing with me in the fresh blossom of youth With me he had sprung up from a child and we had been alwaies school-fellows and play-fellows together Yet was he not then by me so accounted a friend as afterwards nor indeed was he so afterward according to the rule of true friendship because that only is true amity which thou joynest betwixt such parties as first co-here in thee by the glew of that love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost Rom. 5.5 which is given unto us But yet too too sweet was that our amity being long backed and concocted by the equal hear of the same studies pursued by us both For I had also already bended him from the true faith which his youth had not so strongly and deeply comprehended to those fables so superstitious and pernicious for which my poor Mother deplored me And now that man strayed in his judgment together with me nor could my soul mind ought without him And Lo Thou pursuing close upon the backs of us thy fugitives God of revenges and at the same time fountain of mercies who re-convertest unto thee by wonderful waies Lo thou tookest away that man out of this World when he had scarce compleated a year in that my friendship so sweet unto me beyond all the sweetnesses of that my life Who can enumerate thy praises Who those which he hath experienced in himself alone What was it thou didst at that time O my God And how uninvestigable is the Abyss of thy judgments For falling sick of a burning-fever he hapned to lie long time in a mortal sweat without all sense And his recovery then despaired-of he was unknowing it baptized whilst I much mattered it not and presumed that he would sooner retain those signatures I had imprinted on his soul than those which he inscient were received upon his body When far otherwise it proved for he was suddenly refreshed upon it and made †Or recovered of that fit whole And I presently as soon as I could speak with him which was so soon as he could answer me for I departed not from him who too intimately depended on each other began to scoff to him as to one likewise that would deride with me the baptism which he had received when he was so much absented at that instant both in understanding and senses though he had been acquainted after that he had received it But he looked upon me with the same horror as it had been on an enemy and with a wonderful and suddenly-assumed freedom advised me that if I meant to continue a friend I should desist to speak to him on that manner And I though perplexed and amazed thereat yet deferred my passion till his recovery and till the strength of his health were capable of my agitating with him what I thought fit But he ravished from my folly that with Thee he might be preserved for my consolation after a few daies in my absence was re-seized by his Fever and died With what agony was then my heart darkned And whatever I looked on had the face of death upon it Even my Country was a banishment to me and my Fathers house a wonderful affliction And what ever sweet thoughts I had communicated with him turned now unto me being without him into a most bitter torment Mine eyes every where sought him and he was not restored unto me and all places were hated by me because they had him not Neither could they now answer me Behold he will come shortly as it was before in his life time Psal 42.11 when he was absent And I became unto my self a great astonishment and I asked of my soul Why she was so sad why so disquieted within me Nor knew she what to answer me And if I said Trust in God she most justly did not obey me Because a farr truer and better thing that man was whom so dear to her she had lost than that phantasm of God on which she was bidden yet to repose her hope Of all things weeping only was left pleasant to me and this alone had succeeded my Friend in the dearest place of my affection CHAP. V. Why Mourning so pleasant to the afflicted ANd now O Lord those storms are long since blow over and time hath healed up that wound O might I learn from thee who art the truth and thy mouth applied to the ear of my heart wouldst thou tell me why are tears so sweet to the afflicted art thou who art every where present yet as it were then retired from our miseries dwelling alwayes in thy contented self whilst we are varied in much wofull experience in which yet if we might not bemoan our selves in those thy passion-less ears the lost spark of our hope would be extinguished From whence then is so lushious a fruit cropped out of the very bitterness of life as that of groaning and weeping sighing and bemoaning our selves is * Is that the sweetness of it that we hope thou hearest it T is so truly in our prayers for that they have an earnest desire of access unto thee But may it be so said too concerning that grief and mourning for a thing utterly lost wherewith I was then overwhelmed For neither conceived I any hopes to revive him nor petitioned I this with my tears but only wept and lamented my loss as desolate and bereft of all my joyes Or * is weeping it self indeed a bitter thing and only in a fastidiousness of things before enjoyed whilst we abhorr all those former sweets this bitternesse delights us CHAP. VI. His wounded soul for his deceased Friend not finding any consolation BUt why do I speak of these things For this is not a time now of questioning but of confessing unto thee Miserable then I was and miserable is every soul fettered with the love of mortal things and racked asunder it is when it loseth them and then resents the infelicity by which it was equally miserable before it lost them So was I at that time and mourned most bitterly and in that bitterness placed my repose Such a wretch I was and I accounted dearer to me even than that my Friend this my so wretched life For although fain I would have changed it yet was I unwilling to have lost it any more than him and I know not whether unwilling to have lost it even for him As 't is storied of Orestes and Pylades if it be not a fiction that they strove to dye * for each other or at least * together to whom not to live together was a thing worse than death But there ruled in me I know not what passion quite contrary to this Both the tediousness of living was most afflicting to me and the fear of death I think
didst unto me * by vain men only taken with the things of this dying life by some on one side doing mad things and some on the other side promising vain * and thus to reform my present ill courses thou secretly madest use of both their and my own faulty inclinations For both those who thus disturbed my quiet were blinded with a sottish madness and those who invited my removall favoured only Earthly advantages and my self who loathed my present misery yet courted elsewhere but a false felicity But another end why I should leave this place and go to that thou then well knowest my God neither shewedst thou it to me nor to my mother who miserably lamented my departure and followed me to the Sea-side that either she might yet reduce or else her self also accompany me And I feigned that my design was only to accompany a friend till he had a favourable wind for his embarquement and should put to Sea and thus I lied to my mother and to such a mother and got away from her Nevertheless thou in thy great mercy didst not instantly revenge this fault upon me but savedst me from the waters of the Sea a soul so stained with execrable filthiness unto the baptismall waters of thy grace with which I being once washed and made clean those rivers also of my mothers eyes might be dryed up which from her sad face daily watered the ground under her feet poured out unto thee in my behalf There she refusing upon any terms to return back without me I with much ado perswaded her for that night to take some rest in a place that was very near to our ship being †An Oratory dedicated to S. Cyprian where were conserved some of his Reliques a memoriall of St. Cyprian's but that same night I stole away to sea and she was left there praying and weeping And what was it that with so many tears she begged of thee but that thou wouldst put a let to that voyage but thou deep in thy counsels and yielding then also unto her in the sum of her desires regardedst her not in the particular she then requested of thee that so in an higher manner thou mightest accomplish it in the main thing for which she alwayes petitioned thee The wind blew fair and swel'd our sails and the shore withdrew it self from our sight whither my Mother being returned next morning to seek me was now overwhelmed with grief and filled thine ears with groans and complaints thine ears that despised her moan whilst by the the means of my lusts thou hurriedst me away to put an end to those very lusts and chastisedst this her too carnal affection to me with a just scourge of sorrow For she as other Mothers do but much more than many do loved and desired my corporal presence with her and knew not how much joy thou wert preparing for her out of that my absence She knew it not then and therefore mourned and wept and shewed the Reliques of Eve in her seeking thus with sorrow what with sorrow she had brought forth At last after a sad accusation of that my cosenage and cruel behaviour toward a Mother returning again to her prayers to deprecate Thee for that my fault she went about her accustomed affairs and I towards Rome CHAP. IX Coming to Rome he is stricken with a dangerous fever the recovery from which he imputes to his Mothers prayers ANd lo there presently I am smitten with a rod of corporal sickness and now am going post to the place below carrying with me all those evills I had committed against Thee and my self and others many and grievous besides the chain of Original guilt by which we all dye in Adam For as yet Thou hadst remitted nothing unto me in Christ nor had he yet slain that enmity by his Crosse which by my sins I had incurred with thee For how could he take them away by that only-phantastical Crosse of his which I believed How false therefore at that time the death of his flesh seemed to me so true was the death of my soul and how true the death of his flesh was indeed so false was the life of my soul which then did not credit it And thus my fever much increasing I now approached to the very point of dying and of dying eternally For whither had I gone if I had dyed then but into flames and torments sutable to my deeds according to the setled truth of thy ordinance concerning us And my poâ—r mother knew nothing of this yet did I absent enjoy her prayers and Thou omnipresent where she was gavest ear unto her and where I was hadst pity on me in restoring me again to the health of my body though still sick and much distempered in a sacrilegious mind For neither did I so much as desire thy baptism in that my great peril and much better affected I was when I was yet a child and earnestly requested it of my mothers piety as I have before recited and confessed But as I grew bigger so I grew worse and madly derided the prescription of this thy medicine who yet permittedst me not when in such a case so to dye a double death Which had it happened my mothers heart also would have received a wound incurable For I cannot expresse the great affection she bare me nor with how much more sorrow and pain she travelled-again of me to bring me forth * in the spirit then she had formerly done at her child-bearing * in the flesh I see not therefore how ever she should have been cured if these bowels of her love had been once pierced with such a sad end of my life And then what would have become of so many and so passionate prayers without intermission †Nusquam insi the same as nusquaÌ„ non see M. Wats his annotations in all places made by her unto thee Couldst thou a God of mercies despise the contrite and humble heart of a desolate widdow so chast and so sober so abounding in almes-deeds so dutiful and officious to thy saints no day omitting her oblation at thine Altar twice in the day Morning and Evening without intermission coming to thy Church not for vain chat and idle tales but that she might hear Thee in thy words thou her in her prayers by thee then could the tears of such a one wherewith she begged of thee neither silver nor gold nor any mutable or fading good but only the safety of the soul of her poor son could the tears of such a one by thee who madest her such be neglected and contemned and fail of thy help No Lord yea thou wert present and heardst and didst her requests according to the order of thy own predesignments of them to be done Farr was it from thee that thou shouldst deceive her in those visions of hers or answers of thine some already related some omitted by me which pre-engagements from thee she treasured up in a believing
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
luckiness in them and that in their speaking many things that should were spoken some things which did after come to passe not foreknown by those who said them but happened on by their not saying nothing Thou procuredst I say a friend of mine a curious consulter of Astrologers though himself not much seen in it who related to me something from his father which though he made little reflection thereupon served very much for the overthrow of the vain esteem of that Science This man therefore by name Firminus ingenuously educated and well studied in eloquence consulting me as one very dear to him what I collected from his Constellations as he call'd them concerning some important affair of his to which his secular hopes aspired and I who was now somewhat inclined to Nebridius his opinion conjecturing and divining thereupon what my doubting mind met-with in the Art but withall superadding that I was almost perswaded all those things were ridiculous and vain he proceeded to tell me how his father was a most curious student of such books and had also a friend alike-affected who with emulating studies and comparing of their observations were so farre enflamed toward those toyes as that when any mute Animals of their own brought forth young they marked the moment of their birth and set down the positions of the Heavens in them from whence they might gather some experiments of this Art And he said he had heard from his father that when his mother was great with child of the said Firminus a certain maid-servant of his friends happened to be big with child at the same time not unremarked by her Master who observed with most exact diligence even the puppyings of his dogs and that so it happened that they with most wary observation accounting one the day hour minute of his wifes the other of his maids being brought to bed both were delivered at the same instant so that they were forced to set down the same calculation to a minute of the Nativity one of his son the other of his servant For as soon as the women fell in labour they gave mutuall notice and had one ready to send to each other so soon as the child was born and those sent met so justly in the mid-way that neither of them was permitted to observe any position of the starrs or particle of time different from the other And yet Firminus as honourably descended ran the more happy courses of this world increased in wealth was advanced in dignities But the servant having the yoke of his condition no way eased waited on a Master as he told me vvho very vvell knevv him Hearing therefore and believing these things from so creditable an Author all my former reluctance presently melted and first I endeavoured to reduce Firminus from this curiosity saying That from the inspection of his Constellations to tell him the truth of what should succeed I was in them to discern that his parents were of better quality his family noble of the City where they lived his extraction and his education honourable his studies ingenuous But if afterward the servant out of these Constellations for he had the same consulted me to tell him the truth also I must in them behold his fortune a most abject family a condition servile and all other things farr differing and much contrary to the former Whence it would follow that on the same aspects I was to read contrary fortunes if I foretold the truth or if I read the same fortune must say what was false And hence I gathered that what is spoken true from consideration of such Constellations is said not by Art but by guesse and what is spoken false is not from any unskilfulness of Art but from the errour of guessing From this entrance upon a further consideration of these things lest any who lived by this trade whom I much desired to confute and render ridiculous should reply that Firminus to me or his father at least to him had told an untruth I reflected my thoughts on those who are born twins who ordinarily are excluded into the world so hastily one after the other that the small interval of time whatever operation they may pretend it to have in nature yet cannot be collected by humane observation nor expressed in the composition of any figure out of which the Astrologer is to make his prognostication His predictions therefore either cannot be true if from perusing the same figure he should say the same things for example of Esau and Jacob when as the same things happened not to them both Or if true he must not say the same of them whereas yet his inspection was utterly the same Therefore not from Art but chance it is that he speaketh truth For thou O Lord the most just Moderator of the Universe whilst the consulters and the consulted know not any thing by a secret instinct orderest what is fit both that the one should say and the other hear according to the hidden merits of souls and the abyss of thy just judgement Eâ—clus 35.17 To whom let none say What is this wherefore is that let him not say let him not say it for he is but a man CHAP. VII Prâ—secuâ—ing the same query Unde Malum THus loosed from these bonds by thee my Helper yet I was still in a labyrinth concerning the query From whence Evil and could find no way out Yet thou didst not suffer me by any wayes of those my cogitations to be carried away from the right faith by which I believed both that thou wert and that thy substance was immutable and that thou didst take a care of and didst justice amongst men and that in Christ thy Son our Lord and in the holy Scriptures which the authority of thy Catholick Church recommended unto me thou hadst appointed a way of mans salvation in reference to that life which after this present death shall be enjoyed These points therefore being safe and well-quieted in my mind I still hotly enquired from whence should come Evil. And what pangs were those of my heart in travel what groans O my God And there were thine eares receiving them and I knew it not and whilst in silence I importunatly sought the tacite contritions of my soul were powerful clamours to thy mercy Psal 38.9 10. Vulgar Ante te omne desiderium meum lumen oculorum meorum non est mecum And my desire was before thee and the true light of mine eyes was not with me For it was within and I was abroad Neither possessed it any place But my fancy was intent only upon things circumscribed by place and amongst them I found no place of rest and neither did they so well entertain me that I could say I am well this is enough Nor yet did they quite release me to return where it might be well enough with me For I was much superiour to them as inferiour to thee And thou wouldest be true joy and
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
the trouble of emptinesse to the rest of fulnesse my concupisence layeth a snare for me For this passage it self is a pleasure nor is there any other way to passe to it but this to which necessity forceth me And thus whereas health only is the true cause of eating and drinking yet there accompanies it as its handmaid a perillous jucundity and gust which most what endeavours also to step before it that for its sake I should do what I pretend or also desire to do only for healths sake Nor are both of these content with the same allowance That which is sufficient for health beeing too little for delight and many times it becomes uncertain whether it is the necessary care of my body that requires such a supply or the voluptuous deceit of my lust that procures such a maintenance from me and the unhappy soul grows glad in such an uncertainty and thence prepares the protection of an excuse rejoycing that it appears not what is an exact proportion for the welfare of the body that under the cloak of health it may disguise the matter of delight These enticements daily I endeavour to resist and do invoke thy right hand to save me and to thee do relate these my anxitties for I am to seek for Counsel in this matter I hear the voice of my Lord commanding Let not your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkennesse Luk. 21.34 As for drunkennesse it is hitherto farr from me shew thou mercy that it may never approach me But immoderate eating doth sometimes steal upon thy servant shew thou mercy that it may be put farr from me For none can be continent unlesse thou givest it Many things thou bestowest unto our prayers and whatever good also we receive before we pray for it from thee we receive it and the knowledge also that from thee we receive it we receive from thee I was never a drunkard but drunkards have I known made afterwards sober men by thee Therefore from the same thee it is that they should not be so who never were such * from whom it was that they should not alwaies be so who somtimes had been such * from whom also it was that both these should know from whom it was I heard also another voice of thine Eccle. 16 30. 1 Cor. 8.8 Go not after thine own lusts and turn away thy face from thy own pleasure I have heard also that speech from thy bounty with which I am much taken Neither if we eat shall we abound neither if we eat not shall we lack That is neither will the one render me plentifull nor the other deficient Another voice I have heard For I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content Phil. 4.11 I know both how to abound and how to suffer need through Christ that strengtheneth me I can do all things Psal 103.14 Gen. 3. Luke 15.32 See here a Souldier of the Celestial Host and not such earth and dust as we are But remember thou O Lord that we are but dust and that of the dust thon mad'st Man and he was lost but is found Neither was this Man able of himself to do such things because he was the same dust whom by thy inspiration saying such things I do so dearly affect but I saith he can do all things through him who strengthenâ—h me Strengthen thou me also that I may be able Give what thou commandest and command what thou pleasest He also confessed 1 Cor. 4. â— 1 Cor. 1 31. Eccles 23 5 6. that he had received it and what he glorifieth oâ—â—e glorifieth of in the Lord. Another I have heard asking of thee that he might receive Take thou fâ—om me saith hâ— the greedinesse of the belly whence it appears my holy God that thou givest when it is done what thou commandest to be done Thou hast taught Me also Rom. 14.20 1 Tim. 4.4 1 Cor. 8.8 Col. 2.16 Rom. 14.3 Good â—aâ—her Vnto the pure that all things are pure but that it is evill to the man who eateth with offence And That every creature of thine is good and nothing to be refused which is received with thanks giving And That meat commendeth us not to God And That no man may judge us in meat or in drink And That He which eateth let him not despise him that eateth not and let noâ— him that eateth not judge him that eateth These things I have learnt Thaâ—ks be to thee praises to thee My God My Master knocking-at mine ears enlightning My heart Deliver thou Me from all temptations The uncleanesse of the Meat I do not dread but the uncleanesse of lusting I know that Noah was permitted all manner of flesh good for food Gen. 9.3 1 Kin. 17.6 Mat. 3.4 Gen. 25. 1 Chro 11 Mat. 4.3 Num. 11.4 That Elias hungring in the desert was fed with flesh-meat That John the Baptist a man endued with a miraculous abstinence received no pollution from living creatures 1. Locusts made his food And on the otherside I know that Esau was deceived by the lust of a few lentiles and David censured by himself for the desire of a draught of water and that our King was tempted not in a matter of flesh but of bread only and therefore also the people in the Wildernesse not simply because they desired flesh but because in the desire thereof they murmured against the Lord deserved to be rejected I therefore placed amongst the same temptations am striving every day against this concupisence in eating and in drinking For 't is no such thing which I can resolve to cut off at once and touch no more as I could do concerning concubinage Therefore are the reins of the throat to be held with a moderate hand between relaxation and restraint And who is he O Lord who is not sometimes transported beyond the lists of necessity Whoever he be a great one he is * let him magnify thy name But such a one I am not for I am a Sinfull man But I am one also that Magnify thy name and * let him intercede unto thee for these My sins who hath so perfectly overcome the World reckoning Me also amongst the weaker Members of the same body â—sal 136.6 because thy eyes also regard this my imperfect substance and in thy book shall all thine be written CHAP. XXXII 3. Concerning the temptations of the smell in sweet odours and perfumes FRom the allurements of sweet smels I suffer no great trouble when absent I do not misse them when present not refuse them and am willing for ever to be without them Thus I appear to my self but perhaps mistaken For much to be lamented is the darknesse wherein my very abilities and faculties which are within me lie obscured and hidden from me So that my own mind when questioning it self concerning its own strength knows not well how to believe it self because much within it lies secret and concealed from it till
within it whole armies of such copious vanities hence are our very prayers also often interrupted and disturbed and even before thy face and whilst the voice of our hearts is presented unto thy ears so important an affair is suddenly broken off by the rushing in I know not from whence of such nugatory cogitations Have I accounted this sort of temptation a contemptible matter Or is there any thing that amongst such infirmities â—evives my hope save wholly thy mercy because thou hast already begun to effect a change in me CHAP. XXXVI 3. His remaining infiâ—mities concerning the temptations of the pride of life The great danger of vain-glorying â–³ incurred from the approbation and praise of men ANd thou knowest in how great a part thou hast reformed me who to come now to the third sort of temptation the pride of life hast long since healed me from the lust of revenging my selfe or of vindicating my reputation and integrity That so thou mightest forgive all the rest of mine iniquities Psal 103.3 4 5. and mightest heal all my diseases and mightest redeem my life from corruption and crown me with loving kindnesse and tender mercies and satisfy my mouth with good things When thou hadst crushed my pride with thy fear and tamed my neck to thy yoke And now I bear it and it is light unto me because so thou hast promised and so thou hast made it and indeed so it was alwayes but I Knew it not when I was so much affraid to undergo it But yet O thou Lord who alone dost Lord it without all pride because thou only art the Lord who hath no other Lord hath this sort of temptation wholly ceased from me or can it cease at all in this life namely to desire to be reverenced and to be loved by men not for any other end save only that we may rejoyce our selves in it Where is no cause of joy but such a life is truely miserable and this boasting full of shame For from this thing chiefly ariseth their not entirely loving thee and their not chastly-fearing thee Jam. 4.6 Therefore dost thou resist such proud but givest grace unto the humble and thou thunderest over the heads of the ambitious of this world and makest the foundations of these mountains to tremble Yet here because for the better performing several duties of humane society 't is necessary both to be loved and feared of men the adversary of our happiness presseth sore upon us in this matter strowing on every side upon his snares Euge Euge that greedily gathering up this we may be unawares caught by the other and may lay aside our joy in the truth of thee that we may place it in the falsehood of men and may covet to be loved and feared of men not for thy sake but in thy stead and so being made like unto him he may also link us with him not in the union of love Esas 14.13 but in the fellowship of punishment who strives to exalt his throne in the sides of the north that he imitating thee in an opposite way his vassalls contrary to the light and heat of love which thine enjoy may serve in cold and darknesse But we O Lord behold we are thy litle flock keep thou still the possession of us Stretch forth thy wings over us and let us fly under them Be thou all our glory let us love and be loved only for thy sake and let thy word only be feared in us He that longs to be commended by men when thou disapprovest him shall not be justifyed by men when thou judgest him nor rescued by men when thou condemnest him and when Psal 9.29 Vulg. not he that is a sinner is blessed in his wickednesse which he hath done but a man is commended for some good which thou hast given him and yet that man rejoyceth more within himself that he is commended than that he hath from thee that gift for which he is so praised he also is commended whilst thou disallowest And the better Man is he that praiseth than he who is praised for the gift of God in man pleaseth the one but the gift of man namely praise delighteth the other more than that of God CHAP. XXXVII Which is not avoidable to well-doing ASsaulted with these temptations we are daily O Lord Prov. 27.21 without ceasing we are assaulted A daily furnace to try us is Mans tongue applauding us And thou commandest us also in this matter continency Give what thou commandest and command what thou wilt Thou knowest what groans my heart and what floods my eyes concerning this thing powre forth unto thee For 't is no easy thing to me to know how much lesse or more pure I am from this plague and I dread my inward and secret errings which thine eye beholds but mine do not Psal 19.12 For in other kinds of temptations I have some way of trying my self but in this almost none at all For both in the pleasures of the sense and curiosity of science I perceive how much I have my mind wained from them whenas I happen to be without such things whether voluntarily when they are absent or upon necessitie when they are also wanting For at such times I ask my self how much greater or less trouble I have than formerly to be without them And so for riches which are coveted to this end that we may by them serve some one of the forementioned lusts or also two or all of them if my mind cannot Namely those 1 Jo 2.16 lust of the flesh lust of the eyes pride of life in the possession of them throughly discover whether it contemns them more fully to try it self it may dismisse them But to rid our selves of all praise and so in this matter experience our ability to forego it may we take the course of living so ill and ignominiously that all who know may abhor us what madder design â—an such can be named or imagined But if praise both useth and ought to be the companion of a good life and of good works no more is it than a good life avoideable and yet I cannot judg what thing contentedly or impatienly I forego save when I do not enjoy it What shall I therefore confesse unto thee in this kind of temptation O Lord What But that I am pleased with the praise but more with the truth than with it For should it be proposed to Me whether I had rather being mad or ignorant in all things be commended or being wise and most confirmed in the truth be decryed by all I easily see what I would make choise of but yet I wish something further than this viz. that no joy concerning any good of mine might be the least increased in Me from anothers approbation of it But I confess such joy is not only increased in me by their praise but also diminished in Me by their disparagement And when I am troubled at this My