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
Job 25. Who then can represent those my remote sins unto me May not every other such litle one serve for this purpose in whom I may easily read the faults I know not of my self What then in that first bud of my age was my guilt Was it crying so vehemently after the pap and hanging so greedily upon the flowing breasts which should I now in like manner do after my food I should become both culpable and ridiculous Therefore then also I was so but whilst yet I understood not reproof neither reason nor custom suffered me to receive it But yet more-grown we weed out and cast away such humours now none do cleanse a vessel of that which is good And in that litle age were these also commendable qualities * to beg with tears what would have been hurtfully granted * to rage and swell against People unobliged to it its Elders its betters and even those who first gave it life to strive with strengthless but malicious blows to wound those that were far wiser than it self for not obeying its commands which could not be but to its harm observed So that it is the debility of infants limbs and not the mind of Infants that is innocent My self have seen and had experience of such a little one already possessed with jealousie it had not learned to speak and yet then would it cast a pale and envious aspect upon its indigent fellow-suckling A fault well known and by the Mothers or Nurses expiated usually with I know not what remedies unless I ought to call that innocence for one most rich in a fountain of milk unexhausted and overflowing not so much as to endure another to partake a litle with him that is not able to make provision for it self and that can sustain life only with this food But such things are then indulgently tolerated not because they are none or no great faults but faults that diminish as years increase which though then we allow them yet are they censured and detested when they are discovered in a riper age Thou therefore O Lord my God who hast given life to this my infancy and a body which thou hast carefully fenced-about with subtile sense strongly builded-up with pliant limbs beautified with a comely feature and implanted in it all vitall functions for its universal preservation and safety so as we see it Thou now dost command me in and for all these to celebrate thee and to confess unto thee and to sing unto thy name O thou-most highest Psal 192.1 Because thou art the God all-powerfull and all-good and ever to be praised though this only had been all that thou hadst done to me this which none else can do besides thee out of whose rich unity proceed all the severall shapes and fashions of being who out of thy own fairnesse beautifiest all things and according to thy most righteous rule orderest all things This time of my life then in which I do not remember so much as that I lived known only by hear-say and conjectured from other infants that I also once passed through it though this a conjecture much assured this time I say I am loth to account to the rest of the dayes which I live in this World it being in respect of the darkness of my oblivion much like to that obscure part I passed before it in my Mothers womb But if I was thus conceived in sin and my Mother brought me forth in iniquity where I beseech thee O my God where Psal 51.5 Lord was I thy Servant where or when innocent But behold I pass over that time for why should I stay longer upon it which passed so swiftly by me without leaving in me of it the least impression CHAP. VIII An Account of his childhood and his learning to speak ANd thus growing on and passing from Infancy I came into my childhood or rather it came into me and here succeeded Infancy nor did that mean-while depart for whither went it and yet it was now no more for I was now no more a speechlesse babe but a pratling child And this I can remember and have since observed how I learned to speak which was not * by being taught by art as afterward I was forreign-language by having the words ordered in a certain form and method of learning but only * by the single use of my memory and the natural apprehension which thou my God gavest unto me For after I had first by fits of crying broken accents and various motions of my skrewed limbs attempted to expound my thoughts to those that might assist my desires and yet was not able to explain my self in all things which and to whom I had a minde I recorded it first in my yet unwritten memory when I heard them name any thing and when they moved their body toward the thing named I observed it and collected that that which they pronounced was that thing which they shewed And that they meant this thing I was assured by certain motions of the parts of their body the common and natural language as it were of all nations uttered in the habit of the countenance glances of the eye postures of the members accents of the voice which paint and expresse the inward passion of the soul in her desiring fruition hatred or pursuance of things so grew I shortly acquainted with many words whilst they were in several sentences placed in the same fashion and often again repeated what particular things they did designe and having by degrees tamed and broken my unacquainted mouth to a smooth and ready articulation of them by these notes I brought forth the long-suppressed conceptions of my soul And thus I began to enterchange these current signes of our conceits with the people amongst whom I lived and so launched still farther out into the tempestuous society of humane life being as yet wholly dependent on my parents pleasure and the beck of my superiours CHAP. IX Of his * going to Schoole O God my God what miseries did I now encounter and what impostures When the way of right living that was then proposed to me a childe was to be obedient to those who instructed me how to become glorious in this world and how to excell in those verbose Arts which guide the way to humane honours and false-named wealth And so I was put to school to get these Arts and when poor boy I knew no profit of them yet was I miserably beaten if I profited not in them And this hard usage was allowed of by my sage superiours and many that had trod that life afore us had chalked out unto us these wearisome and craggy paths through which we were constrained to follow them with great pain and sorrow thus endlessely multiplyed to the sons of Adam We little ones meanwhile observed that men prayed unto thee and we learnt of them to do the same conceiving thee as far as we could apprehend to be some great one who not
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
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
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
what vast astonishable thing O my God a profound and infinite multiplicity and this is my soul and this is I my self What a thing therefore is my self What a nature am I A various and multiforme life and exceedingly immense in the extent of its power And behold through these innumerable fields and caves and sellars of My memory innumerably full of innumerable sorts of things by so many several wayes conveighed in thither through all those things I fly I run I dive this way and that way as farr as I am able and nowhere can I find an end So great is the power of Memory so great the power of this life in man even whilst he is yet mortal What shall I do then O thou my true life My God I will also passe beyond this power of mine called Memory that I may arrive yet closer unto thee that sweet light after which I seek Lo I ascending by this my soul unto thee who remainest unto me elevated above it I will passe beyond that My faculty called Memory desirous to attain thee so farr as thou art attainable and to inhere in thee so farr as I am capable of union to thee For a Memory I find also in the Beasts and Fouls Otherwise neither their former Dens nor Nests could be repaired to nor many other things done wherein we discover their constant customs but nothing is accustomed to without Memory I will therefore passe o're this memory that so I may arrive at him who hath made me otherwise then the fourfootedbeast and wiser than the winged foul I will leave the Memory but then where shall I find thee O true Good and secure pleasure but then where shall I find thee CHAP. XVIII For if I find thee besides or out of My Memory I must have forgotten thee and how then shall I find thee if I have no remembrance of thee When the woman had lost her groat and sought it with a candle if she had not remembred it how could she have found it for when she had found it how could she know whether that was it of which she had no remembrance CHAP. XXIV FArr have I travelled in memory seeking thee O Lord and I have not found the at all out of it For since I first learned thee thou abidest in my Memory and there I find thee whenever I recall thee to mind and enjoy delight in thee In this place are those my holy pleasures which thy charity and thy mercy hath bestowed upon me taking pity upon my poverty CHAP. XXV BUt where art thou resident in my Memory Thou the Lord What lodging hast thou made there for thee What Sanctuary hast thou built I passed by the lower parts thereof common with beasts because in My remembring thee I found thee not there amongst the images of corporeal things And I came to the parts thereof where are stored the affections of my soul neither yet there found I thee and I have entred into the very seat and lodging of my mind it self which seat also is there in my Memory because the mind remembers also its self and neither wast thou there For as thou art no image of a body nor no affection of the Mind so neither art thou the mind or soul it self but the Lord God of this soul Thou art And all these things are subject to change but thou remainest for ever unchangeable high above all things And yet hast thou vouchsafed to dwell in My Memory since the time I have learned thee CHAP. XXVI That God whom he loves is * something within but yet above his Soul * not confind by place omnipresent c. BUt then where found I thee that I might learn thee For neither wast thou already in my Memory before I learned thee Where then found I thee O my Lord that I might learn thee but in thy self above me Yet nowhere having any place or space between us and thee And we go farr from thee and come near unto thee and yet no where hast thou any place But thou the Truth art in every place present and giving audience to all consulting thee and at the same time thou givest answer unto all consulting thee things never so many or diverse And clearly thou answerest unto all but all do not clearly hear thee All consult thee about what they please but not alwaies hear from thee what pleaseth them And amongst them he is thy best servant who desires not so much to hear from thee what shall be conformable to his will but rather to conform his Will to whatever he shall hear from thee CHAP. XXVII That though he now truely loveth God abstracted from and farr above all other creatures and olso above Himself TOO too late have I found and begun to love thee O beauty so ancient and yet so new too too late begun I to love thee And behold thou wast within me and I abroad and there I sought thee and so deformed a wretch hotly courted those beauties which thou hast made Thou wast with me but I was not with thee And even those things kept me a great distance from thee which have no being but that they have in thee But thou hast called Thou hast cryed out and peirced my deafnesse Thou hast lightned thou hast streamed forth and dispelled my blindnesse Thou hast sent forth thy fragrant perfumes and I have scented thy odours and do pant after thee I have tasted thy sweets and do hunger and thirst after them Thou hast touched me and I am all-inflamed after thy fruition CHAP. XXVIII Yet he enjoyeth not as yet a perfect union unto him but hath a perpetual combat with many other false joyes and griefs and fears WHen once I shall be united to thee and inhere in thee with all my self then shall I no more suffer any sort of these greifs and labours and then my life shall be truely alive when totally full of thee But now since all that are filled with thee are also elevated by thee therefore am I still such a burden to my self because I am not yet full of thee My vain joyes to be deplored contend still in me with my wholesome sorrows to be much joyed in and to what side the victory inclines I know not Wo is me My Lord Have thou pitty on me Again my evill sorrows contend within me with my holy joyes Job 7.1 old Vulgar and to which side the victory inclines yet I know not Wo is me my Lord have thou pitty on me Wo is me Behold I conceal not my wounds from thee Thou art a Phisician I am sick Thou art full of mercy I of misery is not mans life upon the earth a continuall temptation And who is there that can be in love with such troubles and difficulties Thou commandest that they should be suffered but not that they should be loved No Man loves what he suffers though he loves to suffer For though he joyes that he can tollerate and suffer
temptations of the eye Abroad doting on what they have made within deserting him by whom they were made and defacing that which they were made But I O My God and My Glory concerning all these do now sing an hymne and do sacrifice praise to thee My sanctifier For all these beautiful pieces of art which are transferred first from an idea in the soul into the work of a skilful hand are derived originally from that beauty * which is above the soul and * after which my soul languisheth day and night And the drawers and admirers of these exteriour beauties do learn from the first beauty a worthy estimation of them but learn not from it a right use of them And there also the true beauty is and they see it not that they should seek no further Psal 58.10 Vulg. but should preserve the flowre of their strength for thee and not shed it abroad on such tiring pleasures And behold I even whilst I discourse of and estimate these beauties do a little entangle My steps in them but thou pluckest them out O Lord thou loosest them again because thy mercy is before My eyes I fall into these snares through my misery and thou liftest me out again through thy Mercy somtimes without My perceiving it when I step only upon them sometimes with My pain when I stick fast in them CHAP. XXXV 2. His remaining infirmities concerning the temptations of the lust of the eyes or curiosity of vain science TO this first is joined a second sort of temptation more variously perillous For besides the lust of the flesh which lyes in the delectation * of all the senses Psal 73.27 and * of those pleasures after which they go a whoring who are farr from thee there dwels in the soul a certain vain and curious desire not of delighting her self in the flesh but of making vain experiments by the flesh through the means of the same corporeall senses masked under the name of learning and science which being seated in the appetite of knowing and amongst the senses the eyes being the principal instruments of knowledge is in scripture-expressions called the lust of the eyes For though properly seeing belongs only to the eyes yet we apply this word also to the other senses when we employ them in searching after knowledge So we say not only See how it shineth but see how it soundeth how it smelleth or tasteth or how hard it is And therefore the general experience of all the senses is called the lust of the eyes Now what is done by our senses for pleasure and what for curiosity is thus evidently discerned in that their pleasure seeks after obiects beautiful melodious fragrant sweet to tast gentle and soft to touch but their curiosity often tries the contraries not for the sufferance from things so offensive but for the lust of experiencing and knowing them For what pleasure is there to behold in some mangled corps that which strikes us only with horrour and trembling And yet if such a spectacle lies any wh râ— people flock to see it till even they grow sad look pale and straight become affraid that they shall see it again in their sleep as if some body had forced or any report of its beauty had invited them before to look upon it when awake And the like it is in the other senses too long to instance in From this disease of curiosity it is that strange and wonderful sights are presented to us in publick shews and theaters Hence men proceed to search the concealed things of nature which she hath wrought not for us and the knowledg of which no way profits us nor is there other design in our search save only the knowing them Hence come those inspections into arts Magical only for a culpable science sake and hence in true religion it self is God often tempted when signes and miracles are begg'd of him where not our health or our benefit but only the experiment is the end of our desires In this so vast a wood full of snares and dangers behold O Lord how many I have already cut and shaken off from My soul even as thou hast enabled Me to do this O God of My salvation Yet when dare I at any time say so many things of this kind on every side daily importuning this present life when dare I say that no such thing at all makes me intent and earnest * to behold it or also with a vain study * to consider it Indeed now the theaters draw Me not unto them I care not to know the courses of the Stars my soul hath never sought after intelligence with ghosts and all sacrilegious sacraments and compacts I detest But O Lord My God to whom I owe all humble and single-hearted homage with how many devised suggestions doth the enemy deal with me that I would seek a sign from thee But by our King Jesus I beseech thee and by our Country Jerusalem so pure so chast that as yet the consent to any such †Desiring out of meer curiosity to see some miracle done thing is far from me so it may alwayes be further and further For when I do petition thee for any ones health or safety I have a much different intention from this and whilst thou dost what thou wilt in it thou givest and I hope will ever give unto me most willingly to acquiesce in what thou dost Neverthelesse in how many petty and contemptible things is our curiosity daily tempted And who can recount how often we fall How often when people are talking of vain discourse at first do we tolerate them as it were so to give no offense to the weak and then afterward by litle and litle yield a willing ear unto them I do not now go to see a dog's coursing a hare when shewed in the Circus bur yet in the field as I casually paâ—s by such a course presented perhaps averts me from some thought of great moment and converts me towards it not making Me turne aside with the body of My horse but with the inclinations of My soul And unless thou beest pleased by shewing presently My infirmitie to admonish me either to ascend unto thee by some meditation upon such a sight or totally to contemn and neglect it I stupidly confirme in such a diversion What when at home sitting in my chamber a Stellio catching of flies or a spider fâ—tâ—â—ring them falne into her nets sixeth My intention upon them Is not the same curiosity acted because these animals are small I proceed indeed from thence to the praising of thee the wonderful creator and disposer of all but my first observing of them had no such design and it is one thing to rise up quickly and another thing not to fall at all And of such falls as these My life is full and My only hope in thy exceeding great mercy For since our heart is the continuall receipt of such things as these and bears
departs full of anger and disdain but if it be otherwise stayes attentive and sheds joyful tears Love we sorrows then and tears Surely every one desires joy rather Or is it that when as we desire that none should be miserable yet we are pleased that our selves should be pitiful and this pity not being at all without some grief therfore becomes grief it self also affected And all this proceeds from a certain vein and source of friendship in us But whither goes that source Whither runs it Wherefore falls it at length into that torrent of boyling pitch those vast whirlpools of stinking lusts into which it becomes wilfully changed and transformed being precipitated and degraded from its own celestial purity Must all affection and pity then be abandoned by no means and hence sometimes grief also may be loved But beware of any uncleaness in these O my soul under the tuition of my God the God of our Fathers and through all ages to be praised and superexalted beware of any uncleanesse in them For now also am I not void of compassion and pity But whereas then in those theaters I co-rejoyced with lovers when enjoying their unchast desires though these imaginary only in the play and out of pity to them grew as sad when they lost one another and yet both these passions afforded me delight I now contrary more pity one when triumphing in his obtained wickednesse than when despairing in the missing of that pernicious pleasure and in the loss of that miserable felicity This certainly is the truer compassion but in it the heart is not joyed For though he is commended for doing an office of charity that condoles anothers misery yet had he alwaies rather that thing had not been which he condoles whosoever is truly compassionate For if good-will could be thus ill-wishing which cannot be then he that truly and sincerely pities might desire another should be miserable to the end that himself so might be merciful Some grief then is to be approved none to be loved yet is it sometimes too approved for this belongs to thee only Lord God that whilst thou lovest souls farr more purely then we and more incorruptibly hast pity toward them yet no manner of sorrow for them can wound thee And who is sufficient for such things besides thee But I then poor wretch Loved to grieve and searched what might cause it when in another mans and this only a personated disaster that action of the player delighted more and stronglier bewitched me that drew tears from me And what marvel was it that I an unfortunate sheep strayed from thy flock and impatient of thy discipline should be overspread with such a nasty scab And hence was that affection to sorrow not such as pierced me inwardly for neither did I love to suffer what I loved to see but such as being related only and feigned but razed as it were the skin of my soul yet like the scratching of an envenomed nail an enflamed tumor and impostumation and putrefaction followed upon it Such was the life I led But indeed was that then to be called a life O my God CHAP. III. His Concupiscence in the Church the Ambition of his studies and conversation amongst the jeering and abusive Wits ANd then thy mercy ever faithfull to me hovered still afar off over me Whilst I was dissolved into all impiety pursuing a sacrilegious curiosity which brought me having forsaking thee to low and treacherous vanities and to the circumventing service of maligning Devils to whom I sacrificed my villanies though in them all I was still scourged by thee Then I dared even in the celebration of thy solemn feasts within the walls of thy sanctuary to exercise my concupiscence and to drive the trade of procuring the fruits of death for which thou scourgedst me with grievous pains but nothing comparable to my crimes O thou my exceeding great mercy my God thou who wert also my refuge from those terrible mischievous †The Eversores persons amongst whom I gadded here and there with an outstretched neck a run-away from thee loving my own wayes and not thine and loving that my fugitive Liberty Those studies which were counted of great repute had a strong influence upon me as fitting us for pleading in the publick Courts of Justice and I had an ambition to be excellent in them thus to become so much the famouser how much by my eloquence more deceiving so great is the blindness of Men glorying also in their blindness And by this time I was grown a head-Scholler in the Rhetorick-school pleased with self-conceit and swollen with pride though much more modest O Lord thou knowest than some others were and far removed from those Eversions the †The bafling Wits of the school Eversores made for this cruell and diabolical name is as it were a badge of their witty urbanity Amongst these I lived with a shameless bashfulness because my self was not the like and with these I conversed being taken with their society whose actions I ever abhorred I mean those eversions of theirs with which they wantonly persecuted the modesty of new-comers gratis and unprovoked abusing and disgracing them and therewith feeding their malicious mirth An act so like to those of Devils that what could they be more truly called than Eversores being everted first and perverted themselves by those maligning Spirits who first deceive and deride them in this very thing that they delight to deride and to deceive others CHAP. IV. In the nineteenth year of his age his reading of Cicero's Hortensius invites him from affectation of Eloquence to the search of Wisdom AMongst this company then a youth I learned books of Eloquence in which I desired to be eminent but out of a faulty and ambitious end and a fond affectation of humane vanities and in the usual course of study I then was to read a certain book of one Cicero whose tongue almost all Men admire not so his heart Which Treatise of his conteined an exhortation to Philosophy called Hortensius And this book it was that first altered my affections and turned my addresses unto thee O Lord and rendred my purposes and desires clean of another mould than formerly Suddenly all other vain aspirings were slighted by me and with incredible ardency I lusted after the immortality of wisdom and began already to rise up that I might again return unto thee Now not to sharpen my tongue which thing I came thither to purchase with the exhibition my Mother then allowed me I being now nineteen years old and my Father deceased two years before no more now 〈◊〉 my tongue made I use of that book nor did the how but what was said in it affect me Now how did I burn O my God how did I burn to re-mount up from things terrene toward thee not then knowing what thou wouldst act with me For with thee only is wisdom and the love of wisdom called Philosophy was it with
the assistance of the Art of a Magician IN those years I taught the Art of Rhetorick and a victorious loquacity I sold my self overcome by lusts Yet then O Lord thou knowest I rather wished to have honest and vertuous Schollers such as are so called and to them I taught deceits without deceit yet not those deceits whereby the life of an innocent should be endangered but whereby sometime the life of the guilty might be preserved And thou O God beheldest then afarr off some little fidelity in me though staggering in a slippery station and only sparkling a little as it were through a cloud of smoke which in that School-mastership I exhibited toward those who loved vanity and sought after leasing Psal 4.2 my self also in the same being their companion In those years also I had a woman not joyned unto me by that which is called legitimate wedlock but chosen by the wandering ardor of my imprudent affection Yet one only it was and my bed constantly true to her In whom I might in my own particular try the difference between a Matrimonial condition confederated for the desire of issue and the contract of a libidinous love where children are born undesired yet born once cannot but be loved I remember also * that I having undertaken upon the Theater to try a prize of Poetry was sent-to by a Magician to know what reward I would give him to make me the Victor and * that I abominating and detesting such odious mysteries answered that were the crown of immortal Gold I would not permit a fly to perish for the conquest For in his Art he was to sacrifice some live-creatures for me and by those religious honours to attract unto me some suffragating Daemons But this wickedness was repulsed by me not out of my chastity towards thee O God of my soul Osee 12.1 Vulgar Ephraim pascit ventum sequitur â—stum for I had not yet known how to love thee who mistook only certain corporeal splendors for thee And a soul languishing after such figments is it not gone a whoring from thee and trusts in vanities and feeds the winds and yet unwilling forsooth I was the devils should be sacrificed to for my sake to whom I my self in that superstition of mine did sacrifice my self and what other thing is it to feed the winds than to feed and be a prey to those fiends that is by errour to become their scorn and laughter CHAP. III. Yet addicted to Astrology and by a learned Physician disswaded from it BUt on the other side those Planet-gazers whom they stile Mathematicians were freely and unscrupulously consulted by me because in their divination forsooth no sacrifice no prayers were made to any spirit which art notwithstanding Christian and true piety by consequence renounces and condemns For since it is a good thing to confess unto thee O Lord and to say Psal 41. â— Have mercy upon me and heal my soul for I have sinned against thee And then to take heed of not abusing the indulgency of thy forgiveness to a further licence of sinning but to remember the saying of our Lord Behold thou art made whole sin no more lest a worse thing happen unto thee Jo. 5.14 The whole life of this salutary advice they seek to destroy when they say The cause of thy sinning is from heaven and inevitable upon thee And this thing Venus caused or Saturn or Mars That man forsooth might be without fault Man flesh and blood and proud putrefaction and blameable the Creator and wise disposer of the heavens and of the Stars And who is this but our God but the sweetness and the fountain of all Justice by whom shall be rendred to every man aâ—cording to his work yet an humble and contrite heart with him Mat. 16. Psal 51. shall not be despised There was at that time a sharp-witted man very expert in the Art of Physick and one of the noblest of that profession who being then Proconsul with his own hand set the Agonistical Garland upon my sick head but not as its Physician For that disease which it then had 't is thou only that curest thou who resistest the proud and givest thy grace unto the humble Yet also by this old Man thou wert not altogether deficient unto me nor didst forbear to administer Physick unto my soul For afterward grown well-acquainted with him and daily affectionately frequenting his discourse which was grave and delightsome for vivacity of the sence though without much ornament of words when he had perceived by my talk that I was much addicted to the books of Nativity-casters he kindly and fatherly advised me to throw them away and not idly to bestow my care and pains useful for more necessary studies upon those fruitless vanities Telling me that himself in his yonger years had so studied them that he intended wholly to have owed his maintenance to that profession that he who well understood Hippocrates surely was not uncapable of that kind of learning yet that afterward quitting it he had betaken himself to Physick only out of a discovery of the falsity thereof and so an unwillingness to sustain himself by deceits and cheating But you said he have the profession of Rhetorick whereby to subsist and do pursue this fallacious study not out of necessity but choice by how much the more you ought in this point to give me credit who endeavoured to attain perfection in it with design to get my living by it Of whom I demanded what then was the reason that so many things by this art were so truly foretold He answered as he could being no Christian that this was done by the power of a soveraign chance every where diffused through the whole body of nature For if out of a page of a poet dipt-into at hap-hazard a verse often appears strangly consonant to our present business whereas the poets device and intention was farr different 't is less to be admired said he if out of the soul of a man from a superior instinct it self being nothing conscious thereof by hap not art something is delivered which closely sutes to the condition and affairs of the enquirer And so much that man or thou by his instrumency conveyedst unto me and registredst in my memory what I should afterward by my self further examine But as then neither he nor my dearest Nebridius a youth excellently good and singularly cautious deriding all this kind of Divination could perswade me to desert these studies swayed as yet more by those Authors than by these mens authority and discovering no demonstration certain such as I sought for whereby it might without all ambiguity appear to me that the things that were by these men when consulted truly foretold were answered by hap-hazard and chance and not by the art of the Astrologer CHAP. IV. His Anxieties for the death of his dearest friend by him entangled in the same errors but before his death
because the more I loved him the more I abhorred and dreaded that my cruellest Enemy Death that bereaved me of him fancying it a monster that would soon devour the rest of men because it could destroy him Even thus I well remember stood I then affected Behold my heart O my God Behold and see into me how I remember this very well O thou my hope that now cleansest me from the impurity of such passions guiding my eyes unto thy beauties and plucking my feet out of these snares For I wondred much that the rest of mortals could any longer live when he whom I loved as a thing immortall was now dead And yet more wondred that my self being only another He could live when he was gone Well said one of his friends Animae dimidium mea Half of my soul for I deemed his and mine to be but one soul as it were in different bodies And therefore my life was an horror to me who would not live thus an Half and death yet a greater affright to me lest he should perish all whom I so passionately loved ‖ S. Austin reviewing this work in his Retractations 2. l. 6. c. censures this expression quasi declamatio levis potius quam gravis confessio CHAP. VII He forsakes the place of their acquaintance and goes to Carthage O Fond madness that knows not how to love men men-like O sottish man so impatiently taking to heart accidents only humane such as poor I then was Therefore I stormed and sighed and wept and was distracted bereft both of content and counsel For I carried about a soul all lacerated and gored in blood and impatient longer to be carried by me and where to repose it I found not Not in delightsome groves nor in playes and musick not in fragant odors nor in exquisit banquets not in the pleasures of the chamber or of the bed not in books or poesie took it any rest All things looked gastly even the day And whatever it was that was not He importune it was and loathsome except mourning and tears and in these only it found some small content And when at any time I retired my soul from these I was re-surcharged with the grievous burden of my misery which was only to be lightened by thee O Lord only by thee to be removed And I knew this but yet was so much the less either willing or able to find remedy because thou then to me wast no solid or stable thing when my despairing thoughts fled for support unto thee For it was not thou but an empty Phantasm and my own errour that was my God whereon assaying â—o place my soul that it might find some stay through this inanity it still relapsed and again came rouling back upon me And my self remained the alone unhappy place to my self where I could neither be nor be from thence For whether could my heart from my heart fly away where could I avoid my self and where would not my self follow me And yet farr from my Country I fled for my eyes less missed him where they were not used to see him And thus forsaking Tagaste I went to Carthage CHAP. VIII His wound eured by time and new Friendships TImes do not lose time nor idly rowle away by these our senses but in the mind produce strange operations Behold they came and went day by day and in coming and passing they insinuated into me other images and other remembrances and by degrees repaired me with my formerly known delights to which that my grief at length gave place But there succeeded though no new sorrowes yet the causes only of more sorrowes For whence did that my last grief so easily and so deeply wound me but because I had spilt my soul upon a bed of sand and loved a mortal as if he could not die And that which recovered and repaired me of this were but like solaces of other mortal friends with whom I loved something which was not loved for thee even those fabulous delusions †Manicheisme and long-spun lies by the adulterous touches whereof our lascivient minds through our itching ears became still more defiled Nor did these delusions perish to me when my friends did Besides which there were also many other things cementing together our affections To chat and laugh together civil obsequiousnesse and mutuall compliance together to read merry books to jest together and together be solemn to dissent from one another sometimes without offence and as a Man would do from himself and by this disagreeing in some very few things to season and rellish the more our consentments in the rest to teach one another somewhat or somewhat to learn to expect those absent with impatience embrace their returns with joy It being usual by these and the like expresses and emanations from hearts continually reflecting interchanged loves through the countenance through the tongue through the eyes and through a thousand other charming motions as it were by so much fuell heaped on these fires to melt down souls and to cast many of them into one CHAP. IX Yet these too failing him ANd this is it that is loved in a friend and so loved that the conscience is self-accused in any who continues not to love him who loves him again or who loves not that man again who loves him first requiring nothing from his body but only demonstrations of his affection And for this are those mournings if one dies and nights of sorrowes and a languishing heart having all its sweets converted into bitterness and from the dear loss of the life of those who are dead even the death of those alive But alway-blessed he who loves * thee and in thee * his friend and for thee * his Eenmy For he alone loseth nothing dear to whom all are dear only in him whom he never loseth And who is this neverlost but our God the God that made and filleth Heaven and Earth Jer. 23.24 Ps 119.142 Jo. 17.71 and that even by filling them made them Thee none loseth but who leaveth and who so leaveth thee whither goeth he or whither doth he flie but from thee gracious back again to thee offended For in what place finds he not the presence of thy law in his punishment And thy law is truth and Truth is thy self CHAP. X. All things loved besides God pass away and leave the lover to embrace sorrowes Ps 80.19 TVrn us unto thee O God of power shew us the beauty of thy countenance and we shall be whole For which way soever the soul of man turns it self it is consigned unto sorrowes unless only toward thee yea though it seize upon all those other beauties that are out of it self and out of thee which yet could be none at all unless they were from thee All which have their rise and their setting their spring and their fall and in their springing they begin as it were to be and then grow on to attain perfection perfected
straight they decrease again and wither for all of them have their decadency and fade they do all Therefore also when they spring and blossom toward a being look how much more speedily they advance to be the more precipitancy again they make not to be Such their condition and such a lot hast thou bequeathed them because they are parcels of things which are not consistent all together but which by some still retiring and others coming on all of them successively build up that fleeting Universe of which they are parcels In the same manner as our speech is composed of many significant sounds and cannot be perfected unless each word thereof give way and vanish when it hath sounded its part that another may succeed it From all these Creatures O God let my soul raise praises unto thee the Creator of them all but never let my corporeal senses fasten me unto them with the glew of love For they go whither they alwayes did go hastily toward a not-being and then wound and rack the soul with most pestilent longings because she would fain be nothing but what they are and loves to set up her final rest in the thing she loves and in them there is no place of repose for they stay not but pass away And who can with the senses of this flesh either pursue them when gone or comprehend them when at hand For the fleshly sense is slow-paced because it is but the sense of flesh and this is the condition of it And sufficient it is for those ends for which it was made but for this it serveth not to detain and stay things here running their prescribed race and hasting from their beginning appointed to their appointed period For in thy word by which they were created there they all hear their sentence Hinc huc usque Hence and hitherto CHAP. XI The transition of its parts is necessary to make this Vniverse compleat BE no more so vain O my soul nor suffer the tumultuous noise of thy busie vanity to deafen the ear of thy heart Hearken thou also unto the word for it speaks unto thee to return back from these unto it and that there is the seat of un-molested quiet where thy love shall never if it forsake not be forsaken Behold those other things are alway departing that other things yet may succeed and this lower fleeting globe be compleated with all its parts But do I any where depart saith the word of God Isa 40.8 There then fix thine abode thither devote all that thou hast from thence received O my soul at least now after thou hast been out-wearied with impostures Recommend over unto truth what hath been imparted to thee from her and thou shalt so not suffer loss yea thy decayes shall enjoy a fresh spring and thy languors be restored the continual flux of thy materials shall be renovated and re-fashioned and made permanent with thee nor shall they sway thee down also whether they now descend but stand with thee and abide for ever before God who abides and standeth fast for ever To what end therefore dost thou so erroneously pursue the inclinations of thy perverting flesh Rather now let it converted follow after thee For whatever thou discernest by it is only a part of the successive Universe and the whole is yet unknown by thee whereof these are parts and yet so little a part of it delights thee But had thy carnal sense any capacity of comprehending the whole and had it not for thy punishment by reason of its mortality been confined to the prospect only of a small part thereof thou wouldst have wished a speedy transition of these parts which for the present exist that from the whole perfected thou mightst have received a supream content For by the same carnal sense also thou hearest what we speak yet wouldst thou not have one syllable still to sound before thee but sly away by thee and others come till thou maist hear the whole Even so are some of them ever in being which make up one whole yet are they never all together of which that whole is made And these would please more all together than the severall pieces could they be all at once surveyed by thee Yet farr better than all these summed together is he who made them all and this is our God and he hath no transition because he hath no succession If bodies therefore attract thy affection let thy praises from them ascend unto God and thy love wheel about unto their Maker lest in those things which please thee thou displease him CHAP. XII To rest our love upon God and to love other things only for and in him OR if souls delight thee in God let these be loved because these also subject to mutability from him only have their stability else ‖ Alioquin irent perirent pass-on they would and at last pass-away In him therefore let these also be loved And entice with thee to him as many of them as thou canst and say unto them him let us love him let us love He made these things and he is not farr off For he made them not and so left them but being of him they are in him too Lo where he is Where truth is rellished well He is in the heart but alas that heart hath strayed from him Isa 46.8 Vulg. Return O prevaricators unto your heart again and be united unto him that made you Stand with him and ye shall stand fast rest in him and ye shall be at rest Whither go ye into precipices Whither go ye The Good ye court and woo is from Him and so much as it is it is in your tending toward him good and delicious to you But justly then embittered to us when it is once unjustly loved with the desertion of him from whom it is To what purpose still and still tread ye those difficult and toilsome paths Rest is not there where ye seek it seek freely what ye do seek but there it is not where you are seeking it A blessed life ye seek in the region of death and it is not there How life happy there where neither life But life it self descended hither and underwent our death and out of the super-abundance of its life slew it And then with a voice of thunder called out unto us that we should hence return unto him into that secret place from whence he came forth unto us coming into that first pure Virgins womb where he espoused this humane creature of our mortal flesh Ps 19.5 that it might not be ever mortal and thence like a Bridegroom going forth of his chamber he rejoyced as a Giant to run his course But did run all the way here staid not calling out unto us by his words by his deeds by his death by his life by his descension by his Ascension calling out unto us to return unto him and then presently vanished from our eyes that we might return
into our heart Isa 46.8 and might there find Him For he so withdrew himself as that here he is still he would not stay long with us and yet he hath not left us As also thither he departed whence he never parted Because the World was made by him and in this World he was and yet came into this World to save sinners To whom my soul now also confesseth that he may heal it for it hath sinned O ye Sons of men Ps 4.4 how long so heavy hearted And is it possible after this descent of life it self to you that ye will not ascend to it and live But whither ascend ye then when ye set up your selves on high and turn your face against Heaven first descend that so ye may ascend and ascend to God who fell before by ascending against Him These things tell the souls thou lovest that they may deplore their misery in this vally of tears and be carried up with thee towards God for t is from his Spirit also that thou tellest them this if thou saist it from a heart enflamed with the fire of true charity CHAP. XIII Much exercised in Love he writes a book De Pulchro Apto THese things then I knew not and I was enamoured of these lower beauties sinking still deeper in the pit and saying to my Friends Love we any thing but what is fair What is that which is fair then And what is the fairness of it What is that inveigles us so and chaines our affections to the things we love For unless there were gracefulness and beauty there they could by no means thus attract us And I marked narrowly and perceived that in the bodies themselves the whole feature as it were of them was one thing from which they were called fair and another thing their decency and fitnesse namely as they were aptly suting to some other thing as a part of the body is to the whole or a shoe to the foot and the like And these speculations springing still more in my mind from the multiplicity of thoughts I composed certain books De pulchro apto Of Fair and Fit as I remember two or three God thou knowest for I have forgot For I have them not by me but they are straggled abroad I know not whither CHAP. XIV Dedicated to Hierius a Roman Rhetorician much admired by him only upon report BUt what was it that moved me O Lord my God to addresse these Books to Hierius a Rhetorician in Rome not known to me by face and yet loved by me for the same of his learning which was very eminent And some speeches of his likewise I had heard and they had pleased me but pleased me far the more because they pleased others who much admired and magnified the man that he a Syrian by Nation first trained up in the Grecian Eloquence had become so admirable a Master also in the Latine and so knowing in Philosophy A man is * praised and presently upon it though never seen * loved Enters this love then into the heart of the hearer from the mouth of the commender Nothing so But from one lover another is incensed to love For hence is he loved that is commended when he that praiseth is supposed to extoll him with an undissembling heart that is when one that loves commends him For so I then loved men according to the estimation of men and not thine O my God Which is never deceived But yet why loved I him not as I did some others a famous Chariotier or Huntsman c. that are much extolled by popular applause but with a farr different and more serious affection and so as my self also desired the same commendation For neither could I endure that my self should be so commended or loved as Stage-players are whom yet I both commended and loved yet would I chuse my self rather to be obscure than in such a manner noted and even rather to be hated than in such a manner loved Where are the plummets that give motion to so many heterogeneous and divers loves disposed-of in one soul What is it that I love in another man Which same thing again unless I hated I should not loath it in my self and repell it from me though in a like condition both of us are men Indeed a good horse is loved by one who yet would not be the thing he loves but we cannot say so of an Actor communicating with us in nature Can I then love in a man something I would not be though I am a man Man himself is a great deep The very hairs of whose head are all numbred by thee O Lord nor is any of them wanting unto thee and yet those hairs can more easily be numbred than can his affections and the motions of his heart But this Rhetorician was of those whom I so loved as that I wished also the like who strayed thus Ephes 4.14 swolne with ambition and whirled about wiâ—h every wind yet all the while was steered by thee though extream secretly And whence know I this and whence so confidently confess I unto thee that I loved him more from the love of those who commended him than from the things for which he was commended From hence Because had the same men disparaged him to me and related the same things they commended in Him with contempt and scorn I had not been so taken with Him Yet certainly those things had neither been another man's nor the man another from himself but only another the affecâ—ion of the Relaters See in what a condition lies the feeble soul that is not yet fixed upon the Basis of Truth As the unconstant Gales of tongues blow from the breasts of the opinative so is she carried and turned driven forward and driven back again and her eyes are beclouded and the truth not discerned And yet behold it standeth before us And it seemed to me a matter of great importance if my stile and my studies might be known to such a man Which if by him they were approved I should have been still more enflamed if dis-esteemed my heart had been grievously wounded being altogether void and empty of thy solidity Yet that Pulchrum Aptum of which I writ to him was not conceived by me without much delight and the subtilties of those contemplations I my self admired before they had another to praise them CHAP. XV. His late imaginations concerning these things being not yet enlightned by the Scriptures BUt the causes and hinges of such a weighty business I had not as yet studied in that thy sacred science O thou omnipotent Psal 136.4 who alone workest all these wonders and my mind ranged through corporeal formes and Fair I defined and with corporeal instances illustrated * that which is so absolutely of it self Fit * that which is decent and gracefull from application to another And I cast my thoughts also upon the nature of the mind and there the false opinion
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
prepared whatever it might be though seeing to despise it opened his eyes and hence was presently struck with a greater wound in his soul than the Gladiator beheld by him was in his body and fell himself farre more miserably than he at whose fall this clamour was made which entred through his eares and unlocked his eyes through which a mortal blow was given to his soul yet more confident than confirm'd and for this also the weaker that it presumed to have from it self what it could owe to thee alone For no sooner had he seen that stream of blood but he also drunk down the cruelty and savageness thereof with eyes no more averted but fixed upon it and he sucked in those furies and knew not and became delighted with the crime of the combat and inebriated with those bloody pleasures And no more was he the man he came but now one of the multitude amongst whom he sate and their true Associate with whom he came What shall I more say He beheld he shouted he grew hot upon the sport he carried away a longing madness to return not only with his former seducers but before them and without them and seducing others And yet from hence also with a most strong and merciful hand thou savedst him and by this also learnedst him that he could have nothing from himself but all from thee But this was long afterward CHAP. IX Of his being apprehended when S. Austin's Schollar at Carthage for a Thief His going to S. Austin to Millain where he practiseth in the Law ANd this his fall was laid up in his memory for a caution for the future As also was that which happened to him at Carthage when my Schollar where walkâ—ng at mid-day in the Forum meditating an exercise that he was afterward to recite he was apprehended by the Officers of the Forum for a Thief which I suppose O our God thou permittedst for no other reason than that he so great a man that was to be might learn by this how wary one should be in hearing causes of hastily condemning any upon a slight credulity For as he was then walking alone with his table-book and stile in his hand before the Tribunal another of the Schollars a true Thief carrying secretly a hatchet undiscovered by him had got into the leads that covered the Silver-smiths shops and there fell on cutting them The Silver-smiths underneath hearing the sound of the hatchet send some to apprehend any they should find there and the youth over-hearing their murmurings as quickly left his instrument for fear he should be taken with it and got away And Alipius who saw him though not at his going in yet coming forth and making such hast away desirous to know the cause went into the place and taking up the hatchet stood wondring what he had been doing with it when they that were sent come in and find him with the hatchet in his hand they lay hold on him draw him along and calling the Shop-keepers of the Forum together rejoice as if they had taken the true Thief in the very act and so he was to be carried before the Judge And thus far thy Servant was to be instructed But thou O Lord presently relievedst that his innocency of which thou wast a sole witness For as he was led either to prison or to punishment there met him the Architect that had the chief oversight of those publick buildings And glad the Officers were that they met him especially who was apt to suspect some of them for the thefts done there that he might now at length see who had done all those robberies But so it happened that this man had often seen Alipius in a Senatours house which he frequented and knowing him took him by the hand aside and was informed by him how all things had passed and so intreating the people who made a great tumult and used many threats to go along with him he came to the house of the young man who had done the fact where stood at the door the Gentlemans boy who had attended on him in the Forum so little a one as that he might tell all the matter without having suspicion therefrom of any hurt to his Master Alipius knowing him again streight intimated so much to the Artificer and he presently shewing the hatchet to the boy asked if he knew whose it might be who quickly answered t is our hatchet then further examined told all the rest So the crime was devolved on another and the insulting multitude ashamed and He that was to be a Dispenser of thy Word and an Examiner of many Causes in thy Church became more experienced and instructed for his Office CHAP. X. A memorable example of Alipius his Integrity Concerning his other Friend Nebridius deserting his countrey for St. Austin's society and the study of wisdome HIm therefore I found at Rome and he there adhered to me with a most strong bond of friendship and went also with me to Millain both for the enjoyment of my society and for following the practise of the Laws there which he had studied more from his Parents than his own affection thereto In which employment he had been already an Assessor †See their Office in Pandect 1. T. 12. l. of Justice much admired by the rest of his profession for his integrity and incorruptness and he as much wondring at them for their valuing gold above vertue And his inclinations also had been strongly but in vain assaulted not only with the bait of covetousness but the spurr of fear For at Rome he being an Assessor in Court to the Lord Treasurer of the Italian contribution there was a Roman Senator of great authority to whose favours many were obliged and to whose terror many obnoxious who would needs have I know not what usurpation allowed to his power which was prohibited by the Laws Alipius withstood him in it he was promised a reward he rejected it with scorn was assaulted with threats slighted them also whilst all admired such an extraordinary spirit that neither wished a man so great and renowned for the many wayes he had of doing courtesies and displeasures his friend nor feared him his enemy And the Judge himself whose Assessor and Counseller he was though he had rather the Senators suit should not have been granted yet did not openly declare himself against it but casting the blame upon Alipius said that he would not consent thereto For indeed had he passed it the other would have gone off the Bench. With one desire and that was in the way of his studies was Alipius almost overswayed and that was to get himself a Library of Books taken up at the Praetors price But consulting justice in this he rectified his purpose esteeming equity more gainful to him by which he was prohibited this priviledge than his power could be by which he might have used it Luke 16.10 What I have said of him is in no great matter But
he that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much nor can that possibly be spoken to no purpose which came from the mouth of thy Truth If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon who will commit to your trust true riches and if ye have not been faithful in that which is another mans who shall give you that which is your own He then such a man as I haue described adjoyned himself to me and with me laboured in the same uncertainty of what course of life were fittest to be prosecuted by us Nebridius likewise leaving * his own Country not farre from the principal City Carthage and * Carthage also it self where his residence most usually was leaving his Fathers Lands and his House an excellent seat and his Mother desolate who would not follow his travels as mine did He also came to Millain for no other cause but to live and joyn with me in the same zealous quest after Verity and Wisdom and such likewise was his suspiring such his fluctuation an ardent Inquisitor after a beatifical life and an acute Discusser of the most difficult questions And here now were the famished mouths of three necessitous persons breathing their spiritual poverty and wants one to another gasping towards and waiting on thee until thou shouldest give them their meat in due season Psal 145.15 And in that bitterness and anguish of spirit which by thy great mercy followed our secular employments when we examined the end why we should suffer such ungrateful labours we discovered nothing but darkness and we turned away our faces with grief and said How long will this be and this we often said yet saying so did not leave such things because there appeared elsewhere nothing certain to which these forsaken we might confidently adhere CHAP. XI S. Austin's reasoning with himself concerning his past and present condition and the disposal of his future life the misery he apprehended to be in a single life AND I wondered extremely when I considered what a long time it was since the nineteenth year of my age when I began first to be enflamed with the pursuite of Wisdom resolving upon discovery thereof to quit all other empty hopes and deceiving frenzies of vanishing desires and now behold me thirty years old still sticking in the same mire covetous after the fruition of things * present * drawing me hither and thither and * then flying from me whilst I said to my self To morrow I shall find it out it will clearly discover it self and I shall embrace it and Behold Faustus will come and will expound all to me O wise Academicks then said I in whose opinion there is nothing certainly knowable for the regulating of humane life Nay said I then But let us not despair but more diligently search on Behold there are not those absurdities in the Ecclesiastical Books that we imagined but they may be otherwise and rationally interpreted Finally let me remain in those notions of Religion wherein my childhood was instructed by my parents till clear truth be found out But where or when shall we seek it Ambrose is not at leisure nor have we the leisure to read books Where shall we seek these books with what or in what time procure them upon whose recommendations take them Nay but let us set some times apart let us contribute some certain houres for the salvation of our soul Great hope appears the Church Catholick teacheth not what we thought and whereof vainly we accused her Her learned condemn it as blasphemous to think God terminated with an humane shape and doubt we to knock that the rest may be opened My Schollars employ my forenoon houres for the rest of my time what do I why not do this But when then visit our greater friends whose favours we must use when prepare the matter we sell to our Schollars and when repair our spirits in relaxing our mind from this intention of cares Perish all and let these vain and empty solicitudes be dismissed and let us now set our selves only to this inquisition of truth The life we live is wretched death uncertain if it should suddenly seize on us in what a case go we hence and where ever shall we learn what here neglect or more shall not this our neglect then be punished But yet what if death deprive the soul of all its sense and its cares together Then is this also worthy to be sought out But God forbid it should be so Sure 't is no vain no empty matter that the authority of the Christian faith should thus o're spread all the world with so great pre-eminence and renown and surely the divine hand would not have operated so great things for us if together with the death of the body were also wasted and extinguish'd the life of the soul Why delay we then the hopes of the present age forsaken to give up our selves wholly to the search of God and happiness But deferre a while these things are also pleasant and have in them no little sweetness Let us not call off our intentions from them too hastily because after this done it will be dishonourable to return to them see how little we want of acquiring some place of honour in the world and this obtained we may then set up our rest Great store of friends we have very potent if nothing else be got and our hast will not stay for a better place yet we may soon attain a Presidentship And then a Wife also must be gotten with a reasonable dowry that she may not be a charge And here shall my secular desires take up Many great and imitable persons have bestowed themselves in the study of wisdom being married Whilst I discoursed such things and these contrary winds drove my heart to and fro the times ran on and I foreslowed to be converted to the Lord God and deferred from day to day to live in thee though I deferred not daily more and more to die in my self In love with a beatifical life yet I feared to find it where it was and sought after it by flying from it For I thought I should be in too wretched a condition if deprived of the embraces of a woman and I imagined not the medicines of thy mercy to cure this infirmity because I had not tryed them and supposed continency an effect of our own ability in which I found mine too weak For I was so uninstructed that I knew it not to be written Wisd 8.21 vulg That none is continent but from thy gift But that thou wouldest give it if I did with hearty sighs and groanes knock at thy eares and with a solid faith cast upon thee my cares CHAP. XII The disputes between Him and Alipius most chastly disposed concerning marriage and single life INdeed Alipius much disswaded me from marrying alledging we could no way with any secure leisure attend upon our long purposed search of Wisdom if I ran this
enlightened my darkness CHAP. II. CHAP. III. Still unsatisfied concerning the cause of evill and why Angels and Men being created by the most good God there should by him be placed in them a power to will evilly BUt although I thus granted thee uncontaminable and unalterable or liable to misery in any part or member of thee from the Manichean-feigned opposition of I know not what Gens tenebrarum or adverse malignant powers arising out of another lump of matter contrary to that which thou hadst made which could it any way have hurt thee thou must then the very name of which all abhorre have been supposed both violable and corruptible as was well pressed by Nebridius long since at Carthage and had then much startled us that heard it And although I also firmly acknowledged thee our Lord the true God that madest not only our souls †Whereas the Manichees supposed the body produced by another evil principle but bodies but all * of us and * of all things notwithstanding as yet I apprehended not clearly and free from scruples the cause of Evil. Yet whatever it were such I saw it must necessarily be as might no way oblige me to believe * thee the immutable God to be subject to change nor * thy substance to suffer evil rather than ours to do any evil lest so my self should become that I sought for And I strained hard to see and discern what I had heard that our own free-will was the cause that we did evil and thy righteous judgements that we suffered it But I was not yet able to behold this clearly But as I endeavoured to raise up the eye of my soul above these deep waters I presently sunk again and often endeavouring it I sunk down again and again On the one side this elevated and buoy'd me up toward thy light that already I knew as well my self to have a will as to live Therefore in willing or nilling any thing I was most certain no other thing but me to will and nill it and I quickly observed also that the cause of my sin was there Again whatever I did unwillingly and with regret I saw my self to suffer rather such evil than to do it and judged it to be not my fault but punishment which also I apprehending thee as just soon confessed not to be unjustly inflicted But then I argued And who made me Did not my God not only good but goodness it self from whom have I then to will evilly and to nill well that so there might be that for what I might be justly punished Who put this thing into me who planted in me this root of bitterness All of me being made by the most sweet Creator If the Devil the author of it whence then the Devil But if he also by a perverse will of a good Angel became a Devil whence came in him this evil will by which he became such since he totally was made by the best God a good Angel And by these thoughts was I plunged again and suffocated yet not so low as that infernal error to believe That thou rather didst forcedly suffer than man do evil CHAP. IV. CHAP. V. Pursuing the same query still Unde malum Yet * his faith of Christ to be our Lord and Saviour remaining in Him firm and unshaken ANd I sought from whence Evil might come and I sought evilly yet saw not this evil in my inquisition And my spirit placed before it the whole Universe both of visibles as the Earth Sea Air Starrs Plants Animals c. and of invisibles as the Firmament of Heaven and all the Angels and spiritual Inhabitants thereof After this I considered thee my God as every way infinite and boundless environing and entirely penetrating this masse as a shoarless sea would fill a sponge of a great but finite magnitude placed within it so conceived I the finite Creature filled with thee the infinite God and I said within my self Behold God and behold all the things God hath created O how good is he and most perfectly and incomparably more excellent and better than they yet being good he created these good and behold how he outwardly encircleth and within replenisheth all his Creation Where then is Evil or whence or what way hath it stoln in hither what is the root and what the seed of it Or indeed is it at all Why fear we then and why avoid we that which is not Or if we vainly fear surely this fear it self is an evil by which our soul is needlesly pricked and tortured Therefore either there is an evil which we fear or this that we should so fear is an evil Whence is it then because God made all these things the good God all things good He the greater and the supreme good made these the lesser but yet both the creating and the created all are good From whence then is Evil or out of what did God make these things Was there some preexistent matter which was bad and he formed and rectified this but so that he left something in it not converted into good But why this then Was he impotent to change it all that so no more evil should remain in it who yet is omnipotent Lastly why would he make any thing at all of it and not rather by the same omnipotence annihilate it and prepare another matter totally good out of which he might produce all things for he were not omnipotent if he could not make any good unless he were first furnished with some matter which himself had not made Such things I agitated in my perplexed breast loaded with corroding cares from fear of death And not finding out the truth yet the faith concerning Christ both our Lord and our Saviour retained in the Church Catholick was irremovably fixed in my heart in many things indeed yet unformed and floating besides the rule of sound doctrine But my mind did never forsake it yea daily more and more sought to imbrace it CHAP. VI. And * the lying divinations of Astrologers foretelling from the starrs future events no way credited by him ALready also I had cast off the lying divinations and impious dotages of the Astrologers Psal 106.8 vulg And for this also let me confess unto thee from the bottome of my soul thy compassions O my God For it was thou thou alone for who else recals us from the death of any errour but the life never dying and the wisdom illuminating our needy minds needing no illumination it self by which the whole world is orderly administred even to the wind-scattered leaves of trees It was thou that procuredst for the remedying of my obstinacy †See l. 4. c. 3. which opposed both Vendicianus an acute old man and Nebridius a youth of an excellent spirit the one vehemently affirming the other somewhat doubtfully yet often repeating That there was no Art at all of foreseeing or divining things future but that mens conjectures had many times a
that they had a verity in them all because they had a Being and that falsity was nothing at all else but when that is thought to be which hath no being And I saw * them every one suitable and agreeing not only with places but times And * that thou who alone art eternal didst not begin to work after infinite times and ages were run out because all those times and ages which have already or shall hereafter passe could neither go nor come but by thy working first their set courses and revolutions whilst thy self abideth unmoveable CHAP. XVI That Sin is no substance but the perversity of an irregular will declining from its Maker ANd I perceived by experience that it was no strange thing that bread was an affliction to a diseased palat which was sweet to a sound and light grievous to weak eyes which was amiable to the clear And thy justice it self offends the wicked how much more may a Viper or a Worm which notwithstanding thou hast made good and befitting their rank and station in the lowest region of thy creatures the which region also the wicked themselves are most fit for as they are unliker unto thee and fit again for a superior region as they shall be made liker unto thee And I sought what this Evil and wickedness was And I found it not a substance but only a perversion and declination of a distorted will from the soveraign substance of thee O God toward the lowest of things forsaking and rejecting what is most precious and intimate unto it and swelling toward vanities abroad †See this more copiously handled in his first book De libero Arbitrio or Unde sit malum written at Rome in his return to Africk See Confess l. 3. c. 7. CHAP. XVII That he began now to have a right opinion of God ANd I wondred that now indeed I began to love thee and no more a phantasme instead of thee But I stayed not in this fruition of my God But was now wrapt toward Thee by thy beauty straight parted from thee again by my own weight falling down upon the things below thee not without sighing And this weight that pressed me down were my former carnall customes But I retained still a remembrance of Thee Nor could I now doubt at all that there was such a thing as was all-worthy to be possessed and adhered-to but that I as yet was not such a one as could adhear to it For the corruptible body presseth down the soul Wisd 9.15 and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth on many things And I was now most certain Rom. 1.20 That thy invisible things from the Creation of the world are clearly seen and understood by the things that are made even thy eternal Power and Godhead For I searching from what principle it should be that I so approved the Beauty of Bodies celestial or terrestrial and what was present to my mind when it passed its free judgement upon mutables and said This ought to be thus and that must not be so Searching therefore from what it was that I judged when I judged so I had already found that there was an unchangeable Eternity of truth superiour to this changeable mind of mine Whilst I ascended in this my quest by these degrees from bodies first * to the soul as outwardly sensitive by the body then * to the inner powers thereof which those outward corporeal senses informe concerning external objects whitherto reacheth the knowledge of Beasts Then * to the reasoning Faculty to which the things received from the external senses are presented to be considered and judged-of Which rational faculty well perceiving it self also to be in me a thing mutable ascended yet higher * to a more pure intelligence such as abstracts from accustomed objects removes from the troops of several contradicting phantasms that so it might find out what light that is with which it is informed when without any hesitancy it cries out That the unchangeable is to be preferâ—ed before the changeable and so might come to know this unchangeable Essence which had it not already known in some measure it could not have so certainly preferred it before things mutable and thus I might arrive at last to that which is discerned only in a twinkling glance of a trembling sight And thus I had now a glimpse of thy invisible things being understood by those things which do appear But I could not yet steadily fix mine eye upon them nor stand still any while to enjoy my God But my weakness straight being dazled and beaten back and relapsing to accustomed objects I carried away with me only a loving â—â—â—embrance of thee and a longing after things which I 〈◊〉 as it were already but I was not yet able to feed upon CHAP. XVIII But had not yet a right opinion of the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus the only way to salvation ANd I sought after some way of acquiring so much strength as might enable me to enjoy thee Nor found I any 1 Tim. 2.5 Rom. 9.5 John 14.6 * till I came to embrace the M diator between God and man the Man Christ Jesus who is above all God blessed for ever calling unto me and saying I am the Way the Truth and the Life and * till I met with that food which otherwise I was unable to receive mingling it self with our flesh For The Word was made Flesh That so thy Wisdom might nurse and give suck to our Infancy which before gave a being to our nature For I did not then as yet embrace my Lord Jesus Christ so as I ought that is my humility embrace his humility Nor knew I what lesson that his infirmity read me Who being thy Word the eternal Truth supereminent to the most eminent part of thy Creation yet in the lowest regions thereof builded himself an humble Cottage of our mud that he might depress and cast down such as would become his subjects from themselves and then raise them unto himself healing their pride and nourishing their love to the end they might proceed no further in their haughty self-confidence but rather * might become conscious of their own infirmity in beholding before their feet an infirme Divinity from the participation of our leathern mortal covering and so in their feeblenesse and lattitude * might deject and prostrate themselves upon it that it rising again may also raise and exalt them with it CHAP. XIX BUt I as then imagined quite another thing and had an estimation * of my Lord Christ only as of a man admirably wise and no way to be equalled and * that he being so miraculously born of a Virgin and giving us such an example of contemning temporal things for attaining immortality by the divine care over us seemed well to deserve that soveraign authority to be the Master of the world But concerning what mystery Thâ— Word made Flesh contained in it I had not then the
least consideration only I knâ—w from what was storied of him concerning his eating drinking sleeping rejoycing sorrowing discoursing c that * humane flesh was not united unto thy Word alone which was the Apollinarian errour but together with it * an humane both sensitive and rational soul And I hold that he was to be preferred before all others not * as being the very Person of the Truth but * from a certain very great excellency of his humane nature and from his more perfect participation of the divine Wisdom But Alipius imagined the Catholicks to believe God cloathed with Flesh in such a manner as that besides the Deity and the flesh of man there were in Christ no soul or mind of a man and because he held it for certain that the things recorded of him could not be performed but by a Creature both vital and rational therefore he made somewhat a slower progress toward the Christian Faith But afterward knowing this to be the Heresie of the Apollinarists he much congratulated and readily entertained the Catholick belief And for my self I confess I learnt not till afterwards how in the manner of the Words being made Flesh and in the mystery of the Incarnation the Catholick Truth was distinguished from the Photinian errour For the opposition and contest of Hereticks more illustrates the sound doctrine of the Church And there must be also Heresies 1 Cor. 11 19. that they which are approved may be made manifest amongst the weak and infirme CHAP. XX. Though from the Platonick writings he became assured of many divine Truths yet these books breeding pride in him and not humility UPon reading these writings of the Platonists being already instructed to seek after a verity incorporeal and disengaged of Bodies I beheld thy invisible things understood by the things which are made and being repulsed had a glimpse only of that which by reason of the darkness of my soul I could not more fully contemplate being thus farre assured that thou art and art infinite yet without any diffusion of thee either through finite or infinite space and that thou only hast true being and alwayes the same being in no part of thee by any motion mutable and that all others in that they are are from thee These things I was then assured of concerning thee but yet farre too infirme to enjoy thee And I * talked as one that had knowledge when as had I not fought out the way to thee in Christ our Saviour I had been eternally lost and * began to affect the seeming wise being full of my punishment and I deplored not this my misery but was also puft up and exalted with my Science 1 Cor. 8.1 But where was that charity edifying on the foundation of humility which is Christ Jesus Or when could these books have learned me that To which writings I suppose thou guidedst me before any studying of thy Scriptures that my memory might afterward reflect on the affections they caus'd in me and that when I should be asswaged and humbled afterward in perusing thy book and my sores had been dressed by thy all-healing hands I might discern and distinguish between blind presumption and humble confession between those who saw to what place they should go but saw not what way and those who enjoyed the Way it self leading into that beatifical Country not to be seen only by them but inhabited For had I been first instituted in thy holy books and thou in their familiar entertainment hadst there grown sweet and dear unto me and then afterward I had happened on these volumes perhaps either their novelty last looked on might have removed me in something from the foundation of piety Or in my retaining stedfast still the saving principles and affections I had imbib'd from thence yet I might have thought that those other books though alone studied might have produced the like CHAP. XXI He lastly betakes himself to reading of the Scriptures especially those of S. Paul where he finds the advancement of Gods Grace and salvation through Jesus Christ to the penitent and humble AFter these therefore with an extraordinary ardour I betook my self to the venerable stile of thy Spirit and above the rest of the Apostles to the writings of S. Paul And those scruples presently vanished wherein his discourse had sometimes seemed to me contradictory to it self and also not agreeing with the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets And now it appeared one uniform piece of chast and pure doctrine and I learned to rejoyce in them with reverence and trembling And I attempted them and found what truths I had read in the other books to be said here also but with great recommendation and advancing of thy Grace * that he who sees should not boast as though he had not received both that which he sees and that he sees it 1 Cor. 4.7 For what thing hath any which he hath not received and * that he must by thee who art alwayes the same not only be admonished and instructed that he may see but also his infirmity be healed that he may possesse And * that he who being yet afarre off cannot see yet ought to walk in the way whereby he may come to approach nearer and to see and possess Rom. 7. Because indeed though a man delight in the Law of God after the inward man yet what shall he do concerning the other law in his members warâ—ing against the law of his mind and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin which is in his members because that thou arâ— just Dan. 9.5 O Lord and we have sinned Dan. 9.5 and done wickedly and behaved our selves impiously and therefore thy hand is heavy upon us and we are justly delivered over to that old sinner Heb. 2.14 the President and Prince of death because he perswaded unto our will a conformity unto his will which remained not stedfast in thy Truth And now wretched man that he is what shall he do For who shall deliver him from the body of this death but thy grace through Jesus Christ our Lord Prov. 8.22 John 14 30. Col. 2.14 whom thou hast begotten coeternal with thy self and hast possessed in the beginning of thy wayes In whom the Prince of this world found nothing worthy of death and yet slâ—w him by whose death for us was cancelled the hand-writing which was against us Those other learnings contain none of these matters Those pages present no such Scene of piety as this viz. the teaâ—s of confession thy acceptable sacâ—ifice an afflicted spirit an humble and câ—nâ—â—iâ—e heart the salvation of mankind the celâ—stâ—al bridal-City the present earnest of the Spirit the precious cup of our redemption No ravish'd spirit there breaks out into such a song Truly my soul waiteth upon God Psal 62.1 For from him cometh my salvation He only is my rock and my salvation he is my undertaker no more shall I be moved
it you have heard The unlearn'd start up and take heaven by force whilst we with all our Science cowardly and heartless see how we wallow still in flesh and blood What because they have out-stript and are gone before us are we ashamed to follow and are we not more ashamed at least not so much as to follow them Some such thing said and straight my rage flung away from him who stood silent and beheld me with much amazement For neither did I speak language usual and besides my eyes forehead cheeks colour the accent of my voice more spoke my passion than my words did There was a little garden belonging to our lodging which we had use of as of the whole house our hospitable friend the Master thereof dwelling elsewhere Thither this tumult in my breast carried me away where none might hinder the hot contention which I had engaged with my self until it concluded in that issue which thou already knewest but not yet I. Only I was in a sober rage and suffering a death that would beget life well knowing what evil I then was not knowing what good within a little while I was to be Thus away I went into the garden and Alipius followed close after me for I counted my privacy not the lesse for his presence nor indeed would he forsake me whom he saw in such disorder We sate us down as remote as might be from the houses I fretred in my spirit and raged with most implacable indignation that I did not goe into a strict league and covenant with thee O my God whilst all my bones cried out that I should enter into it and extolled it to the heavens unto me And thither I needed not go either in Ships or in Coaches or on my feet no not so farr as I went from the house to this seat in the garden For not only to go but to come to the end of such a journey was nothing else but only to consent and to be willing to goe that is to be resolutely and entirely willing and not to turn and tosse a will maimed one half of it sometimes on one side and sometimes on another in one part raising it self up and strugling with another part that hangs down And yet how many things in these conflicts of my lingring will did I effect as I pleased in my body which yet those who would alwayes cannot do as if perchance they have not such members or theâ—e be tied with bands or dissolved with sickness or some other way restrained For example if then I tare off my hair or smote my forehead or clasped my hands about my knee as soon as I pleased presently I did it Yet was it possible in all these to have willed them and not have done them if the unpliantness of my joynts could not serve my purpose So many things therefore did I then where to will them only was not to do them and yet did I not that which incomparably more contented me and which as soon as I would I might do because as soon as I would I might will it for here the ability was the same that the will and to will only was to do it and yet it was not done and the body yielded a more easie obedience to the smallest willing of the soul to bend its limbs according to the others beck than the soul it self did to it self and that for its greatest joy and pleasure and this to be perfected and accomplished only by willing it CHAP. IX The fierce combate there between the Flesh and the Spirit and his sad complaint of the great difficulty the will hath to command it self when it so easily commandeth the other members FRom whence such a monster and how can this be let thy mercy enlighten me and let me enquire if perhaps in these great secrecies of mens punishments for sin and the most obscure judgements of the sons of Adam any thing may appear that may afford me some answer whence such a monster and how can this be The mind commands the body and is presently obeyed the mind commands it self and is opposed the mind commands the motion of the hand and so speedily is it executed as the obedience is scarce distinguishable from the command and yet the mind is a spirit and the hand a body the same mind commands the mind to will a thing the very same essence with it and yet it doth it not Whence such a monster and how can this be It commands I say that it should will a thing which could not command it unless it willed it first and yet that is not done which it commands Indeed it is not wholly willing therefore neither doth it wholly command for only so farr it commands as it wills and so farr what it commands is not done as it wills not that it should be done Because the will commands that there should be a willing and nothing else commands this but only it self upon it self therefore it doth not wholly command it and therefore that which it commands that it may be is such a thing as is not already for if the will were already wholly inclined to such a thing it would not command that such inclination should be because it was already Both to will and yet to nill in part therefore is no monster But a sickness and infirmity of the mind which cannot entirely arise when lifted up by the truth because 't is counterpoised by vitious custom And therefore only there are two willings because one of them is not total and so what is wanting to the one makes up and fortifieth the other CHAP. X. LEt them perish from before thy face O God as the speakers of lies and imposters do perish who when they observe in our deliberating two wills do affirm two distinct minds in us of a different nature the one good and the other bad For when I thus deliberated at last to enter upon the service of my Lord God as I had long design'd iâ— was I that willed and I also that nilled it It was the â—â—me I who as yet neither fully willed nor fully nilled it and therefore was in contention with my self and divided and rent from my self and this rent in me indeed was made against my will yet it signified not in me the inhabitancy of some forreign mind but the punishment of my own and therefore it was no more I that wrought this distraction but sin that dwelled in me from the punishment of that first more freely-committed offence inasmuch as I am a son of Adam And certainly if there were so many contrary natures in us as there are in us contrary desires there will not be two principles only one of our good inclinations the other of our bad But must be many also of the bad and many of the good Since we have many wills and desires opposing and hindering one another and yet all of them bad and many repugning also one to another yet
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
the Aenigma of a similitude but should hear * his own self the person whom we love in all these other things * his own self without these as but now for a start we enlarged our selves and with a swift thought touched that eternal wisdom above all permanent for ever if such a thing I say were continued unto us and all other sights so farr unlike and inferiour to it were quite removed and this one should totally ravish and ingulf and overwhelme the beholder with those interior joyes that so our life for ever should be such as that moment of intelligence was after which we so much languished and sighed would not this haply be that thing in the Gospell Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord Mat. 25.23 1 Cor. 15 51. And when shall this be shall it be when we all shall rise again But shall not we then be also all changed Such things at that time we discoursed together and if not altogether in this manner and in such words yet Lord thou knowest that upon that day we argued such like things and whilst amidst our talk this World with all the allurements and delights thereof appeared unto us vile and contemptible then she said unto me Son For my part I am no more taken at all with any thing in this life What I should more do here or why I am here I know not all my hopes in this world being now ended One thing there was for which sake I was earnest to stay a little longer in it that I might see you a Catholick Christian before I died and my God much more abundantly hath performed this unto me in that I see you also this worlds felicity despised his all-devoted Servant What make I here any longer CHAP. XI Her sickness Death careless of her funerall only desiring from them a remembrance of her at the Altar of the Lord. TO this what I answered her I do not well remember But scarce five dayes or little more had passed when she fell into a Fever and one day being very sick swooned away when her company was removed a little space from her who running to her she soon after recovered her senses and looking up upon me and my brother †Navigius See his book De vitâ beatâ standing by her said to us as one ignorant Where have I been Then beholding us all-amazed with grief she said Here ye shall interr your Mother I held my peace and refrained weeping But my brother let fall some word wherein he wished as a thing more happy that she might not die abroad but in her own Country which she hearing and with an offended countenance checking him with her eyes that he should yet relish such things then looking on me she said hear you what he saith and then to us both Lay this body any where let the care thereof nothing trouble you Only this I beg of you that ye make remembrance of me at the Lords Altar wheresoever ye be And when she had expressed to us this her mind with â—uch words as she could she said no more now strugling with the pains of her disease And I fell into a deep meditation on thy gifts O my God so invisible which thou sowest in the hearts of thy faithfull and which bring forth such admirable fruits and much rejoyced and gave thanks unto thee calling to mind what I knew formerly with what great care she had alwaies been perplexed concerning her place of buriall which she had provided and prepared for her self near the body of her husband For because they had ever lived very peaceably together she desired also as humane affections are lesse capable of Divine matters that this might be accumulated to their former felicity and might be commemorated by posterity that it was granted her after her crossing the sea and so long forreign travells to have the same tomb and earth to cover the united ashes of her and her husband And at what time that vanity out of the replenishing of thy goodnesse ceased to be in her heart I know not but I rejoyced and wondred at this new inclination which she now discovered Although by that discourse we formerly had at the window when she said What make I here any longer there appeared no desire in her to die in her own Country And I heard afterward that at Ostia in my absence my mother had with much confidence discoursed with some friends of mine concerning the contempt of this life and benefit of death And they admiring such courage in a woman which thou hadst bestowed on her and asking whether she feared not to leave her body so far from her own City Nothing said she is farr off from God neither need I fear that he should not know in the end of the world where to find that from whence to raise me again And so the ninth day of her sickness the fifty sixth year of her age and the thirty third of mine that religious and pious soul was dissolved from the body CHAP. XII S. Austin refraining from weeping though suffering much inward grief to which after her buriall he indulgeth some tears I Closed her eyes and great grief presently seized my heart and thence overflowed into tears but at the same time I forced my eyes by the overruling power of my soul to drink up again this their fountain even unto drynesse whilst this inward combat was no small pain unto me When also at her last breath my boy Adeodat burst out on crying we all chiding him for it he forbare in the same manner as also omething childish in me tended to weeping but checked by a more manly voice of my heart was stilled again For we did not think it decent to celebrate that funeral with lamentations and complaints because these for the most part are used to deplore some misery of the dead or rather their extinction But neither miserably did she die nor die at all This was assured unto us both from the purity of her manners from the sincerity of her faith and from other reasons indubitable What was it therefore that within so much pained me but a fresh wound given me from the custom of our conversation together so sweet and so dear to me now suddenly broken off I confesse I took some solace in that testimony of hers in her last sicknesse when speaking-fair my then-services towards her she called me her Dutifull Son and related with much tendernesse of affection that She never once heard fall from my lips a harsh or contumelious speech toward her But alas O my God who madest us both what comparison could there be between such honour from me given to her and her great services done to me And therefore now left destitute of her so great a solace my soul was deeply wounded and that life rent asunder which was now made up all one of mine and hers The boy stilled from crying Euodius took up a Psalter and began to
free-will-offerings of my mouth O Lord be acceptable unto thee Because when the time of her dissolution drew near she had no regard of her body to be sumptuously inâ—erred or richly embalmed or desired some choice Monument or was solicitous for a Sepulchre in her own Country None of these things recommended she to us but only desired us to make remembrance of her at thy Altar thy Altar at which without any one dayes intermission she constantly attended From whence she knew was dispensed the Holy Victime Col. 2.14 â–³ by which was cancelled the hand-writing which was contrary unto us â–³ by which was triumphed o're that enemy who casteth up our faults and seeks for what he may lay to our charge and findeth nothing due through Him in whom we conquer For who shall refund unto him that innocent and precious blood who repay him the price wherewith he bought us that so he may redeem us from him To the Sacr ment of which price thy Hand-maid bound-fast her soul with the line of her Faith O let none ever break off or â—â—ver her from thy protection Let not that Lion and Dragon either by strength or subtilty interpose himself Because she will not plead that she owes thee nothing lest so she should be convicted and seized-on by her cunning accuser but she will plead that her debts are discharged by Him to whom none can repay that sum which he owing nothing for himself was pleased to lay down for us Rest she therefore in peace together with her Husband before whom and after whom none enjoyed her and whom she dutifully served bringing forth fruit unto thee with much patience towards him that she might also gain him unto thee And do thou inspire O Lord my God do thou inspire thy Servants my Brethren thy Children my Masters whom I serve both with my heart and my voice and my pen that as many of them as shall read these things may remember at thine Altar Monica thine Hand-maid and Patricius her Husband from whose bodies thou broughtest me into this life after what manner I know not let them remember with a charitable devotion these my Parents in this secular vanishing life * my Brethren under thee our Father in our Catholick Mother * my fellow-Citizens in the Eternal Jerusalem which place the pilgrimage of thy people so much sigheth after from their departure thence till their return thither that so what my Mother made her last request to me may be more plentifully performed to her by the prayers of many procured by these confessions and prayers of mine LIB X. CHAP. I. In this Book S. Austin makes confession of the several lapses and infirmities of his present condition since his regeneration by Baptism 1 Cor. 13 12. LET me know thee O Lord perfect knower of me let me know thee as also I am known by thee Vertue of my soul enter thou into it and prepare it also for thee that thou maist inhabit and possesse it pure without spot and wrinckle This is my hope at last and hither tends my speech and in this hope is all my joy when I joy rightly As for other things of this life usually joyed or greived for they are the more to be lamented by how much men lament less in or for them and again less to be lamented by how much men do more lament for them Behold thou hast loved truth John 3.21 and he that doth the truth cometh willingly to the light I will performe the truth in this my Confession both private in my heart before thee and publick in this my writing before many other witnesses CHAP. II. The end and fruit of confessing his present condition mentally to God ANd first to thee O Lord before whose eyes the dark abysse of mans conscience lyes naked what then can there be concealed in me though I refused to confesse it for so I should only hide not Me from Thee but Thee from Me but now by these my groanes in confession testifying how much I dislike and loath my self thou thereby becomest so much the more splendent and beauteous and amiable unto me so much the more loved and longed for by me that so I may be ashamed of my self and throw away my self and make choice of thee and seek neither to please thee nor my self for mine but only for thy sake Therefore O Lord though alwaies manifest and disclosed to thee I am whatever I am yet not without fruit do I confesse unto thee as is shewed before which confession of mine to thee is acted not with the words of my flesh and outward sounds but with the words of my soul and the loud cry of my thoughts which thy ear only discerneth where in what thing I am evill my confession to thee is * nothing else than to disallow and condemn my self in what thing pious * nothing else than not to attribute and ascribe such thing to my self because as thou O Lord approvest the just so thou first justifiest him wicked And such my Confession O my God is made before thee in some sort in in some sort not in silence being silent in respect of external noise but very clamorous in respect of internal affection And nothing that is good do I say here before men which thou Lord hast not first in secret heard from me nor dost thou hear any such thing from me but that thou also first hast said it unto me CHAP. III. The end and fruit of his confessing his present condition publickly before men BUt then what matters it that men should hear my Confessions as if they were to heal all my infirmities A race curious to pry into other mens lives carelesse to amend their own Why seek they to hear from me what a one I am who will not hear from thee what a thing themselves are And whence know they receiving only a relation from my self concerning my self whether I deliver truth seeing none knows what is in man but the spirit of man which is in him But 1 Cor. 2.11 when they hear from thee concerning themselves they cannot say the Lord lieth For what is it from thee to hear of themselves but to know themselves And none that knows the truth of himself can say 't is false unlesse he lye unto himself But yet because charity believeth all things namely amongst those whom by a mutuall connexion it makes all one therefore I so confesse to thee O Lord that men also may hear me though I cannot demonstrate to them that I confesse truth because they will believe me neverthelesse whose ears charity hath set open unto me But yet thou intimate Physitian of my soul shew me what fruit of this confession of my present condition I am now going about For the confessions indeed made heretofore of my forepast sins which thou hast remitted and covered that thou mightest make me happy in thee changing this my soul by faith and by thy Sacraments which read or
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
innermost part of my soul and * to I know not what sweetness which were it once perfected in me I know not what blisse that is which such a life would not enjoy But then with certain cumbersome weights hanging upon me I presently am pressed down again to these things below and am re-ingulfed and detained by former custom and much I bewail my self and yet much still I am detained so greatly hath the burden of a bad custome overloaded me And in this estate I can abide still but would not and in the other I would willingly abide but cannot both wayes very miserable CHAP. XLI ANd in this condition I proceeded to consider the remaining languors of my sins in a threefold concupiscence and have invoked the help of thy right hand to deliver me For I beheld thy brightness with a sick and wounded spirit and beaten back and dazled by it I said who can ever attain thither I am utterly cast away from the sight of thine eyes Thou art the truth who presidest above all things And I out of my covetousness was not willing to loose thee but yet greedily desired also to possess what was a lie together with thee as no man desireth so to speak lies as to be ignorant what is truth and therefore I lost thee because thou vouchsafest not to be enjoyed together with a lie CHAP. XLII His recourse for a remedy to all these his maladies not * to evil Angels or Demons with the Platonists or others practising evil Arts as Mediatours between God and man because sinners like men spirits like God ANd now whom could I find who might reconcile and reduce me unto thee Was that office to be undertaken by some Angel for me upon what devotions upon what sacraments performed unto him Many endeavouring to return unto thee and of themselves unable as I hear have attempted such wayes and fallen into the desire of curious visions and so deserved to be exposed to many delusions For being high-minded they sought thee with the pride of learning exalting rather than beating their swollen breasts and so have allured unto rhem from the likeness of their affections spirits associated with them in pride Eph. 2 2. the powers of this air by whom through magical operations they might be deceived whilst they were seeking a Mediatour by whom they might be purged But it was none such they light on 2 Cor. 11 14 but the Devil it was transforming himself as an Angel of light And this much allured proud flesh to repair unto him because he had no body of flesh For they were mortals and sinners and thou O Lord with whom they sought reconciliation wert sinless and immmortal Now the mediating Person between God and men it was meet he should have something like to God something like to men lest in both like to men he should be at too great a distance from God or in both like to God he should stand too remote from men Therefore also this conterfeit Mediatour by whom according to thy secret judgement our pride deserves to be deluded had one thing common with men that is sin and would seem to have the other thing common with God whilst not cloathed with the mortality of flesh he vaunts himself as immortal Rom. 6.23 But since the certain wages of sin is death and this sin he hath common with man he hath also that common with man to be sentenced unto death CHAP. XLIII But * to Christ who is the only true Mediatour mortal like man righteous like God through whom else desperate he confidently hopes a perfect cure of all his diseases BUt the true Mediatour whom in thy secret mercy thou hast manifested to the humble and hast also sent him amongst them 1. Tim. 2.5 that they might by his example learn humility that Mediatour of God and men the man Christ Jesus between these mortal sinners and the immortal righteous one hath appeared mortal together with men righteous together with God that because the wages of righteousness is life and peace he by his righteousness which was allied to God might evacuate death to justified sinners which death he was pleased to have common with men And this true Mediatour was also made known to the Saints of old that they by the faith of his passion to come as we by the faith of it past might attain salvation And it was as he was man that he was Mediatour but as he was the Word so he was no midling person because equall to God and God with God and Phil. 2.6 Joh. 1.1 together with the Holy Spirit one God How far hast thou loved us O thou good Father who sparedst not thine only Son but deliveredst him up for us ungodly How far hast thou loved us for whom he Rom. 8.52 Phil. 2.6 8. who thought it no robbery to be equal to thee was made subject even to death even to the death of the cross only he free amongst the dead having power to lay down his life John 10.18 and power likewise to take it up again becoming unto thee for us both a Victor and a Victim and therefore a Victor because he had been a Victim becoming unto thee for us both the Priest and the Sacrifice and therefore the Priest because a Sacrifice making us unto thee of Servants Sons by being born thy Son and becoming our Servant And therefore do I justly repose strong hope in him that thou wilt heal all my diseases by him who sitteth at thy right hand and intercedeth unto thee for us Else should I despair for many and great are these my diseases many and great they are but greater is the cure which thou hast provided And well might we have imagined thy Word to have been too remote from having any alliance with us and so have despaired of our selves had it not thus been made flesh and dwelt amongst us Affrighted with these my sins and with the load of my misery I had once a thought and a design of retiring my self into some desert solitude but thou didst prohibit it unto me and confirmedst me saying That therefore Christ died for all 2 Cor. 5.15 that they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him who died for them Behold O Lord I cast all my care upon thee let me live and I will consider the wonderful things of thy law Psal 119.18 Thou knowest my ignorance my infirmities Teach me Heal me He thy only One in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge redeemed me with his own blood Let not the proud my spiritual enemies falsly accuse me For I meditate on this my ransom Col. 2.3 and I eat it and drink it and communicate it to others and being poor I desire to be satisfied therewith amongst those who eat and are satisfied and they shall praise the Lord that seek him CHAP. XLIV The end and purpose of these his Confessions O Lord since thou art eternally art thou ignorant o these things I now say unto thee or seest thou no till a certain time what is done in time Why then have I ordered a narration of so many several matters unto thee Surely not that thou shouldest learn such things from me but only that I might the more excite my affection and love towards thee and theirs also who reaâ— these things that we may all say together Magnus Dominus lauâ—abilis valde Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised I have already said it and let me say it again Out of my love of thy love to me it is that I do this As also we continue to pray nevertheless that the truth hath said Your heavenly Father knoweth what things yâ— have need of before ye ask him Mat. 6.8 We only publish the affections we have towards thee while we confess to theâ— our miseries and thy mercies that thou mayest compleaâ— our freedom as thou hast already begun it and that a length we may perfectly cease to be miserable in our selves and may arrive to beatitude in thee because thoâ— hast graciously called us that we should be poor in spirit and meek and mournful and hungry and thirsty after righteousness and merciful and pure in heart and peace makers See I have rehearsed before thee a many things such as I had ability and such as I had also a will to relate because thou first hadst so willed that I should confess unto thee Psal 118.1 the Lord my God Because that Thou arâ— good and thy mercy endureth for ever FINIS
same Faustus For the rest I had met with unable to solve my doubts still promised him to me a little of whose conference should easily clear to me not only those but any harder queries When he came therefore I found him a person indeed of very agreeable and compleasant discourse and much more charmingly delivering the same things which they had said before But what was my thirst relieved by having so decent a minister of such pretious but empty cups My cars had been long since cloyed with such dainties nor did any thing seem better to me because better said nor therefore any thing true because elegant nor the soul wiser for a comely mine and a graceful utterance Neither were those who promised him to me good weighers of such things to whom he seemed prudent in his judgment because pleasing in his words Whereas I have also found others of a contrary humour that suspect truth it self and suspend their assent to it so often as presented in compt and elegant expressions But Thou hadst then already taught me O my God by wayes secret and admirable for I presume that it was Thou that taughtest it me because I now know it to be true and there is no other Doctor of truth besides thee where or howsoever it shines forth unto us then had I already learnt from Thee both these that neither any thing should therefore seem spoken truly because eloquently nor therefore falsly because the signification thereof from the lips is somewhat inharmonious Nor again therefore a thing be true because plainly and nakedly spoken nor therefore false because much painted and adorned but the truth and falshood wisdom and folly are like wholsom and hurtful meats both of which may be served up either in rich or mean language as these may in courtly or country dishes CHAP. VII S. Austins affection to the Manichean Doctrines much abated upon discovery of Faustus his ignorance whom he instructs in the Art of Rhetorick WHen therefore he also after much tryal made of him appeared sufficiently ignorant of those arts in which I presumed him excellent I despaired of receiving from him any solution of those doubts which so much perplexed me Though yet in the ignorance of those arts I grant he might have retained still the truths of piety supposing he had not been a Manichean For their books are full of tedious fables of the Heaven and the Starrs and the Sun and the Moon which now I had no longer a conceit that he could evidence unto me by shewing out of the Manichean writings reasons better or at least equal to those I had formerly read Which reasons when I proposed to be examined and discussed he modestly durst not undertake the controversy and well knowing his ignorance neither was he ashamed to acknowledg it not like to those I before met with who undertook to teach me and said nothing But he had a soul though not upright towards thee yet not also treacherous to himself not altogether ignorant was he of his ignorance and not willing in a rash dispute to run himself into those straits out of which he could neither find an issue nor a fair retreat And herein his carriage much took me the modesty of his soul in confessing its defects having much more beauty and worth in it then his science could have had in solving my doubts And in all difficulter and subtler questions which I proposed on this manner I found him My affection therefore which I formerly had to the Manichean opinions was now much abated and despairing of their other Doctors skill after the trial of one so much famed I began a new conversation with him in those studies of Rhetorick which he much affected and I then taught at Carthage reading with him such books as he desired or I thought sutable for such a wit and to such a purpose But all design of further advancing my self in that Sect after his acquaintance now fell to the ground only I continued to be what by chance I then was untill I should discover something more eligible Thus this Faustus to so many the fetters of death became the first looser of my chaines and that neither witting nor willing it himself For thy hand O my God out of the secret of thy providence never let go my soul whilst my Mother did sacrifice even her hearts blood unto thee by her continual tears day and night in my behalf and thou proceededst with me all this while by wayes very wonderful and secret and undiscoverable 'T was thou didst this O my God For mans steps are directed by the Lord and he it is that disposeth his way Psal 37. â—3 And what efficient of safety can there be save thy hand which only can repair what it at first builded CHAP. VIII Much offended with the unrulinesse of his Schollers in Carthage he removes from thence beyond Sea to Rome to profess Rhetorick there extreamly against his Mothers will THerefore by the conduct of thy providence it was now so brought about that I should be perswaded rather to go to Rome and to teach there what I did at Carthage And here how I became so resolved I will not omit to confess unto thee because also in these things thy most secret workings and alwayes most present mercies toward us ought ever to be considered and professed My intent for Rome was not so much for greater profit or honour though both these were promised by my friends and then not a little swayed my inclinations but the chief and almost the only reason thereof was because youth was there said to be more orderly in the School and quiet and under stricter discipline the Schollers of one School not without leave rushing in and disturbing the Government of another contrary to the wicked and licentious custom of those of Carthage who impudently without leave of the Master and to the disturbance of the Schollers rush into his School whom they do not learn of and there commit such outrages as are punishable by the laws were they not against these patronized by custom yet in this they so much the more unhappy that they do as a thing lawfull what thy eternall commands have prohibited and that they conceit they do it with all impunity to whom the cecity by which they do it is a great punishment and the mischief which they suffer themselves incomparably worse then that they act on others Therefore those wicked fashions which I hated my self to do when I was a student being now forced to suffer when a Master from others I resolv'd rather to remove to a place Ps 142.5 where I was told were no such insolencies But thou O my hope and my portion in the land of the living to make me change my station for the changing of my life and for the safety of my soul both administredst discouragements at Carthage to chase me thence and proposedst allurements at Rome to draw me thither and this thou