Professor of Theology

Perkins School of Theology

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 55-5021

This book is in the public domain.

It was scanned from an uncopyrighted edition.

Harry Plantinga

planting@cs.pitt.edu

and the first medieval father of Western Christianity. He gathered together and

conserved all the main motifs of Latin Christianity from Tertullian to Ambrose; he

appropriated the heritage of Nicene orthodoxy; he was a Chalcedonian before

Chalcedon--and he drew all this into an unsystematic synthesis which is still our

best mirror of the heart and mind of the Christian community in the Roman

Empire. More than this, he freely received and deliberately reconsecrated the

religious philosophy of the Greco-Roman world to a new apologetic use in

maintaining the intelligibility of the Christian proclamation. Yet, even in his role as

summator of tradition, he was no mere eclectic. The center of his "system" is in the

Holy Scriptures, as they ordered and moved his heart and mind. It was in Scripture

that, first and last, Augustine found the focus of his religious authority.

At the same time, it was this essentially conservative genius who recast the

patristic tradition into the new pattern by which European Christianity would be

largely shaped and who, with relatively little interest in historical detail, wrought

out the first comprehensive "philosophy of history." Augustine regarded himself as

much less an innovator than a summator. He was less a reformer of the Church

than the defender of the Church’s faith. His own self-chosen project was to save

Christianity from the disruption of heresy and the calumnies of the pagans, and,

above everything else, to renew and exalt the faithful hearing of the gospel of man’s

utter need and God’s abundant grace. But the unforeseen result of this enterprise

was to furnish the motifs of the Church’s piety and doctrine for the next thousand

years and more. Wherever one touches the Middle Ages, he finds the marks of

Augustine’s influence, powerful and pervasive--even Aquinas is more of an

Augustinian at heart than a "proper" Aristotelian. In the Protestant Reformation,

the evangelical elements in Augustine’s thought were appealed to in condemnation

of the corruptions of popular Catholicism--yet even those corruptions had a certain

right of appeal to some of the non-evangelical aspects of Augustine’s thought and

life. And, still today, in the important theological revival of our own time, the

influence of Augustine is obviously one of the most potent and productive impulses

at work.

A succinct characterization of Augustine is impossible, not only because his

thought is so extraordinarily complex and his expository method so incurably

digressive, but also because throughout his entire career there were lively tensions

and massive prejudices in his heart and head. His doctrine of God holds the

Plotinian notions of divine unity and remotion in tension with the Biblical emphasis

upon the sovereign God’s active involvement in creation and redemption. For all his

devotion to Jesus Christ, this theology was never adequately Christocentric, and

this reflects itself in many ways in his practical conception of the Christian life. He

did not invent the doctrines of original sin and seminal transmission of guilt but he

did set them as cornerstones in his "system," matching them with a doctrine of

infant baptism which cancels, ex opere operato, birth sin and hereditary guilt. He

never wearied of celebrating God’s abundant mercy and grace--but he was also fully

persuaded that the vast majority of mankind are condemned to a wholly just and

appalling damnation. He never denied the reality of human freedom and never

allowed the excuse of human irresponsibility before God--but against all detractors

of the primacy of God’s grace, he vigorously insisted on both double predestination

and irresistible grace.

For all this the Catholic Church was fully justified in giving Augustine his

aptest title, Doctor Gratiae. The central theme in all Augustine’s writings is the

sovereign God of grace and the sovereign grace of God. Grace, for Augustine, is

God’s freedom to act without any external necessity whatsoever--to act in love

beyond human understanding or control; to act in creation, judgment, and

redemption; to give his Son freely as Mediator and Redeemer; to endue the Church

with the indwelling power and guidance of the Holy Spirit; to shape the destinies of

all creation and the ends of the two human societies, the "city of earth" and the "city

of God." Grace is God’s unmerited love and favor, prevenient and occurrent. It

touches man’s inmost heart and will. It guides and impels the pilgrimage of those

called to be faithful. It draws and raises the soul to repentance, faith, and praise. It

transforms the human will so that it is capable of doing good. It relieves man’s

religious anxiety by forgiveness and the gift of hope. It establishes the ground of

Christian humility by abolishing the ground of human pride. God’s grace became

incarnate in Jesus Christ, and it remains immanent in the Holy Spirit in the

Church.

Augustine had no system--but he did have a stable and coherent Christian

outlook. Moreover, he had an unwearied, ardent concern: man’s salvation from his

hopeless plight, through the gracious action of God’s redeeming love. To understand

and interpret this was his one endeavor, and to this task he devoted his entire

genius.

He was, of course, by conscious intent and profession, a Christian theologian,

a pastor and teacher in the Christian community. And yet it has come about that

his contributions to the larger heritage of Western civilization are hardly less

important than his services to the Christian Church. He was far and away the best--

if not the very first--psychologist in the ancient world. His observations and

descriptions of human motives and emotions, his depth analyses of will and thought

in their interaction, and his exploration of the inner nature of the human self--these

have established one of the main traditions in European conceptions of human

nature, even down to our own time. Augustine is an essential source for both

contemporary depth psychology and existentialist philosophy. His view of the shape

and process of human history has been more influential than any other single

source in the development of the Western tradition which regards political order as

inextricably involved in moral order. His conception of a societas as a community

identified and held together by its loyalties and love has become an integral part of

the general tradition of Christian social teaching and the Christian vision of

"Christendom." His metaphysical explorations of the problems of being, the

character of evil, the relation of faith and knowledge, of will and reason, of time and

eternity, of creation and cosmic order, have not ceased to animate and enrich

various philosophic reflections throughout the succeeding centuries. At the same

time the hallmark of the Augustinian philosophy is its insistent demand that

reflective thought issue in practical consequence; no contemplation of the end of life

suffices unless it discovers the means by which men are brought to their proper

goals. In sum, Augustine is one of the very few men who simply cannot be ignored or

depreciated in any estimate of Western civilization without serious distortion and

impoverishment of one’s historical and religious understanding.

In the space of some forty-four years, from his conversion in Milan (A.D. 386)

to his death in Hippo Regius (A.D. 430), Augustine wrote--mostly at dictation--a

vast sprawling library of books, sermons, and letters, the remains of which (in the

Benedictine edition of St. Maur) fill fourteen volumes as they are reprinted in

Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina (Vols. 32-45). In his old age,

Augustine reviewed his authorship (in the Retractations) and has left us a critical

review of ninety-three of his works he judged most important. Even a cursory glance

at them shows how enormous was his range of interest. Yet almost everything he

wrote was in response to a specific problem or an actual crisis in the immediate

situation. One may mark off significant developments in his thought over this

twoscore years, but one can hardly miss the fundamental consistency in his entire

life’s work. He was never interested in writing a systematic summa theologica, and

would have been incapable of producing a balanced digest of his multifaceted

teaching. Thus, if he is to be read wisely, he must be read widely--and always in

context, with due attention to the specific aim in view in each particular treatise.

For the general reader who wishes to approach Augustine as directly as

possible, however, it is a useful and fortunate thing that at the very beginning of his

Christian ministry and then again at the very climax of it, Augustine set himself to

focus his experience and thought into what were, for him, summings up. The result

of the first effort is the Confessions, which is his most familiar and widely read

work. The second is in the Enchiridion, written more than twenty years later. In the

Confessions, he stands on the threshold of his career in the Church. In the

Enchiridion, he stands forth as triumphant champion of orthodox Christianity. In

these two works--the nearest equivalent to summation in the whole of the

Augustinian corpus--we can find all his essential themes and can sample the

characteristic flavor of his thought.

Augustine was baptized by Ambrose at Milan during Eastertide, A.D. 387. A

short time later his mother, Monica, died at Ostia on the journey back to Africa. A

year later, Augustine was back in Roman Africa living in a monastery at Tagaste,

his native town. In 391, he was ordained presbyter in the church of Hippo Regius (a

small coastal town nearby). Here in 395--with grave misgivings on his own part (cf.

Sermon CCCLV, 2) and in actual violation of the eighth canon of Nicea (cf. Mansi,

Sacrorum conciliorum, II, 671, and IV, 1167)--he was consecrated assistant bishop

to the aged Valerius, whom he succeeded the following year. Shortly after he

entered into his episcopal duties he began his Confessions, completing them

pilgrimage of grace had led him to a most unexpected outcome. Now he felt a

compelling need to retrace the crucial turnings of the way by which he had come.

And since he was sure that it was God’s grace that had been his prime mover on

that way, it was a spontaneous expression of his heart that cast his self-recollection

into the form of a sustained prayer to God.

The Confessions are not Augustine’s autobiography. They are, instead, a

deliberate effort, in the permissive atmosphere of God’s felt presence, to recall those

crucial episodes and events in which he can now see and celebrate the mysterious

actions of God’s prevenient and provident grace. Thus he follows the windings of his

memory as it re-presents the upheavals of his youth and the stages of his disorderly

quest for wisdom. He omits very much indeed. Yet he builds his successive climaxes

so skillfully that the denouement in Book VIII is a vivid and believable convergence

of influences, reconstructed and "placed" with consummate dramatic skill. We see

how Cicero’s Hortensius first awakened his thirst for wisdom, how the Manicheans

deluded him with their promise of true wisdom, and how the Academics upset his

confidence in certain knowledge--how they loosed him from the dogmatism of the

Manicheans only to confront him with the opposite threat that all knowledge is

uncertain. He shows us (Bk. V, Ch. X, 19) that almost the sole cause of his

the autobiographical sections in Hilary of Poitiers and Cyprian of Carthage have only to be compared

with the Confessions to see how different they are.

intellectual perplexity in religion was his stubborn, materialistic prejudice that if

God existed he had to exist in a body, and thus had to have extension, shape, and

finite relation. He remembers how the "Platonists" rescued him from this

"materialism" and taught him how to think of spiritual and immaterial reality--and

so to become able to conceive of God in non-dualistic categories. We can follow him

in his extraordinarily candid and plain report of his Plotinian ecstasy, and his

momentary communion with the One (Book VII). The "Platonists" liberated him

from error, but they could not loose him from the fetters of incontinence. Thus, with

a divided will, he continues to seek a stable peace in the Christian faith while he

stubbornly clings to his pride and appetence.

In Book VIII, Augustine piles up a series of remembered incidents that

inflamed his desire to imitate those who already seemed to have gained what he had

so long been seeking. First of all, there had been Ambrose, who embodied for

Augustine the dignity of Christian learning and the majesty of the authority of the

Christian Scriptures. Then Simplicianus tells him the moving story of Victorinus (a

more famous scholar than Augustine ever hoped to be), who finally came to the

baptismal font in Milan as humbly as any other catechumen. Then, from

Ponticianus he hears the story of Antony and about the increasing influence of the

monastic calling. The story that stirs him most, perhaps, relates the dramatic

conversion of the two "special agents of the imperial police" in the garden at Treves-

-two unlikely prospects snatched abruptly from their worldly ways to the monastic

life.

He makes it plain that these examples forced his own feelings to an

intolerable tension. His intellectual perplexities had become resolved; the virtue of

continence had been consciously preferred; there was a strong desire for the storms

of his breast to be calmed; he longed to imitate these men who had done what he

could not and who were enjoying the peace he longed for.

But the old habits were still strong and he could not muster a full act of the

whole will to strike them down. Then comes the scene in the Milanese garden which

is an interesting parallel to Ponticianus’ story about the garden at Treves. The long

struggle is recapitulated in a brief moment; his will struggles against and within

itself. The trivial distraction of a child’s voice, chanting, "Tolle, lege," precipitates

the resolution of the conflict. There is a radical shift in mood and will, he turns

eagerly to the chance text in Rom. 13:13--and a new spirit rises in his heart.

After this radical change, there was only one more past event that had to be

relived before his personal history could be seen in its right perspective. This was

the death of his mother and the severance of his strongest earthly tie. Book IX tells

us this story. The climactic moment in it is, of course, the vision at Ostia where

mother and son are uplifted in an ecstasy that parallels--but also differs

significantly from--the Plotinian vision of Book VII. After this, the mother dies and

the son who had loved her almost too much goes on alone, now upheld and led by a

greater and a wiser love.

We can observe two separate stages in Augustine’s "conversion." The first

was the dramatic striking off of the slavery of incontinence and pride which had so

long held him from decisive commitment to the Christian faith. The second was the

development of an adequate understanding of the Christian faith itself and his

baptismal confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. The former was achieved

in the Milanese garden. The latter came more slowly and had no "dramatic

moment." The dialogues that Augustine wrote at Cassiciacum the year following his

conversion show few substantial signs of a theological understanding, decisively or

distinctively Christian. But by the time of his ordination to the presbyterate we can

see the basic lines of a comprehensive and orthodox theology firmly laid out.

Augustine neglects to tell us (in 398) what had happened in his thought between

385 and 391. He had other questions, more interesting to him, with which to

wrestle.

One does not read far in the Confessions before he recognizes that the term

"confess" has a double range of meaning. On the one hand, it obviously refers to the

free acknowledgment, before God, of the truth one knows about oneself--and this

obviously meant, for Augustine, the "confession of sins." But, at the same time, and

more importantly, confiteri means to acknowledge, to God, the truth one knows

about God. To confess, then, is to praise and glorify God; it is an exercise in selfknowledge

and true humility in the atmosphere of grace and reconciliation.

Thus the Confessions are by no means complete when the personal history is

concluded at the end of Book IX. There are two more closely related problems to be

explored: First, how does the finite self find the infinite God (or, how is it found of

him?)? And, secondly, how may we interpret God’s action in producing this created

world in which such personal histories and revelations do occur? Book X, therefore,

is an exploration of man’s way to God, a way which begins in sense experience but

swiftly passes beyond it, through and beyond the awesome mystery of memory, to

the ineffable encounter between God and the soul in man’s inmost subject-self. But

such a journey is not complete until the process is reversed and man has looked as

deeply as may be into the mystery of creation, on which all our history and

experience depend. In Book XI, therefore, we discover why time is such a problem

and how "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is the basic

formula of a massive Christian metaphysical world view. In Books XII and XIII,

Augustine elaborates, in loving patience and with considerable allegorical license,

the mysteries of creation--exegeting the first chapter of Genesis, verse by verse,

until he is able to relate the whole round of creation to the point where we can view

the drama of God’s enterprise in human history on the vast stage of the cosmos

itself. The Creator is the Redeemer! Man’s end and the beginning meet at a single

point!

The Enchiridion is a briefer treatise on the grace of God and represents

Augustine’s fully matured theological perspective--after the magnificent

achievements of the De Trinitate and the greater part of the De civitate Dei, and

after the tremendous turmoil of the Pelagian controversy in which the doctrine of

grace was the exact epicenter. Sometime in 421, Augustine received a request from

one Laurentius, a Christian layman who was the brother of the tribune Dulcitius

(for whom Augustine wrote the De octo dulcitii quaestionibus in 423-425). This

Laurentius wanted a handbook (enchiridion) that would sum up the essential

Christian teaching in the briefest possible form. Augustine dryly comments that the

shortest complete summary of the Christian faith is that God is to be served by man

in faith, hope, and love. Then, acknowledging that this answer might indeed be too

brief, he proceeds to expand it in an essay in which he tries unsuccessfully to

subdue his natural digressive manner by imposing on it a patently artificial

schematism. Despite its awkward form, however, the Enchiridion is one of the most

important of all of Augustine’s writings, for it is a conscious effort of the theological

magistrate of the Western Church to stand on final ground of testimony to the

Christian truth.

For his framework, Augustine chooses the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s

Prayer. The treatise begins, naturally enough, with a discussion of God’s work in

creation. Augustine makes a firm distinction between the comparatively

unimportant knowledge of nature and the supremely important acknowledgment of

the Creator of nature. But creation lies under the shadow of sin and evil and

Augustine reviews his famous (and borrowed!) doctrine of the privative character of

evil. From this he digresses into an extended comment on error and lying as special

instances of evil. He then returns to the hopeless case of fallen man, to which God’s

wholly unmerited grace has responded in the incarnation of the Mediator and

Redeemer, Jesus Christ. The questions about the appropriation of God’s grace lead

naturally to a discussion of baptism and justification, and beyond these, to the Holy

Spirit and the Church. Augustine then sets forth the benefits of redeeming grace

and weighs the balance between faith and good works in the forgiven sinner. But

redemption looks forward toward resurrection, and Augustine feels he must devote

a good deal of energy and subtle speculation to the questions about the manner and

mode of the life everlasting. From this he moves on to the problem of the destiny of

the wicked and the mystery of predestination. Nor does he shrink from these grim

topics; indeed, he actually expands some of his most rigid ideas of God’s ruthless

justice toward the damned. Having thus treated the Christian faith and Christian

hope, he turns in a too-brief concluding section to the virtue of Christian love as the

heart of the Christian life. This, then, is the "handbook" on faith, hope, and love

which he hopes Laurence will put to use and not leave as "baggage on his

bookshelf."

Taken together, the Confessions and the Enchiridion give us two very

important vantage points from which to view the Augustinian perspective as a

whole, since they represent both his early and his mature formulation. From them,

we can gain a competent--though by no means complete--introduction to the heart

and mind of this great Christian saint and sage. There are important differences

between the two works, and these ought to be noted by the careful reader. But all

the main themes of Augustinian Christianity appear in them, and through them we

can penetrate to its inner dynamic core.

There is no need to justify a new English translation of these books, even

though many good ones already exist. Every translation is, at best, only an

approximation--and an interpretation too. There is small hope for a translation to

end all translations. Augustine’s Latin is, for the most part, comparatively easy to

read. One feels directly the force of his constant wordplay, the artful balancing of

his clauses, his laconic use of parataxis, and his deliberate involutions of thought

and word order. He was always a Latin rhetor; artifice of style had come to be

second nature with him--even though the Latin scriptures were powerful modifiers

of his classical literary patterns. But it is a very tricky business to convey such a

Latin style into anything like modern English without considerable violence one

way or the other. A literal rendering of the text is simply not readable English. And

this falsifies the text in another way, for Augustine’s Latin is eminently readable!

On the other side, when one resorts to the unavoidable paraphrase there is always

the open question as to the point beyond which the thought itself is being recast. It

has been my aim and hope that these translations will give the reader an accurate

medium of contact with Augustine’s temper and mode of argumentation. There has

been no thought of trying to contrive an English equivalent for his style. If

Augustine’s ideas come through this translation with positive force and clarity,

there can be no serious reproach if it is neither as eloquent nor as elegant as

Augustine in his own language. In any case, those who will compare this translation

with the others will get at least a faint notion of how complex and truly brilliant the

original is!

The sensitive reader soon recognizes that Augustine will not willingly be

inspected from a distance or by a neutral observer. In all his writings there is a

strong concern and moving power to involve his reader in his own process of inquiry

and perplexity. There is a manifest eagerness to have him share in his own flashes

of insight and his sudden glimpses of God’s glory. Augustine’s style is deeply

personal; it is therefore idiomatic, and often colloquial. Even in his knottiest

arguments, or in the labyrinthine mazes of his allegorizing (e.g., Confessions, Bk.

XIII, or Enchiridion, XVIII), he seeks to maintain contact with his reader in

genuine respect and openness. He is never content to seek and find the truth in

solitude. He must enlist his fellows in seeing and applying the truth as given. He is

never the blind fideist; even in the face of mystery, there is a constant reliance on

the limited but real powers of human reason, and a constant striving for clarity and

intelligibility. In this sense, he was a consistent follower of his own principle of

Even the best of Augustine’s writing bears the marks of his own time and

there is much in these old books that is of little interest to any but the specialist.

There are many stones of stumbling in them for the modern secularist--and even for

the modern Christian! Despite all this, it is impossible to read him with any

attention at all without recognizing how his genius and his piety burst through the

limitations of his times and his language--and even his English translations! He

grips our hearts and minds and enlists us in the great enterprise to which his whole

life was devoted: the search for and the celebration of God’s grace and glory by

which his faithful children are sustained and guided in their pilgrimage toward the

true Light of us all.

The most useful critical text of the Confessions is that of Pierre de Labriolle

(fifth edition, Paris, 1950). I have collated this with the other major critical editions:

Martin Skutella, S. Aureli Augustini Confessionum Libri Tredecim (Leipzig, 1934)--

itself a recension of the Corpus Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum XXXIII text

of Pius Knöll (Vienna, 1896)--and the second edition of John Gibb and William

Montgomery (Cambridge, 1927).

There are two good critical texts of the Enchiridion and I have collated them:

Otto Scheel, Augustins Enchiridion (zweite Auflage, Tübingen, 1930), and Jean

Rivière, Enchiridion in the Bibliothèque Augustinienne, Œuvres de S. Augustin,

première série: Opuscules, IX: Exposés généraux de la foi (Paris, 1947).

It remains for me to express my appreciation to the General Editors of this

Library for their constructive help; to Professor Hollis W. Huston, who read the

entire manuscript and made many valuable suggestions; and to Professor William

A. Irwin, who greatly aided with parts of the Enchiridion. These men share the

credit for preventing many flaws, but naturally no responsibility for those

remaining. Professors Raymond P. Morris, of the Yale Divinity School Library;

Robert Beach, of the Union Theological Seminary Library; and Decherd Turner, of

our Bridwell Library here at Southern Methodist University, were especially

generous in their bibliographical assistance. Last, but not least, Mrs. Hollis W.

Huston and my wife, between them, managed the difficult task of putting the

results of this project into fair copy. To them all I am most grateful.

AUGUSTINE’S TESTIMONY CONCERNING

THE CONFESSIONS

1. My Confessions, in thirteen books, praise the righteous and good God as

they speak either of my evil or good, and they are meant to excite men’s minds and

affections toward him. At least as far as I am concerned, this is what they did for me

when they were being written and they still do this when read. What some people

think of them is their own affair [ipse viderint]; but I do know that they have given

pleasure to many of my brethren and still do so. The first through the tenth books

were written about myself; the other three about Holy Scripture, from what is

2. In Book IV, when I confessed my soul’s misery over the death of a friend

and said that our soul had somehow been made one out of two souls, "But it may

have been that I was afraid to die, lest he should then die wholly whom I had so

greatly loved" (Ch. VI, 11)--this now seems to be more a trivial declamation than a

serious confession, although this inept expression may be tempered somewhat by

the "may have been" [forte] which I added. And in Book XIII what I said--"The

firmament was made between the higher waters (and superior) and the lower (and

inferior) waters"--was said without sufficient thought. In any case, the matter is

very obscure.

This work begins thus: "Great art thou, O Lord."

II. De Dono Perseverantiae, XX, 53 (A.D. 428)

Which of my shorter works has been more widely known or given greater

pleasure than the [thirteen] books of my Confessions? And, although I published

them long before the Pelagian heresy had even begun to be, it is plain that in them I

said to my God, again and again, "Give what thou commandest and command what

thou wilt." When these words of mine were repeated in Pelagius’ presence at Rome

by a certain brother of mine (an episcopal colleague), he could not bear them and

contradicted him so excitedly that they nearly came to a quarrel. Now what, indeed,

does God command, first and foremost, except that we believe in him? This faith,

therefore, he himself gives; so that it is well said to him, "Give what thou

commandest." Moreover, in those same books, concerning my account of my

conversion when God turned me to that faith which I was laying waste with a very

that I was given as a gift to the faithful and daily tears of my mother, who had been

promised that I should not perish? I certainly declared there that God by his grace

turns men’s wills to the true faith when they are not only averse to it, but actually

adverse. As for the other ways in which I sought God’s aid in my growth in

perseverance, you either know or can review them as you wish (PL, 45, c. 1025).

III. Letter to Darius (A.D. 429)

Thus, my son, take the books of my Confessions and use them as a good man

should--not superficially, but as a Christian in Christian charity. Here see me as I

am and do not praise me for more than I am. Here believe nothing else about me

than my own testimony. Here observe what I have been in myself and through

myself. And if something in me pleases you, here praise Him with me--him whom I

desire to be praised on my account and not myself. "For it is he that hath made us

remade us [sed qui fecit, refecit]. As, then, you find me in these pages, pray for me

that I shall not fail but that I may go on to be perfected. Pray for me, my son, pray

for me! (Epist. CCXXXI, PL, 33, c. 1025).

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER I

1. "Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is thy power, and

creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin

and the proof that thou dost resist the proud. Still he desires to praise thee, this

man who is only a small part of thy creation. Thou hast prompted him, that he

should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our

heart until it comes to rest in thee. Grant me, O Lord, to know and understand

whether first to invoke thee or to praise thee; whether first to know thee or call

upon thee. But who can invoke thee, knowing thee not? For he who knows thee not

may invoke thee as another than thou art. It may be that we should invoke thee in

order that we may come to know thee. But "how shall they call on him in whom they

him, shall praise him. I will seek thee, O Lord, and call upon thee. I call upon thee,

O Lord, in my faith which thou hast given me, which thou hast inspired in me

CHAPTER II

2. And how shall I call upon my God--my God and my Lord? For when I call

on him I ask him to come into me. And what place is there in me into which my God

can come? How could God, the God who made both heaven and earth, come into me?

Is there anything in me, O Lord my God, that can contain thee? Do even the heaven

and the earth, which thou hast made, and in which thou didst make me, contain

thee? Is it possible that, since without thee nothing would be which does exist, thou

didst make it so that whatever exists has some capacity to receive thee? Why, then,

do I ask thee to come into me, since I also am and could not be if thou wert not in

me? For I am not, after all, in hell--and yet thou art there too, for "if I go down into

unless I exist in thee, from whom and by whom and in whom all things are. Even so,

Lord; even so. Where do I call thee to, when I am already in thee? Or from whence

wouldst thou come into me? Where, beyond heaven and earth, could I go that there

CHAPTER III

3. Since, then, thou dost fill the heaven and earth, do they contain thee? Or,

dost thou fill and overflow them, because they cannot contain thee? And where dost

thou pour out what remains of thee after heaven and earth are full? Or, indeed, is

there no need that thou, who dost contain all things, shouldst be contained by any,

since those things which thou dost fill thou fillest by containing them? For the

vessels which thou dost fill do not confine thee, since even if they were broken, thou

wouldst not be poured out. And, when thou art poured out on us, thou art not

thereby brought down; rather, we are uplifted. Thou art not scattered; rather, thou

dost gather us together. But when thou dost fill all things, dost thou fill them with

thy whole being? Or, since not even all things together could contain thee

altogether, does any one thing contain a single part, and do all things contain that

same part at the same time? Do singulars contain thee singly? Do greater things

contain more of thee, and smaller things less? Or, is it not rather that thou art

wholly present everywhere, yet in such a way that nothing contains thee wholly?

CHAPTER IV

4. What, therefore, is my God? What, I ask, but the Lord God? "For who is

excellent, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful and most just; most secret

and most truly present; most beautiful and most strong; stable, yet not supported;

unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never old; making all things new,

yet bringing old age upon the proud, and they know it not; always working, ever at

rest; gathering, yet needing nothing; sustaining, pervading, and protecting;

creating, nourishing, and developing; seeking, and yet possessing all things. Thou

dost love, but without passion; art jealous, yet free from care; dost repent without

remorse; art angry, yet remainest serene. Thou changest thy ways, leaving thy

plans unchanged; thou recoverest what thou hast never really lost. Thou art never

in need but still thou dost rejoice at thy gains; art never greedy, yet demandest

dividends. Men pay more than is required so that thou dost become a debtor; yet

who can possess anything at all which is not already thine? Thou owest men

nothing, yet payest out to them as if in debt to thy creature, and when thou dost

cancel debts thou losest nothing thereby. Yet, O my God, my life, my holy Joy, what

is this that I have said? What can any man say when he speaks of thee? But woe to

them that keep silence--since even those who say most are dumb.

CHAPTER V

5. Who shall bring me to rest in thee? Who will send thee into my heart so to

overwhelm it that my sins shall be blotted out and I may embrace thee, my only

good? What art thou to me? Have mercy that I may speak. What am I to thee that

thou shouldst command me to love thee, and if I do it not, art angry and threatenest

vast misery? Is it, then, a trifling sorrow not to love thee? It is not so to me. Tell me,

by thy mercy, O Lord, my God, what thou art to me. "Say to my soul, I am your

O Lord; open them and "say to my soul, I am your salvation." I will hasten after that

voice, and I will lay hold upon thee. Hide not thy face from me. Even if I die, let me

see thy face lest I die.

6. The house of my soul is too narrow for thee to come in to me; let it be

enlarged by thee. It is in ruins; do thou restore it. There is much about it which

must offend thy eyes; I confess and know it. But who will cleanse it? Or, to whom

shall I cry but to thee? "Cleanse thou me from my secret faults," O Lord, "and keep

thou, O Lord, thou knowest. Have I not confessed my transgressions unto thee, O

iniquity lie even to itself. I do not, therefore, contend in judgment with thee, for "if

CHAPTER VI

7. Still, dust and ashes as I am, allow me to speak before thy mercy. Allow me

to speak, for, behold, it is to thy mercy that I speak and not to a man who scorns me.

Yet perhaps even thou mightest scorn me; but when thou dost turn and attend to

me, thou wilt have mercy upon me. For what do I wish to say, O Lord my God, but

that I know not whence I came hither into this life-in-death. Or should I call it

death-in-life? I do not know. And yet the consolations of thy mercy have sustained

me from the very beginning, as I have heard from my fleshly parents, from whom

and in whom thou didst form me in time--for I cannot myself remember. Thus even

though they sustained me by the consolation of woman’s milk, neither my mother

nor my nurses filled their own breasts but thou, through them, didst give me the

food of infancy according to thy ordinance and thy bounty which underlie all things.

For it was thou who didst cause me not to want more than thou gavest and it was

thou who gavest to those who nourished me the will to give me what thou didst give

them. And they, by an instinctive affection, were willing to give me what thou hadst

supplied abundantly. It was, indeed, good for them that my good should come

through them, though, in truth, it was not from them but by them. For it is from

thee, O God, that all good things come--and from my God is all my health. This is

what I have since learned, as thou hast made it abundantly clear by all that I have

seen thee give, both to me and to those around me. For even at the very first I knew

how to suck, to lie quiet when I was full, and to cry when in pain--nothing more.

8. Afterward I began to laugh--at first in my sleep, then when waking. For

this I have been told about myself and I believe it--though I cannot remember it--for

I see the same things in other infants. Then, little by little, I realized where I was

and wished to tell my wishes to those who might satisfy them, but I could not! For

my wants were inside me, and they were outside, and they could not by any power

of theirs come into my soul. And so I would fling my arms and legs about and cry,

making the few and feeble gestures that I could, though indeed the signs were not

much like what I inwardly desired and when I was not satisfied--either from not

being understood or because what I got was not good for me--I grew indignant that

my elders were not subject to me and that those on whom I actually had no claim

did not wait on me as slaves--and I avenged myself on them by crying. That infants

are like this, I have myself been able to learn by watching them; and they, though

they knew me not, have shown me better what I was like than my own nurses who

knew me.

9. And, behold, my infancy died long ago, but I am still living. But thou, O

Lord, whose life is forever and in whom nothing dies--since before the world was,

indeed, before all that can be called "before," thou wast, and thou art the God and

Lord of all thy creatures; and with thee abide all the stable causes of all unstable

things, the unchanging sources of all changeable things, and the eternal reasons of

all non-rational and temporal things--tell me, thy suppliant, O God, tell me, O

merciful One, in pity tell a pitiful creature whether my infancy followed yet an

earlier age of my life that had already passed away before it. Was it such another

age which I spent in my mother’s womb? For something of that sort has been

suggested to me, and I have myself seen pregnant women. But what, O God, my

Joy, preceded that period of life? Was I, indeed, anywhere, or anybody? No one can

explain these things to me, neither father nor mother, nor the experience of others,

nor my own memory. Dost thou laugh at me for asking such things? Or dost thou

command me to praise and confess unto thee only what I know?

10. I give thanks to thee, O Lord of heaven and earth, giving praise to thee for

that first being and my infancy of which I have no memory. For thou hast granted to

man that he should come to self-knowledge through the knowledge of others, and

that he should believe many things about himself on the authority of the

womenfolk. Now, clearly, I had life and being; and, as my infancy closed, I was

already learning signs by which my feelings could be communicated to others.

Whence could such a creature come but from thee, O Lord? Is any man

skillful enough to have fashioned himself? Or is there any other source from which

being and life could flow into us, save this, that thou, O Lord, hast made us--thou

with whom being and life are one, since thou thyself art supreme being and

supreme life both together. For thou art infinite and in thee there is no change, nor

an end to this present day--although there is a sense in which it ends in thee since

all things are in thee and there would be no such thing as days passing away unless

ever-present day. And how many of ours and our fathers’ days have passed through

this thy day and have received from it what measure and fashion of being they had?

And all the days to come shall so receive and so pass away. "But thou art the

yesterday and the days that are past, thou wilt gather into this thy day. What is it

to me if someone does not understand this? Let him still rejoice and continue to ask,

"What is this?" Let him also rejoice and prefer to seek thee, even if he fails to find

an answer, rather than to seek an answer and not find thee!

CHAPTER VII

11. "Hear me, O God! Woe to the sins of men!" When a man cries thus, thou

showest him mercy, for thou didst create the man but not the sin in him. Who

brings to remembrance the sins of my infancy? For in thy sight there is none free

from sin, not even the infant who has lived but a day upon this earth. Who brings

this to my remembrance? Does not each little one, in whom I now observe what I no

longer remember of myself? In what ways, in that time, did I sin? Was it that I cried

for the breast? If I should now so cry--not indeed for the breast, but for food suitable

to my condition--I should be most justly laughed at and rebuked. What I did then

deserved rebuke but, since I could not understand those who rebuked me, neither

custom nor common sense permitted me to be rebuked. As we grow we root out and

cast away from us such childish habits. Yet I have not seen anyone who is wise who

cast away the good when trying to purge the bad. Nor was it good, even in that time,

to strive to get by crying what, if it had been given me, would have been hurtful; or

to be bitterly indignant at those who, because they were older--not slaves, either,

but free--and wiser than I, would not indulge my capricious desires. Was it a good

thing for me to try, by struggling as hard as I could, to harm them for not obeying

me, even when it would have done me harm to have been obeyed? Thus, the infant’s

innocence lies in the weakness of his body and not in the infant mind. I have myself

observed a baby to be jealous, though it could not speak; it was livid as it watched

another infant at the breast.

Who is ignorant of this? Mothers and nurses tell us that they cure these

things by I know not what remedies. But is this innocence, when the fountain of

milk is flowing fresh and abundant, that another who needs it should not be allowed

to share it, even though he requires such nourishment to sustain his life? Yet we

look leniently on such things, not because they are not faults, or even small faults,

but because they will vanish as the years pass. For, although we allow for such

things in an infant, the same things could not be tolerated patiently in an adult.

12. Therefore, O Lord my God, thou who gavest life to the infant, and a body

which, as we see, thou hast furnished with senses, shaped with limbs, beautified

with form, and endowed with all vital energies for its well-being and health--thou

dost command me to praise thee for these things, to give thanks unto the Lord, and

good, even if thou hadst done no more than these things, which no other but thou

canst do--thou alone who madest all things fair and didst order everything

according to thy law.

I am loath to dwell on this part of my life of which, O Lord, I have no

remembrance, about which I must trust the word of others and what I can surmise

from observing other infants, even if such guesses are trustworthy. For it lies in the

deep murk of my forgetfulness and thus is like the period which I passed in my

mother’s womb. But if "I was conceived in iniquity, and in sin my mother nourished

thy servant, ever innocent? But see now, I pass over that period, for what have I to

do with a time from which I can recall no memories?

CHAPTER VIII

13. Did I not, then, as I grew out of infancy, come next to boyhood, or rather

did it not come to me and succeed my infancy? My infancy did not go away (for

where would it go?). It was simply no longer present; and I was no longer an infant

who could not speak, but now a chattering boy. I remember this, and I have since

observed how I learned to speak. My elders did not teach me words by rote, as they

taught me my letters afterward. But I myself, when I was unable to communicate

all I wished to say to whomever I wished by means of whimperings and grunts and

various gestures of my limbs (which I used to reinforce my demands), I myself

repeated the sounds already stored in my memory by the mind which thou, O my

God, hadst given me. When they called some thing by name and pointed it out while

they spoke, I saw it and realized that the thing they wished to indicate was called

by the name they then uttered. And what they meant was made plain by the

gestures of their bodies, by a kind of natural language, common to all nations, which

expresses itself through changes of countenance, glances of the eye, gestures and

intonations which indicate a disposition and attitude--either to seek or to possess, to

reject or to avoid. So it was that by frequently hearing words, in different phrases, I

gradually identified the objects which the words stood for and, having formed my

mouth to repeat these signs, I was thereby able to express my will. Thus I

exchanged with those about me the verbal signs by which we express our wishes

and advanced deeper into the stormy fellowship of human life, depending all the

while upon the authority of my parents and the behest of my elders.

CHAPTER IX

14. O my God! What miseries and mockeries did I then experience when it

was impressed on me that obedience to my teachers was proper to my boyhood

estate if I was to flourish in this world and distinguish myself in those tricks of

speech which would gain honor for me among men, and deceitful riches! To this end

I was sent to school to get learning, the value of which I knew not--wretch that I

was. Yet if I was slow to learn, I was flogged. For this was deemed praiseworthy by

our forefathers and many had passed before us in the same course, and thus had

built up the precedent for the sorrowful road on which we too were compelled to

travel, multiplying labor and sorrow upon the sons of Adam. About this time, O

Lord, I observed men praying to thee, and I learned from them to conceive thee--

after my capacity for understanding as it was then--to be some great Being, who,

though not visible to our senses, was able to hear and help us. Thus as a boy I began

to pray to thee, my Help and my Refuge, and, in calling on thee, broke the bands of

my tongue. Small as I was, I prayed with no slight earnestness that I might not be

beaten at school. And when thou didst not heed me--for that would have been giving

me over to my folly--my elders and even my parents too, who wished me no ill,

treated my stripes as a joke, though they were then a great and grievous ill to me.

15. Is there anyone, O Lord, with a spirit so great, who cleaves to thee with

such steadfast affection (or is there even a kind of obtuseness that has the same

effect)--is there any man who, by cleaving devoutly to thee, is endowed with so great

a courage that he can regard indifferently those racks and hooks and other torture

weapons from which men throughout the world pray so fervently to be spared; and

can they scorn those who so greatly fear these torments, just as my parents were

amused at the torments with which our teachers punished us boys? For we were no

less afraid of our pains, nor did we beseech thee less to escape them. Yet, even so,

we were sinning by writing or reading or studying less than our assigned lessons.

For I did not, O Lord, lack memory or capacity, for, by thy will, I possessed

enough for my age. However, my mind was absorbed only in play, and I was

punished for this by those who were doing the same things themselves. But the

idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is

punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men. For

will any common sense observer agree that I was rightly punished as a boy for

playing ball--just because this hindered me from learning more quickly those

lessons by means of which, as a man, I could play at more shameful games? And did

he by whom I was beaten do anything different? When he was worsted in some

small controversy with a fellow teacher, he was more tormented by anger and envy

than I was when beaten by a playmate in the ball game.

CHAPTER X

16. And yet I sinned, O Lord my God, thou ruler and creator of all natural

things--but of sins only the ruler--I sinned, O Lord my God, in acting against the

precepts of my parents and of those teachers. For this learning which they wished

me to acquire--no matter what their motives were--I might have put to good account

afterward. I disobeyed them, not because I had chosen a better way, but from a

sheer love of play. I loved the vanity of victory, and I loved to have my ears tickled

with lying fables, which made them itch even more ardently, and a similar curiosity

glowed more and more in my eyes for the shows and sports of my elders. Yet those

who put on such shows are held in such high repute that almost all desire the same

for their children. They are therefore willing to have them beaten, if their childhood

games keep them from the studies by which their parents desire them to grow up to

be able to give such shows. Look down on these things with mercy, O Lord, and

deliver us who now call upon thee; deliver those also who do not call upon thee, that

they may call upon thee, and thou mayest deliver them.

CHAPTER XI

17. Even as a boy I had heard of eternal life promised to us through the

humility of the Lord our God, who came down to visit us in our pride, and I was

signed with the sign of his cross, and was seasoned with his salt even from the

womb of my mother, who greatly trusted in thee. Thou didst see, O Lord, how, once,

while I was still a child, I was suddenly seized with stomach pains and was at the

point of death--thou didst see, O my God, for even then thou wast my keeper, with

what agitation and with what faith I solicited from the piety of my mother and from

thy Church (which is the mother of us all) the baptism of thy Christ, my Lord and

my God. The mother of my flesh was much perplexed, for, with a heart pure in thy

faith, she was always in deep travail for my eternal salvation. If I had not quickly

recovered, she would have provided forthwith for my initiation and washing by thy

life-giving sacraments, confessing thee, O Lord Jesus, for the forgiveness of sins. So

my cleansing was deferred, as if it were inevitable that, if I should live, I would be

further polluted; and, further, because the guilt contracted by sin after baptism

would be still greater and more perilous.

Thus, at that time, I "believed" along with my mother and the whole

household, except my father. But he did not overcome the influence of my mother’s

piety in me, nor did he prevent my believing in Christ, although he had not yet

believed in him. For it was her desire, O my God, that I should acknowledge thee as

my Father rather than him. In this thou didst aid her to overcome her husband, to

whom, though his superior, she yielded obedience. In this way she also yielded

obedience to thee, who dost so command.

18. I ask thee, O my God, for I would gladly know if it be thy will, to what

good end my baptism was deferred at that time? Was it indeed for my good that the

reins were slackened, as it were, to encourage me in sin? Or, were they not

slackened? If not, then why is it still dinned into our ears on all sides, "Let him

alone, let him do as he pleases, for he is not yet baptized"? In the matter of bodily

health, no one says, "Let him alone; let him be worse wounded; for he is not yet

cured"! How much better, then, would it have been for me to have been cured at

once--and if thereafter, through the diligent care of friends and myself, my soul’s

restored health had been kept safe in thy keeping, who gave it in the first place!

This would have been far better, in truth. But how many and great the waves of

temptation which appeared to hang over me as I grew out of childhood! These were

foreseen by my mother, and she preferred that the unformed clay should be risked

CHAPTER XII

19. But in this time of childhood--which was far less dreaded for me than my

adolescence--I had no love of learning, and hated to be driven to it. Yet I was driven

to it just the same, and good was done for me, even though I did not do it well, for I

would not have learned if I had not been forced to it. For no man does well against

his will, even if what he does is a good thing. Neither did they who forced me do

well, but the good that was done me came from thee, my God. For they did not care

about the way in which I would use what they forced me to learn, and took it for

granted that it was to satisfy the inordinate desires of a rich beggary and a

shameful glory. But thou, Lord, by whom the hairs of our head are numbered, didst

use for my good the error of all who pushed me on to study: but my error in not

being willing to learn thou didst use for my punishment. And I--though so small a

boy yet so great a sinner--was not punished without warrant. Thus by the

instrumentality of those who did not do well, thou didst well for me; and by my own

sin thou didst justly punish me. For it is even as thou hast ordained: that every

inordinate affection brings on its own punishment.

CHAPTER XIII

20. But what were the causes for my strong dislike of Greek literature, which

I studied from my boyhood? Even to this day I have not fully understood them. For

Latin I loved exceedingly--not just the rudiments, but what the grammarians teach.

For those beginner’s lessons in reading, writing, and reckoning, I considered no less

a burden and pain than Greek. Yet whence came this, unless from the sin and

vanity of this life? For I was "but flesh, a wind that passeth away and cometh not

and through them I acquired, and still retain, the power of reading what I find

written and of writing for myself what I will. In the other subjects, however, I was

compelled to learn about the wanderings of a certain Aeneas, oblivious of my own

wanderings, and to weep for Dido dead, who slew herself for love. And all this while

I bore with dry eyes my own wretched self dying to thee, O God, my life, in the

midst of these things.

21. For what can be more wretched than the wretch who has no pity upon

himself, who sheds tears over Dido, dead for the love of Aeneas, but who sheds no

tears for his own death in not loving thee, O God, light of my heart, and bread of the

inner mouth of my soul, O power that links together my mind with my inmost

around me, also sinning, thus cried out: "Well done! Well done!" The friendship of

this world is fornication against thee; and "Well done! Well done!" is cried until one

feels ashamed not to show himself a man in this way. For my own condition I shed

myself was seeking the lowest rung of thy creation, having forsaken thee; earth

sinking back to earth again. And, if I had been forbidden to read these poems, I

would have grieved that I was not allowed to read what grieved me. This sort of

madness is considered more honorable and more fruitful learning than the

beginner’s course in which I learned to read and write.

22. But now, O my God, cry unto my soul, and let thy truth say to me: "Not

so, not so! That first learning was far better." For, obviously, I would rather forget

the wanderings of Aeneas, and all such things, than forget how to write and read.

Still, over the entrance of the grammar school there hangs a veil. This is not so

much the sign of a covering for a mystery as a curtain for error. Let them exclaim

against me--those I no longer fear--while I confess to thee, my God, what my soul

desires, and let me find some rest, for in blaming my own evil ways I may come to

love thy holy ways. Neither let those cry out against me who buy and sell the

baubles of literature. For if I ask them if it is true, as the poet says, that Aeneas

once came to Carthage, the unlearned will reply that they do not know and the

learned will deny that it is true. But if I ask with what letters the name Aeneas is

written, all who have ever learned this will answer correctly, in accordance with the

conventional understanding men have agreed upon as to these signs. Again, if I

should ask which would cause the greatest inconvenience in our life, if it were

forgotten: reading and writing, or these poetical fictions, who does not see what

everyone would answer who had not entirely lost his own memory? I erred, then,

when as a boy I preferred those vain studies to these more profitable ones, or rather

loved the one and hated the other. "One and one are two, two and two are four": this

was then a truly hateful song to me. But the wooden horse full of its armed soldiers,

and the holocaust of Troy, and the spectral image of Creusa were all a most

23. But why, then, did I dislike Greek learning, which was full of such tales?

For Homer was skillful in inventing such poetic fictions and is most sweetly wanton;

yet when I was a boy, he was most disagreeable to me. I believe that Virgil would

have the same effect on Greek boys as Homer did on me if they were forced to learn

him. For the tedium of learning a foreign language mingled gall into the sweetness

of those Grecian myths. For I did not understand a word of the language, and yet I

was driven with threats and cruel punishments to learn it. There was also a time

when, as an infant, I knew no Latin; but this I acquired without any fear or

tormenting, but merely by being alert to the blandishments of my nurses, the jests

of those who smiled on me, and the sportiveness of those who toyed with me. I

learned all this, indeed, without being urged by any pressure of punishment, for my

own heart urged me to bring forth its own fashioning, which I could not do except by

learning words: not from those who taught me but those who talked to me, into

whose ears I could pour forth whatever I could fashion. From this it is sufficiently

clear that a free curiosity is more effective in learning than a discipline based on

fear. Yet, by thy ordinance, O God, discipline is given to restrain the excesses of

freedom; this ranges from the ferule of the schoolmaster to the trials of the martyr

and has the effect of mingling for us a wholesome bitterness, which calls us back to

thee from the poisonous pleasures that first drew us from thee.

CHAPTER XV

24. Hear my prayer, O Lord; let not my soul faint under thy discipline, nor let

me faint in confessing unto thee thy mercies, whereby thou hast saved me from all

my most wicked ways till thou shouldst become sweet to me beyond all the

allurements that I used to follow. Let me come to love thee wholly, and grasp thy

hand with my whole heart that thou mayest deliver me from every temptation, even

unto the last. And thus, O Lord, my King and my God, may all things useful that I

learned as a boy now be offered in thy service--let it be that for thy service I now

speak and write and reckon. For when I was learning vain things, thou didst impose

thy discipline upon me: and thou hast forgiven me my sin of delighting in those

vanities. In those studies I learned many a useful word, but these might have been

learned in matters not so vain; and surely that is the safe way for youths to walk in.

CHAPTER XVI

25. But woe unto you, O torrent of human custom! Who shall stay your

course? When will you ever run dry? How long will you carry down the sons of Eve

can scarcely pass over? Do I not read in you the stories of Jove the thunderer--and

as a cloak for him to play at real adultery. Yet which of our gowned masters will

give a tempered hearing to a man trained in their own schools who cries out and

says: "These were Homer’s fictions; he transfers things human to the gods. I could

more true if he said, "These are, indeed, his fictions, but he attributed divine

attributes to sinful men, that crimes might not be accounted crimes, and that

whoever committed such crimes might appear to imitate the celestial gods and not

abandoned men."

26. And yet, O torrent of hell, the sons of men are still cast into you, and they

pay fees for learning all these things. And much is made of it when this goes on in

the forum under the auspices of laws which give a salary over and above the fees.

And you beat against your rocky shore and roar: "Here words may be learned; here

you can attain the eloquence which is so necessary to persuade people to your way

of thinking; so helpful in unfolding your opinions." Verily, they seem to argue that

we should never have understood these words, "golden shower," "bosom," "intrigue,"

"highest heavens," and other such words, if Terence had not introduced a good-fornothing

youth upon the stage, setting up a picture of Jove as his example of

lewdness and telling the tale

"Of Jove’s descending in a golden shower

Into Danae’s bosom...

With a woman to intrigue."

the means of safe transport from earth to heaven.

celebrated the philanderings of the gods; see De civ. Dei, II, vii-xi; IV, xxvi-xxviii.

rather common philosopher's complaint against Olympian religion and the poetic myths about it. Cf.

De Labriolle, I, 21 (see Bibl.).

See how he excites himself to lust, as if by a heavenly authority, when he says:

"Great Jove,

Who shakes the highest heavens with his thunder;

Shall I, poor mortal man, not do the same?

These words are not learned one whit more easily because of this vileness,

but through them the vileness is more boldly perpetrated. I do not blame the words,

for they are, as it were, choice and precious vessels, but I do deplore the wine of

error which was poured out to us by teachers already drunk. And, unless we also

drank we were beaten, without liberty of appeal to a sober judge. And yet, O my

God, in whose presence I can now with security recall this, I learned these things

willingly and with delight, and for it I was called a boy of good promise.

CHAPTER XVII

27. Bear with me, O my God, while I speak a little of those talents, thy gifts,

and of the follies on which I wasted them. For a lesson was given me that

sufficiently disturbed my soul, for in it there was both hope of praise and fear of

shame or stripes. The assignment was that I should declaim the words of Juno, as

she raged and sorrowed that she could not

"Bar off Italy

I had learned that Juno had never uttered these words. Yet we were compelled to

stray in the footsteps of these poetic fictions, and to turn into prose what the poet

had said in verse. In the declamation, the boy won most applause who most

strikingly reproduced the passions of anger and sorrow according to the "character"

of the persons presented and who clothed it all in the most suitable language. What

is it now to me, O my true Life, my God, that my declaiming was applauded above

that of many of my classmates and fellow students? Actually, was not all that smoke

and wind? Besides, was there nothing else on which I could have exercised my wit

and tongue? Thy praise, O Lord, thy praises might have propped up the tendrils of

my heart by thy Scriptures; and it would not have been dragged away by these

empty trifles, a shameful prey to the spirits of the air. For there is more than one

way in which men sacrifice to the fallen angels.

CHAPTER XVIII

28. But it was no wonder that I was thus carried toward vanity and was

estranged from thee, O my God, when men were held up as models to me who, when

relating a deed of theirs--not in itself evil--were covered with confusion if found

guilty of a barbarism or a solecism; but who could tell of their own licentiousness

and be applauded for it, so long as they did it in a full and ornate oration of wellchosen

words. Thou seest all this, O Lord, and dost keep silence--"long-suffering,

Even now thou drawest from that vast deep the soul that seeks thee and thirsts

after thy delight, whose "heart said unto thee, ‘I have sought thy face; thy face,

it is not by our feet, nor by change of place, that we either turn from thee or return

to thee. That younger son did not charter horses or chariots, or ships, or fly away on

visible wings, or journey by walking so that in the far country he might prodigally

gavest; and kinder still when he returned destitute! To be wanton, that is to say, to

be darkened in heart--this is to be far from thy face.

29. Look down, O Lord God, and see patiently, as thou art wont to do, how

diligently the sons of men observe the conventional rules of letters and syllables,

taught them by those who learned their letters beforehand, while they neglect the

eternal rules of everlasting salvation taught by thee. They carry it so far that if he

who practices or teaches the established rules of pronunciation should speak

(contrary to grammatical usage) without aspirating the first syllable of "hominem"

["ominem," and thus make it "a ‘uman being"], he will offend men more than if he, a

human being, were to hate another human being contrary to thy commandments. It

is as if he should feel that there is an enemy who could be more destructive to

himself than that hatred which excites him against his fellow man; or that he could

destroy him whom he hates more completely than he destroys his own soul by this

same hatred. Now, obviously, there is no knowledge of letters more innate than the

writing of conscience--against doing unto another what one would not have done to

himself.

only great God, who by an unwearied law hurlest down the penalty of blindness to

unlawful desire! When a man seeking the reputation of eloquence stands before a

human judge, while a thronging multitude surrounds him, and inveighs against his

enemy with the most fierce hatred, he takes most vigilant heed that his tongue does

not slip in a grammatical error, for example, and say inter hominibus [instead of

inter homines], but he takes no heed lest, in the fury of his spirit, he cut off a man

from his fellow men [ex hominibus].

30. These were the customs in the midst of which I was cast, an unhappy boy.

This was the wrestling arena in which I was more fearful of perpetrating a

barbarism than, having done so, of envying those who had not. These things I

declare and confess to thee, my God. I was applauded by those whom I then thought

it my whole duty to please, for I did not perceive the gulf of infamy wherein I was

cast away from thy eyes.

For in thy eyes, what was more infamous than I was already, since I

displeased even my own kind and deceived, with endless lies, my tutor, my masters

and parents--all from a love of play, a craving for frivolous spectacles, a stage-struck

restlessness to imitate what I saw in these shows? I pilfered from my parents’ cellar

and table, sometimes driven by gluttony, sometimes just to have something to give

to other boys in exchange for their baubles, which they were prepared to sell even

though they liked them as well as I. Moreover, in this kind of play, I often sought

dishonest victories, being myself conquered by the vain desire for pre-eminence.

And what was I so unwilling to endure, and what was it that I censured so violently

when I caught anyone, except the very things I did to others? And, when I was

myself detected and censured, I preferred to quarrel rather than to yield. Is this the

innocence of childhood? It is not, O Lord, it is not. I entreat thy mercy, O my God,

for these same sins as we grow older are transferred from tutors and masters; they

pass from nuts and balls and sparrows, to magistrates and kings, to gold and lands

and slaves, just as the rod is succeeded by more severe chastisements. It was, then,

the fact of humility in childhood that thou, O our King, didst approve as a symbol of

CHAPTER XIX

31. However, O Lord, to thee most excellent and most good, thou Architect

and Governor of the universe, thanks would be due thee, O our God, even if thou

hadst not willed that I should survive my boyhood. For I existed even then; I lived

and felt and was solicitous about my own well-being--a trace of that most

over the integrity of my outer senses, and even in these trifles and also in my

thoughts about trifles, I learned to take pleasure in truth. I was averse to being

deceived; I had a vigorous memory; I was gifted with the power of speech, was

softened by friendship, shunned sorrow, meanness, ignorance. Is not such an

animated creature as this wonderful and praiseworthy? But all these are gifts of my

God; I did not give them to myself. Moreover, they are good, and they all together

constitute myself. Good, then, is he that made me, and he is my God; and before him

will I rejoice exceedingly for every good gift which, even as a boy, I had. But herein

lay my sin, that it was not in him, but in his creatures--myself and the rest--that I

sought for pleasures, honors, and truths. And I fell thereby into sorrows, troubles,

and errors. Thanks be to thee, my joy, my pride, my confidence, my God--thanks be

to thee for thy gifts; but do thou preserve them in me. For thus wilt thou preserve

me; and those things which thou hast given me shall be developed and perfected,

and I myself shall be with thee, for from thee is my being.

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER I

1. I wish now to review in memory my past wickedness and the carnal

corruptions of my soul--not because I still love them, but that I may love thee, O my

God. For love of thy love I do this, recalling in the bitterness of self-examination my

wicked ways, that thou mayest grow sweet to me, thou sweetness without

deception! Thou sweetness happy and assured! Thus thou mayest gather me up out

of those fragments in which I was torn to pieces, while I turned away from thee, O

satisfied with worldly things, and I dared to grow wild in a succession of various

and shadowy loves. My form wasted away, and I became corrupt in thy eyes, yet I

was still pleasing to my own eyes--and eager to please the eyes of men.

CHAPTER II

2. But what was it that delighted me save to love and to be loved? Still I did

not keep the moderate way of the love of mind to mind--the bright path of

friendship. Instead, the mists of passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence

of the flesh, and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and overcast

my heart that I was unable to distinguish pure affection from unholy desire. Both

boiled confusedly within me, and dragged my unstable youth down over the cliffs of

unchaste desires and plunged me into a gulf of infamy. Thy anger had come upon

me, and I knew it not. I had been deafened by the clanking of the chains of my

mortality, the punishment for my soul’s pride, and I wandered farther from thee,

and thou didst permit me to do so. I was tossed to and fro, and wasted, and poured

out, and I boiled over in my fornications--and yet thou didst hold thy peace, O my

tardy Joy! Thou didst still hold thy peace, and I wandered still farther from thee

into more and yet more barren fields of sorrow, in proud dejection and restless

lassitude.

3. If only there had been someone to regulate my disorder and turn to my

profit the fleeting beauties of the things around me, and to fix a bound to their

sweetness, so that the tides of my youth might have spent themselves upon the

shore of marriage! Then they might have been tranquilized and satisfied with

having children, as thy law prescribes, O Lord--O thou who dost form the offspring

of our death and art able also with a tender hand to blunt the thorns which were

are far from thee. Now, on the other hand, I might have given more vigilant heed to

the voice from the clouds: "Nevertheless, such shall have trouble in the flesh, but I

unmarried cares for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord;

but he that is married cares for the things that are of the world, how he may please

greater happiness expected thy embraces.

4. But, fool that I was, I foamed in my wickedness as the sea and, forsaking

thee, followed the rushing of my own tide, and burst out of all thy bounds. But I did

not escape thy scourges. For what mortal can do so? Thou wast always by me,

mercifully angry and flavoring all my unlawful pleasures with bitter discontent, in

order that I might seek pleasures free from discontent. But where could I find such

pleasure save in thee, O Lord--save in thee, who dost teach us by sorrow, who

woundest us to heal us, and dost kill us that we may not die apart from thee. Where

was I, and how far was I exiled from the delights of thy house, in that sixteenth year

of the age of my flesh, when the madness of lust held full sway in me--that madness

which grants indulgence to human shamelessness, even though it is forbidden by

thy laws--and I gave myself entirely to it? Meanwhile, my family took no care to

save me from ruin by marriage, for their sole care was that I should learn how to

make a powerful speech and become a persuasive orator.

CHAPTER III

5. Now, in that year my studies were interrupted. I had come back from

and the money for a further term at Carthage was being got together for me. This

project was more a matter of my father’s ambition than of his means, for he was

only a poor citizen of Tagaste.

To whom am I narrating all this? Not to thee, O my God, but to my own kind

in thy presence--to that small part of the human race who may chance to come upon

these writings. And to what end? That I and all who read them may understand

heard in thy ear than a confessing heart and a faithful life?

Who did not extol and praise my father, because he went quite beyond his

means to supply his son with the necessary expenses for a far journey in the

interest of his education? For many far richer citizens did not do so much for their

children. Still, this same father troubled himself not at all as to how I was

progressing toward thee nor how chaste I was, just so long as I was skillful in

speaking--no matter how barren I was to thy tillage, O God, who art the one true

6. During that sixteenth year of my age, I lived with my parents, having a

holiday from school for a time--this idleness imposed upon me by my parents’

straitened finances. The thornbushes of lust grew rank about my head, and there

was no hand to root them out. Indeed, when my father saw me one day at the baths

and perceived that I was becoming a man, and was showing the signs of

adolescence, he joyfully told my mother about it as if already looking forward to

produced by the province of Africa.

Augustine of his motive and aim in writing these "confessions."

grandchildren, rejoicing in that sort of inebriation in which the world so often

forgets thee, its Creator, and falls in love with thy creature instead of thee--the

inebriation of that invisible wine of a perverted will which turns and bows down to

infamy. But in my mother’s breast thou hadst already begun to build thy temple

and the foundation of thy holy habitation--whereas my father was only a

catechumen, and that but recently. She was, therefore, startled with a holy fear and

trembling: for though I had not yet been baptized, she feared those crooked ways in

which they walk who turn their backs to thee and not their faces.

7. Woe is me! Do I dare affirm that thou didst hold thy peace, O my God,

while I wandered farther away from thee? Didst thou really then hold thy peace?

Then whose words were they but thine which by my mother, thy faithful handmaid,

thou didst pour into my ears? None of them, however, sank into my heart to make

me do anything. She deplored and, as I remember, warned me privately with great

solicitude, "not to commit fornication; but above all things never to defile another

man’s wife." These appeared to me but womanish counsels, which I would have

blushed to obey. Yet they were from thee, and I knew it not. I thought that thou

wast silent and that it was only she who spoke. Yet it was through her that thou

didst not keep silence toward me; and in rejecting her counsel I was rejecting thee--

rushed on headlong with such blindness that, among my friends, I was ashamed to

be less shameless than they, when I heard them boasting of their disgraceful

exploits--yes, and glorying all the more the worse their baseness was. What is

worse, I took pleasure in such exploits, not for the pleasure’s sake only but mostly

for praise. What is worthy of vituperation except vice itself? Yet I made myself out

worse than I was, in order that I might not go lacking for praise. And when in

anything I had not sinned as the worst ones in the group, I would still say that I

had done what I had not done, in order not to appear contemptible because I was

more innocent than they; and not to drop in their esteem because I was more chaste.

8. Behold with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon! I rolled in

its mire and lolled about on it, as if on a bed of spices and precious ointments. And,

drawing me more closely to the very center of that city, my invisible enemy trod me

down and seduced me, for I was easy to seduce. My mother had already fled out of

in counseling me to chastity, she did not bear in mind what her husband had told

her about me. And although she knew that my passions were destructive even then

and dangerous for the future, she did not think they should be restrained by the

bonds of conjugal affection--if, indeed, they could not be cut away to the quick. She

took no heed of this, for she was afraid lest a wife should prove a hindrance and a

burden to my hopes. These were not her hopes of the world to come, which my

mother had in thee, but the hope of learning, which both my parents were too

anxious that I should acquire--my father, because he had little or no thought of

thee, and only vain thoughts for me; my mother, because she thought that the usual

course of study would not only be no hindrance but actually a furtherance toward

my eventual return to thee. This much I conjecture, recalling as well as I can the

temperaments of my parents. Meantime, the reins of discipline were slackened on

me, so that without the restraint of due severity, I might play at whatsoever I

fancied, even to the point of dissoluteness. And in all this there was that mist which

shut out from my sight the brightness of thy truth, O my God; and my iniquity

CHAPTER IV

9. Theft is punished by thy law, O Lord, and by the law written in men’s

hearts, which not even ingrained wickedness can erase. For what thief will tolerate

another thief stealing from him? Even a rich thief will not tolerate a poor thief who

is driven to theft by want. Yet I had a desire to commit robbery, and did so,

compelled to it by neither hunger nor poverty, but through a contempt for welldoing

and a strong impulse to iniquity. For I pilfered something which I already had

in sufficient measure, and of much better quality. I did not desire to enjoy what I

stole, but only the theft and the sin itself.

There was a pear tree close to our own vineyard, heavily laden with fruit,

which was not tempting either for its color or for its flavor. Late one night--having

prolonged our games in the streets until then, as our bad habit was--a group of

young scoundrels, and I among them, went to shake and rob this tree. We carried off

a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely

tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was

forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart--which thou didst pity

even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was

seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil

but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my

error--not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away

from security in thee to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful

deed but shame itself.

CHAPTER V

10. Now there is a comeliness in all beautiful bodies, and in gold and silver

and all things. The sense of touch has its own power to please and the other senses

find their proper objects in physical sensation. Worldly honor also has its own glory,

and so do the powers to command and to overcome: and from these there springs up

the desire for revenge. Yet, in seeking these pleasures, we must not depart from

thee, O Lord, nor deviate from thy law. The life which we live here has its own

peculiar attractiveness because it has a certain measure of comeliness of its own

and a harmony with all these inferior values. The bond of human friendship has a

sweetness of its own, binding many souls together as one. Yet because of these

values, sin is committed, because we have an inordinate preference for these goods

of a lower order and neglect the better and the higher good--neglecting thee, O our

Lord God, and thy truth and thy law. For these inferior values have their delights,

but not at all equal to my God, who hath made them all. For in him do the righteous

delight and he is the sweetness of the upright in heart.

11. When, therefore, we inquire why a crime was committed, we do not accept

the explanation unless it appears that there was the desire to obtain some of those

values which we designate inferior, or else a fear of losing them. For truly they are

beautiful and comely, though in comparison with the superior and celestial goods

they are abject and contemptible. A man has murdered another man--what was his

motive? Either he desired his wife or his property or else he would steal to support

himself; or else he was afraid of losing something to him; or else, having been

injured, he was burning to be revenged. Would a man commit murder without a

motive, taking delight simply in the act of murder? Who would believe such a thing?

Even for that savage and brutal man [Catiline], of whom it was said that he was

gratuitously wicked and cruel, there is still a motive assigned to his deeds. "Lest

purpose? Why, even this: that, having once got possession of the city through his

practice of his wicked ways, he might gain honors, empire, and wealth, and thus be

exempt from the fear of the laws and from financial difficulties in supplying the

needs of his family--and from the consciousness of his own wickedness. So it seems

that even Catiline himself loved not his own villainies, but something else, and it

was this that gave him the motive for his crimes.

CHAPTER VI

12. What was it in you, O theft of mine, that I, poor wretch, doted on--you

deed of darkness--in that sixteenth year of my age? Beautiful you were not, for you

were a theft. But are you anything at all, so that I could analyze the case with you?

Those pears that we stole were fair to the sight because they were thy creation, O

Beauty beyond compare, O Creator of all, O thou good God--God the highest good

them that my miserable soul lusted, for I had an abundance of better pears. I stole

those simply that I might steal, for, having stolen them, I threw them away. My sole

gratification in them was my own sin, which I was pleased to enjoy; for, if any one of

these pears entered my mouth, the only good flavor it had was my sin in eating it.

And now, O Lord my God, I ask what it was in that theft of mine that caused me

such delight; for behold it had no beauty of its own--certainly not the sort of beauty

that exists in justice and wisdom, nor such as is in the mind, memory senses, and

the animal life of man; nor yet the kind that is the glory and beauty of the stars in

their courses; nor the beauty of the earth, or the sea--teeming with spawning life,

replacing in birth that which dies and decays. Indeed, it did not have that false and

shadowy beauty which attends the deceptions of vice.

13. For thus we see pride wearing the mask of high-spiritedness, although

only thou, O God, art high above all. Ambition seeks honor and glory, whereas only

thou shouldst be honored above all, and glorified forever. The powerful man seeks to

be feared, because of his cruelty; but who ought really to be feared but God only?

What can be forced away or withdrawn out of his power--when or where or whither

or by whom? The enticements of the wanton claim the name of love; and yet nothing

is more enticing than thy love, nor is anything loved more healthfully than thy

truth, bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity prompts a desire for knowledge,

whereas it is only thou who knowest all things supremely. Indeed, ignorance and

foolishness themselves go masked under the names of simplicity and innocence; yet

there is no being that has true simplicity like thine, and none is innocent as thou

art. Thus it is that by a sinner’s own deeds he is himself harmed. Human sloth

pretends to long for rest, but what sure rest is there save in the Lord? Luxury would

fain be called plenty and abundance; but thou art the fullness and unfailing

abundance of unfading joy. Prodigality presents a show of liberality; but thou art

the most lavish giver of all good things. Covetousness desires to possess much; but

thou art already the possessor of all things. Envy contends that its aim is for

excellence; but what is so excellent as thou? Anger seeks revenge; but who avenges

more ju