Confessions

This is an AI modernization of Confessions into contemporary English. The original is available from Project Gutenberg. Also available as an epub.

Editor's Introduction

Augustine was born in 354 in Thagaste, a small inland town in Roman North Africa, in what is now Algeria. He taught rhetoric for a living — at Carthage, then Rome, then the imperial court at Milan — spent nine years as a Manichee, lived for about fifteen years with a woman whose name he never gives and had a son by her, and was baptised in Milan in 387, at thirty-two. His mother Monica, who had followed him across the sea, died a few months later at Ostia. He was made bishop of Hippo, a port on the same North African coast, in his early forties, and wrote this book at about that time, somewhere between 397 and 400.

The first thing to know about it is who it is talking to. Every sentence of the thirteen books is addressed to God — not about him, to him. Augustine is telling the story of his own life to someone who already knows all of it, and asking questions of him in the middle of the telling. That is why the book reads the way it does, and a reader who expects to be addressed will spend the first pages confused. Nobody is explaining anything to us. We are overhearing.

The pronoun for God here is "you", capitalised. Pusey's 1838 translation, which this edition works from, used "Thou" throughout, and that has been the English voice of the book ever since. But Latin tu is the intimate singular — the pronoun for a friend or a child — so the Victorian "Thou" makes the book considerably more formal than Augustine wrote it. The capital is kept for a practical reason: he breaks off from addressing God to address his readers directly, sometimes in the same paragraph, and the capital is the cheapest way to say which "you" is which.

Nine of the thirteen books are memoir, ending with Monica's death. Book Ten is about memory. Books Eleven to Thirteen are about time, creation, and the opening verses of Genesis. Most modern editions cut or append those last four, which turns the Confessions into a conversion story, which is a thing it invented and then refused to be. All thirteen are here. Book Eleven is the one people come back for; it contains the best-known admission of ignorance in philosophy, about what time is.

He is faster and funnier than his reputation. He steals pears he does not want and cannot stop thinking about it thirty years later. He prays for chastity, and adds, but not yet, and knows exactly how funny that is. He is jealous of a cheerful drunk in a Milan street. He hated learning Greek.

Contents

Book One: Infancy, Boyhood, and the Beginnings of Sin

Book Two: The Pear Tree

Book Three: Carthage, the Theatre, and the Manichees

Book Four: Friendship, Grief, and the Death of a Friend

Book Five: Faustus, Rome, and the Road to Milan

Book Six: Ambrose, Alypius, and the Struggle to Believe

Book Seven: The Platonists and the Problem of Evil

Book Eight: The Garden at Milan

Book Nine: Baptism, Ostia, and the Death of Monica

Book Ten: Memory

Book Eleven: Time and Eternity

Book Twelve: Heaven and Earth

Book Thirteen: The Days of Creation

Book One: Infancy, Boyhood, and the Beginnings of Sin

You are great, Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Your power, and Your wisdom has no limit. And a human being wants to praise You — a human being, one small piece of what You have made, carrying his own mortality about with him, carrying the evidence of his sin and the evidence that You resist the proud. Still he wants to praise You, this small piece of what You have made. You stir us to take delight in praising You, because You made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.

Grant me, Lord, to know and understand which comes first: calling on You or praising You? And again, knowing You or calling on You? For how can anyone call on You without knowing You? Not knowing You, he might call on something else instead. Or is it rather that we call on You in order to know You? But how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe without a preacher? And they that seek the Lord shall praise him — for those who seek will find him, and those who find will praise him. So let me seek You, Lord, by calling on You, and call on You by believing in You; for You have been preached to us. My faith calls on You, Lord — the faith You gave me, the faith You breathed into me through the humanity of Your Son, through the work of the man who preached.

And how shall I call on my God, my God and Lord, when calling for him means calling him into myself? What room is there in me for my God to come into? Where can God come into me — God, who made heaven and earth? Is there really anything in me, Lord my God, that can hold You? Do heaven and earth hold You, which You made, and in which You made me? Or is it that, since nothing that exists could exist without You, whatever exists holds You? Then since I exist too, why do I ask You to come into me, when I would not be at all if You were not in me already? Why? Because I have not gone down to hell — and yet You are there too. For if I go down into hell, You are there. I could not exist, my God, could not exist at all, if You were not in me — or rather, unless I were in You, from whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are all things. Just so, Lord. Just so. Where am I calling You to, when I am already in You? Or where can You come into me from? Where could I go, beyond heaven and earth, for my God to come to me from there — my God, who has said, I fill heaven and earth?

Do heaven and earth hold You, then, since You fill them? Or do You fill them and overflow, since they cannot hold You? And when heaven and earth are full, where do You pour out the rest of Yourself? Or do You have no need of anything to hold You, since You hold all things — filling what You fill by holding it? The vessels You fill do not hold You up: they could all be smashed and You would not spill out. And when You are poured out over us, You are not brought down but lift us up; You are not scattered but gather us together. But You, who fill all things: do You fill them with the whole of Yourself? Or, since nothing can hold all of You, does each thing hold a part? And the same part, all at once? Or each its own part, the larger things more and the smaller less? Is one part of You larger, then, and another smaller? Or are You wholly everywhere, while nothing holds the whole of You?

What are You, then, my God? What, except the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? Who is God but our God? Highest, best, most powerful, most all-powerful; most merciful and most just; most hidden and most present; most beautiful and most strong; steady and beyond comprehension; unchangeable and changing everything; never new, never old, and making all things new, while bringing the proud into old age without their noticing; always working, always at rest; still gathering and lacking nothing; supporting, filling, sheltering; creating, feeding, ripening; searching, though You have everything. You love, without being agitated by it; You are jealous, without anxiety; You repent, but You do not grieve; You are angry, and You are calm; You change Your work, and Your purpose does not change; You take back what You find, and never lost it; You are never in need, and You are glad of what You gain; You are never greedy, and You demand interest. We give You more than we owe, so that You may be in our debt — and who has anything that is not Yours? You pay debts, owing nothing; You cancel debts, losing nothing. And what have I said now, my God, my life, my holy joy? What does anyone say when he speaks about You? And yet woe to the man who says nothing, since even the most eloquent are struck dumb.

Oh, that I might rest in You! Oh, that You would come into my heart and flood it, so that I might forget my troubles and take hold of You, my one good! What are You to me? Have pity, and teach me how to say it. What am I to You, that You demand my love and are angry with me if I do not give it, and threaten me with terrible miseries? Is it a small misery, then, not to love You? Oh, for Your mercy's sake, Lord my God, tell me what You are to me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation. Say it so that I hear it. Look: my heart is in front of You, Lord; open its ears and say to my soul, I am your salvation. Let me run after that voice and take hold of You. Do not hide Your face from me. Let me die — so that I do not die — only let me see Your face.

The house of my soul is too narrow for You to come into; enlarge it. It is falling down; repair it. There are things in it that must offend Your eyes; I confess it and I know it. But who is going to clean it out? Whom should I cry to but You? Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults, and spare Your servant from the power of the enemy. I believe, and so I speak. Lord, You know. Have I not confessed my sins against myself to You, and have You not, my God, forgiven the wickedness of my heart? I will not go to law with You, who are the truth. I am afraid of deceiving myself, of letting my own wrongdoing lie to itself. So I will not go to law with You — for if You, Lord, should keep account of our sins, Lord, who could stand it?

Yet let me speak to Your mercy, dust and ashes that I am. Let me speak, since it is Your mercy I am speaking to, and not to some man who would laugh at me. Perhaps You laugh at me too — but You will turn back and have compassion on me. For what would I say, Lord my God, except that I do not know where I came from into this dying life, or should I call it living death? And straight away the comforts of Your compassion took me up, as I have heard from the parents of my flesh, out of whose substance You once shaped me — I do not remember it myself. So I was met by the comfort of a woman's milk. My mother and my nurses did not fill their own breasts for me; it was You who gave me the food of my infancy through them, according to Your arrangement, by which You distribute Your riches through the hidden depths of things. You also gave me not to want more than You gave, and gave my nurses the willingness to give me what You had given them. They gave me what they had from You, and they gave it gladly, out of a love You had taught them. What was good for me from them was good for them too. And in fact it was not from them but through them — because all good things are from You, God, and all my health is from my God. I learned this only later, when You called out to me through these gifts of Yours, inside me and outside me. In those days all I knew was how to suck, to be content with what pleased me and cry at what hurt me; nothing more.

Later I began to smile, first in my sleep and then awake — so I was told about myself, and I believed it, because we see other babies do the same, though I remember nothing of my own. Bit by bit I began to notice where I was, and to want to make my wants known to the people who could satisfy them; and I could not, because the wants were inside me and the people were outside, and no sense of theirs could get into my mind. So I flung my arms and legs and voice about at random, making the few signs I could — signs very little like what I actually meant. And when I was not obeyed at once, either because my wants were harmful or because nobody understood them, I was outraged: outraged that my elders would not do as they were told, that free people would not serve me, that people who owed me nothing would not wait on me — and I punished them for it by crying. That is what babies are like; I have watched them and learned it. And that I was like that myself, they have shown me better, without knowing it, than my nurses could who did know it.

And now my infancy is long dead, and I am alive. But You, Lord, live for ever, and nothing in You dies. Before the foundation of the world, before anything that can be called "before", You are, and You are God and Lord of everything You created. In You stand fixed for ever the first causes of everything that does not stand; in You, unchanging, are the sources of everything that changes; in You live the eternal reasons of everything unreasoning and temporary. Tell me, Lord, tell Your suppliant; have pity, and tell me who need pity: did my infancy come after some earlier age of mine that had already died? Was that the time I spent inside my mother? I have heard something about that, and I have seen pregnant women myself. But before that again, God my joy — was I anywhere, was I anybody? There is nobody to tell me. Not my father, not my mother, not other people's experience, not my own memory. Are You laughing at me for asking, and telling me to praise You and acknowledge You for what I do know?

I acknowledge You, Lord of heaven and earth, and praise You for the first rudiments of my being and for my infancy, which I remember nothing of; because You have arranged that a man should guess much about himself from other people, and believe a great deal of it on the word of mere women. Even then I had being and life, and by the end of my infancy I could look for signs by which to make my feelings known to others. Where could such a creature come from, Lord, if not from You? Can anyone be his own maker? Is there some other channel anywhere that could pour existence and life into us, except from You, Lord, in whom existing and living are one thing — since You Yourself are supremely existence and supremely life? For You are most high, and You do not change, and today does not come to an end in You. And yet it does come to an end in You, since all such things are in You too; they would have no way of passing at all unless You held them up. And since Your years do not run out, Your years are a single today. How many of our years, and our fathers' years, have flowed away through Your "today", taking from it the measure and the shape of whatever being they had? And still others will flow away and take their shape in turn. But You are still the same, and everything of tomorrow and beyond, and everything of yesterday and behind it, You have done today. What is it to me if somebody cannot follow this? Let him be glad and say, What is this? Let him be glad even so, and be content to find You by not finding You, rather than to miss You by finding.

Hear me, God. How terrible human sin is! So says a man, and You pity him, because You made him and did not make the sin in him. Who will remind me of the sins of my infancy? For in Your sight nobody is free of sin, not even a baby whose life on earth is one day long. Who will remind me? Does not every small child, in whom I can see what I do not remember of myself? What was my sin, then? Was it that I cried for the breast? If I cried now for food suitable to my age, I should rightly be laughed at and told off. What I did then deserved telling off; but since I could not have understood it, custom and reason forbade anyone to tell me off. Those are habits we dig out and throw away once we have grown — and no one who prunes a tree knowingly throws away the good wood. So was it good, even for a time, to cry for what would have hurt me if I got it? To be bitterly angry that free people, my own elders, the very people who gave me life, did not wait on me? That plenty of others, wiser than I was, did not jump at my nod? To do my best to hit and hurt them, because they would not obey orders that it would have harmed me to have obeyed? It is the weakness of a baby's limbs that is innocent, not its will. I have seen a baby jealous myself. It could not talk yet, and it went pale and glared at the other child at the breast. Everybody knows this. Mothers and nurses will tell you they have their own remedies for it. But is that innocence — when the fountain of milk is running rich and full, to refuse to let another share it, though he needs it desperately and his whole life depends on it? We put up with all this gently, not because it is no evil, or a small one, but because the child will grow out of it. It is tolerated now, and exactly the same temper is completely intolerable in an older person.

You then, Lord my God, who gave life to this infancy of mine, and fitted out the body You gave me with senses, as we can see, and joined its limbs together, and shaped it well, and planted in it all the functions of life for its safety and good — You command me to praise You for these things, to confess to You and sing to Your name, most high. For You are God, almighty and good, even if You had done nothing but this, which nobody but You could do: You whose oneness is the pattern of all things; who out of Your own beauty make all things beautiful; who order all things by Your law. This age, then, Lord, which I have no memory of, which I take on other people's word and guess at from other babies — true though the guess may be — I am still reluctant to count as part of this life of mine that I live in this world. It is hidden from me in the shadows of forgetting, exactly as the time I spent in my mother's womb is. But if I was shaped in wickedness, and my mother conceived me in sin, then where, I beg You, my God — where, Lord, or when, was I, Your servant, ever innocent? Still, I pass that period by. What have I to do now with a time I can recall no trace of?

Leaving infancy behind, I came to boyhood — or rather it came to me, and pushed infancy out. Not that infancy went away, for where would it have gone? And yet it was no longer there. I was no longer a speechless infant but a talking boy. This I do remember, and I have worked out since how I learned to talk. It was not that my elders taught me words by any set method, the way they taught me other things later. It was that I longed to express what I was thinking, by cries and broken noises and various movements of my limbs, so as to get my own way; and being unable to express everything I wanted, or to the person I wanted, I practised the sounds in my memory with the mind You had given me, my God. When people named something and turned towards it as they spoke, I saw it and understood that the thing they were pointing out was called by the sound they made. And that they meant this thing and not another was obvious from the movement of their bodies — the natural language of all nations, made up of expression, glances, gestures and tone of voice, which shows what the mind is feeling as it goes after something, or holds it, or refuses it, or runs from it. So by hearing words over and over as they turned up in different sentences, I gradually collected what they stood for; and having broken my mouth in to these signs, I used them to say what I wanted. In this way I traded the current signs of our wants with the people around me, and launched further out into the stormy business of human life — still depending, of course, on the authority of my parents and the nod of my elders.

My God, my God, what miseries and mockeries I met with then, when as a boy I was told that the right thing was to obey my teachers, so that I might get on in this world and excel in the science of the tongue, which serves to win the praise of men and money that deceives. Next I was sent to school to get an education, though I had no idea, poor wretch, what it was good for; and yet if I was lazy at my lessons I was beaten. Our forefathers thought this the right way, and plenty of people had gone the same road before us and laid out these weary paths, which we were made to walk, multiplying toil and misery for the sons of Adam. But, Lord, we found that people called on You, and we learned from them to think of You — as far as we were able — as somebody great, who could hear us and help us, though hidden from our senses. So as a boy I began to pray to You, my help and my refuge, and I loosened my tongue to call on You, and I prayed, small as I was, with no small earnestness, not to be beaten at school. And when You did not hear me — which was not abandoning me to my folly — my elders, and even my parents, who wished me no harm at all, laughed at my beatings, which were my great and grievous trouble.

Is there anyone, Lord, of a soul so large, so passionately attached to You — for a kind of stupidity will do it after a fashion, but I mean anyone made so great-hearted by devotion to You — that he can think as lightly of the racks and hooks and other tortures that people all over the world beg You in terror to be spared, and laugh at those who dread them most bitterly, as our parents laughed at the torments we suffered from our schoolmasters as boys? For we were no less afraid of ours, and prayed to You no less to escape them. And still we sinned, by writing or reading or studying less than we were set. It was not that we lacked memory or ability, Lord; Your will had given us plenty for our age. It was that our whole delight was in play — and for that we were punished by people who were doing exactly the same. But an adult's idleness is called business; a boy's, which is the same thing, gets him punished by those adults, and nobody feels sorry for either the boys or the men. For would anyone with any sense approve of my being beaten as a boy because playing ball slowed my progress in studies that were to fit me, as a man, for playing at something less becoming? And what else was the man doing who beat me? If he came off worse in some trivial argument with a fellow teacher, he was more embittered and jealous than I was on losing a ball game to a playmate.

And yet I did sin in this, Lord God, orderer and creator of everything in nature — orderer only, of sin. I sinned, Lord my God, by disobeying the commands of my parents and my teachers. Whatever their motive, what they wanted me to learn I might have put to good use later. I disobeyed, not because I had chosen something better, but out of love of play: I loved the pride of winning my contests, and having my ears tickled with lying stories so that they itched all the more; and the same curiosity kept flashing brighter in my eyes for the shows and games of my elders. And those who put on such shows are held in such esteem that almost everyone wants the same for their children — while being perfectly willing to have them beaten if the games get in the way of the studies by which they hope the children will grow up to put such shows on. Look on all this with pity, Lord; and rescue us who call on You now; and rescue those too who do not yet call on You, so that they may call on You, and You may rescue them.

As a boy I had already heard about an eternal life promised to us through the humility of the Lord our God stooping down to our pride; and from my mother's womb — she hoped greatly in You — I was marked with the sign of his cross and seasoned with his salt. You saw, Lord, how once when I was still a boy I was seized by a sudden stomach complaint and was close to death. You saw, my God, because You were already my keeper, how eagerly and with what faith I begged for the baptism of Your Christ, my God and Lord, from the loving care of my mother and of Your Church, the mother of us all. And my mother in the flesh was greatly troubled, since with a heart pure in Your faith she was labouring even more lovingly to give birth to my salvation; she would have hurried to see me consecrated and cleansed by the healing sacraments, confessing You, Lord Jesus, for the forgiveness of sins — except that I suddenly recovered. So my cleansing was put off, on the grounds that if I lived I was bound to be polluted again, and that the stains of sin after that washing would carry greater and more dangerous guilt. I already believed by then; so did my mother and the whole household, except my father. But he did not defeat my mother's devotion in me, and win the point that because he did not yet believe, I should not believe either. She took great care that You, my God, should be my father rather than he was; and in this You helped her to prevail over her husband, whom she went on obeying, better woman though she was — obeying You in that too, since You have commanded it.

I beg You, my God, I would very much like to know, if You are willing to tell me: why was my baptism put off then? Was it for my good that the rein was let out, so to speak, and I was free to sin? Or was it not let out? If it was not, why do we still hear on every side, "Leave him alone, let him do what he likes, he is not baptised yet"? Whereas about bodily health nobody says, "Let him be wounded worse, he is not healed yet." How much better it would have been to be healed at once, and then, by my own efforts and my friends', to keep my soul's recovered health safe in Your keeping, since You gave it. Better indeed. But what great waves of temptation seemed to be hanging over me after boyhood! My mother could see them coming, and preferred to expose the raw clay to them, from which I might be moulded afterwards, rather than the finished cast.

In boyhood itself, though — so much less feared for me than adolescence was — I did not love study, and I hated being made to do it. But I was made to do it, and it was good for me, though I did not do well; because I would not have learned unless I had been forced. And nobody does well against his will, even if what he does is good in itself. Nor did the people forcing me do well either; the good came to me from You, my God. They cared nothing for what I would do with what they forced me to learn, except to satisfy the insatiable appetites of a rich poverty and a shameful glory. But You, who have numbered the very hairs of our head, used the error of everybody who pushed me to learn for my good — and used my own error, in refusing to learn, as my punishment, which was a fair penalty for so small a boy and so great a sinner. So by people who did wrong You did right by me; and by my own sin You justly punished me. For You have ordered it, and so it is, that every disordered love is its own punishment.

But why did I so hate Greek, which I studied as a boy? I still do not entirely know. I loved Latin — not what my first teachers taught, but what the so-called grammarians taught. Those first lessons, reading and writing and arithmetic, I found as much of a burden and a penalty as any Greek. And where did that come from, again, except the sin and vanity of this life, because I was flesh, and a breath that passes away and does not come back? Those first lessons were certainly the better ones, because they were the more certain; by them I gained, and still have, the power to read whatever I find written and to write whatever I want. Whereas in the others I was made to learn the wanderings of a man called Aeneas, while forgetting my own wanderings, and to weep for a dead Dido because she killed herself for love — while with dry eyes I put up with my own wretched self, dying among these things, far from You, God my life.

For what is more wretched than a wretch who has no pity on himself, and weeps at Dido's death for love of Aeneas but does not weep at his own death for want of love of You, God? Light of my heart, bread of the inmost part of my soul, power that gives vigour to my mind and quickens my thought: I did not love You. I was unfaithful to You, and all around me, in the same unfaithfulness, the voices echoed, "Well done! Well done!" For friendship with this world is unfaithfulness to You — and the "Well done! Well done!" goes on until a man is ashamed not to be like that. And for none of this did I weep, I who wept for Dido killed, "seeking with the sword the last extremity of her wound", while I myself was seeking a worse extremity: the lowest of Your creatures, having abandoned You, earth going back into earth. And if I was forbidden to read all this, I was miserable that I could not read what made me miserable. Madness like that is reckoned a higher and richer education than the one that taught me to read and write.

But now, my God, cry aloud in my soul, and let Your truth tell me: Not so, not so. That first study was far better. For I would far rather forget the wanderings of Aeneas and all the rest than forget how to read and write. There is a curtain hanging over the door of the grammar school, true enough. But it is less a symbol of anything mysterious than a cover for error. Let the people I no longer fear not shout me down, while I confess to You, my God, whatever my soul wants to confess, and consent to the condemnation of my bad ways in order to love Your good ones. Let neither the buyers nor the sellers of grammar shout me down. If I ask them whether it is true that Aeneas once came to Carthage, as the poet says, the less educated will answer that they do not know and the better educated that he never did. But if I ask what letters the name "Aeneas" is spelled with, everyone who has learned it will answer correctly, according to the signs people have agreed on among themselves. And if I ask which could be forgotten with the least damage to the business of living, reading and writing or these poetic fictions, who cannot see what everybody must answer, unless he has entirely forgotten himself? So I sinned as a boy in preferring the empty studies to the useful ones — or rather in loving the one and hating the other. "One and one is two, two and two is four" was a hateful singsong to me; while "the wooden horse packed with armed men", and "the burning of Troy", and "the sad ghost of Creusa" were the favourite show of my vanity.

Then why did I hate the Greek classics, which tell the same sort of tales? Homer too is a skilful weaver of such fictions, and is most sweetly empty, and yet he was bitter to my boyish taste. And I suppose Virgil would be the same to Greek children, made to learn him as I was made to learn Homer. The truth is that difficulty — the difficulty of a foreign language — poured gall over all the sweetness of Greek storytelling. I did not understand a word of it, and to make me understand I was driven hard with cruel threats and punishments. There was a time when as an infant I knew no Latin either; but I learned that without fear or suffering, simply by paying attention, among the caresses of my nurses and the jokes of the people around me, smiling and playfully egging me on. I learned it with no punishment pressing me forward, because my own heart pressed me to give birth to what was in it — which I could only do by learning words, not from the people who taught but from the people who talked to me, and in whose ears I in turn gave birth to whatever I was thinking. So there is no doubt that free curiosity has more power to make us learn these things than terrified compulsion. Only, compulsion restrains the wanderings of that freedom, by Your laws, my God — Your laws, running from the schoolmaster's cane to the martyr's trials, which are able to mix a wholesome bitterness for us, calling us back to Yourself from the deadly sweetness that lures us away.

Hear my prayer, Lord. Do not let my soul give way under Your discipline, and do not let me give way in confessing to You all the mercies by which You have drawn me out of my worst ways, so that You might become a delight to me above all the attractions I once chased; so that I may love You completely, and take hold of Your hand with all my heart, and You may rescue me from every temptation right to the end. For look, Lord, my king and my God: let whatever useful thing I learned as a child be for Your service — that I speak, write, read, count, let it be for Your service. For You gave me Your discipline while I was learning trivialities, and You have forgiven my sin of enjoying them. In them, it is true, I learned many a useful word — but those can be learned just as well in things that are not trivial, and that is the safe road for a young person's feet.

But woe to you, torrent of human custom! Who can stand against you? How long before you run dry? How long will you go on rolling the sons of Eve into that huge, hideous ocean, which even the ones who climb the cross barely get across? Did I not read in you about Jove the thunderer and adulterer? He could hardly be both — but the invented thunder was there to give cover and encouragement to the real adultery. And now which of our gowned professors will listen soberly to a man from their own school who cries out, "These were Homer's fictions, transferring human things to the gods; if only he had brought divine things down to us"? Though it would have been truer to say: "These are indeed his fictions — but by giving a divine nature to wicked men he made crimes stop being crimes, so that anybody committing them could seem to be imitating not degraded men but the gods in heaven."

And still, you hellish torrent, the sons of men are thrown into you with rich rewards for mastering such learning. A great ceremony is made of it when it is done in the forum, in full view of laws granting a salary on top of the pupils' fees — and you lash your rocks and roar, "This is where words are learned! This is where you get the eloquence you must have to win your case or defend your position!" As if we should never have known words like "golden shower", "lap", "seduce", "the temples of heaven", and the rest of that passage, unless Terence had put a dissolute young man on the stage holding Jupiter up as his model for seduction:

	Looking at a picture where the story was painted
	of Jove coming down in a shower of gold
	into Danaë's lap, to seduce a woman.

And then see how he works himself up to lust as if on heavenly authority:

	And what god? Great Jove,
	who shakes the highest temples of heaven with his thunder,

	and I, a poor mortal man, not do the same?
	I did it, and I did it with all my heart.

Not one word is learned any more easily for all this filth; but by means of the words the filth is committed with less shame. I do not blame the words themselves, which are like choice and precious vessels — I blame the wine of error that drunken teachers pour out to us in them, and if we will not drink it too we are beaten, with no sober judge to appeal to. Yet, my God, in whose presence I can now remember this without being hurt by it, I learned all this willingly, unhappily, with great delight, and for it I was pronounced a boy of promise.

Bear with me, my God, while I say something about my cleverness, which was Your gift, and about the follies I wasted it on. A task was set me, troublesome enough to my soul, with praise or disgrace at stake and a beating to fear: to speak the words of Juno as she raged and grieved that she could not

	turn this Trojan prince away from Italy.

I had heard that Juno never said any such words; but we were made to go wandering after these poetic fictions, and to say in prose roughly what the poet had said in verse. And the boy who was applauded most was the one in whom rage and grief stood out most, dressed in the most fitting language and keeping up the dignity of the character. What is that to me, my true life, my God — that my recitation was applauded above so many others of my own age and class? Is it not all smoke and wind? Was there nothing else to exercise my wits and my tongue on? Your praises, Lord, Your praises might have propped up the still tender shoot of my heart with the support of Your Scriptures, and it would not have trailed away among these empty trifles, a dirtied prey for the birds of the air. For there is more than one way of sacrificing to the rebel angels.

But is it any wonder that I was carried off into trivialities and went away from Your presence, my God, when the models set in front of me were men who, if they made a grammatical slip in describing some action of their own that was not in itself wicked, were criticised and ashamed — but who, when they described their own disordered lives in rich, well-ordered, ornamented language, were praised and gloried in it? You see all this, Lord, and keep quiet; slow to anger, and full of mercy and truth. Will You keep quiet for ever? Even now You are drawing out of this horrible pit the soul that seeks You, that thirsts for Your delights, whose heart says to You, I have sought Your face; Your face, Lord, will I seek. For to have one's love darkened is to be far away from You. It is not with our feet, or by changing place, that people leave You or come back to You. Did that younger son of Yours look for horses or carriages or ships, or fly away on visible wings, or travel by moving his legs, in order to waste in riotous living, in a far country, everything You gave him when he left? You were a loving father when You gave it, and more loving still when he came back with nothing. So it is in lustful, that is to say darkened, love that the real distance from Your face consists.

Look, Lord God — look patiently, as You always do — at how carefully the sons of men keep the agreed rules about letters and syllables handed down to them by those who spoke before, while neglecting the eternal covenant of everlasting salvation handed down from You. So much so that a man teaching or learning the inherited laws of pronunciation will offend people more by dropping his aitch and saying "a uman being", against the laws of grammar, than if he, a human being, hates a human being, against Your law. As if any enemy could do more harm than the hatred with which he is inflamed against him; or could wound the man he persecutes more deeply than he wounds his own soul by his hostility. Certainly no knowledge of letters can be so deeply rooted in us as the record of conscience — that he is doing to another what he would hate to have done to himself. How deep Your ways are, God, the only great one, sitting silent on high and by a tireless law dealing out a punishing blindness to lawless desires. Chasing a reputation for eloquence, a man standing before a human judge, surrounded by a human crowd, denouncing his enemy with the fiercest hatred, will take the greatest care not to murder the word "human being" by a slip of the tongue — and take no care at all not to murder a real human being in the fury of his heart.

This was the world at whose gate I lay, unhappy, in my boyhood; this was the arena where I was more afraid of committing a grammatical error than, having committed one, of envying those who had not. These things I say and confess to You, my God; and for these things I was praised by the people whom I then thought it the whole of virtue to please. For I could not see the pit of foulness I had been thrown into, away from Your eyes. In their sight, what was fouler than I already was, displeasing even people like myself, deceiving my tutor and my teachers and my parents with countless lies, out of love of play and eagerness to watch pointless shows and restlessness to copy them? I stole, too, from my parents' cellar and table, driven by greed, or so that I would have something to give the boys who sold me their games — games they enjoyed just as much as I did. And in these games I often cheated my way to victory, conquered myself all the while by a vain desire to be first. And what could I bear less, and denounce more fiercely when I caught somebody at it, than the very thing I was doing to others? And when I was caught and denounced myself, I would rather pick a fight than give in. Is this the innocence of boyhood? It is not, Lord, it is not; I beg Your mercy, my God. These very same sins, as the years go on, simply move from tutors and teachers to magistrates and kings, from nuts and balls and pet sparrows to gold and estates and slaves — exactly as harsher punishments take the place of the cane. It was the small stature of childhood that You, our king, praised as an emblem of humility, when You said, Of such is the kingdom of heaven.

Yet, Lord, to You, creator and governor of the universe, most excellent and most good, thanks would still be due, our God, even if You had meant me to have boyhood and nothing more. For even then I existed, I was alive, I felt; I had a built-in care for my own well-being, a trace of that mysterious oneness I came from. I guarded the wholeness of my senses by an inward sense; and in these tiny pursuits, and in my thoughts about tiny things, I learned to take delight in truth, I hated being deceived, I had a strong memory, I was given the gift of speech, I was comforted by friendship, I avoided pain and lowness and ignorance. In so small a creature, what was not remarkable, what was not admirable? But all of it is my God's gift; I did not give it to myself. And these things are good, and all of them together are me. So he who made me is good, and he is my good; and I will rejoice before him for every good thing I had as a boy. It was my sin that I looked for pleasures and heights and truths not in him but in his creatures — in myself and others — and so fell headlong into sorrows and confusions and errors. Thanks be to You, my joy and my glory and my confidence, my God; thanks be to You for Your gifts. Only keep them for me. For then You will keep me, and the things You have given me will be enlarged and made perfect, and I myself will be with You, since even my existing is Your gift.

Book Two: The Pear Tree

Now I want to call to mind my past foulness, and the bodily corruptions of my soul — not because I love them, but so that I may love You, my God. I do it for love of Your love, going back over my worst ways in the very bitterness of remembering them, so that You may grow sweet to me: sweetness that never fails, blissful and certain sweetness. I do it to be gathered up again out of the scattering in which I was torn to pieces, when I turned away from You, the one good, and lost myself among a multitude of things. For there was a time in my youth when I burned to be filled full with things down here, and I dared to run wild with all these shadowy loves; my beauty wasted away and I stank in Your sight — while pleasing myself, and anxious to be pleasing in the sight of men.

And what was it I took delight in, except loving and being loved? But I did not keep to the proper measure of love, mind to mind, which is the bright boundary of friendship. Out of the muddy craving of the flesh and the bubbling up of adolescence, a fog rose that clouded my heart over, so that I could not tell the clear brightness of love from the mist of lust. Both were boiling together in me confusedly and sweeping my unsteady youth over the cliff of unholy desires, sinking me in a pit of shameful things. Your anger had gathered over me and I did not know it. I had gone deaf from the clanking of the chain of my mortality, which was the punishment for my soul's pride; and I wandered further from You, and You let me alone, and I was thrown about and squandered and scattered and boiled over in my promiscuity — and You kept quiet, my slow-coming joy. You kept quiet then, and I wandered further and further from You, into more and more barren seedbeds of sorrow, with a proud despondency and a restless exhaustion.

If only somebody had brought my disorder into some kind of order then, and made good use of the fleeting beauty of these lowest things You have made — had set a limit to their pleasure, so that the tides of my youth might have broken on the shore of marriage, if they could not be calmed. If they could have been kept inside the purpose of raising a family, as Your law prescribes, Lord — You who shape the offspring of this our death, and are able with a gentle hand to blunt the thorns that were shut out of Your paradise. For Your all-powerfulness is not far from us, even when we are far from You. Otherwise I ought to have paid closer attention to the voice from the clouds: Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh, but I spare you. And, It is good for a man not to touch a woman. And, He that is unmarried thinks of the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he that is married cares for the things of this world, how he may please his wife.

I should have listened to those words more carefully; and if I had made myself a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake, I would have waited more happily for Your embrace. But I, poor wretch, foamed like a rough sea, following the rush of my own tide, abandoning You, and I overran every limit You had set — and I still did not escape Your whip. What mortal ever does? You were always with me, mercifully severe, sprinkling the bitterest additive over all my forbidden pleasures, so that I might go looking for a pleasure with nothing bitter in it. And where to find one I could not discover, except in You, Lord, who teach by pain, and wound in order to heal, and kill us so that we shall not die away from You. Where was I, and how far was I exiled from the delights of Your house, in the sixteenth year of the age of my flesh, when the madness of lust took charge of me — the madness human shamelessness gives free licence to, though Your laws do not — and I handed myself over to it completely? Meanwhile my family took no trouble to save me from falling by marrying me off. Their only concern was that I should learn to speak excellently and be a persuasive public speaker.

That year my studies were interrupted. I had come back from Madaura, a nearby town where I had gone to learn grammar and rhetoric, and money was being put together for a longer journey to Carthage — put together more by my father's determination than by his means, since he was only a poor freeman of Thagaste. Whom am I telling this to? Not to You, my God; but in Your presence I am telling it to my own kind, to whatever small part of the human race may come across these writings of mine. And why? So that anyone who reads this may consider out of what depths we have to cry to You. And what is nearer to Your ears than a confessing heart and a life of faith? Everybody praised my father for providing his son with everything necessary for a long journey for the sake of his studies, well beyond what he could afford; plenty of far better-off citizens did nothing of the kind for their children. And yet that same father had no concern at all about how I was growing towards You, or whether I was chaste — so long as I was fluent in speech, however barren I might be of Your cultivation, God, who are the one true and good owner of Your field, which is my heart.

But while I was living with my parents in that sixteenth year, out of school for a time because a period of idleness had been forced on us by my parents' narrow finances, the briars of unclean desire grew up over my head, and there was no hand to root them out. When my father saw me at the baths, growing towards manhood and full of a restless adolescence, he told my mother about it gladly, as though already anticipating grandchildren — delighting in that upheaval of the senses by which the world forgets You its creator and falls in love with what You made instead of with You, drunk on the invisible wine of its own self-will, turning aside and bowing down to the very lowest things. But in my mother's heart You had already begun Your temple and laid the foundations of Your holy dwelling, while my father was still only a catechumen, and a recent one. So she was startled into a holy fear and trembling; and though I was not yet baptised, she was afraid for me of the crooked paths walked by those who turn their backs to You and not their faces.

How wretched I am — and do I dare say that You kept quiet, my God, while I wandered further from You? Did You really keep quiet then? And whose were those words if not Yours, which You sang in my ears through my mother, Your faithful servant? Not one of them sank into my heart deep enough to act on. She wanted, and I remember her warning me privately with great anxiety, that I should not commit fornication, and above all should never touch another man's wife. This struck me as women's advice, which I should have been embarrassed to take. But it was Yours, and I did not know it; I thought You were silent and it was she who was speaking — and it was through her that You were not silent to me, and in her that I, her son, the son of Your handmaid, Your servant, despised You. But I did not know it, and I ran headlong, so blind that among my equals I was ashamed of not being shameless enough. I would hear them boasting of their disgraces, and the more degraded they were the more they boasted; and I took pleasure not only in the pleasure of the act but in the credit for it. What deserves blame except vice? But I made myself out worse than I was, so as not to be blamed; and where I had not sinned as far as the worst of them, I would claim to have done things I had not done, so as not to seem contemptible in proportion as I was innocent, or to count for less the chaster I was.

Look at the company I walked the streets of Babylon in, wallowing in its mud as though in a bed of spices and precious ointments. And to fasten me tighter to its very centre, my invisible enemy trod me down and led me astray, because I was easy to lead. Even my mother in the flesh — who had already fled from the centre of Babylon, though she still moved slowly through its outskirts — even she, while she urged me to be chaste, did not act on what her husband had told her about me by trying to keep within the bounds of marriage what could not be cut away altogether. She did not act on what she felt was already dangerous and would be more dangerous later. She did not, because she was afraid that a wife would be a weight and a hindrance to my prospects. Not the hopes of the world to come, which my mother rested in You, but the hopes of an education, which both my parents were far too eager for me to get: my father because he had next to no thought of You and only empty ideas about me; my mother because she reckoned that the usual course of study would be no obstacle to reaching You, and might even help. That is my guess, at least, recalling as best I can what my parents were like. Meanwhile the reins were let out for me far past any reasonable severity, to spend my time in amusement and even in dissipation, at whatever I felt like. And over all of it hung a fog, cutting me off, my God, from the brightness of Your truth; and my wickedness burst out as if from sheer overfeeding.

Theft is punished by Your law, Lord, and by the law written in human hearts, which not even wickedness can rub out. What thief will put up with another thief? Not even a rich thief will put up with one who steals out of need. And yet I wanted to steal, and did it, driven by no hunger and no poverty, but out of a surfeit of doing well and a pampered appetite for wrongdoing. For I stole something I had plenty of already, and better. Nor did I want to enjoy what I stole; my enjoyment was in the theft, in the sin itself. There was a pear tree near our vineyard, loaded with fruit, tempting neither in colour nor in taste. A gang of us worthless young men went to shake it down and rob it late one night, having dragged our games out in the streets till then, as our poisonous custom was. We carried off huge loads — not to eat, but to throw to the pigs, after tasting a few. And we did it purely because we liked doing what we were not allowed to do. Look at my heart, God, look at my heart, which You had pity on at the bottom of the bottomless pit. Now let my heart tell You what it was after down there, that I should be gratuitously evil, with no motive for wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own ruin. I loved my own failing — not the thing I failed over, but the failing itself. My soul was foul, falling away from Your firmament into utter destruction, seeking nothing through the disgrace but the disgrace itself.

For there is an attraction in beautiful bodies, in gold and silver, in everything; and in the touch of the body there is a strong sympathy, and every other sense has its own object properly suited to it. Worldly honour has its charm too, and the power of winning and of mastery, which is also where the thirst for revenge comes from. But we may not leave You, Lord, or turn aside from Your law, in order to get any of it. The life we live here has its own enchantment as well, through a certain proportion of its own and a correspondence with all the beautiful things down here. Human friendship, too, is sweetly binding, because of the unity it makes out of many souls. It is over all these things, and things like them, that sin gets committed — when through an immoderate leaning towards these goods of the lowest order, the better and higher goods are abandoned: You, our Lord God, and Your truth and Your law. These lower things have their delights, but not like my God who made everything, for it is in him that the righteous delight, and he is the joy of the upright in heart.

So when we ask why a crime was committed, we do not believe the answer unless it appears that there might have been some desire to get one of the lower goods we mentioned, or some fear of losing it. They are beautiful and attractive, after all, though compared with the higher and blessed goods they are cheap and low. A man has murdered another. Why? He loved his wife, or his property; or he wanted to rob him to live on; or he was afraid of losing something to him; or, having been wronged, he was on fire for revenge. Would anybody commit a murder for no reason at all, simply enjoying the murdering? Who would believe it? Even of that furious and savage man who is said to have been gratuitously evil and cruel, a reason is given: so that, as he put it, his hand and his heart should not go soft through idleness. And to what end? So that by practising crime he might take the city and get office and power and money, and be free of his fear of the laws and of his difficulties from debts at home and from knowing what he had done. So not even Catiline loved his own crimes; he loved something else, and it was for that he committed them.

What then did wretched I love in you, my theft, my deed of darkness, in that sixteenth year of my life? Lovely you were not, since you were a theft. But are you anything at all, that I should be talking to you? The pears we stole were lovely, because they were Your creation, most lovely of all, creator of all, good God, God, the highest good and my true good. Those pears were lovely; but it was not the pears my wretched soul wanted, since I had plenty of better ones, and I picked these only in order to steal. Once picked, I threw them away; my whole feast in them was my own sin, which I was pleased to enjoy. If any of those pears did go into my mouth, what sweetened it was the sin. And now, Lord my God, I ask what it was in that theft that delighted me — and look, there is no loveliness in it at all. I do not mean the loveliness there is in justice and wisdom; nor the loveliness in the human mind and memory and senses and animal life; nor the way the stars are glorious and beautiful in their courses, or the earth and the sea, full of unborn life, replacing what decays by what is born. Not even that false and shadowy beauty that belongs to the vices that deceive us.

For pride imitates height, when You alone are God, high above everything. Ambition — what does it want but honour and glory, when You alone are to be honoured above everything, and are glorious for ever? The cruelty of the powerful wants to be feared: but who is to be feared except God alone, out of whose power what can be wrenched or withheld, and when, and where, and how, and by whom? The caresses of the promiscuous want to be counted as love — yet nothing is more tender than Your love, and nothing is loved more wholesomely than Your truth, brighter and more beautiful than anything. Curiosity puts on the appearance of a desire for knowledge, when You supremely know everything. Even ignorance and stupidity dress themselves up under the names of simplicity and harmlessness, since nothing is found more single than You, and what is less harmful, since it is the sinner's own works that damage him? Laziness would like to be at rest: but what steady rest is there apart from the Lord? Extravagance wants to be called plenty and abundance: but You are the fullness and the never-failing plenty of pleasures that do not go bad. Wastefulness offers a shadow of generosity: but You are the most overflowing giver of every good thing. Greed wants to own many things, and You own everything. Envy argues about who is better: what is better than You? Anger looks for revenge: who takes revenge more justly than You? Fear startles at whatever is strange and sudden and endangers what it loves, and takes thought for its safety: but to You what is strange or sudden, and who separates from You what You love? Where is unshakeable safety except with You? Grief wastes away over things it has lost, the delight of its desires, because it wants nothing taken away from it — as nothing can be taken from You.

This is how the soul is unfaithful: when she turns away from You, looking outside You for what she will not find pure and unspoiled until she comes back to You. So everyone who goes far away from You and lifts himself up against You is imitating You in a twisted way. But even by imitating You like that, they show that You are the creator of the whole of nature, and that there is nowhere to retreat to that is altogether away from You. So what did I love in that theft? In what way was I even corruptly and perversely imitating my Lord? Did I want, at least by stealth, to do the opposite of Your law, because by power I could not — so that being a prisoner I might act out a crippled liberty, doing with impunity what was not permitted me, a darkened likeness of Your all-powerfulness? Look at Your servant, running away from his Lord and catching a shadow. What rottenness, what a monstrous life, what a depth of death: could I like a thing only because it was not allowed?

What shall I give back to the Lord, that my memory can go over these things and my soul not be terrified by them? I will love You, Lord, and thank You, and confess to Your name, because You have forgiven me these enormous and hateful deeds of mine. I put it down to Your grace and Your mercy that You have melted my sins away like ice. And I put down to Your grace as well every evil I did not do — for what might I not have done, when I loved a sin for its own sake? I confess that all of it has been forgiven me: both the evils I committed by my own will, and the ones I did not commit because You guided me. What man is there who, weighing up his own weakness, dares to credit his purity to his own strength, so as to love You the less, on the grounds that he needed less of the mercy by which You forgive the sins of those who turn to You? If anyone was called by You and followed Your voice and avoided the things he reads me recalling and confessing about myself, let him not laugh at me: I was sick and was cured by the same doctor whose help kept him from being sick, or from being as sick. Let him love You for that as much and more, since he can see that I was brought back from so deep a wasting of sin by the very one who kept him from wasting the same way.

What did I get out of those things then, wretched man, that I am now ashamed even to remember? Above all out of that theft, which I loved for the theft's own sake — and it was nothing in itself, which makes me the more miserable for loving it. And yet I would not have done it alone. That is what I was then, as I remember it: alone I would never have done it. So did I love the company of my accomplices as well as the theft? Then it was not the theft alone I loved — or rather it was nothing else I loved, because that circumstance of the company was nothing either. What is the truth about this? Who can teach me but the one who lights up my heart and uncovers its dark corners? What is it that has come into my mind to ask and turn over and think about? If I had loved the pears I stole and wanted to enjoy them, I could have done it alone, if simply committing the theft would have been enough for my pleasure; I would not have needed to inflame the itch of my desire by the excitement of accomplices. But since my pleasure was not in the pears, it was in the offence itself, and the company of fellow sinners is what produced it.

What was this feeling, then? Certainly it was too foul, and it was my misfortune to have it. But what was it? Who can understand his own errors? It was the joke — the way it tickled our hearts to fool people who had no idea what we were doing and would have hated it. Why then was my delight the kind I could not take alone? Because nobody normally laughs alone. Normally nobody does; and yet laughter does sometimes overcome a man by himself, with nobody at all beside him, if something very funny strikes his senses or his mind. Yet I would not have done this alone; alone I would never have done it. Look, my God, at the vivid memory of my soul, here in front of You: alone I would never have committed that theft, in which what pleased me was not what I stole but the stealing — and stealing alone would not have pleased me, so I would not have done it. What an unfriendly friendship, an inexplicable seducer of the mind, a greed for doing harm out of fun and mischief, a thirst for other people's loss with no appetite for my own gain or revenge! But when somebody says, "Come on, let's do it," we are ashamed not to be shameless.

Who can untangle that twisted, knotted thing? It is foul; I hate to think about it or look at it. But it is You I long for, righteousness and innocence, beautiful and attractive to all clean eyes, and satisfying without ever cloying. With You is complete rest and a life nothing can disturb. Whoever comes into You comes into the joy of his Lord, and shall not be afraid, and shall be at his best in the one who is best of all. I fell away from You and wandered, my God, much too far astray from You, my support, in those days of my youth, and I became to myself a barren land.

Book Three: Carthage, the Theatre, and the Manichees

I came to Carthage, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all around my ears. I was not yet in love, but I was in love with being in love, and out of a deep-seated need I hated myself for not needing more. I looked for something to love, being in love with loving; and I hated safety, and a road without traps. Inside me there was a famine of that inward food which is You, my God — and yet the famine did not make me hungry. I had no appetite at all for food that does not go bad, not because I was full of it but because the emptier I got the more I loathed it. And so my soul was sick and covered in sores, and it flung itself outside, desperate to be scratched by the touch of things it could feel. Yet if these things had no souls in them, they would not be objects of love. To love and to be loved was sweet to me, and sweeter still when I got to enjoy the person I loved. So I dirtied the spring of friendship with the filth of lust, and clouded its brightness over with the hell of appetite; and foul and ugly as I was, I still wanted, out of enormous vanity, to be thought elegant and sophisticated. I fell headlong into the love I had been longing to be caught by. My God, my mercy, out of Your great goodness how much bitterness You sprinkled over that sweetness for me! For I was loved in return, and I secretly reached the point of enjoying it; and I was joyfully tied down with chains that brought misery, so that I could be beaten with the red-hot rods of jealousy and suspicion and fear and anger and quarrelling.

The theatre carried me away as well, full of pictures of my own miseries and fuel for my fire. Why is it that a man wants to be made sad by watching tragic and terrible things that he would not put up with for a moment himself? And yet he wants to feel grief at them as a spectator, and that very grief is his pleasure. What is this but a miserable madness? For the less free a man is from such feelings himself, the more these performances affect him. When he suffers in his own person we usually call it misery; when he feels for other people we call it compassion. But what sort of compassion is this, for staged and invented sufferings? The listener is not being called on to help, only to grieve — and the more he grieves the more he applauds the actor who is inventing it. And if the disasters of those characters, whether ancient or made up, are acted so badly that the spectator is not moved to tears, he leaves disgusted and complaining; whereas if he is moved, he stays riveted and weeps with enjoyment.

So griefs are loved as well? Surely everybody wants joy. Or is it that although nobody likes being miserable himself, he does like being merciful — and since mercy cannot exist without feeling pain, that is the only reason such pains are loved? This too springs from that same vein of friendship. But where does that vein go? Where does it flow to? Why does it run off into a boiling torrent of pitch, throwing up those monstrous tides of foul appetite, into which it deliberately changes itself, flinging itself down of its own will from its heavenly clarity? Should compassion be got rid of, then? By no means. So griefs may sometimes be loved. But beware of uncleanness, my soul, under the protection of my God, the God of our fathers, who is to be praised and lifted high above everything for ever — beware of uncleanness. I have not stopped pitying people now. But in those days, in the theatres, I rejoiced with lovers when they wickedly enjoyed one another, though it was only make-believe on stage; and when they lost each other I grieved with them, as though full of compassion — and enjoyed myself either way. Now I pity far more the man who is delighted with his own wickedness than the man who is supposed to be suffering hardship by missing out on some destructive pleasure and losing some wretched happiness. That is certainly the truer mercy, but there is no delight in the grief of it. For although a man who grieves for the miserable is to be commended for his charity, a genuinely compassionate person would much rather there were nothing to grieve about. If goodwill could be ill-willed, which it never can, then a man who truly pities others might wish there were some miserable people about for him to pity. So some grief may be allowed; none may be loved. That is how You do it, Lord God, who love souls far more purely than we do and pity them more incorruptibly, and are yet wounded by no grief. And who is equal to that?

But I in my misery loved grieving in those days and went looking for things to grieve at; and in somebody else's suffering, invented and acted, the performance that pleased me best and drew me hardest was the one that made me cry. What wonder that an unhappy sheep, straying from Your flock and impatient of Your keeping, should catch a foul disease? Hence the love of griefs — not the kind that sink deep into me, since I did not want to suffer what I liked to look at, but the kind that scratched the surface lightly when I heard the story. And as when nails are poisoned, what followed the scratching was inflammation and swelling and an infected sore. My life being like that, was it a life at all, my God?

And Your faithful mercy hovered over me from far off. On what dreadful wickednesses I wore myself out, pursuing a sacrilegious curiosity which, now that it had abandoned You, was to bring me down to the treacherous depths and the cheating service of devils, to whom I sacrificed my bad actions — and in all this You were whipping me. I even dared, while Your solemn services were being celebrated inside the walls of Your church, to want and to arrange a piece of business whose fruits deserved death; and for that You whipped me with heavy punishments, though nothing next to what I deserved, my enormous mercy, my God, my refuge from those terrible destroyers among whom I wandered with a stiff neck, going further and further from You, loving my own ways and not Yours — loving a runaway liberty.

The studies that were reckoned respectable had their eye on excelling in the law courts: the more praised, the more crooked. Such is human blindness, glorying even in its blindness. By now I was top of the school of rhetoric, and I was proudly delighted with it and swollen with arrogance — though, Lord, You know, I was far quieter and had nothing at all to do with the wreckings of the "Wreckers", as that ill-omened and devilish name was the very badge of style among the people I lived with. I lived among them with a shameless shame at not being like them. I lived with them and sometimes enjoyed their friendship, while always detesting what they did — their "wreckings", by which they wantonly persecuted the modesty of newcomers, breaking in on them with gratuitous mockery and feeding their own malicious nature on it. Nothing could be more like the actual behaviour of devils. So what could they more truly be called than "Wreckers"? They were wrecked themselves and completely perverted first, with the deceiving spirits secretly laughing at them and leading them on, in the very thing they enjoy — mocking and deceiving others.

Among people like this, at that unsettled time of my life, I studied books of rhetoric, in which I wanted to be outstanding, for a damnable and boastful purpose: delight in human vanity. In the ordinary course of study I came across a book of Cicero's, whose language nearly everybody admires, though not his heart. That book of his is an exhortation to philosophy, and is called the Hortensius. But this book changed what I felt. It turned my prayers towards You, Lord, and gave me different aims and desires. Every empty hope became worthless to me at a stroke, and I longed with an incredible burning of the heart for the immortality that wisdom gives, and began to get up and go back to You. It was not to sharpen my tongue that I took up that book — which sharpening seemed to be what I was buying with my mother's allowance, in my nineteenth year, my father having died two years before. It was not to sharpen my tongue: what got into me from it was not its style but its content.

How I burned then, my God, how I burned to fly back up from earthly things to You — and I did not know what You meant to do with me. For with You is wisdom. But love of wisdom is called philosophy in Greek, and it was philosophy this book set me on fire for. There are people who use philosophy to lead others astray, colouring and disguising their own errors with a great, smooth, respectable name; and almost everyone of that kind, in Cicero's time and before it, is criticised and exposed in that book. It also makes plain that wholesome warning of Your Spirit, given through Your good and devoted servant: Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and empty deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And since at that time — You know it, light of my heart — the writings of the Apostles were unknown to me, my delight in that exhortation went only so far as this: that it strongly roused and kindled and inflamed me to love and seek and win and hold and embrace, not this school or that, but wisdom itself, whatever it might be. And one thing alone checked me in the middle of this blaze: that the name of Christ was not in it. For by Your mercy, Lord, this name of my saviour, Your Son, my young heart had devoutly drunk in with my mother's milk and stored up deep; and whatever lacked that name, however learned and polished and true, could not take complete hold of me.

So I decided to turn my mind to the holy Scriptures, to see what they were like. And look: I see something the proud do not understand and that is not laid open to children — humble to approach, lofty in its inner rooms, and veiled in mystery. And I was not the sort who could get inside it, or bend my neck to follow where it went. For I did not feel then as I speak now when I turned to those Scriptures. They struck me as unworthy to be set beside the grandeur of Cicero. My swollen pride recoiled from their plainness, and my sharp wit could not get through to what was inside. Yet they were the kind of thing that grows up along with a little child. But I disdained to be a little child, and being puffed up with pride I took myself for a great man.

So I fell in among men who were proud and delirious, extremely fleshly and full of chatter, whose mouths were traps of the devil, limed with a mixture of the syllables of Your name and of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit, our Comforter. These names never left their mouths — but only as sound and the noise of the tongue, for their hearts were empty of truth. Still they cried out "Truth! Truth!" and said a great deal to me about it, and it was not in them: they told lies, and not only about You, who truly are Truth, but even about the elements of this world, which are Your creatures. And I ought to have passed over even philosophers who told the truth about those elements, for love of You, my Father, supremely good, beauty of everything beautiful. Truth, Truth — how the marrow of my soul panted after You even then, when they kept sounding Your name at me in all sorts of ways, in many enormous books, and it was only an echo! And these were the dishes on which, while I was starving for You, they served me the sun and moon instead — beautiful works of Yours, but Your works and not You, and not even Your first works. For Your spiritual works come before these bodily ones, however heavenly and shining they are. But it was not even those first works of Yours I hungered and thirsted for; it was You Yourself, the Truth, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. And still they set before me on those dishes a set of glittering fantasies — and it would have been better to love this actual sun, which is at least real to our sight, than the fantasies that fool the mind through the eyes. But because I took them for You, I fed on them; not eagerly, since You did not taste to me in them as You are, because You were not those empty things; and they did not nourish me but wore me out. Food in a dream looks very like our food when awake, and yet sleepers get no nourishment from it, because they are asleep. But these things were not even in any way like You, as You have now spoken to me, for they were bodily fantasies, false bodies — and the true bodies we see with our physical sight, in the sky or on the earth, are far more certain than they are. Animals and birds can make out those as well as we can, and they are more certain than when we imagine them. And again, we imagine them more certainly than we can guess from them at other vaster and infinite bodies that have no existence at all. Those were the empty husks I was fed on then, and I was not fed. But You, love of my soul, in looking for whom I fail so that I may grow strong, are neither the bodies we see, even in heaven, nor the ones we do not see there; for You created them, and do not count them among the greatest of Your works. How far, then, are You from those fantasies of mine, fantasies of bodies that do not exist at all — when the images of bodies that do exist are far more certain, and the bodies themselves more certain still, which even so You are not; nor are You the soul, which is the life of bodies. So the life of bodies is better and more certain than the bodies. But You are the life of souls, the life of lives, having life in Yourself, and You do not change, life of my soul.

Where were You then, in relation to me, and how far off? Far indeed I was straying from You, shut out even from the husks of the pigs I was feeding with husks. For how much better are the fables of the poets and grammarians than these traps! Verses and poems and "Medea flying" are truly more useful than these men's five elements, variously disguised to answer to five dens of darkness, which do not exist and yet kill the man who believes in them. Verses and poems I can turn into real food; and as for "Medea flying", I might sing it but I did not maintain it, and I heard it sung but I did not believe it — whereas those other things I did believe. What steps I went down by into the depths of hell, toiling and churning for want of truth! For I sought You, my God — I confess it to You, who had mercy on me before I confessed anything — not with the understanding of the mind, by which You wanted me to be above the animals, but with the senses of the flesh. And You were more inward to me than my most inward part, and higher than my highest. I ran into that brazen woman, foolish and knowing nothing, who is pictured in Solomon, sitting at the door and saying, Eat bread of secrecy gladly, and drink stolen waters, which are sweet. She seduced me, because she found my soul living outdoors, in the eye of my flesh, chewing over the sort of food I had swallowed through it.

For I did not know anything else, anything that really is; and I was persuaded, by what felt like sharpness of wit, to agree with foolish deceivers when they asked me, "Where does evil come from?" and "Is God confined to a bodily shape, and does he have hair and nails?" and "Are men to be counted righteous who had several wives at once, and killed people, and sacrificed animals?" I was badly troubled by these questions in my ignorance, and while walking away from the truth I thought I was walking towards it — because I did not yet know that evil is nothing but the absence of good, right down to the point where a thing stops existing altogether. And how was I to see that, when the sight of my eyes reached only to bodies and the sight of my mind only to a phantom? And I did not know God to be a Spirit, not something with parts stretched out in length and breadth, or whose being was bulk; because every bulk is less in a part than in the whole, and if it is infinite it must be less in a part marked off by a certain space than in its infinity, and so is not wholly everywhere, as Spirit is, as God is. And what it was in us by which we resembled God, and could rightly be said to be made in the image of God, I had no idea at all.

Nor did I know that true inward righteousness which judges not by custom but by the most upright law of God almighty — the law by which the ways of particular places and times were arranged to suit those times and places, while the law itself stays the same always and everywhere, not one thing here and another there. By that law Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David were righteous, and so were all the others whom God's own mouth commended; and they were judged unrighteous by silly people, judging by human standards and measuring the moral customs of the whole human race by their own small habits. It is as if a man in an armoury, not knowing what fitted which part of the body, put leg-armour on his head and tried to wear a helmet on his feet and then complained that they did not fit. Or as if, on a day when business is publicly closed in the afternoon, somebody were angry at not being allowed to keep his shop open, when he had been open in the morning. Or as if in one house he saw a servant handling something the butler is not allowed to touch, or something permitted outdoors that is forbidden in the dining room, and were angry that in one house and one family the same thing is not allowed everywhere and to everybody. Such are the people who are irritated to hear that something was lawful for righteous men in the past and is not now; or that God, for particular reasons of time, commanded those men one thing and these another, when both were obeying the same righteousness. They can see in one man, one day, one household, that different things suit different parts and different seasons and different persons, and that what was lawful before a certain time is not lawful after it, and that a thing permitted in one corner is rightly forbidden and punished in another. Is justice, then, variable and changeable? No; but the times over which it presides do not flow evenly, because they are times. Men, whose days on earth are few, cannot use their senses to harmonise the causes of things in earlier ages and other nations, which they have no experience of, with the ones they do have experience of; whereas in a single body or day or family they easily see what suits each part and season and person. So they take exception to the one and submit to the other.

These things I did not know then and did not notice. They struck my eye from every side and I did not see them. I wrote verses, in which I could not put every foot everywhere but had to put different feet in different metres, and could not even put the same foot in every position within a single metre. Yet the art itself, by which I wrote, did not have different principles for these different cases: it took them all in together. Still I could not see how that righteousness, which good and holy men obeyed, contained all the things God had commanded far more excellently and loftily in one, and varied in no part at all — although in varying times it did not prescribe everything at once, but allotted and required what was right for each. And in my blindness I criticised the holy fathers, not only where they were using what was to hand as God commanded and inspired them, but even where they were foretelling things to come, as God was revealing through them.

Can it ever, anywhere, be unjust to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself? Therefore those foul offences that are against nature are to be detested and punished everywhere and always, such as the offences of the men of Sodom — which, if all nations committed them, would leave them all guilty of the same crime by the law of God, who did not make men to abuse one another in that way. For even the dealing that ought to be between God and us is violated when the nature he is the author of is polluted by a perversion of lust. But actions that are offences against human custom are to be avoided according to whatever customs prevail in each place, so that something agreed and settled by the custom or law of any city or nation may not be broken by the lawless whim of anyone, native or foreigner. For any part that does not harmonise with its whole is offensive. But when God commands something to be done that goes against the customs or agreements of a people, it must be done, even if they have never done it before; and if it has lapsed, it must be restored; and if it was never established, it must be established now. For if it is lawful for a king in the state he rules to command something nobody before him and he himself had never commanded, and obeying him cannot be against the common good of the state — indeed it would be against the common good if he were not obeyed, since obeying rulers is a general agreement of human society — how much more unhesitatingly ought we to obey God in everything he commands, the ruler of all his creatures? Just as among the powers in human society the greater authority is obeyed in preference to the lesser, so God must be obeyed above all.

The same goes for acts of violence, where there is a wish to hurt, by insult or injury; and these are done either for revenge, as one enemy against another; or for some profit that belongs to somebody else, as a robber does to a traveller; or to avoid some harm, against a man one is afraid of; or out of envy, as a less fortunate man treats a more fortunate one, or a man doing well treats one whose coming level with him he fears or resents; or simply for the pleasure of another's pain, as with spectators at gladiator shows, or people who jeer at and mock others. These are the main headings of wickedness, which spring from the appetite of the flesh, or of the eye, or for power — either singly, or two together, or all three; and so men live badly against the three and the seven, that instrument of ten strings, Your Ten Commandments, God, most high and most sweet. But what foul offence can there be against You, who cannot be defiled? What act of violence against You, who cannot be harmed? What You avenge is what men commit against themselves; because even when they sin against You they are acting wickedly against their own souls, and wickedness gives itself the lie — either by corrupting and perverting the nature You created and ordered, or by an immoderate use of what is allowed, or by burning for what is not allowed, in a use that is against nature. Or they are found guilty of raging in heart and tongue against You, kicking against the goads; or of bursting out of the fence of human society and boldly delighting in self-willed factions and splits, according to whatever they have to gain or to take offence at. And all this is done when You are abandoned, fountain of life, the one true creator and governor of the universe, and when some single false thing is picked out of what You made and loved, out of self-willed pride. So it is by a humble devotion that we come back to You; and You cleanse us of our bad habits, and are merciful to the sins of those who confess, and hear the groaning of the prisoner, and loosen the chains we made for ourselves — as long as we do not raise against You the horns of an unreal liberty, losing everything through greed for more, by loving our own private good more than You, the good of all.

Among these offences of foulness and violence, and so many other wickednesses, there are the sins of men who are on the whole making progress; and those who judge rightly criticise these by the standard of perfection while commending the men themselves, in hope of future fruit, as one does with the green blade of growing corn. And there are things that look like offences of foulness or violence and are yet not sins at all, because they offend neither You, our Lord God, nor human society: when, for instance, things suitable to a particular time are obtained for the service of life, and we cannot tell whether it was out of an appetite for possessing; or when things are punished by a constituted authority for the sake of correction, and we cannot tell whether it was out of an appetite for hurting. So many an action disapproved of in men's sight is approved by Your testimony, and many that men praise are condemned with You as witness — because the look of the action, the mind of the man doing it, and the unknown needs of the moment all vary independently. But when You suddenly command something unaccustomed and unimagined, even something You once forbade, and keep the reason for Your command hidden for the time, and it goes against the rules of some human society — who doubts that it must be done, since the human society that is just is the one that serves You? But blessed are those who know Your commands! For everything Your servants did was either to show something needed at the time, or to foreshadow what was to come.

Being ignorant of all this, I mocked those holy servants and prophets of Yours. And what did I gain by mocking them, except to be mocked by You, drawn on imperceptibly, step by step, into such follies as believing that a fig tree wept when its fruit was picked, and that the mother tree shed milky tears? And yet if some Manichaean saint had eaten that fig — picked by somebody else's guilt and not his own — and mixed it with his insides, he would breathe angels out of it; indeed particles of divinity would burst out at every sigh and groan of his prayer, particles of the most high and true God, which would have stayed imprisoned in that fig if they had not been set free by the teeth and stomach of some "Elect" saint. And I, poor wretch, believed that more mercy was owed to the fruits of the earth than to the men they were created for. For if some hungry man who was not a Manichaean asked for a piece, the mouthful given to him would be as good as condemned to death.

And You reached down Your hand from above and pulled my soul out of that deep darkness, while my mother, Your faithful servant, wept to You for me more than mothers weep at the bodily deaths of their children. For by the faith and the spirit she had from You she could see the death I was lying in, and You heard her, Lord. You heard her and did not scorn her tears, when they streamed down and watered the ground under her eyes wherever she prayed. Yes, You heard her. For where else did that dream come from, by which You comforted her, so that she let me live with her and eat at the same table in the house — which she had begun to shrink from, hating and detesting the blasphemies of my error? She saw herself standing on a wooden measuring rule, and a shining young man coming towards her, cheerful and smiling at her, while she was grieving and overwhelmed with grief. He asked her the reasons for her grief and her daily tears — asking, as such messengers do, in order to teach rather than to be taught — and when she answered that she was mourning my ruin, he told her to be easy, and to look and see that where she was, I was too. And when she looked, she saw me standing beside her on the same rule. Where did this come from, except that Your ears were turned towards her heart? Good and all-powerful one, who care for every one of us as if You cared for him alone, and for all of us as if we were one!

And where did this come from too: that when she had told me the vision, and I tried to bend it to mean that she should not despair of one day being what I was, she replied at once, without any hesitation, "No. It was not said to me, 'Where he is, there you will be,' but 'Where you are, there he will be.'" I confess to You, Lord, that as far as I can remember — and I have often spoken of this — Your answer through my waking mother moved me even more at the time than the dream itself: that she was not thrown by the plausibility of my false reading, and saw so quickly what was there to be seen, which I certainly had not noticed before she spoke. The dream had signalled, so long in advance, a joy for that holy woman which was to be fulfilled so long afterwards, and was given to console her present anguish. For nearly nine years went by in which I wallowed in the mud of that deep pit and the darkness of falsehood, often trying to get up and being knocked down harder. All that time that chaste, devout, level-headed widow — the kind You love — now more cheerful with hope, but relaxing not at all in her weeping and mourning, never stopped lamenting my case to You at every hour of her prayers. And her prayers came into Your presence; and still You let me be tangled and re-tangled in that darkness.

Meanwhile You gave her another answer, which I remember; for I am passing over a great deal, hurrying on to the things that press me harder to confess to You, and much of it I do not remember. You gave her another answer, then, through a priest of Yours, a bishop brought up in Your church and well read in Your books. When this woman begged him to be so good as to talk to me, refute my errors, unteach me the bad things and teach me the good ones — which he was in the habit of doing when he found people fit to receive it — he refused, wisely, as I realised later. He answered that I was still unteachable, being puffed up with the novelty of that heresy, and had already tied several unskilled people in knots with trick questions, as she had told him. "Just leave him alone for a while," he said. "Only pray to God for him. He will find out by his own reading what that error is and how great its impiety." At the same time he told her how he himself, as a small boy, had been handed over to the Manichees by his own misled mother, and had not only read but frequently copied out almost all their books, and had seen — without anybody arguing him out of it — how much that sect was to be avoided, and had avoided it. When he had said this and she was still not satisfied but pressed him harder, with pleading and many tears, to see me and talk to me, he was a little annoyed at her persistence and said, "Go your way, and God bless you; it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish." And she took that answer, as she often mentioned when talking with me afterwards, as though it had sounded out of heaven.

Book Four: Friendship, Grief, and the Death of a Friend

For nine years, from my nineteenth to my twenty-eighth, we lived seduced and seducing, deceived and deceiving, in one appetite after another: openly, through the disciplines they call liberal; secretly, through a religion with a false name. Proud on the one side, superstitious on the other, and empty on both. On the one side chasing the emptiness of popular applause, right down to theatre ovations and poetry prizes and contests for wreaths of grass, and the follies of public shows and the intemperance of desire. On the other, wanting to be cleansed of those pollutions by carrying food to the men they called the "elect" and the "holy", out of which, in the workshop of their stomachs, they were to forge angels and gods for us, who might then do the cleansing. These were the things I chased and practised with my friends, who were deceived by me and along with me. Let the arrogant mock me, and everyone who has not been struck down and knocked flat by You for the health of his soul, my God — I will still confess my own shame to You in Your praise. Bear with me, I beg You, and give me the grace to go over the wanderings of my past in my present memory, and to offer You the sacrifice of thanksgiving. For what am I to myself without You but a guide to my own downfall? What am I even at my best but a baby sucking the milk You give, and feeding on You, the food that does not perish? What sort of thing is any man, seeing he is only a man? Let the strong and the powerful laugh at us; let us, poor and needy, confess to You.

In those years I taught rhetoric, and, mastered by greed, sold a talkativeness for mastering others. And yet, Lord, You know, I preferred students who were honest, as honesty is reckoned; and I taught them tricks without any tricks of my own — tricks not to be used against an innocent man's life, though sometimes to save a guilty one's. And You, God, saw me from far off, stumbling on that slippery road and sending out a few sparks of good faith through a great deal of smoke; and I showed those sparks in the way I guided people who loved emptiness and went looking for lies, being their companion in it. In those years I had a woman — not in what is called lawful marriage, but one I had found in a wayward passion with no understanding in it. But only one, and I stayed faithful to her. And in my own case I learned the difference between the self-restraint of the marriage covenant, entered into for the sake of children, and the bargain of a lustful love, where children are born against their parents' wishes — though once born they compel love.

I remember too that when I had decided to enter for a prize at the theatre, some fortune-teller asked me what I would pay him to win. I detested and loathed those foul mysteries, and answered, "Even if the wreath were of imperishable gold, I would not let a fly be killed to win it for me." For he was going to kill living creatures in his sacrifices, and by those honours invite the demons to favour me. But I rejected this evil too, and not out of any pure love for You, God of my heart; for I did not know how to love You, not knowing how to conceive of anything beyond a material brightness. And does not a soul sighing after such fictions commit adultery against You, trusting in unreal things and feeding on wind? Still, I did not want sacrifices offered to demons on my behalf — while by that superstition I was sacrificing myself to them. For what else is feeding on wind but feeding them, that is, becoming their entertainment and their joke by going astray?

Those frauds they call astrologers, then, I consulted without hesitation, because they seemed to use no sacrifices and to pray to no spirit for their divinations — an art which Christian and true piety nevertheless consistently rejects and condemns. For it is a good thing to confess to You and say, Have mercy on me, heal my soul, for I have sinned against You; and not to abuse Your mercy as a licence to sin, but to remember the Lord's words, See, you are made whole; sin no more, in case something worse happens to you. All of that wholesome advice they work to destroy, saying, "The cause of your sin is fixed inevitably in heaven," and "This was the doing of Venus, or Saturn, or Mars" — so that a man, flesh and blood and proud rottenness, may be blameless, while the creator and orderer of heaven and the stars takes the blame. And who is he but our God? The very sweetness and wellspring of righteousness, who repay every man according to his works, and will not despise a broken and contrite heart.

There was in those days a wise man, very skilled in medicine and famous for it, who had with his own proconsular hand set the winner's wreath on my diseased head — though not as a physician, for this disease is cured only by You, who resist the proud and give grace to the humble. But did You fail me even through that old man, or hold back from healing my soul? For I got to know him better and hung on his conversation steadily, since although his words were simple they were vivid and lively and in earnest; and when he had gathered from my talk that I was devoted to the books of the horoscope-casters, he advised me kindly, like a father, to throw them away and not waste on such empty things the care and diligence that useful work needed. He said he had studied that art in his earliest years, meaning to take it up as the profession he would live by; that if he could understand Hippocrates, he could soon have understood a study like this; and that he had nevertheless given it up and turned to medicine, for no other reason than that he had found it completely false — and being a serious man he would not make a living by deceiving people. "But you," he said, "have rhetoric to keep yourself by, so you are following this by choice and not from necessity. All the more reason to believe me about it, since I worked to master it well enough to live by it and nothing else." When I asked him how so many true things could be predicted by it, he answered as best he could: that the force of chance, spread through the whole order of things, brought it about. For if when a man opens a book of poetry at random — a poet who was thinking and writing about something completely different — a line often turns up that fits the present business remarkably well, it would be no wonder if out of a man's soul, which does not know what is going on inside it, some higher instinct should produce an answer matching the affairs and actions of the person asking: by luck, not by art.

And this much, from him or through him, You conveyed to me and traced in my memory, for me to examine for myself later. But at the time neither he nor my dearest Nebridius, an exceptionally good young man with a holy fear in him, who laughed at the whole business of divination, could persuade me to throw it out. The authority of the writers still swayed me, and I had as yet found no certain proof, of the kind I was looking for, that would show beyond all doubt that what had been truly predicted by the people consulted was the result of chance and not of the star-gazers' art.

In the years when I first began teaching rhetoric in my home town, I had made a friend, too dear to me, out of a shared set of interests: a man of my own age, and like me in the first opening flower of youth. He had grown up with me from childhood, and we had been schoolfellows and playfellows. But he was not yet my friend in the way he became later, nor even then in the way that true friendship is; for friendship cannot be true unless You cement it together, in people who hold fast to You by the love which is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us. And yet it was all too sweet, ripened in the warmth of shared studies. For I had twisted him away from the true faith, which as a young man he had not thoroughly taken in, and towards those superstitious and destructive fables that my mother wept over me for. Now his mind went wrong along with mine, and my soul could not be without him. But look: You were close behind Your runaways, God of vengeance and fountain of mercies at once, turning us back to Yourself by remarkable means. You took that man out of this life when he had barely completed a single year of my friendship, a friendship sweeter to me than all the sweetness of that life of mine.

Who can recount all Your praises, which he has felt in his own single self? What did You do then, my God, and how unsearchable is the depth of Your judgements? For he was long and badly sick with a fever, and lay unconscious in a death sweat; and when his recovery was despaired of, he was baptised without knowing it. I meanwhile hardly cared, assuming that his soul would keep what it had got from me rather than what had been done to his unconscious body. But it turned out quite otherwise: he revived and recovered. As soon as I could speak to him — and I could as soon as he was able, since I never left him and we depended far too much on each other — I tried to joke with him, expecting him to join me in laughing at the baptism he had received while completely absent in mind and feeling, but had now been told about. But he recoiled from me as from an enemy, and with a remarkable and sudden independence told me that if I wanted to remain his friend I would stop talking to him like that. Astonished and confused, I held back everything I felt until he should get well and be strong enough for me to handle him as I wished. But he was taken away from my madness, to be kept safe with You for my consolation. A few days later, while I was away, he was attacked by the fever again, and died.

At this grief my heart went completely dark, and everything I looked at was death. My own country was a torture to me and my father's house a strange misery; and everything I had shared with him became, without him, an agony. My eyes looked for him everywhere and did not get him; and I hated every place, because he was not in it, and because they could not say to me, "He is coming," as they had when he was alive and away. I became a great riddle to myself, and I asked my soul why she was so sad and why she troubled me so badly — and she did not know what to answer. And if I said, Trust in God, she quite rightly did not obey me; because the dearest friend she had lost was, being a man, both truer and better than the phantom she was being told to trust. Only tears were sweet to me, for they had taken my friend's place in the dearest of my affections.

And now, Lord, these things are past and time has taken the edge off my wound. Let me learn from You, who are the truth, and bring the ear of my heart up to Your mouth, so that You may tell me why weeping is sweet to the wretched. Have You, though present everywhere, thrown our misery far away from You? You stay in Yourself, while we are thrown about among all sorts of trials. And yet unless we did our mourning in Your hearing, we should have no hope left. So where does sweet fruit come from, gathered out of the bitterness of life, out of groaning and tears and sighs and complaints? Is it hoping that You hear us that sweetens it? That is true of prayer, since there is a longing in prayer to come close to You. But is it also true of grief for something lost, and the sorrow I was drowning in then? For I did not hope he would come back to life, and I did not ask for that with my tears. I only wept and grieved. I was miserable, and I had lost my joy. Or is weeping really a bitter thing, which pleases us out of sheer disgust at what we used to enjoy, at the moment when we recoil from it?

But why am I talking about this? Now is no time for questions but for confessing to You. I was wretched, and every soul is wretched that is tied down by love of things that die. It is torn apart when it loses them, and only then does it feel the wretchedness it was in before it lost them. So it was with me then. I wept most bitterly and found my rest in bitterness. That was how wretched I was, and I held that wretched life dearer than my friend. For although I would gladly have changed it, I was still less willing to give it up than to give him up — indeed I do not know whether I would have given it up even for him, as the story goes, if it is not invented, about Pylades and Orestes, who would gladly have died for each other or together, since living apart was worse to them than death. But something had risen in me that was quite the opposite of this and that I cannot explain: I loathed living and was afraid to die, both at once. I suppose the more I loved him the more I hated and feared, as the cruellest of enemies, the death that had taken him from me; and I imagined it would make a quick end of everybody, since it had had power over him. That is how it was with me, I remember. Look at my heart, my God, look inside me; I remember it well, my hope, who cleanse me of the impurity of such loves, turning my eyes towards You and pulling my feet out of the trap. For I was amazed that other people, who are also going to die, were alive, when the man I had loved as if he would never die was dead; and I was more amazed still that I myself, who had been a second self to him, could be alive when he was dead. Somebody said of his friend, "You half of my soul" — and I felt that my soul and his soul had been one soul in two bodies; and so my life was a horror to me, because I did not want to live as a half. And that was perhaps why I was afraid to die: so that the man I had loved so much should not die completely.

What madness, not to know how to love people as people! What a fool I was then, unable to bear a human being's lot with any patience! I fretted and sighed and wept and was distracted, with no rest and no counsel. For I was carrying about a shattered and bleeding soul that could not bear to be carried by me — and where to set it down I could not find. Not in pleasant woods, not in games and music, not in scented gardens, not in elaborate dinners, not in the pleasures of the bed, and not, in the end, in books or poetry either. Everything looked ghastly, even the daylight. Whatever was not what he had been was disgusting and hateful — except groaning and tears, which were the only things I found any relief in. But when my soul was pulled away from those, an enormous weight of misery pressed me down. It should have been lifted up to You, Lord, for You to lighten it; I knew that, and I could not and would not — all the more since when I thought about You, You were nothing solid or substantial to me. For You were not Yourself but a phantom, and my error was my god. If I tried to unload my burden onto that, so that it might rest, it slid through the emptiness and came rushing back down on me; and I was left to myself as a miserable place where I could neither stay nor get away from. For where could my heart run to, away from my heart? Where could I run from myself? Where would I not follow myself? And yet I ran out of my own country, so that my eyes should look for him less, in places where they were not used to seeing him. And so I came from Thagaste to Carthage.

Time does not waste time; it does not roll idly by. Through our senses it works strange changes on the mind. Look: the days came and went, and by coming and going they brought other images and other memories into my mind, and patched me back together bit by bit with my old sort of pleasures, to which that grief of mine gave way. And what followed was not exactly other griefs, but the causes of other griefs. For how had that first grief got so easily into the deepest part of me, except that I had poured out my soul on dust, by loving a man who had to die as if he never would? What mainly restored and refreshed me was the comfort of other friends, with whom I loved what I was loving instead of You; and this was a huge fable and an extended lie, whose adulterous prodding defiled our souls as they lay itching in our ears. But that fable would not die for me, however many of my friends died. There were other things in them that took my mind more: talking and laughing together; doing each other kindnesses by turns; reading good books together; playing the fool together and being serious together; disagreeing occasionally without any ill feeling, as a man does with himself, and using the very rarity of those disagreements to season our far more frequent agreements; sometimes teaching and sometimes learning; longing impatiently for the ones who were away, and welcoming them with delight when they came. These signs and others like them, coming out of the hearts of people who loved and were loved in return, showing in the face and the tongue and the eyes and a thousand pleasing gestures, were fuel to melt our souls together and make one out of many.

This is what is loved in friends, and so loved that a man's conscience condemns him if he does not love someone who loves him, or does not love back the man who loves him, looking for nothing from him but the signs of his love. Hence that mourning when one of them dies, and the darkenings of sorrow, and the steeping of the heart in tears, and all sweetness turned bitter; and when the dying lose their life, the living die. Blessed is the man who loves You, and loves his friend in You, and his enemy for Your sake. He alone loses nobody dear to him, since everybody is dear to him in the one who cannot be lost. And who is that but our God, the God who made heaven and earth and fills them, because he created them by filling them? Nobody loses You except the man who leaves You; and the man who leaves You, where does he go or run to, except from You pleased to You displeased? For where does he not find Your law in his own punishment? And Your law is truth, and truth is You.

Turn us again, God of hosts, show us Your face, and we shall be whole. For wherever the human soul turns, unless it turns towards You, it is nailed to sorrows — even when it is nailed to beautiful things. And yet those things, outside You and outside the soul, would not exist unless they were from You. They rise and set; and by rising they begin, so to speak, to be; they grow, so as to become complete; and once complete they age and wither. Not all of them age, but all of them wither. So when they rise and press towards being, the faster they grow towards being, the faster they hurry towards not being. That is the law of them. That is the share You have allotted them, because they are parts of a thing that does not exist all at once, but by passing away and being succeeded makes up together the whole universe they are parts of. And in the same way our speech is completed by signs that make a sound — but this too is not finished unless one word passes away when it has sounded its part, so that another can follow. Out of all these things let my soul praise You, God, creator of everything; but let my soul not be nailed to these things with the glue of love, through the senses of the body. For they go where they were always going, into not being, and they tear her with sickly longings, because she longs to be, and loves to rest in what she loves. But in these things there is no resting place; they do not stay, they run. And who can follow them with the senses of the flesh? Who can even grasp them when they are close at hand? For the sense of the flesh is slow, because it is the sense of the flesh, and it is limited by that. It is enough for what it was made for, but it is not enough to hold things that are running their course from their appointed start to their appointed end. For in Your Word, by which they are created, they hear their sentence: this far and no further.

Do not be foolish, my soul, and do not let the ear of your heart go deaf with the din of your own folly. Listen, you too. The Word himself is calling you to come back; and there is the place of rest that nothing can disturb, where love is not abandoned if it does not do the abandoning itself. Look: these things pass away so that others can take their place, and so this lower universe is completed by all its parts. But do I go anywhere? says the Word of God. Fix your home there. Trust to that place whatever you have from it, my soul — now at least, when you are worn out with empty things. Entrust to Truth whatever you have from the Truth, and you will lose nothing; and what has rotted in you will bloom again, and all your diseases will be healed, and your mortal parts will be reshaped and made new and fastened round you. They will not lay you down where they themselves go down; they will stand firm with you and remain for ever before God, who remains and stands firm for ever.

Why then be twisted about and follow your flesh? Let it be turned round and follow you. Whatever you get from it a sense of is only a part; the whole, of which these are parts, you do not know — and yet the parts delight you. But if the sense of your flesh had the capacity to take in the whole, and had not itself been justly restricted, for your punishment, to a part of the whole, you would want everything that exists at this moment to pass away, so that the whole might please you better. For what we are saying now, you hear by that same sense of the flesh; and you would not want the syllables to stand still but to fly away, so that others might come and you might hear the whole. And so it always is: when one thing is made up of many that do not all exist together, the many would please more taken all together than they do separately, if they could all be taken in at once. But far better than any of this is the one who made it all; and he is our God, and he does not pass away, since nothing follows after him.

If bodies please you, praise God for them, and turn your love back on their maker, so that in the things that please you, you do not displease. If souls please you, let them be loved in God; for they too can change, but in him they are firmly settled — otherwise they would pass, and pass away. So let them be loved in him, and take along with you to him whatever souls you can, and say to them: "Let us love him, let us love him. He made these things and he is not far off. He did not make them and then leave; they are from him and in him. Look, there he is, wherever truth is loved. He is inside the very heart — and the heart has wandered away from him. Go back into your heart, you rebels, and hold fast to the one who made you. Stand with him and you will stand firm. Rest in him and you will be at rest. Where are you going, over these rough roads? Where are you going? The good thing you love is from him — but it is good and pleasant only in relation to him, and it will justly turn bitter, because anything that comes from him is unjustly loved if he is abandoned for it. Why then do you go on and on walking these hard and exhausting roads? There is no rest where you are looking for it. Look for what you are looking for, but it is not where you are looking. You are looking for a blessed life in the land of death; it is not there. How could there be a blessed life where there is no life at all?

"But our true life came down here and bore our death, and killed it out of the abundance of his own life; and he thundered, calling aloud to us to come back from here to him, into that hidden place he came out from to reach us — first into the Virgin's womb, where he was joined to the human creation, our mortal flesh, so that it should not be mortal for ever; and then coming out like a bridegroom from his chamber, rejoicing like a strong man to run his race. For he did not linger but ran, calling aloud by words, deeds, death, life, descent, ascent — crying aloud to us to come back to him. And he went out of our sight, so that we might go back into our heart and find him there. He went away, and look, he is here. He would not stay with us long, and he did not leave us; for he went back to the place he had never left, since the world was made by him. And he was in this world, and came into this world to save sinners, to whom my soul confesses, and he heals it, since it has sinned against him. Sons of men, how long will you be so slow of heart? Even now, after life has come down to you, will you not rise and live? But where are you rising to, when you are already on high and have set your mouth against the heavens? Come down, so that you may rise, and rise to God. For you fell by rising up against him." Tell them this, so that they may weep in the valley of tears, and so carry them up with you to God; because it is out of his spirit that you say this to them, if you say it burning with the fire of love.

I did not know these things then. I loved these lower beauties and I was sinking to the very bottom, and I said to my friends, "Do we love anything but the beautiful? What then is the beautiful? What is beauty? What is it that attracts us and wins us over to the things we love? If there were no grace and beauty in them, they could not possibly draw us to them." And I noticed and worked out that in bodies themselves there is one beauty that comes from their forming a kind of whole, and another that comes from a fitting correspondence with something else, as a part of the body corresponds to the whole body, or a shoe to a foot, and so on. This line of thought came up in my mind out of my inmost heart, and I wrote two or three books, I think, called On the Beautiful and the Fitting. You know, Lord; it is gone from me. I do not have them; they have strayed away from me somehow.

But what moved me, Lord my God, to dedicate those books to Hierius, an orator in Rome whom I did not know by sight, but loved for the fame of the learning he was distinguished for, and for a few words of his I had heard and liked? He pleased me more because he pleased others, who praised him highly, amazed that a Syrian, trained first in Greek eloquence, should afterwards turn into a remarkable Latin orator and a man deeply learned in philosophy. A man is praised and, unseen, is loved. Does this love pass into the hearer's heart out of the mouth of the man praising him? Not at all. But one who loves kindles another. That is why a man who is praised is loved: when the praiser is believed to be praising him with an honest heart, that is, when the man praising him loves him.

For that is how I loved men then — on other men's judgement, not on Yours, my God, in whom nobody is deceived. But then why not for qualities like those of a famous charioteer, or a beast-fighter in the arena, known far and wide by a popular fame? Because I loved this differently, and seriously, and in the way I would want to be praised myself. I would not want to be praised or loved as actors are, though I praised and loved them myself; I would rather be unknown than known that way, and even hated than loved that way. Where are all the weights of these various and different kinds of love stored up in one soul? Why, since we are equally men, do I love in another man what, if I did not hate it, I would not push away from myself? It will not do to say that a good horse is loved by a man who would not be that horse even if he could, and that the same holds of an actor, who shares our nature. So do I love in a man what I hate to be, being a man myself? Man himself is a great deep, whose very hairs You have numbered, Lord, and they do not fall to the ground without You. And yet the hairs of his head are easier to number than his feelings and the beatings of his heart.

But that orator was the kind of man I loved because I wanted to be like him. I went wrong through swollen pride and was tossed about by every wind — and still I was being steered by You, very secretly. And how do I know, and how can I confess it to You with confidence, that I loved him more for the love his admirers had for him than for the very things he was admired for? Because if he had gone unpraised, and these same men had run him down and told me exactly the same things about him with contempt, I would never have been fired up to love him. And the facts would have been no different, and he would have been no different; only the feelings of the people reporting. Look where the helpless soul lies stretched out, when it is not yet held up by the solidity of truth! Just as the gales of talk blow from the chests of people with opinions, so the soul is carried this way and that, driven forward and back, and the light is clouded over for it, and the truth goes unseen. And there it is, right in front of us. It was a great matter to me that my writing and my work should be known to that man. If he approved, I would burn all the brighter; if he disapproved, my empty heart, with none of Your solidity in it, would have been wounded. And yet the beautiful and the fitting, which I wrote to him about, I dwelt on with pleasure and looked over and admired, whether or not anybody joined me in it.

But I could not yet see where the whole weight of this matter turned in Your wisdom, all-powerful one, who alone do wonders. My mind ranged over bodily shapes; I defined and distinguished "beautiful", which is so in itself, from "fitting", whose beauty lies in corresponding to something else — and I backed this up with bodily examples. Then I turned to the nature of the mind, and the false notion I had about spiritual things would not let me see the truth. And yet the force of truth flashed into my eyes by itself, and I turned my panting soul away from incorporeal substance to outlines and colours and physical magnitudes; and being unable to see these in the mind, I concluded I could not see my mind. And whereas in virtue I loved peace, and in vice I hated discord, in the first I noticed a unity and in the second a kind of division. And I took that unity to be where the rational soul lay, and the nature of truth and of the highest good; while in the division I miserably imagined some unknown substance of irrational life, the nature of the highest evil, which should be not only a substance but real life too, and yet not derived from You, my God, from whom all things come. The first of these I called a Monad, as though it were a soul without sex, and the second a Dyad — anger, in acts of violence, and lust, in acts of disgrace — not knowing what I was talking about. For I had not learned that evil is not a substance, and that our soul is not that supreme and unchangeable good.

For just as acts of violence arise when that emotion of the soul from which forceful action springs becomes corrupted and stirs itself up insolently and out of control; and just as lusts arise when the affection by which bodily pleasures are drunk in goes ungoverned — so errors and false opinions spoil the conduct of life, if the reasoning soul itself is corrupted. And it was corrupted in me then, since I did not know that it must be lit by another light in order to share in truth, seeing it is not itself the nature of truth. For You will light my candle, Lord my God; You will lighten my darkness; and of Your fullness we have all received, for You are the true light that lights every man who comes into the world; for in You there is no variableness, neither shadow of change.

But I pressed towards You and was pushed away, so that I might taste death; for You resist the proud. And what could be prouder than for me, in a strange madness, to maintain that I was by nature what You are? For although I was subject to change — which was obvious enough to me, since my very desire to become wise was a wish to go from worse to better — I still chose rather to imagine You subject to change, and myself not to be what You are. So I was pushed back by You, and You resisted my empty stiff-neckedness; and I imagined bodily shapes, and, being flesh myself, accused the flesh; and being a wind that passes away, I did not turn back to You, but went further and further on into things that have no being at all, neither in You nor in me nor in bodies. They were not created for me by Your truth but invented by my own vanity out of bodily things. And I used to ask Your faithful little ones, my fellow citizens — from whom I stood exiled without knowing it — I used to ask them, chattering and stupid, "Why then does the soul go wrong, when God created it?" But I would not be asked, "Why then does God go wrong?" And I maintained that Your unchangeable substance went wrong under compulsion, rather than confess that my changeable substance had gone astray of its own accord, and now lay in error as its punishment.

I was some twenty-six or twenty-seven years old when I wrote those volumes, turning over inside me bodily fictions that buzzed in the ears of my heart — ears I was trying to turn, sweet truth, towards Your inward music, while I thought about the beautiful and the fitting, longing to stand still and listen to You and to rejoice greatly at the bridegroom's voice. And I could not; for I was hurried outside by the voices of my own errors, and by the weight of my own pride I was sinking into the lowest pit. For You had not made me hear joy and gladness, and the bones did not rejoice which had not yet been humbled.

And what good did it do me that when I was barely twenty a book of Aristotle's called the Ten Categories came into my hands — on whose very name I used to hang as on something great and divine, whenever my rhetoric master at Carthage and others reckoned learned mouthed it with their cheeks bursting with pride — and I read it and understood it with no help at all? When I compared notes with others, who said they had only just understood it with very able tutors, who not only explained it aloud but drew a great many things in the sand, they could tell me no more about it than I had learned reading it by myself. The book seemed to me to speak very clearly about substances, such as "man", and about their qualities: the shape of a man, what sort it is; his height, how many feet; his relations, whose brother he is; where he is placed; when he was born; whether he is standing or sitting; whether he is shod or armed; whether he is doing something or having something done to him — and all the countless things that can be arranged under these nine categories, of which I have given a few samples, or under the chief category of Substance.

What did all this do for me, when in fact it got in my way? Imagining that whatever existed was covered by those ten categories, I tried to understand Your wonderful and unchangeable oneness in the same terms, my God, as though You too had been made a subject of Your own greatness and beauty, so that they existed in You as their subject, the way they do in bodies — whereas You Yourself are Your greatness and Your beauty, while a body is not great or beautiful by being a body, since it would still be a body if it were less great or less beautiful. But what I conceived about You was falsehood, not truth: fictions of my own misery, not the realities of Your blessedness. For You had commanded, and it was carried out in me, that the earth should bring forth briars and thorns for me, and that I should eat my bread in the sweat of my brow.

And what good did it do me that I read and understood by myself, vile slave of vile appetites that I was, every book I could get hold of on the so-called liberal arts? I took delight in them and did not know where whatever was true or certain in them came from. For I had my back to the light and my face to the things it lit, so that my face, with which I made out the things that were lit, was not itself lit. Whatever was written on rhetoric or logic or geometry or music or arithmetic I understood by myself, without much difficulty and with no teacher; You know it, Lord my God, because both quickness of understanding and sharpness in distinguishing are Your gift. But I did not sacrifice any of it to You. So it did not serve my good but my ruin, since I was busy getting so good a portion of my inheritance into my own keeping, and did not keep my strength for You, but wandered away from You into a far country to spend it on prostitutes. For what use were good abilities not put to good use? I did not realise how hard those arts were to master, even for the studious and the talented, until I tried explaining them to such people — and the best of them was the one who was not too far behind me.

But what good did any of it do me, when I imagined that You, Lord God, the truth, were an enormous shining body and I was a fragment of that body? What monstrous perversity! But that is what I was. And I do not blush, my God, to confess Your mercies to me and to call on You, when I did not blush then to declare my blasphemies to men and to bark at You. What good was my nimble wit in those sciences then, and all those knotty volumes untangled by me with no help from any human teacher, when I was going so foully and so sacrilegiously wrong about the doctrine of true religion? And what harm did a far slower wit do to Your little ones, since they did not go far away from You, and could grow their feathers safely in the nest of Your church, and feed the wings of love on the food of a sound faith? Lord our God, let us hope under the shadow of Your wings; protect us and carry us. You will carry us when we are small and carry us to our grey hairs; for our firmness, when it is You, is firmness indeed, but when it is our own it is weakness. Our good always lives with You, and when we turn away from it we are turned aside. Let us come back now, Lord, so that we are not overturned; because with You our good lives without any decay, and that good is You. And we need not be afraid that there will be nowhere to come back to because we fell from it — for our being away did not bring our home down. Our home is Your eternity.

Book Five: Faustus, Rome, and the Road to Milan

Accept the sacrifice of my confessions from the ministry of my tongue, which You shaped and stirred up to confess to Your name. Heal all my bones, and let them say, Lord, who is like You? A man who confesses to You is not informing You what goes on inside him, since a closed heart does not shut out Your eye, and human hard-heartedness cannot push back Your hand: You dissolve it whenever You like, in pity or in vengeance, and nothing can hide from Your heat. But let my soul praise You, so that it may love You; and let it confess Your own mercies to You, so that it may praise You. The whole of Your creation never stops praising You and never falls silent: not the human spirit with its voice turned towards You, and not creation, living or lifeless, speaking through the voices of those who consider it. So our souls may rise up out of their weariness towards You, leaning on the things You have made and passing on to You, who made them wonderfully. There is refreshment, and real strength.

Let the restless and the godless leave You and run away — and still You see them, and divide the darkness. And look: the universe with them in it is beautiful, though they are foul. What harm have they done You? How have they disgraced Your rule, which is just and complete from heaven down to this lowest earth? Where did they run to, when they ran from Your presence? Where do You not find them? They ran so as not to see You seeing them, and so as to blunder blindly into You — because You abandon nothing You have made — so that the unjust should stumble against You and be justly hurt, pulling away from Your gentleness, tripping on Your uprightness, and falling on their own roughness. They do not know that You are everywhere, and that no place contains You, and that You alone are near even to those who take themselves far away from You. Let them turn round, then, and look for You; for You have not abandoned Your creation the way they have abandoned their creator. Let them turn round and look for You, and there You are, in their heart — in the heart of those who confess to You and throw themselves on You and weep on Your chest after all their rough roads. Then You gently wipe away their tears, and they weep the more, and rejoice in weeping; because it is You, Lord, not some man of flesh and blood but You, Lord, who made them, who remake them and comfort them. But where was I when I was looking for You? You were in front of me, and I had gone away from You; and I could not even find myself, let alone You.

I want to lay open before my God that twenty-ninth year of my life. There had come to Carthage a certain bishop of the Manichees called Faustus, a great trap of the devil, and many people were caught in it by the bait of his smooth talk. I admired that talk myself, but I could tell it apart from the truth of the things I was so anxious to learn; I was not so much interested in the serving-dish of his oratory as in the knowledge that this Faustus, so praised among them, was setting in front of me to feed on. Rumour had already announced him as an expert in every valuable branch of learning and finely skilled in the liberal arts. And since I had read and remembered a good deal of the philosophers, I compared some of their views with the long fables of the Manichees and found the philosophers more probable — even though they could get no further than judging this lower world, and could not by any means find out its Lord. For You are great, Lord, and You have regard for the humble, while the proud You watch from far off. You come near only to the contrite in heart, and are not found by the proud, not even if by ingenious skill they could number the stars and the sand, and measure the starry heavens, and track the courses of the planets.

For with the understanding and wit You gave them they investigate these things, and they have found out a great deal. They have predicted eclipses of those two great lights, the sun and the moon, many years in advance — the day, the hour, and how much would be covered — and their calculations did not fail, and it happened as they said. They wrote down the rules they had discovered, and those rules are read today; and from them others predict in what year and month and on what day of the month and at what hour of the day, and what fraction of its light, the moon or sun will be eclipsed. And so it happens, exactly as foretold. People who do not know the science marvel at this and are astonished; and those who do know it exult and are puffed up, and by an irreligious pride they go away from You and lose Your light. They foresee a failure of the sun's light so long beforehand, and do not see the failure of their own, which is present now. For they do not enquire religiously where the wit comes from with which they investigate all this. And when they find that You made them, they do not give themselves up to You to be kept safe, or sacrifice to You what they have made of themselves. They do not kill off their own soaring fancies, as birds of the air; nor their own diving curiosities, with which like the fishes of the sea they wander the unknown paths of the deep; nor their own indulgences, as beasts of the field — so that You, Lord, a consuming fire, might burn up those dead concerns of theirs and remake the men themselves immortally.

But they did not know the way, Your Word, by whom You made the things they count, and the men who do the counting, and the sense by which they perceive what they count, and the understanding out of which they count — and that of Your wisdom there is no counting. But the Only Begotten was himself made wisdom and righteousness and sanctification for us, and was counted among us, and paid tax to Caesar. They did not know this way, by which to come down to him from themselves and by him climb up to him. They did not know this way, and thought themselves high up among the stars and shining; and look, they fell to the earth, and their foolish heart was darkened. They say a great many true things about the created world; but Truth, the maker of that world, they do not seek reverently, and so they do not find him — or if they do find him, and know him to be God, they do not glorify him as God, nor are they thankful, but become empty in their imaginings and declare themselves wise, taking to themselves what is Yours. And thereby, with the most perverse blindness, they take pains to attribute to You what is their own, inventing lies about You, who are the truth, and exchanging the glory of the incorruptible God for an image made like corruptible man, and like birds and four-footed animals and creeping things — changing Your truth into a lie, and worshipping and serving the creature more than the creator.

Yet I did retain from these men many true things about the created world, and saw the reasons for them from calculations, from the sequence of the seasons, and from the visible evidence of the stars. And I compared these with the sayings of Manichaeus, who in his frenzy had written at enormous length on these subjects; and I could find no account of the solstices or the equinoxes or the eclipses of the greater lights, or anything else of the kind I had learned in the books of secular philosophy. And I was ordered to believe — and it did not match what had been established by calculation and by my own eyes, but was flatly contrary to it.

Does a man who knows these things please You just for that, Lord God of truth? Surely a man who knows all of them and does not know You is unhappy; and happy is the man who knows You, even if he knows none of them. And the man who knows both You and them is not the happier for them but only for You, if in knowing You he glorifies You as God and is thankful and does not become empty in his imaginings. For a man is better off who knows how to own a tree and give You thanks for the use of it, though he does not know how many feet high it is or how wide it spreads, than one who can measure it and count every branch and neither owns it nor knows or loves its creator. In the same way a believer, to whom all this world of wealth belongs, and who having nothing yet possesses everything by holding fast to You, whom all things serve — even if he does not know the circling of the Great Bear, it would be folly to doubt that he is in a better state than someone who can measure the sky and count the stars and weigh the elements, and neglects You, who have made all things in number, weight and measure.

But who told that Manichaeus to write about these subjects too, when skill in them is no part of true religion? For You have said to man: reverence — that is wisdom. Of these he might have been ignorant while knowing everything about the stars. But since he dared, most impudently, to teach these things while not knowing them, he plainly could have no knowledge of reverence. It is empty to make a profession of these worldly matters even when you do know them; but confession to You is reverence. So this wanderer talked at length about these things for this purpose: that when he had been shown up by people who had really learned them, it would become obvious what sort of understanding he had of the more obscure matters. For he did not want to be thought little of, but set out to persuade people that the Holy Spirit, the comforter and enricher of Your faithful, was personally inside him with full authority. So when he was caught teaching falsehoods about the heavens and the stars and the motions of the sun and moon — although these things do not belong to religious doctrine — his sacrilegious presumption became obvious enough, since he delivered things he not only did not know but had got wrong, with such a mad vanity of pride that he wanted them credited to himself as to a divine person.

For when I hear some Christian brother who is ignorant of these matters and mistaken about them, I can watch such a man holding his opinion patiently. I cannot see that any ignorance about the position or character of the physical creation can hurt him, so long as he believes nothing unworthy of You, Lord, the creator of everything. It does hurt him if he imagines it belongs to the substance of religious doctrine, and insists stubbornly on what he does not know. And yet even that weakness, in the infancy of faith, is carried by our mother, Love, until the newborn grows into a full-grown man and can stop being blown about by every wind of doctrine. But in a man who presumed to be the teacher, the source, the guide, the head of everyone he could so persuade — so that whoever followed him believed he was following not a mere man but Your Holy Spirit — who would not judge that such enormous madness, once it was convicted of teaching anything false, should be detested and utterly rejected? But at that stage I had not yet established for certain whether the changes between longer and shorter days and nights, and between day and night itself, and the eclipses of the greater lights, and everything else of the kind I had read about elsewhere, could possibly be explained consistently with what he said. If they somehow could be, it would still remain an open question for me whether they were so or not; but I might rest my belief on his authority, on account of his reputed holiness.

And for almost all those nine years in which I had been their disciple with an unsettled mind, I had been longing far too intensely for this Faustus to come. Whenever the rest of the sect that I happened to run into could not solve my objections on these matters, they still held out the coming of this Faustus, in conversation with whom these and any greater difficulties I might have would be cleared up most readily and abundantly. When he did come, I found him a man of agreeable conversation who could talk fluently and in better words — but still the very same things they were all in the habit of saying. What good was the neatest of wine-waiters to my thirst for a more precious drink? My ears were already sick of this sort of thing, and it did not seem better to me for being better said, or truer for being eloquent, or the soul wiser for the face being handsome and the language graceful. But the people who had held him out to me were poor judges of things, and so to them he seemed intelligent and wise because his words were pleasing. I noticed that another sort of people are suspicious even of the truth and refuse to accept it if it is delivered in a smooth and copious style. But You, my God, had already taught me by wonderful and secret ways, and I believe You taught me because it is the truth, and there is no teacher of truth besides You, wherever it may shine on us from. From You, then, I had learned by now that nothing ought to seem true because it is eloquently said, or false because the words come out awkwardly; nor again true because it is roughly delivered, or false because the language is rich; but that wisdom and folly are like wholesome and unwholesome food, and ornate or plain phrases are like court dishes and country dishes: either kind of food can be served up in either kind of dish.

So the greediness with which I had waited so long for this man was certainly delighted with his manner and his feeling in argument, and with the choice and readiness of the words he dressed his ideas in. I was delighted then, and along with many others, and more than they, I praised and extolled him. What troubled me, though, was that in the crowd of his listeners I was not allowed to put in the questions that were bothering me and talk them over with him privately. When I could, and began with my friends to get his ear at times when it was not unsuitable for him to discuss things with me, and brought forward the questions that were troubling me — I found him first of all entirely ignorant of the liberal arts, apart from grammar, and that only in an ordinary way. But because he had read some of Cicero's speeches, a very few books of Seneca, some poetry, and the few volumes of his own sect that were written in neat Latin, and because he practised speaking daily, he had picked up a certain eloquence, which was all the more pleasing and seductive for being guided by a good wit and a kind of natural grace. Is that not how it was, as I recall it, Lord my God, judge of my conscience? My heart is in front of You, and my memory, You who at that time were directing me by the hidden mystery of Your providence, and setting those shameful errors of mine in front of my face, so that I might see them and hate them.

For once it was clear that he was ignorant of the arts I had thought he excelled in, I began to despair of his opening up and solving the difficulties that puzzled me — though ignorant of all that, he might still have held the truths of religion, had he not been a Manichee. For their books are stuffed with long-winded fables about the heaven and the stars and the sun and moon; and I no longer thought him able to settle satisfactorily what I very much wanted settled: whether, comparing these things with the calculations I had read elsewhere, the account in the books of Manichaeus was preferable, or at least as good. When I proposed that this be considered and discussed, he modestly shrank from the burden. He knew that he did not know these things, and was not ashamed to admit it. He was not one of those talkers, many of whom I had put up with, who undertook to teach me these things and said nothing. This man had a heart that was not right towards You, and yet was not altogether treacherous to himself either. He was not entirely ignorant of his own ignorance, and he would not be rashly tangled up in an argument he could neither back out of nor get out of honourably. I liked him the better even for that. For the modesty of an honest mind is finer than the knowledge of the things I wanted; and that is how I found him in all the harder and subtler questions.

With my enthusiasm for the writings of Manichaeus blunted like this, and despairing all the more of their other teachers, seeing how the most famous of them had turned out on various points that puzzled me, I began working with him on the literature he was keen on too — and which as a lecturer in rhetoric I was at that time teaching to young men at Carthage. We read together either what he wanted to hear or what I judged suited his abilities. But all the efforts I had planned to make to rise in that sect came completely to an end once I knew the man; not that I detached myself from them altogether, but as one who could find nothing better, I settled for being content in the meantime with whatever I had happened to land in, unless something more eligible should happen to dawn on me. So this Faustus, who to so many had been a trap of death, had now, without wanting to or knowing it, begun to loosen the trap I was caught in. For Your hands, my God, in the secret purpose of Your providence, did not abandon my soul; and out of my mother's heart's blood, through the tears she poured out day and night, a sacrifice was being offered for me to You, and You dealt with me in wonderful ways. You did it, my God: for the steps of a man are ordered by the Lord, and he shall direct his way. How else shall we obtain salvation, but from Your hand, remaking what it made?

So You arranged that I should be persuaded to go to Rome and teach there what I had been teaching at Carthage. And how I was persuaded to this I shall not fail to confess to You, because here too the deepest recesses of Your wisdom and Your most present mercy to us must be considered and confessed. I did not want to go to Rome because higher pay and higher standing were promised me by the friends who urged it, though at the time those things did have an influence on me. My chief and almost only reason was that I heard the young men there studied more peaceably and were kept quiet under a more regular discipline, so that they did not go bursting into the classroom of a teacher whose pupils they were not, whenever they felt like it, and were not even admitted without his permission. Whereas at Carthage there is a thoroughly disgraceful and unruly licence among the students. They burst in insolently, and with almost frantic behaviour they wreck whatever order a man has established for the good of his pupils. They commit various outrages with a remarkable stupidity, punishable by law were custom not on their side — that same custom showing them to be the more wretched, since they now do as lawful what by Your eternal law will never be lawful, and they think they get away with it unpunished, when they are punished by the very blindness that makes them do it, and suffer incomparably worse than what they inflict. So the behaviour I would not adopt as a student, I was obliged to put up with in others as a teacher; and so I was glad to go where everyone who knew assured me that nothing of the kind happened. But You, my refuge and my portion in the land of the living: so that I should change my earthly dwelling for the salvation of my soul, You goaded me at Carthage to tear me away from it, and dangled attractions at Rome to draw me there — through men in love with a dying life, the one lot doing frantic things and the other lot promising empty ones. And to correct my steps You secretly used both their perversity and my own. For those who were disturbing my peace were blinded by a disgraceful frenzy, and those who were inviting me elsewhere had the taste of earth about them. And I, who hated real misery here, was over there looking for an unreal happiness.

But why I left there and went here, You knew, God, and You did not show it either to me or to my mother, who grieved bitterly over my journey and followed me as far as the sea. She held on to me by force, so as either to keep me back or come with me — and I deceived her, pretending I had a friend I could not leave until he had a fair wind to sail. I lied to my mother, and to such a mother, and got away. And You have mercifully forgiven me even for that, preserving me from the waters of the sea, full of loathsome filth as I was, and keeping me for the water of Your grace, by which, when I was washed clean, the streams from my mother's eyes would be dried up — the streams with which she daily watered the ground under her face for me. And since she refused to go home without me, I only just persuaded her to spend that night in a place near our ship, where there was a chapel in memory of the blessed Cyprian. That night I slipped away, and she stayed behind weeping and praying. And what, Lord, was she asking of You with all those tears, except that You would not let me sail? But You, in the depth of Your counsels, hearing the main point of her desire, took no notice of what she was asking at that moment, so as to make me what she was always asking for. The wind blew and filled our sails and drew the shore out of our sight; and in the morning she was there, frantic with grief, filling Your ears with complaints and groans, which You then disregarded — while through my own desires You were hurrying me on to the end of all desire, and the earthly part of her love for me was being chastened by the appointed whip of sorrow. For she loved having me with her, as mothers do, but far more than most; and she did not know what great joy You were about to make for her out of my absence. She did not know, and so she wept and wailed; and in that agony there appeared in her the inheritance of Eve, looking in sorrow for what she had brought forth in sorrow. And yet, after accusing me of treachery and hard-heartedness, she turned again to pleading with You for me, went back to her usual place, and I went to Rome.

And there I was met by the whip of bodily illness, and I was going down to hell carrying all the sins I had committed against You and against myself and against others — many and serious, over and above the bond of original sin by which we all die in Adam. For You had forgiven me none of these things in Christ, and he had not abolished by his cross the enmity I had incurred with You by my sins. How could he, by the crucifixion of a phantom, which is what I believed him to be? The death of my soul was as real as the death of his flesh seemed to me false; and as real as the death of his body was, so unreal was the life of my soul, which did not believe it. And now, as the fever rose, I was going, and going for ever. If I had left this world then, where would I have gone but into the fire and torments my deeds deserved in the truth of Your ordering? And she did not know this, and prayed for me while she was away. But You, present everywhere, heard her where she was, and where I was You had compassion on me: so that I recovered my bodily health, still deranged as I was in my sacrilegious heart. For in all that danger I did not want Your baptism. I had been better as a boy, when I begged for it from my mother's devotion, as I have already recounted and confessed. But I had grown up to my own shame, and I madly laughed at the prescriptions of Your medicine, when You would not let me, such as I was, die a double death. If my mother's heart had been pierced by that wound, it could never have healed. For I cannot describe the love she had for me, and with how much more violent anguish she was now in labour with me in the spirit than she had been in childbirth in the flesh.

I do not see how she could have been healed, if such a death of mine had struck through the depths of her love. And where would those strong, unceasing prayers of hers have been, addressed to You alone without a break? But would You, God of mercies, despise the contrite and humbled heart of that chaste and sober widow — so frequent in almsgiving, so full of duty and service to Your saints, letting no day pass without an offering at Your altar, coming to Your church twice a day, morning and evening, without any interruption, and not for idle gossip and old wives' tales, but so that she might hear You in Your discourses and You might hear her in her prayers? Could You despise the tears of such a woman, and refuse Your help — tears with which she begged You not for gold or silver or any changeable and passing good, but for the salvation of her son's soul, You by whose gift she was what she was? Never, Lord. You were at hand, hearing and acting, in the order You had already determined it should be done. Far be it from You to have deceived her in the visions and answers You gave her, some of which I have mentioned and some of which I have not, which she stored up in her faithful heart and, always praying, pressed on You as Your own handwriting. For since Your mercy endures for ever, You are willing to become a debtor by Your promises to those whose debts You forgive entirely.

So You brought me through that illness and healed the son of Your handmaid, in body for the time being, so that he might live for You to give him a better and more lasting health. And even then, in Rome, I attached myself to those deceiving and deceived "holy ones" — not only to their hearers, of whom the man in whose house I fell ill and recovered was one, but also to those they call "the Elect". For I still thought that it is not we who sin, but some other nature, I do not know what, that sins in us. It pleased my pride to be free of blame; and when I had done something wrong, not to confess I had done anything, so that You might heal my soul because it had sinned against You. I preferred to excuse it and accuse something else, I did not know what, which was with me but was not me. But in truth it was entirely me, and my irreligion had divided me against myself; and that sin was the more incurable in that I did not judge myself a sinner. It was a loathsome wickedness that I would rather have You, almighty God, defeated in me to my destruction, than myself defeated by You to my salvation. You had not yet set a watch before my mouth and a door of safekeeping round my lips, so that my heart should not turn aside to wicked talk, making excuses for sins along with men who do evil; and so I was still attached to their Elect.

But now, despairing of getting anywhere in that false doctrine, I held even the things I had decided to be content with, if I could find nothing better, more loosely and carelessly. For a thought half rose in me that those philosophers they call the Academics were wiser than the rest, because they held that men ought to doubt everything and laid it down that no truth can be grasped by a human being — for at that stage I did not even understand what they meant, and I too was firmly convinced that they thought what they are commonly reported to have thought. And I quite freely and openly discouraged my host from the over-confidence I could see he had in the fables the books of Manichaeus are full of. And yet I lived on more intimate terms with them than with people outside the heresy. I no longer maintained it with my old eagerness; but my closeness to that sect — Rome secretly harbouring a great many of them — made me slower to look for another way, especially since I despaired of finding, in Your church, Lord of heaven and earth, creator of everything visible and invisible, the truth they had turned me away from. It seemed to me utterly unfitting to believe that You had the shape of human flesh and were bounded by the bodily outlines of our limbs. And because, when I tried to think about my God, I could think of nothing but a mass of bodies — since whatever was not that did not seem to me to be anything at all — this was the greatest and almost the only cause of my unavoidable error.

For it made me believe that evil too was some substance of the same kind, with its own foul and hideous bulk: either thick, which they called earth, or thin and subtle like the body of the air, which they imagine to be some malignant mind creeping through that earth. And because a sort of reverence obliged me to believe that the good God never created any evil nature, I imagined two masses, opposed to each other, both without limit, but the evil one narrower and the good one broader. And from this poisonous beginning the rest of the sacrilegious notions followed. For when my mind tried to get back to the Catholic faith, I was driven off, because what I thought was the Catholic faith was not. And it seemed to me more reverent to believe You, my God, to whom Your mercies confess out of my mouth, to be unbounded at least on the other sides, though on the one side where the mass of evil was set against You I was forced to admit You bounded — rather than to imagine You bounded on all sides by the shape of a human body. And it seemed better to believe that You had created no evil, which in my ignorance seemed to me not merely something but a bodily substance, since I could not conceive of mind except as a subtle body spread out in definite spaces, than to believe that the nature of evil, as I conceived it, could come from You. And I believed even our saviour himself, Your Only Begotten, had been stretched out, so to speak, for our salvation from the mass of Your most shining substance — so as to believe nothing about him except what I could imagine in my emptiness. His nature being like that, I thought it could not be born of the Virgin Mary without being mixed with the flesh; and how what I had pictured to myself could be mixed with flesh and not defiled, I could not see. So I was afraid to believe him born in the flesh, in case I should be forced to believe him defiled by the flesh. Your spiritual ones will now smile at me mildly and lovingly, if they read these confessions of mine. But that is what I was.

Furthermore, the criticisms the Manichees made of Your Scriptures I thought could not be answered. And yet at times I really did want to talk these various points over with somebody very well versed in those books, and test what he thought about them. For the words of a man called Helpidius, speaking and arguing face to face against the Manichees, had begun to stir me even at Carthage; because he had produced things out of the Scriptures that were not easily resisted, and the Manichees' answer struck me as weak. That answer they did not like to give in public, but only to us in private: that the Scriptures of the New Testament had been corrupted by somebody or other, who wanted to graft the law of the Jews onto the Christian faith — and yet they never produced any uncorrupted copies themselves. But I, who could conceive only of bodily things, was held down mainly by those "masses", violently oppressed and practically suffocated by them; and panting under them for the breath of Your truth, I could not breathe it pure and untainted.

So I began working hard at the thing I had come to Rome for, teaching rhetoric; and first at gathering a few pupils at my house, through whom and to whom I was beginning to be known. And then I found other offences going on in Rome that I had not been exposed to in Africa. It was true that the "wreckings" by dissolute young men were not practised here, as I had been told. But all of a sudden, people said, a group of students will conspire together to avoid paying their teacher's fee and move to another one — breakers of faith, who hold justice cheap for love of money. My heart hated these people too, though not with a perfect hatred: for I probably hated them more because of what I stood to lose by them than because of the sheer illegality of what they did. Certainly such people are base, and they whore away from You, loving these fleeting mockeries of temporary things, and filthy money, which dirties the hand that grabs it; hugging the fleeting world and despising You, who stay, and call back, and forgive the adulterous human soul when she comes back to You. And now I hate such crooked people, though I love them if they can be put right, so that they might prefer the learning they are acquiring to money, and prefer You to the learning, God, the truth and fullness of guaranteed good, and the purest peace. But in those days I disliked their being bad more for my own sake than I wanted them good for Yours.

So when the people of Milan sent to the prefect of the city at Rome, asking him to supply them with a lecturer in rhetoric for their city and send him at public expense, I applied — through the very people drunk on Manichaean vanities whom I was to be freed from by going, though neither they nor I knew it — for Symmachus, then prefect of the city, to test me by setting me a subject and then send me. So I came to Milan, and to Ambrose the bishop, known throughout the world as one of the best of men, Your devoted servant, whose eloquent preaching then dispensed to Your people in abundance the flour of Your wheat, the gladness of Your oil, and the sober intoxication of Your wine. I was led to him by You without knowing it, so that through him I might knowingly be led to You. That man of God received me like a father and showed me an episcopal kindness at my arrival. From then on I began to love him — at first not as a teacher of truth, which I had utterly given up hope of finding in Your church, but as a man who was kind to me. And I listened carefully to him preaching to the people, not with the intention I should have had, but testing his eloquence, as it were, to see whether it lived up to its reputation or ran fuller or thinner than reported. I hung on his words attentively, and about the substance of them I was a careless and scornful bystander. I was delighted by the sweetness of his delivery, which was more learned than Faustus's but less winning and harmonious in manner. As to the substance there was no comparison, for the one was wandering about among Manichaean delusions and the other was teaching salvation soundly. But salvation is far from sinners, and that is what I was as I stood in front of him — and yet I was drawing nearer, little by little and without noticing.

For although I took no trouble to learn what he was saying but only to hear how he said it — that empty concern being all I had left, having despaired of any road to You open to a human being — nevertheless, along with the words I was choosing to attend to, the substance I meant to reject came into my mind as well, since I could not separate them. And while I opened my heart to take in how eloquently he spoke, there also came in how truly he spoke — but gradually. First these matters began to look defensible to me; and the Catholic faith, for which I had thought nothing could be said against the Manichees' objections, I now thought could be maintained without embarrassment, especially after I had heard one or two passages of the Old Testament explained, and often explained figuratively — passages which, when I took them literally, had killed me spiritually. So when a great many places in those books had been explained, I began to blame my own despair for believing that no answer at all could be given to those who hated and mocked the Law and the Prophets. And yet I did not therefore see that the Catholic way was the one to hold, just because it too could produce learned defenders who could answer objections at length and with some show of reason; nor that what I held was to be condemned just because both sides could be defended. For the Catholic case seemed to me not so much defeated as still not yet victorious.

At this point I bent my mind hard to seeing whether I could by any certain proof convict the Manichees of falsehood. If I could once have conceived of a spiritual substance, all their strongholds would have been beaten down and thrown out of my mind altogether; but I could not. Even so, on the structure of this world and the whole of nature that the senses of the flesh can reach, the more I considered and compared, the more I judged the views of most of the philosophers to be far more probable. So, in the manner of the Academics as they are supposed to be, doubting everything and wavering between everything, I settled at least this far: that the Manichees were to be abandoned. I judged that even while I was in doubt I could not stay in a sect I already ranked below some of the philosophers — to which philosophers, however, since they were without the saving name of Christ, I absolutely refused to trust the cure of my sick soul. So I decided to remain a catechumen in the Catholic Church, which my parents had commended me to, until something certain should dawn on me to steer my course by.

Book Six: Ambrose, Alypius, and the Struggle to Believe

My hope from my youth, where were You to me, and where had You gone? Had You not created me and marked me off from the beasts of the field and the birds of the air? You had made me wiser than they were, and I walked in darkness and in slippery places, and I looked for You outside myself and did not find the God of my heart. I had come into the depths of the sea and had lost all trust and all hope of ever finding the truth.

By now my mother had come out to me, made resolute by her faith, following me over sea and land and trusting in You through every danger. In the dangers of the sea she comforted the sailors themselves — though it is usually sailors who comfort passengers unfamiliar with deep water when they are frightened — assuring them of a safe arrival, because You had assured her of it in a vision. She found me in grave danger, having despaired of ever finding the truth. But when I let her know that I was no longer a Manichee, though not a Catholic Christian either, she was not overjoyed as though at something unexpected. She had already been reassured about that part of my misery which had made her mourn me as a dead man, though one You would wake again, carrying me out on the bier of her thoughts so that You might say to the widow's son, Young man, I say to you, get up — and he would revive and begin to speak, and You would give him back to his mother. So her heart was not shaken by any tumult of excitement when she heard that what she had asked of You daily in tears had already so largely come about: that although I had not yet reached the truth, I had been rescued from falsehood. Being certain that You, who had promised the whole thing, would one day give the rest, she answered me quite calmly, with a heart full of confidence, that she believed in Christ that before she left this life she would see me a Catholic believer. That was what she said to me. But to You, fountain of mercies, she poured out still more prayers and tears, that You would hurry Your help and light up my darkness. And she went the more eagerly to church and hung on the lips of Ambrose, praying for the fountain of that water which springs up to everlasting life. She loved that man like an angel of God, because she knew that it was through him that I had been brought, for the moment, to the doubtful state of faith I was now in — through which she confidently expected me to pass from sickness to health, after what would be, so to speak, a sharper attack of the fever, the kind doctors call the crisis.

Once, when my mother had brought to the churches built in memory of the saints some cakes and bread and wine, as her custom had been in Africa, she was stopped by the doorkeeper. And as soon as she learned that the bishop had forbidden it, she accepted his wishes so devoutly and obediently that I was astonished at how readily she found fault with her own practice rather than argue about his ban. Wine-drinking laid no siege to her spirit, and no love of wine drove her to hate the truth, as it does far too many people, men and women alike, who recoil from a lesson in sobriety like a thoroughly drunk man from a cup mixed with water. When she brought her basket of the customary festival food, to be tasted by herself and then given away, she never included more than one small cup of wine, watered down to suit her own abstemious habits, which she would sip out of courtesy. And if there were several churches of departed saints to be honoured in that way, she carried the same single cup round to be used at all of them; and although it grew not only very watery but unpleasantly warm from being carried about, she would share it out among the people there in small sips, since what she was after was devotion and not pleasure. So as soon as she found that this custom had been forbidden by that famous preacher and most devout bishop, even for people who would use it soberly — in case it gave the heavy drinkers an occasion for excess, and because these annual commemorations of the dead were very like the superstition of the pagans — she gave it up quite willingly. Instead of a basket filled with the fruits of the earth, she had learned to bring to the churches of the martyrs a breast filled with purer prayers, and to give what she could to the poor; so that the sharing of the Lord's body should be rightly celebrated in the place where, following the example of his passion, the martyrs had been sacrificed and crowned. And yet it seems to me, Lord my God, and this is what my heart thinks about it in Your sight, that she might not have given up that custom so readily if it had been forbidden by somebody other than Ambrose, whom she did not love as she loved him. She loved him utterly, for my salvation's sake, and he loved her in return for her deeply religious way of life, in which she was constant at church, so fervent in spirit in her good works; so that when he saw me he often broke into praise of her, congratulating me on having such a mother — not knowing what a son she had in me, who doubted every one of these things and imagined the way to life could not be found at all.

Nor did I yet groan in my prayers for You to help me. My mind was entirely set on learning and restless to argue. And Ambrose himself I considered a happy man as the world counts happiness, since such great people held him in such honour; only his celibacy struck me as a painful business. What hope he carried inside him, what struggles he had against the temptations that beset his very excellences, what comfort he had in trouble, and what sweet joys Your bread had for the hidden mouth of his spirit when he chewed it over — of all that I could form no guess and had no experience. Nor did he know the tides of my feelings or the depth of my danger. For I could not ask him what I wanted, in the way I wanted, being shut off from both his ear and his voice by crowds of busy people whose troubles he served. When he was not taken up with them, which was only for a short time, he was either refreshing his body with the absolutely necessary food or his mind with reading.

But when he read, his eye ran over the page and his heart searched out the sense, while his voice and tongue were still. Often, when we had come in — for nobody was forbidden to come in, and it was not his custom to have visitors announced — we saw him reading like this, silently, and never otherwise. And after sitting a long time in silence, since who would dare to interrupt a man so absorbed, we would leave again, guessing that in the small interval he got for refreshing his mind, free from the din of other people's business, he did not want to be taken off it. Perhaps he was also afraid that if the author he was reading said anything obscurely, some attentive or puzzled listener would want it explained, or would want to discuss some of the harder questions; and with his time spent that way he could not get through as many volumes as he wanted. Though preserving his voice, which was easily strained by a very little speaking, may be the truer reason for his reading silently. Whatever his intention was, in a man like that it was certainly good.

I certainly had no chance to ask what I wanted of that holy oracle of Yours, his heart, unless the question could be answered briefly. And those tides in me, which needed pouring out to him, required his full attention, and never found it. I did hear him every Sunday, rightly expounding the word of truth among the people; and I became more and more convinced that all the knots of clever slander which our deceivers had tied against the divine books could be untied. And when I also came to understand that "man created by You in Your own image" was not understood by Your spiritual sons — whom You have brought to birth again by grace out of our Catholic mother — as though they believed and conceived of You as bounded by a human shape, then, although I had not even the faintest shadow of a notion what a spiritual substance might be, I blushed with joy at having spent so many years barking not at the Catholic faith but at the inventions of physical imaginations. For I had been so rash and so irreligious that I had pronounced judgement and condemnation on things I ought to have learned by asking. For You, most high and most near, most hidden and most present, who have no limbs some larger and some smaller, but are wholly everywhere and nowhere in space, are not of any bodily shape; and yet You have made man in Your own image — and look, from head to foot he is contained in space.

Being ignorant, then, of how this image of Yours could exist, I should have knocked and put the difficulty as a question, asking how it was to be believed, instead of insultingly attacking it as if it were believed. So doubt about what to hold for certain gnawed at my heart the more sharply, the more ashamed I was that after being so long deceived by the promise of certainties, I had gone on chattering about so many uncertainties with a childish error and vehemence. That they were falsehoods became clear to me later; what I was certain of at the time was that they were uncertain, and that I had once counted them certain, when with a blind contentiousness I accused Your Catholic Church — which I now found, not indeed to be teaching truly yet, but at least not to be teaching what I had so severely criticised her for. So I was confounded, and turned round. And I was glad, my God, that the one and only Church, the body of Your only Son, in which the name of Christ had been laid on me as a baby, had no taste for these infantile notions; and that in her sound teaching she maintained no doctrine that would cram You, the creator of everything, into a space — however great and wide, but bounded everywhere by the outline of a human body.

I was glad too that the old Scriptures of the law and the prophets were now set before me to be read with different eyes from the ones that had once made them seem absurd, when I attacked Your holy people for thinking what in fact they did not think. And with joy I heard Ambrose in his sermons to the people often recommend this text as a rule: the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. And he would draw aside the mystical veil and lay open spiritually what, taken literally, seemed to teach something unsound — teaching nothing here that offended me, though he taught things I did not yet know to be true. For I kept my heart from consenting to anything, afraid of falling headlong; and by hanging in suspense I was being killed the more surely. For I wanted to be as sure of the things I could not see as I was that seven and three make ten. I was not so mad as to think that even this could not be grasped; but I wanted other things to be as clear as this — whether physical things not present to my senses, or spiritual things, which I could not conceive of except as bodies. And by believing I might have been cured, so that the eyesight of my soul, being cleared, might somehow be turned towards Your truth, which stays for ever and fails in no part. But it happens that a man who has tried a bad doctor is afraid to trust himself to a good one; and so it was with the health of my soul, which could not be healed except by believing, and refused to be cured in case it should believe falsehoods — resisting Your hands, who have prepared the medicines of faith and applied them to the diseases of the whole world, and given them such great authority.

Being led on from this to prefer Catholic teaching, I felt that its way of proceeding was more modest and more honest, in that it required things to be believed that had not been demonstrated — whether because they could be demonstrated in themselves but not to certain people, or could not be demonstrated at all — whereas among the Manichees our credulity was mocked with a promise of certain knowledge, and then a great many fabulous and absurd things were forced on us to be believed, precisely because they could not be demonstrated. Then You, Lord, little by little, with the most gentle and merciful hand, touching and settling my heart, persuaded me. I thought of the countless things I believed which I had never seen and had not been present at: so many events in secular history, so many reports of places and cities I had not visited, so much from friends, so much from doctors, so much continually from other people, without believing which we should do nothing at all in this life. And last of all, with what unshakeable confidence I believed which parents I was born to, which I could never have known unless I believed it on hearsay. Considering all this, You persuaded me that the ones to blame were not the people who believed Your books, which You have established with such great authority among almost every nation, but the people who did not believe them; and that no attention should be paid to anyone who said to me, "How do you know that those Scriptures were given to mankind by the Spirit of the one true God?" For that was of all things the most to be believed, since no contentiousness of blasphemous questioning, out of all the mass of it I had read in the self-contradicting philosophers, could wring from me the belief that You exist, whatever You are, which I did not know, and that the government of human affairs belongs to You.

This I believed, sometimes more strongly and sometimes more weakly; but I always believed both that You existed and that You cared about us, though I did not know what to think about Your substance, or what road led to You or back to You. So since we were too weak to find out truth by abstract reasoning, and for that very reason needed the authority of holy writ, I had now begun to believe that You would never have given that writing such outstanding authority throughout the world unless You had meant to be believed in through it and looked for through it. For now that I had heard several of the passages that used to offend me by their strange sound expounded satisfactorily, I put them down to the depth of the mysteries; and its authority looked to me all the more venerable and all the more worthy of religious trust in that, while it lay open for everyone to read, it kept the majesty of its mysteries in its deeper meaning — coming down to everyone in the great plainness of its words and the lowliness of its style, and yet demanding the most intense effort from those who are not light-minded. So that it might take everyone into its open arms, and ferry a few across through narrow channels towards You — yet far more than if it did not stand up on such a height of authority, and did not draw crowds into its arms by its holy lowliness. These things I thought about, and You were with me. I sighed, and You heard me. I wavered, and You steered me. I wandered along the broad road of the world, and You did not abandon me.

I panted after honours, money, marriage — and You laughed at me. In these desires I went through the bitterest frustrations, and You were the kinder the less You allowed anything to grow sweet to me that was not You. Look at my heart, Lord, who wanted me to remember all this and confess it to You. Let my soul hold fast to You, now that You have pulled it free of the sticky birdlime of death. How wretched it was! And You kept irritating the feeling of its wound, so that it might leave everything else and turn to You, who are above everything and without whom nothing would exist at all — turn, and be healed.

How miserable I was then, and how You dealt with me to make me feel my misery, on the day when I was preparing to deliver a speech in praise of the emperor, in which I was going to tell a great many lies, and be applauded for lying by people who knew I was lying. My heart was panting with all these anxieties and boiling with the fever of thoughts that were eating me up. And going along one of the streets of Milan I noticed a poor beggar, with a full stomach, I suppose, joking and laughing. And I sighed, and spoke to the friends with me about the many sorrows of our own madness. For by all the efforts I was labouring at then, dragging the burden of my own wretchedness along under the goad of desire and making it heavier by dragging it, we were only hoping to arrive at the very cheerfulness that beggar had arrived at before us — and which we might never reach at all. What he had got with a few coins begged for, I was scheming after by many a laborious twist and turn: the joy of a temporary happiness. He certainly did not have the true joy — but with those ambitions of mine I was looking for one much less true. And he was certainly cheerful and I was anxious; he had no cares and I was full of fears. But if anyone asked me whether I would rather be cheerful or afraid, I would answer cheerful. And if he asked whether I would rather be what that man was or what I then was, I would choose to be myself, worn out with cares and fears — and that would be a bad judgement. For was it the truth? I ought not to have preferred myself to him on the grounds of being better educated, since I got no joy from my education but used it to please people; and not to instruct them, simply to please them. That is why You broke my bones with the rod of Your correction.

So away from my soul with those who say to her, "It makes a difference what a man's joy comes from. That beggar's joy came from drink; you wanted joy from glory." What glory, Lord? One that is not in You. For just as his was no true joy, so that was no true glory, and it overturned my soul the more. He would sleep off his drunkenness that same night; I had slept and got up with mine, and was going to sleep and get up with it again, for how many days You know, God. Yes, it does make a difference what a man's joy comes from; I know it, and the joy of a faithful hope lies incomparably beyond such emptiness. And in fact even then he was beyond me: he was genuinely the happier man, and not only because he was thoroughly soaked in cheerfulness while I was gutted with anxieties, but because he had got his wine by wishing people well, while I was looking for empty, swollen praise by lying. I said a good deal to this effect to my friends then, and I often noticed in them how things stood with me; and I found things were going badly with me, and grieved over it, and so doubled the trouble. And if any success smiled on me, I could not be bothered to snatch at it, since it flew away almost before I could get hold of it.

These were the things we lamented together, we who were living as friends; but I spoke about them mostly and most intimately with Alypius and Nebridius. Alypius was born in my own town, of leading people there, and was younger than I was. He had studied under me both when I first lectured in our town and afterwards at Carthage, and he loved me very much because I struck him as kind and learned, and I loved him for his great promise in virtue, which was conspicuous enough in one so young. But the whirlpool of Carthaginian habits, where those idle entertainments are hotly followed, had drawn him into the madness of the racetrack. And while he was being wretchedly tossed about in it, and I, teaching rhetoric there, had a public school, he was not yet attending my classes, because of some ill feeling that had arisen between his father and me. So I had found out how fatally besotted he was with the races, and was deeply grieved that he looked likely to throw away — or had already thrown away — such great promise; and yet I had no way of advising him, or of reclaiming him by some kind of pressure, either through a friend's kindness or a teacher's authority. For I assumed he thought of me as his father did. But he did not; and putting aside his father's attitude in the matter, he began to greet me, and to come into my lecture room now and then, listen a little, and go.

But I had forgotten to work on him, so that he should not ruin so good a mind through a blind, headlong appetite for empty amusements. But You, Lord, who steer the course of everything You have created, had not forgotten him, who was one day to be among Your children, a priest and a minister of Your sacrament. And so that his reform might plainly be credited to You, You brought it about through me, without my knowing it. For one day, as I sat in my usual place with my pupils in front of me, he came in, greeted me, sat down and set his mind on what I was discussing. I happened to have a passage in hand, and while I was explaining it a comparison with the chariot races occurred to me as likely to make what I wanted to convey pleasanter and plainer, seasoned with a biting mockery of those the madness had enslaved. God, You know that I was not thinking then of curing Alypius of that infection. But he took the whole thing to himself and thought I had said it purely for his sake. And where another man would have taken it as grounds for offence at me, that right-minded young man took it as grounds for being offended at himself, and for loving me more fiercely. For You had said it long ago, and put it in Your book: Rebuke a wise man and he will love you. But I had not rebuked him. You had — You who use everyone, knowing and unknowing, in the order You Yourself know, and that order is just. You made burning coals out of my heart and my tongue, to set light to the hopeful mind that was wasting away, and cure it. Let anyone keep quiet in Your praises who does not consider Your mercies, which confess to You out of the depths of my soul. For at that speech he burst out of the pit he had deliberately plunged into, and been blinded in by its wretched amusements; and he shook his mind free by a strong act of self-command, and all the filth of the racetrack flew off him, and he never went there again. After this he prevailed on his unwilling father to let him be my pupil. His father gave way and gave in. And Alypius, beginning to attend me again, was caught up in the same superstition I was, loving in the Manichees that show of self-restraint which he took to be genuine — whereas it was a senseless and seducing restraint, trapping precious souls that could not yet reach the depths of virtue and were easily taken in by the surface of a shadowy and counterfeit one.

Without giving up the secular career his parents had charmed him into, he had gone ahead of me to Rome to study law; and there he was carried away by an incredible eagerness for the gladiator shows, incredibly. He had been utterly opposed to such spectacles and detested them. Then one day he happened to be met by a number of his acquaintances and fellow students coming from dinner, and with the familiar violence of friends they hauled him — furiously refusing and resisting — into the amphitheatre, during those cruel and deadly shows. He protested as they went: "You can drag my body to that place and sit me down in it, but can you make me turn my mind or my eyes to those shows? I shall be absent while present, and so I shall beat you and them together." Hearing this, they took him along all the same, perhaps wanting to test that very thing, whether he could do what he said. When they got there and had taken whatever seats they could, the whole place was ablaze with that savage entertainment. But he shut the gateway of his eyes and forbade his mind to go out after such evil — and if only he had stopped his ears too! For in the fighting, when one man fell, the enormous roar of the whole crowd struck him hard; and overcome by curiosity, and as though prepared to see whatever it was and despise it and rise above it, he opened his eyes. And he was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the man he had wanted to look at was struck in his body; and he fell more wretchedly than the man whose fall had raised the great shout that came in through his ears and unlocked his eyes, opening the way for a soul to be struck and beaten down — a soul that was bold rather than resolute, and all the weaker for having relied on itself, when it should have relied on You. For as soon as he saw the blood he drank in savagery along with it; and he did not turn away, but fixed his gaze and swallowed the frenzy without knowing it, and took delight in that guilty fight and was drunk on the bloody entertainment. He was no longer the man who had come in, but one of the crowd he had come into — a true companion of the men who had brought him. Why say more? He watched, he shouted, he caught fire, he carried away with him a madness that would goad him to come back, not only with the friends who first dragged him there but ahead of them, and dragging others in. And yet You pulled him out of it with the strongest and most merciful hand, and taught him to have confidence not in himself but in You. But that came later.

Even now, though, it was being stored up in his memory as a medicine for later. So was this. When he was still studying under me at Carthage, and was going over at midday in the marketplace what he had to recite by heart, as students do for practice, You allowed him to be arrested by the market officers as a thief. I imagine, our God, that You allowed it for no other reason than that a man who was going to turn out so great should begin to learn already that in judging cases a man must not be condemned by another man out of rash credulity. For as he was walking up and down by himself in front of the court, with his notebook and pen, a young man, a lawyer, the real thief, secretly brought a hatchet in, got as far as the lead gratings that fence in the silversmiths' shops without Alypius noticing him, and began to cut away the lead. But the noise of the hatchet was heard, and the silversmiths below began to stir and sent men to arrest whoever they found. Hearing their voices, he ran off, leaving his hatchet behind, afraid of being caught with it. Alypius, who had not seen him come in, was aware of him going, and saw how fast he made off. Wanting to know what the matter was, he went into the place — and there he found the hatchet, and was standing over it, wondering and examining it, when the men who had been sent found him alone with the hatchet in his hand, the noise of which had startled them and brought them there. They seized him and hauled him away, and gathering the people of the marketplace round them, boasted of having caught a notorious thief; and so he was taken off to be brought before the judge.

But this was as far as Alypius's lesson was to go. For at once, Lord, You came to the help of his innocence, of which You alone were the witness. As he was being led off either to prison or to punishment, they were met by an architect who had the chief responsibility for the public buildings. They were especially glad to run into him, since he was the man who usually suspected them of stealing the goods that went missing from the marketplace; now they could show him at last who was committing these thefts. But he had several times seen Alypius at the house of a certain senator whom he often went to pay his respects to; and recognising him at once, he took him aside by the hand, asked what the cause of such a disaster was, heard the whole story, and told everyone there, amid a great deal of uproar and threatening, to come with him. So they came to the house of the young man who had done it. In front of the door was a boy young enough to be likely to give the whole thing away, not realising it could harm his master; and he had gone with his master to the marketplace. As soon as Alypius remembered him he told the architect, who showed the boy the hatchet and asked whose it was. "Ours," he said at once — and being questioned further, he revealed everything. So the crime was transferred to that house, and the crowd who had begun to jeer at Alypius were put to shame; and the man who was to be a minister of Your word, and to examine many cases in Your church, went away with more experience and better instructed.

So I had found him at Rome, and he clung to me by the strongest of ties and went with me to Milan, both so as not to leave me and so as to practise something of the law he had studied — more to please his parents than himself. There he had sat three times as an assessor, with an incorruptibility that others found astonishing, while he found it more astonishing that anyone could prefer gold to honesty. His character was tested besides not only with the bait of greed but with the goad of fear. At Rome he was assessor to the count of the Italian treasury. There was at that time a very powerful senator to whom many people owed favours and many others owed fear. He wanted, by his usual authority, to have something allowed him that the laws did not allow. Alypius resisted. A bribe was offered; he despised it with his whole heart. Threats were made; he trampled on them. Everyone was amazed at so unusual a spirit, which neither wanted the friendship nor feared the enmity of a man so great and so hugely famous for his countless ways of doing good or harm. And the judge himself, whose adviser Alypius was, although he too was unwilling that it should be allowed, would not openly refuse, but put the matter off onto Alypius, claiming that Alypius would not let him do it — when in truth if the judge had done it, Alypius would have left. On one point connected with his studies he was nearly seduced: that he might have books copied for him at official rates. But consulting justice, he changed his mind for the better, reckoning the fairness that stopped him more profitable than the power that would have allowed it. These are small things; but he that is faithful in little is faithful also in much. And nothing can be empty that has come out of the mouth of Your truth: If you have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been faithful in what belongs to another man, who shall give you what is your own? Being such a man, he was at that time attached to me, and wavered along with me about what course of life was to be taken.

Nebridius was there too. He had left his home near Carthage, and Carthage itself where he had lived a good deal, and left his excellent family estate and house and a mother who was not going to follow him, and had come to Milan for no other reason than to live with me in a burning search for truth and wisdom. Like me he sighed, like me he wavered: a passionate searcher after the true life and a most acute examiner of the hardest questions. So there were the mouths of three beggars, sighing out their needs to one another and waiting on You to give them their food at the proper time. And in all the bitterness that by Your mercy followed our worldly business, when we looked towards the end — why we should be suffering all this — darkness met us, and we turned away groaning and saying, How long is this going to go on? We said it often, and saying it we did not give the things up, because as yet nothing certain had dawned that we might take hold of once we had let them go.

And as I went over things again and again, what most astonished me was the length of time since that nineteenth year of mine, when I first began to burn with the desire for wisdom, and settled that when I found her I would abandon all the empty hopes and lying frenzies of pointless desires. And here I was, in my thirtieth year, stuck in the same mud, greedy to enjoy present things that slipped away and wasted my soul, while I said to myself: "Tomorrow I shall find it. It will show itself plainly and I shall take hold of it. Look, Faustus the Manichee will come and clear everything up. You great men, you Academics — is it true then that no certainty can be reached to order one's life by? No; let us search all the harder and not despair. Look, the things in the church's books are not absurd to us now, which once seemed absurd, and can be taken another way, in a good sense. I shall take my stand where my parents put me as a child, until the plain truth is found. But where is it to be looked for, and when? Ambrose has no free time; we have no free time to read. Where shall we even find the books? Where or when are we to get them? Who can we borrow them from? Let fixed times be set aside and hours arranged for the health of our soul. Great hope has dawned: the Catholic faith does not teach what we thought, and what we pointlessly accused it of; its instructed members hold it profane to believe God is bounded by the shape of a human body. And do we hesitate to knock, so that the rest may be opened to us? Our pupils take up the mornings; what do we do with the rest of the day? Why not this? But then when do we pay our respects to our powerful friends, whose favour we need? When do we compose what we can sell to students? When do we rest, and let our minds off this intensity of care?

"Let everything go to ruin. Let us dismiss these empty vanities and give ourselves to the one search for truth. Life is empty, death is uncertain; if it steals up on us suddenly, in what condition shall we leave here? Where shall we learn what we have neglected to learn here? Shall we not rather suffer the punishment for this neglect? What if death itself cuts off and ends all care and feeling? Then that must be settled. But God forbid it should be so! It is not empty and pointless that the outstanding dignity and authority of the Christian faith has spread over the whole world. God would never have done such great things for us if the life of the soul came to an end with the death of the body. So why put off abandoning worldly hopes and giving ourselves entirely to the search for God and the blessed life? But wait — those things are pleasant too; they have a real and not a small sweetness. We must not give them up lightly, for it would be a disgrace to go back to them again. Look, it is no great matter now to obtain some post — and then what more should we want? We have plenty of powerful friends; if nothing else turns up and we are in a hurry, at least a governorship could be given us. And a wife with some money of her own, so that she does not add to our expenses. And that would be the limit of our wanting. Many great men, very much worth imitating, have devoted themselves to the study of wisdom while married."

While I went over all this, and these winds shifted and drove my heart this way and that, time went on; and I put off turning to the Lord, and from day to day I put off living in You, and did not put off dying daily in myself. Loving a happy life, I was afraid of it in its own home, and looked for it by running away from it. I thought I would be too miserable unless I was folded in a woman's arms; and it did not occur to me that the medicine of Your mercy could cure that weakness, since I had not tried it. As for self-control, I supposed it was in our own power, though I could not find that power in myself, being foolish enough not to know what is written: nobody can be self-controlled unless You give it — and that You would give it, if I knocked at Your ears with inward groaning and threw my care on You with a settled faith.

Alypius did keep me from marrying, arguing that if I married we could by no means live together in the love of wisdom with undistracted leisure, as we had long wanted to. In this matter he was at that time remarkably pure — the more remarkably since at the very start of his adolescence he had gone that way and had not got stuck in it, but had felt remorse and revulsion at it, and had lived with complete self-control ever since. But I opposed him with the examples of men who had cherished wisdom as married men, and served God acceptably, and kept their friends and loved them faithfully. I fell a long way short of their greatness of spirit; tied down by the disease of the flesh and its deadly sweetness, I dragged my chain along, dreading to be unfastened, and pushing his good advice away as though it were the hand of someone trying to unchain me, and as though my wound had been rubbed by it. What is more, the serpent spoke to Alypius himself through me, weaving pleasant traps with my tongue and laying them across his path, where his virtuous and free feet might be caught.

For he was astonished that I, whom he thought well of, should be stuck so fast in the birdlime of that pleasure as to insist, whenever we discussed it, that I could never live a single life. And when I saw him astonished, I said in my own defence that there was a great difference between his momentary and barely remembered experience of that life, which he could therefore easily despise, and my continued familiarity with it — and that if the honourable name of marriage were added to mine, he ought not to be surprised that I could not despise it. And then he too began to want to be married: not overcome by any desire for the pleasure, but out of curiosity. He said he would like to know what this thing was, without which my life, which he found so agreeable, would to me not be life at all but a punishment. For his mind, free of that chain, was amazed at my slavery, and through the amazement was going on to a wish to try it, and from there to the trial itself, and from there perhaps to sink into the very bondage he was amazed at — since he was willing to make a covenant with death, and the man who loves danger will fall into it. For whatever honour there may be in the work of ordering a marriage and a family well, it moved neither of us much. What tormented me for the most part was the habit of satisfying an appetite that could not be satisfied, which held me prisoner; what was leading him captive was an admiring curiosity. That was where we were, until You, most high, not abandoning our dust, and pitying us in our misery, came to our help by wonderful and secret ways.

Continual efforts were made to get me married. I proposed, I was accepted, chiefly through my mother's efforts, on the grounds that once I was married the health-giving baptism might wash me clean — and she was glad to see me being made fitter for it daily, and noticed that her prayers and Your promises were being fulfilled in my faith. At that time, both at my request and out of her own longing, she begged You daily with strong cries of the heart to show her something about my future marriage in a vision. You never would. She did see certain empty and fantastic things, of the kind the energy of a human mind busy with a subject throws together; and she told me about them, not with the confidence she usually had when You showed her something, but dismissively. She said she could tell the difference between Your revelations and her own soul's dreams by a certain feeling she could not put into words. Still, the matter was pushed on, and a girl was asked for in marriage, two years under the proper age; and since she was pleasing, we waited for her.

And a number of us friends, discussing the matter together and loathing the turbulent turmoil of human life, had debated and almost decided on living apart from business and the bustle of people. We were to manage it like this: we would bring in whatever each of us could get, and make one household of everything, so that through the honesty of our friendship nothing would belong to anyone in particular, but the whole thing, drawn from all of us, should belong as a whole to each, and everything to everybody. We thought there might be about ten people in this society, some of them very rich, especially Romanianus, a man from my own town and a very close friend of mine since childhood, whom the difficult tangles of his affairs had brought up to court. He was the keenest on this project, and his voice carried great weight in it, because his ample estate far exceeded anyone else's. We had also settled that two of us should serve as annual officers and provide everything necessary, leaving the rest undisturbed. But when we began to consider whether the wives that some of us already had, and others hoped to have, would allow this, the whole plan we had been shaping so well fell to pieces in our hands, and was smashed and thrown aside. From there we went back to sighs and groans, and our feet went back to following the broad and beaten roads of the world; for there were many thoughts in our heart, but Your counsel stands for ever. Out of that counsel You laughed at ours and prepared Your own, meaning to give us food at the proper time and to fill our souls with blessing.

Meanwhile my sins were multiplying; and when the woman I lived with was torn from my side as an obstacle to my marriage, my heart, which had held fast to her, was torn and wounded and bleeding. And she went back to Africa, vowing to You never to know another man, leaving with me the son I had by her. But I in my unhappiness could not imitate even a woman. I could not bear the delay, since it would be two years before I could have the girl I had asked for; and being not so much a lover of marriage as a slave of lust, I got myself another woman, though not a wife, so that by the servitude of a lasting habit the disease of my soul might be kept going at full strength, or even increased, into the domain of marriage. And that wound of mine was not healed which had been made by cutting the first woman away; after the inflammation and the sharpest pain it went dead, and my pain grew less sharp and more hopeless.

Praise to You, glory to You, fountain of mercies. I was growing more wretched and You were coming nearer. Your right hand was always ready to pull me out of the mud and wash me thoroughly, and I did not know it. Nothing called me back from a still deeper pit of bodily pleasures except the fear of death and of Your judgement to come, which through all my changes never left my chest. And when I argued with my friends Alypius and Nebridius about the nature of good and evil, I held that in my view Epicurus would have carried off the prize, if I had not believed that after death there remained a life for the soul and places of repayment according to what men deserve — which Epicurus refused to believe. And I asked: if we were immortal and going to live in perpetual bodily pleasure with no fear of losing it, why should we not be happy, and what else should we be looking for? I did not know that great misery was involved in this very thing: that being so sunk and blinded, I could not make out that light of excellence and beauty which is to be embraced for its own sake, which the eye of flesh cannot see and which is seen by the inner man. Nor did I, unhappy as I was, consider where it came from that even about these things, foul as they were, I talked with pleasure to my friends; and that I could not be happy without friends, even on the notions of happiness I had then, however great the supply of bodily pleasures. And these friends I loved for their own sake alone, and I felt that they loved me back for mine alone.

What twisted roads! Pity the reckless soul that hoped, by leaving You, to get something better. It turned this way and that, on its back and its sides and its front, and everything hurt; and You alone are rest. And look, You are close at hand, and free us from our miserable wanderings, and set us on Your road, and comfort us and say: "Run; I will carry you; I will bring you through; and there too I will carry you."

Book Seven: The Platonists and the Problem of Evil

My evil and disgusting youth was dead by now and I was passing into early manhood — and the older I grew the dirtier I got with empty things, since I could not imagine any substance except the kind that can be seen with these eyes. I did not think of You, God, in the shape of a human body; from the time I first heard anything about wisdom, I had always avoided that, and I was glad to find the same view in the faith of our spiritual mother, Your Catholic Church. But what else to conceive of You I did not know. And I, a man, and such a man, tried to conceive of You, the sovereign, only, true God. In the depths of my soul I did believe that You were incorruptible and injury-proof and unchangeable; because although I did not know how or where the idea came from, I saw plainly and was certain that what can be corrupted must be inferior to what cannot, and I unhesitatingly preferred what could not be damaged to what could take damage, and the unchangeable to things subject to change. My heart cried out passionately against all my phantoms, and with this one blow I tried to beat away from my mind's eye the whole unclean swarm buzzing round it. And barely had they been driven off when, in the blink of an eye, they crowded thickly back round me, flew at my face and blotted it out; so that although I was not conceiving of You in the shape of a human body, I was still forced to conceive of You — that incorruptible, injury-proof, unchangeable thing which I preferred to the corruptible and damageable and changeable — as existing in space, whether poured into the world or spread infinitely outside it. Because anything I conceived without this space seemed to me to be nothing; utterly nothing, not even a void. It was as though, if a body were taken out of its place and the place remained empty of everything — of earth and water, air and sky — it would still remain an empty place, a spacious kind of nothing.

Being so gross-hearted, then, and not clear even to myself, I thought that whatever was not spread out over some space, or thinned or thickened or swollen out, and did not or could not take on some of these dimensions, was altogether nothing. For my heart ranged over the same sorts of shape my eyes were used to ranging over. And I did not see that the very act of the mind by which I was shaping those images was not of that kind at all — and yet it could not have shaped them unless it were itself something great. So I tried to conceive of You, life of my life, as vast, going through infinite spaces on every side, penetrating the whole mass of the universe, and beyond it in every direction through immeasurable, boundless space; so that the earth had You, and the sky had You, and everything had You, and everything was bounded within You, while You were bounded nowhere. For just as the body of the air above the earth does not stop the light of the sun from passing through it, penetrating it not by bursting it or cutting it but by filling it completely, so I thought that the substance not only of the sky and air and sea but of the earth as well was pervious to You, so that in all its parts, the largest and the smallest, it took in Your presence, by a secret breathing that directed everything You have created from within and from without. That was my guess, only because I could not conceive of anything else, and it was false. For on this account a larger part of the earth would contain a larger portion of You, and a smaller part a smaller portion; and everything would be full of You in such a way that an elephant's body would contain more of You than a sparrow's, in proportion to its being bigger and taking up more room; and so You would be making the several portions of Yourself present to the several portions of the world in fragments — large ones to the large, tiny ones to the tiny. But that is not what You are. And You had not yet lit up my darkness.

It was enough for me, Lord, to set against those deceived deceivers and dumb chatterers — since Your word never sounded out of them — the argument Nebridius used to put forward long ago, when we were still at Carthage, which staggered all of us who heard it. "That nation of darkness which the Manichees are in the habit of setting up as an opposing mass over against You: what could it have done to You, if You had refused to fight it? If they answer that it could have done You some harm, then You would be subject to injury and corruption. But if it could do You no harm, then no reason has been given for Your fighting it — and fighting in such a way that a certain portion or limb of You, an offspring of Your very substance, should be mixed with opposing powers and with natures You did not create, and be corrupted by them and changed for the worse to the point of being turned from happiness into misery, and need help to get it out and clean it up. And this offspring of Your substance was supposed to be the soul, which, being enslaved and defiled and corrupted, Your Word — free, pure and whole — might rescue; while that Word itself would still be corruptible, since it was of one and the same substance. So if they say that You, whatever You are, that is, the substance by which You are what You are, is incorruptible, then all these claims are false and to be cursed; and if they say it is corruptible, then the statement shows itself false and disgusting on the face of it." So this argument of Nebridius' was enough against people who deserved to be vomited up altogether from a stomach that could not hold them; because there was no way out for them, without a horrible blasphemy of heart and tongue, thinking and speaking of You like that.

But I still did not clearly and easily understand the cause of evil, though I held and was firmly convinced that You, our Lord the true God, who made not only our souls but our bodies, and not only our souls and bodies but every being and every thing, were undefilable and unalterable and in no degree changeable. And yet whatever the cause was, I saw that it must be looked for in a way that did not force me to believe the unchangeable God changeable — in case I became the very evil I was looking for. So I set about the search free from that anxiety at least, being certain of the falsity of what the people I recoiled from with my whole heart maintained. For I could see that in enquiring into the origin of evil they were filled with evil, since they preferred to think that Your substance suffered evil rather than that their own committed it.

And I strained to grasp what I now heard: that free will is the cause of our doing evil, and Your just judgement the cause of our suffering it. But I could not make it out clearly. So when I tried to draw my soul's vision up out of that deep pit, I was plunged back into it; and trying often, I was plunged back as often. But one thing did lift me a little way into Your light: I knew as surely that I had a will as that I was alive. When I willed or refused something, I was quite certain that it was nobody but myself who willed and refused; and I very nearly saw that this was where the cause of my sin lay. As for what I did against my will, I saw that I was undergoing it rather than doing it, and I judged that to be not my fault but my punishment — by which, since I held You to be just, I quickly admitted I was not being punished unjustly. But then again I said: who made me? Was it not my God, who is not only good but goodness itself? So where did it come from, my willing evil and refusing good, so that I am justly punished for it? Who put this in me and grafted this bitter plant into me, when I was made entirely by my sweetest God? If the devil is the author, then where does the devil come from? And if he too, by his own perverse will, turned from a good angel into a devil, where did the evil will come from in him by which he became a devil, seeing the whole nature of angels was made by that best of creators? By these thoughts I was pushed under and choked again — though not brought down to that hell of error, where nobody confesses to You, of thinking that You suffer evil rather than that man does it.

For I was trying to work out the rest as a man who had already found that the incorruptible must be better than the corruptible; and I therefore confessed that You, whatever You are, are incorruptible. For no soul ever was or ever will be able to conceive anything better than You, who are the sovereign and the best good. And since it is completely true and certain that the incorruptible is preferable to the corruptible, as I now preferred it, then if You were not incorruptible I could have arrived in thought at something better than my God. So where I saw the incorruptible to be preferable to the corruptible, there I ought to look for You, and there notice where evil itself was — that is, where corruption comes from, by which Your substance can by no means be damaged. For corruption does not damage our God in any way: not by any will, not by any necessity, not by any unforeseen accident. Because he is God, and what he wills is good, and he himself is that good; and being corrupted is not good. Nor are You forced into anything against Your will, since Your will is not greater than Your power. It would have to be greater if You were greater than Yourself; for the will and the power of God are God himself. And what can be unforeseen by You, who know everything? There is no nature among things that You do not know. And what more need we say about why the substance that God is should not be corruptible, seeing that if it were, he would not be God?

And I looked for where evil comes from, and looked in an evil way, and did not see the evil in the very way I was looking. I set before the sight of my spirit the whole of creation, everything we can see in it — sea, earth, air, stars, trees, mortal creatures — and everything in it we do not see, the vault of the sky, and all the angels too, and all its spiritual inhabitants. But my imagination arranged even these beings in places, as though they were bodies. And I made one great mass out of Your creation, sorted by the kinds of bodies in it: some real bodies, and some the ones I had made up for spirits. I made this mass huge — not as it actually was, which I could not know, but as I found convenient, and finite in every direction. And You, Lord, I imagined surrounding and penetrating it on every side, but infinite in every direction: as though there were a sea, everywhere and on every side, through unmeasured space, one single boundless sea, and it held inside it a sponge, huge but bounded, and that sponge would have to be filled in every part from that unmeasurable sea. That was how I conceived of Your creation: finite itself, and full of You, the infinite. And I said, Look, this is God, and this is what God has created; and God is good, mightily and incomparably better than all of this; but still he, the Good, created them good, and see how he surrounds and fills them. Where then is evil, and where does it come from, and how did it creep in here? What is its root and what is its seed? Or has it no being at all? Then why do we fear and avoid what does not exist? Or if we fear it for nothing, then that very fear is an evil, by which the soul is goaded and racked for nothing — and so much the greater an evil, in that we have nothing to fear and are still afraid. So either what we fear is evil, or else the evil is that we fear. Where does it come from, then, seeing God, the Good, created all these things good? He indeed, the greater and chief good, created these lesser goods; but creator and created, all of them are good. Where does evil come from?

Or was there some evil matter which he made and shaped and ordered, and yet left something in it that he did not turn into good? But why? Had he no power to turn and change the whole of it, so that no evil should be left in it, seeing he is almighty? Last of all, why would he make anything at all out of it, instead of using that same almightiness to make it not exist? Or could it exist against his will? Or if it existed from eternity, why did he allow it to be so through infinite stretches of past time, and only decide so long afterwards to make something out of it? Or if he suddenly decided to do something now, then this is what the almighty should have done rather: that this evil matter should not exist, and he alone should be, the whole, true, sovereign and infinite good. Or if it was not good that he who was good should not also frame and create something good, then he might have taken that evil matter away and reduced it to nothing, and formed good matter to create everything out of. For he would not be almighty if he could not create something good without the help of matter he had not created himself. These thoughts I turned over in my miserable heart, weighed down with the most gnawing anxiety in case I should die before I had found the truth. And yet the faith of Your Christ, our Lord and saviour, as professed in the Catholic Church, was firmly fixed in my heart — on many points still unformed, certainly, and drifting away from the rule of doctrine, but my mind did not leave it entirely; rather it took in more and more of it every day.

By this time I had also rejected the lying divinations and irreligious ravings of the astrologers. Let Your own mercies confess to You for this too, God, out of the very depths of my soul. For it was You, entirely You — since who else calls us back from the death of all errors, but the Life that cannot die and the Wisdom that needs no light and lights up the minds that need it, by which the universe is steered, right down to the spinning leaves on the trees? You made provision for the obstinacy with which I resisted Vindicianus, a sharp old man, and Nebridius, a young man of admirable ability. The first asserted vehemently, and the second often said, though with some hesitation, that there is no such art for foreseeing what is to come, and that men's guesses are a kind of lottery: out of the many things they say will happen, some actually do, without the speakers knowing why, since they stumble on it by talking so much. So You provided me with a friend who was no negligent consulter of astrologers — and not much skilled in those arts either, but, as I say, a curious consulter of them, who nevertheless knew one thing which he said he had heard from his father, and had no idea how far it went towards overturning any respect for that art.

This man, Firminus by name, having had a liberal education and been well taught in rhetoric, consulted me as a very dear friend about what I thought, according to his so-called horoscope, of certain business of his in which his worldly hopes had risen. And I, having by now begun to lean towards Nebridius' opinion, did not altogether refuse to guess and tell him what came into my unsettled mind, though I added that I was now almost convinced these were empty and ridiculous follies. At that he told me his father had been very keen on such books, and had a friend as enthusiastic about them as himself; and by studying and discussing together they fanned their affection for these toys into a flame, to the point that they would note the exact moments at which even the dumb animals bred about their houses gave birth, and then note the position of the heavens, so as to make fresh experiments in this so-called art. He said, then, that he had heard from his father that at the time when his mother was about to give birth to him, Firminus, a maidservant of his father's friend was also pregnant — which could not escape her master, who took the most exact care to know the births even of his puppies. And so it happened that, the one for his wife and the other for his servant, with the most careful observation, counting days, hours and even the smaller divisions of hours, both women were delivered at the same instant; so that both men were obliged to allow the same horoscope, down to the smallest points, the one for his son and the other for his newborn slave. For as soon as the women went into labour, each man sent word to the other of what was happening in his house, and had messengers ready to send off the moment there was news of the actual birth — which each had easily arranged for in his own household. And the two sets of messengers, he said, met at such an equal distance from each house that neither man could make out any difference in the position of the stars, or in any other minute detail. And yet Firminus, born to a high position in his parents' house, ran his course along the gilded roads of life, grew rich and rose to honours; while that slave went on serving his masters with his yoke never loosened at all, as Firminus, who knew him, told me.

When I heard these things and believed them, told by a man of such credibility, all my resistance gave way. And first I tried to reclaim Firminus himself from that obsession, by telling him that on inspecting his horoscope I ought, if I were going to predict truly, to have seen in it parents of standing in the neighbourhood, a family noble in its own city, high birth, a good upbringing, a liberal education — whereas if that slave had consulted me about the same horoscope, since it was his as well, I ought again, to tell him equally truly, to see in it the lowest of pedigrees, a slave's condition, and everything else utterly at odds with the first. So if I spoke the truth, I would be saying different things from the same horoscope; and if I said the same thing, I would be speaking falsely. From which it followed quite certainly that whatever is said truly after inspecting a horoscope is said not by art but by chance; and whatever is said falsely is not from ignorance of the art but from a failure of the chance.

With that opening made, I turned the like of it over in my own mind, so that none of those old fools who lived by the trade — whom I was longing to attack and refute with derision — could argue against me that Firminus had told me a lie, or that his father had lied to him. I fixed my thoughts on twins, who for the most part come out of the womb so close together that the small interval between them, whatever force people may claim it has in the nature of things, cannot be noted by human observation or expressed at all in the charts the astrologer has to inspect in order to pronounce truly. And they cannot be pronouncing truly, since looking at the same charts he would have had to predict the same things of Esau and Jacob, and the same things did not happen to them. So either he must be speaking falsely; or, if truly, then looking at the same charts he must not give the same answer. So it is not by art but by chance that he speaks truly. For You, Lord, most righteous ruler of the universe, while neither the man consulting nor the man consulted knows it, bring it about by Your hidden inspiration that the man consulting should hear what, according to the hidden deserts of souls, he ought to hear, out of the unsearchable depth of Your just judgement — to whom let no man say, What is this? Why that? Let him not say it, for he is a man.

By now, my helper, You had freed me from those chains. And I looked for where evil comes from, and found no way through. But You did not let any wavering of my thought carry me away from the faith by which I believed both that You exist and that Your substance is unchangeable, and that You care about men and will judge them, and that in Christ Your Son our Lord, and in the holy Scriptures which the authority of Your Catholic Church pressed on me, You had laid down the way of man's salvation to the life that comes after this death. With these things safe and immovably settled in my mind, I anxiously looked for where evil comes from.

What were the labour pains of my teeming heart, what groans, my God! And Your ears were open there too and I did not know it. And when I searched hard in silence, those silent contritions of my soul were loud cries to Your mercy. You knew what I was going through, and no one else did. For what portion of it was distilled through my tongue into the ears of my closest friends? Did the whole tumult of my soul, which neither time nor speech was enough for, reach them? Yet the whole of it went up to Your hearing, everything I roared out from the groanings of my heart; and my desire was in front of You, and the light of my eyes was not with me. That light was within and I was outside; nor was it confined to a place, while I was intent on things that are in places. And there I found no resting place; they did not receive me in a way that let me say, "This is enough, this is good"; and they did not let me go back to where things might be good enough for me. For I was above these things and below You; and You are my true joy when I am subject to You, and You had made the things You created below me subject to me. And this was the true balance, the middle region of my safety: to remain in Your image, and by serving You, to rule the body. But when I rose up proudly against You and charged at the Lord with my neck under the thick bosses of my shield, even these lower things were set above me and pressed me down, and there was no space anywhere to breathe. They met my eye on all sides in heaps and crowds, and in my thoughts their images presented themselves unasked, whenever I wanted to come back to You, as though they were saying, "Where are you going, unworthy and defiled?" And these things had grown out of my wound, for You humble the proud like a man who has been wounded; and it was through my own swelling that I was cut off from You — my face swollen with pride closed up my eyes.

But You, Lord, remain for ever, and are not angry with us for ever, because You pity our dust and ashes, and it pleased You to reform my deformities. And by inward goads You stirred me up, so that I should be uneasy until You were made plain to my inward sight. So by the secret hand of Your treatment my swelling was reduced, and the troubled and dimmed eyesight of my mind was healed day by day by the stinging ointment of healthy sorrows.

And You, wanting first to show me how You resist the proud but give grace to the humble, and by how great an act of mercy You had marked out for men the way of humility — in that Your Word was made flesh and lived among men — arranged for me, through a man swollen with the most unnatural pride, to get hold of certain books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin. And in them I read, not in these very words but to exactly this effect, backed up with many and various arguments: that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God; all things were made by him, and without him was nothing made that was made; what was made by him is life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not take it in. And that the soul of man, though it bears witness to the light, is not itself that light, but the Word of God, being God, is the true light that lights every man who comes into the world. And that he was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world did not know him. But that he came to his own, and his own did not receive him; and that as many as did receive him, to them he gave the power to become the sons of God, as many as believed in his name — that I did not read there.

Again, I read there that God the Word was born not of flesh nor of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God. But that the Word was made flesh and lived among us, I did not read there. For I found in those books that it was said in many different ways that the Son was in the form of the Father, and did not think it robbery to be equal with God, since by nature he was the same substance. But that he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men and found in fashion as a man, and humbled himself and became obedient to death, and that the death of the cross; and that therefore God raised him from the dead and gave him a name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father — those books do not have. That before all time and above all time Your only-begotten Son remains unchangeable, co-eternal with You, and that souls receive of his fullness so that they may be blessed, and are renewed so as to be wise by sharing in the wisdom that lives in them, is there. But that at the proper time he died for the ungodly, and that You did not spare Your only Son but gave him up for us all, is not there. For You hid these things from the wise and revealed them to little children, so that those who labour and are heavy laden might come to him and he might give them rest, because he is meek and lowly in heart; and the meek he directs in judgement, and the gentle he teaches his ways, seeing our lowliness and our trouble and forgiving all our sins. But those who are lifted up on the lofty walk of some supposedly higher learning do not hear him saying, Learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. Although they knew God, they do not glorify him as God, nor are they thankful, but grow empty in their thinking, and their foolish heart is darkened; claiming to be wise, they became fools.

And so I read there too how they had exchanged the glory of Your incorruptible nature for idols and various shapes, for the likeness of the image of corruptible man, and of birds and animals and creeping things — that Egyptian food, in fact, for which Esau lost his birthright, since Your firstborn people worshipped the head of a four-footed beast instead of You, turning back in their hearts towards Egypt, and bowing Your image, which is their own soul, before the image of a calf that eats hay. These things I found here, and I did not feed on them. For it pleased You, Lord, to take away the reproach of being the lesser from Jacob, so that the elder should serve the younger; and You called the Gentiles into Your inheritance. And I had come to You from among the Gentiles, and I set my mind on the gold that You wanted Your people to take out of Egypt, since it was Yours wherever it was. And You said to the Athenians through Your apostle that in You we live and move and have our being, as one of their own poets had said. And those books certainly came from there. But I did not set my mind on the idols of Egypt, which they served with Your gold, exchanging the truth of God for a lie, and worshipping and serving the creature more than the creator.

And being warned by this to come back to myself, I went into my inmost self with You as my guide. And I was able to, because You had become my helper. And I went in, and with the eye of my soul, such as it was, I saw above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, the unchangeable light. Not this ordinary light that any creature can look at, nor a greater light of the same kind, as though this one's brightness were multiplied many times over and filled all space with its greatness. It was not that kind of light but another, utterly different from these. Nor was it above my soul as oil floats above water, or as the sky is above the earth. It was above me because it made me, and I was below it because I was made by it. He who knows the truth knows what that light is, and he who knows it knows eternity. Love knows it.

Eternal truth, and true love, and beloved eternity! You are my God; I sigh for You day and night. When I first knew You, You lifted me up so that I could see there was something for me to see, and that I was not yet the kind of person who could see it. And You beat back the weakness of my sight, blazing Your beams upon me at full strength, and I trembled with love and dread. And I found myself to be far away from You, in a country unlike Yours, as though I heard this voice of Yours from on high: "I am the food of grown men. Grow, and you shall feed on me. And you shall not change me into yourself as you do the food of your body; you shall be changed into me." And I learned that You correct a man for his wrongdoing, and that You made my soul shrivel like a spider's web. And I said, "Is truth nothing, then, because it is not spread through space, finite or infinite?" And You cried out to me from far off, "Yes it is: I am who I am." And I heard as the heart hears, and I had no room left to doubt; I would sooner have doubted that I was alive than that truth exists, which is clearly seen and understood by the things that are made.

And I looked at the other things below You, and I saw that they neither altogether are nor altogether are not. They are, since they are from You; and they are not, since they are not what You are. For that truly is which stays unchangeably. So it is good for me to hold fast to God; because if I do not remain in him I cannot remain in myself, while he, remaining in himself, makes everything new. And You are the Lord my God, since You have no need of anything good from me.

And it was made plain to me that things which are corrupted are nevertheless good; they could not be corrupted if they were supremely good, and they could not be corrupted if they were not good at all. For corruption does damage, and unless it reduced some goodness it could do no damage. So either corruption does no damage, which is impossible; or, which is quite certain, everything that is corrupted is deprived of some good. But if they were deprived of all good, they would cease to exist. For if they still existed and could no longer be corrupted, they would be better than before, since they would go on incorruptibly. And what could be more monstrous than to claim that things become better by losing all their good? So if they were deprived of all good they would no longer exist. Therefore as long as they exist they are good; therefore whatever exists is good. So that evil whose origin I was looking for is not a substance at all; for if it were a substance it would be good. Either it would be an incorruptible substance, and so a supreme good; or a corruptible substance, which could not be corrupted unless it were good. So I saw, and it was made plain to me, that You made all things good, and that there is no substance at all that You did not make. And because You did not make everything equal, therefore everything exists; because each thing is good, and taken all together they are very good, since our God made everything very good.

And to You nothing whatever is evil — not only to You, but to Your creation as a whole, since there is nothing outside it that could break in and wreck the order You have appointed for it. But among its parts, some things are counted evil because they do not harmonise with certain others; while those very things harmonise with others, and are good, and in themselves are good. And all these things that do not harmonise together do harmonise with the lower part, which we call earth, which has its own cloudy and windy sky to match it. Far be it from me to say, "These things ought not to exist." If I saw nothing but these, I would certainly long for better; but even for these alone I would have to praise You. For that You are to be praised is shown from the earth by dragons and all the deeps, fire and hail, snow and ice and stormy wind fulfilling Your word; mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars; wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds; kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth; young men and girls, old men and children, praising Your name. But when from heaven these praise You — when all Your angels praise You in the heights, our God, and all Your hosts, sun and moon, all the stars and the light, the heaven of heavens and the waters above the heavens, praise Your name — then I no longer longed for anything better, because I could take them all in together. And with a sounder judgement I understood that the things above were better than the things below, but that everything together was better than the things above by themselves.

There is no soundness in people who are displeased by anything in Your creation, any more than there was in me, when a great deal of what You have made displeased me. And because my soul did not dare to be displeased with my God, it preferred not to count as Yours whatever displeased it. That is how it had gone off into the opinion of two substances, and had no rest, and talked nonsense. And coming back from that, it had made itself a God stretched through the infinite measures of all space, and thought this was You, and set it up in its heart, and had again become the temple of its own idol, which You detest. But after You had soothed my head without my knowing it, and closed my eyes so that they should not look at emptiness, I let go a little of my old self, and my madness was lulled to sleep; and I woke up in You, and saw You infinite, but in a different way — and this seeing did not come from the flesh.

And I looked back at other things, and I saw that they owed their being to You, and that they were all bounded in You, but in a different way: not as being in a space, but because You hold all things in Your hand, in Your truth. And all things are true so far as they exist, and there is no falsehood except when something is thought to be that is not. And I saw that all things harmonise not only with their places but with their times. And that You, who alone are eternal, did not begin to work after countless stretches of time had gone by; because all stretches of time, both the ones that have passed and the ones still to come, neither go nor come except through You, who work and remain.

And I noticed, and found nothing strange in it, that bread which is pleasant to a healthy mouth is disgusting to a sick one; and that light which delights sound eyes is offensive to sore ones. Your righteousness displeases the wicked, and so much the more do the viper and the reptiles, which You created good and fitted to the lower parts of Your creation — parts which the very wicked also fit into, the more so the more unlike You they are, while they fit the higher creatures the more they grow like You. And I asked what wickedness is, and found it to be no substance but a perversion of the will, turned aside from You, God, the highest, towards these lower things, throwing away its own insides and swelling up on the outside.

And I was amazed that I now loved You, and not a phantom in Your place. And yet I did not press on to enjoy my God; I was carried up to You by Your beauty and soon carried back down from You by my own weight, sinking with grief into these lower things. That weight was the habit of the flesh. And yet a memory of You stayed with me, and I did not doubt at all that there was someone for me to hold fast to, only that I was not yet the sort of person who could hold fast to You — because the body that is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly tent weighs down the mind that has many things to think about. And I was quite certain that Your invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen and understood by the things that are made, even Your eternal power and divinity.

For I examined why it was that I admired the beauty of bodies, in the sky or on the earth, and what helped me to judge soundly about changeable things and pronounce, "This ought to be like this, this ought not." And in examining why I judged as I did, given that I did judge, I had found the unchangeable and true eternity of truth above my changeable mind. So step by step I moved up from bodies to the soul, which perceives through the bodily senses; and from there to the soul's inward faculty, to which the bodily senses report external things, and which is as far as the faculties of animals reach; and from there again to the reasoning faculty, to which what has been taken in by the bodily senses is referred for judgement. And this faculty, finding that it too was something variable in me, raised itself to its own understanding, and drew my thoughts away from the power of habit, pulling itself out of the crowds of contradictory phantoms, so as to find what that light was in which it was bathed when it cried out without any doubt at all that the unchangeable was to be preferred to the changeable — and from which it also knew the unchangeable, since unless it had known it in some way it would have had no sure ground for preferring it to the changeable. And so with the flash of one trembling glance it arrived at That Which Is. And then I saw Your invisible things understood by the things that are made. But I could not hold my gaze there; and my weakness was struck back, and I was thrown onto my usual habits again, carrying away with me only a loving memory of it, and a longing for something I had, as it were, caught the smell of and was not yet able to eat.

Then I looked for a way of getting strength enough to enjoy You, and did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who is over all, God blessed for ever, calling to me and saying, I am the way, the truth, and the life — and mixing the food I was unable to take in with our flesh. For the Word was made flesh, so that Your wisdom, by which You created everything, might provide milk for our infancy. For I did not hold to my Lord Jesus Christ, I in my humbling to the humble one; nor did I yet know what his weakness was going to teach us. For Your Word, the eternal truth, far above the higher parts of Your creation, raises up to itself those who submit; but in this lower world it built itself a lowly house out of our clay, by which to bring down from themselves those who were to submit, and carry them over to himself — reducing their swelling and nursing their love, so that they should go no further in self-confidence, but rather agree to become weak, seeing at their feet divinity made weak by putting on our coats of skin; and being exhausted, throw themselves down on it, so that it might rise and lift them up.

But I thought otherwise. I conceived of my Lord Christ only as a man of outstanding wisdom, whom nobody could be compared to; especially since, having been marvellously born of a virgin, he seemed accordingly, through God's care for us, to have reached that great eminence of authority as an example of despising temporary things in order to gain immortality. But what mystery there was in "the Word was made flesh" I could not even imagine. All I had learned from what is written about him was that he ate and drank, slept, walked, rejoiced in spirit, was sad, and talked; that flesh did not attach itself to Your Word by itself, but with a human soul and mind. Everybody knows this who knows the unchangeableness of Your Word, which I now knew as far as I could, and did not doubt at all. For to move the limbs of the body by an act of will at one moment and not the next, to be moved by a feeling at one moment and not the next, to deliver wise sayings through human signs at one moment and to keep silent the next, all belong to a soul and mind subject to variation. And if these things were falsely written of him, everything else would be under the same suspicion, and there would be no saving faith for mankind left in those books. So since they were written truly, I acknowledged a complete man in Christ: not only a man's body, nor a body with a sensitive soul but no rational one, but a real man — whom I judged to be preferred above others not only for being a shape of truth, but for a certain great excellence of human nature and a fuller share in wisdom.

But Alypius imagined that Catholics believed God to be so clothed in flesh that besides God and flesh there was no soul at all in Christ, and did not think a human mind was ascribed to him. And because he was firmly convinced that the actions recorded of Christ could only be done by a living and rational creature, he moved the more slowly towards the Christian faith. But when he later understood that this was the error of the Apollinarian heretics, he was glad and fell in with the Catholic faith. I confess it was somewhat later that I learned how, in that saying "the Word was made flesh", the Catholic truth is distinguished from the falsehood of Photinus. For the rejection of heretics makes the doctrines of Your church and sound teaching stand out more clearly. There must also be heresies, so that the approved may be shown up among the weak.

But having read those books of the Platonists, and been taught by them to search for an incorporeal truth, I saw Your invisible things understood by the things that are made; and though I was thrown back, I did grasp what it was that the darkness of my mind was stopping me from contemplating. I was sure that You existed, and were infinite, and yet were not spread through space, finite or infinite; and that You truly are, who are always the same, varying in no part and by no motion; and that everything else is from You, on this one absolutely sure ground, that it exists. Of these things I was sure, and too unsure to enjoy You. I chattered like an expert; and if I had not looked for Your way in Christ our saviour, I should have turned out not an expert but a corpse. For by now I had begun to want to seem wise, being full of my own punishment; and I did not mourn, but rather sneered, puffed up with knowledge. For where was that love that builds on the foundation of humility, which is Christ Jesus? And when were those books going to teach me it? I believe it was for this reason that You wanted me to come across them before I studied Your Scriptures: so that it should be printed on my memory how they affected me, and so that afterwards, when my spirit had been tamed by Your books and my wounds touched by Your healing fingers, I might tell the difference between presumption and confession — between people who saw where they had to go and could not see the road, and the road that leads not merely to seeing the blessed country but to living in it. For if I had been formed first in Your holy Scriptures, and You had grown sweet to me through familiar use of them, and I had then come across those other volumes, they might perhaps have pulled me off the solid ground of true religion; or, if I had held on to the healthy frame of mind I had taken in from Scripture, I might have thought it could have been got from the study of those books alone.

So I seized most eagerly on that venerable writing of Your Spirit, and above all on the apostle Paul. And with that, the difficulties vanished in which he had once seemed to me to contradict himself, and his argument to disagree with the evidence of the Law and the Prophets. The face of that pure word appeared to me as one and the same, and I learned to rejoice with trembling. So I began; and whatever truth I had read in those other books, I found here amid the praise of Your grace — so that a man who sees may not boast as though he had not received, not only what he sees but the fact that he sees it, for what does he have that he has not received? — and so that he may not only be advised to look at You, who are always the same, but healed so as to hold You; and so that a man who cannot see into the distance may still walk the road by which he can arrive and see and hold. For though a man delights in the law of God according to the inner man, what is he to do about that other law in his limbs, which wars against the law of his mind and takes him prisoner under the law of sin that is in his limbs? For You are righteous, Lord; but we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly, and Your hand has grown heavy on us, and we are justly handed over to that ancient sinner, the king of death, because he persuaded our will to be like his own will, by which he did not stay in Your truth.

What is a wretched man to do? Who shall free him from the body of this death, but only Your grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord, whom You have begotten co-eternal with Yourself and formed at the beginning of Your ways; in whom the prince of this world found nothing worth death, and yet killed him, so that the record of debt that stood against us was wiped out? None of this is in those books. Those pages do not present the picture of this devotion, the tears of confession, Your sacrifice, a troubled spirit, a broken and contrite heart, the salvation of the people, the bridal city, the pledge of the Holy Spirit, the cup of our redemption. Nobody there sings, Shall not my soul be subject to God? For from him comes my salvation; he is my God and my salvation, my defender, and I shall not be shaken again. Nobody there hears him calling, Come to me, all you who labour. They are too proud to learn from him, because he is meek and lowly in heart; for You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to little children. For it is one thing to see the land of peace from a wooded mountaintop and find no way there, trying uselessly along impassable roads, harassed and ambushed by runaways and deserters under their captain the lion and the dragon; and quite another to keep to the road that leads there, guarded by the army of the heavenly commander, where deserters from the heavenly army do not plunder, since they avoid that road as a torture. These things sank into me wonderfully, when I read that least of Your apostles, and had considered Your works, and trembled greatly.

Book Eight: The Garden at Milan

My God, let me remember with thanksgiving, and confess to You, Your mercies to me. Let my bones be soaked with Your love, and let them say to You: who is like You, Lord? You have broken my chains apart; I will offer You the sacrifice of thanksgiving. And how You broke them I shall now tell; and everyone who worships You, when they hear this, will say, "Blessed be the Lord, in heaven and on earth; great and wonderful is his name."

Your words had stuck fast in my heart, and I was fenced in on all sides by You. Of Your eternal life I was now certain, though I saw it in a riddle and as through a glass. I had stopped doubting that there is an incorruptible substance from which every other substance comes; and I no longer wanted to be more certain about You, but steadier in You. But as for my life in this world, everything was wavering, and my heart had to be purged of the old leaven. The Way, the saviour himself, pleased me well enough, but I still shrank from going through its narrowness. And You put it into my mind, and it seemed a good idea to me, to go to Simplicianus, who struck me as a good servant of Yours, and in whom Your grace shone. I had also heard that from his earliest youth he had lived entirely devoted to You. By now he was well on in years, and after so long a life spent following Your ways so eagerly, he seemed to me likely to have gathered a great deal of experience — and so he had. I wanted him to draw on that store and tell me, once I had laid out my anxieties in front of him, which was the best road for a man in my condition to walk in Your paths.

For I could see the church was full, and one man went this way and another that. And I was unhappy that I was leading a worldly life. Now that my old desires no longer inflamed me with hopes of honour and profit, it was a very heavy burden to carry so heavy a slavery. Compared with Your sweetness and the beauty of Your house, which I loved, those things gave me no more pleasure. But I was still held captive by the love of a woman; and the apostle did not forbid me to marry, although he advised something better, chiefly wishing that all men were as he was himself. But being weak, I chose the more indulgent place; and because of that one thing alone, I was tossed about in everything else, faint and worn out with withering cares, since in other matters I was forced against my will to conform to a married life which I was given over to and enslaved by. I had heard from the mouth of the truth that there are some eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake; but, he says, let the man who can take it, take it. Certainly all men are empty who are ignorant of God, and could not from the good things that are seen find out the one who is good. But I was no longer in that emptiness; I had got past it, and by the shared testimony of all Your creatures I had found You, our creator, and Your Word, God with You, and one God together with You, by whom You created everything. There is yet another kind of irreligion: knowing God and not glorifying him as God, and not being thankful. Into that I had fallen too, but Your right hand held me up and took me out of it, and You set me where I might recover. For You have said to man: reverence for the Lord — that is wisdom. And, Do not want to seem wise, because those who claimed to be wise became fools. But I had now found the fine pearl which I should have sold everything to buy, and I hesitated.

So I went to Simplicianus, who had been father to Ambrose, now a bishop, in receiving Your grace, and whom Ambrose truly loved as a father. To him I described the maze of my wanderings. But when I mentioned that I had read certain books of the Platonists, which Victorinus, once professor of rhetoric at Rome and, as I had heard, dead a Christian, had translated into Latin, he said how glad he was that I had not come across the writings of other philosophers, which are full of fallacies and deceptions, after the elements of this world, whereas the Platonists led in many ways towards belief in God and his Word. Then, to urge me towards the humility of Christ, hidden from the wise and revealed to little ones, he spoke of Victorinus himself, whom he had known very intimately at Rome; and about him he told me a story I shall not keep back, since it contains great praise of Your grace, to be confessed to You.

Here was an old man, deeply learned and skilled in the liberal arts, who had read and weighed so many works of the philosophers; the teacher of so many noble senators, who as a monument of his excellent service had both deserved and been given a statue in the Roman forum, which men of this world reckon a high honour. Up to that age he was a worshipper of idols and a sharer in the sacrilegious rites that almost all the nobility of Rome were devoted to, and he had inspired the people with a love of

	Anubis, the barking god, and all
	the monster gods of every kind, who fought
	against Neptune, Venus and Minerva:

gods Rome had once conquered and now worshipped, all of which the aged Victorinus had defended for so many years with thundering eloquence. And now he did not blush to be the child of Your Christ and a newborn baby at Your font, bending his neck under the yoke of humility and submitting his forehead to the disgrace of the cross.

Lord, Lord, who have bent the heavens and come down, and touched the mountains and made them smoke, by what means did You get Yourself into that man's heart? He used to read the holy Scripture, Simplicianus said, and studied and searched all the Christian writings most carefully, and would say to Simplicianus — not publicly, but privately and as a friend — "You should know that I am already a Christian." To which he answered, "I shall not believe it, and I shall not count you among the Christians, until I see you in the church of Christ." And the other would say, teasing, "Is it the walls, then, that make Christians?" He often said he was already a Christian, and Simplicianus as often gave the same answer, and the joke about the walls was as often repeated. For he was afraid of offending his friends, proud demon-worshippers, and he supposed the weight of their enmity would fall on him from the height of their Babylonian dignity, as from the cedars of Lebanon which the Lord had not yet brought down. But after he had gathered firmness by reading and hard thought, and had come to be afraid of being denied by Christ before the holy angels if he was now afraid to confess him before men — and thought himself guilty of a serious offence in being ashamed of the sacraments of the humility of Your Word, while not being ashamed of the sacrilegious rites of those proud demons, whose pride he had imitated and whose rites he had taken up — he became bold-faced against emptiness and shamefaced before the truth, and said suddenly and unexpectedly to Simplicianus, as Simplicianus himself told me: "Let us go to the church; I want to be made a Christian." And he, unable to contain himself for joy, went with him. And having been admitted to the first sacrament and become a catechumen, not long afterwards he gave in his name to be born again by baptism — Rome astonished, the church rejoicing. The proud saw it and were furious; they ground their teeth and melted away. But the Lord God was Your servant's hope, and he paid no attention to empty things and lying madness.

And at last, when the hour came for him to make his profession of faith — which at Rome those about to come to Your grace deliver from a raised place, in front of all the faithful, in a set form of words learned by heart — the presbyters, he said, offered Victorinus the chance to make his profession more privately, as was done for those likely to be alarmed by shyness. But he chose to profess his salvation in the presence of the holy crowd. "For it was not salvation that he had taught in his rhetoric, and he had professed that publicly. How much less, then, should he be afraid of Your gentle flock when pronouncing Your word, when he had not been afraid of a mad crowd while delivering his own?" So when he went up to make his profession, everybody who knew him whispered his name to his neighbour with a note of congratulation. And who there did not know him? A low murmur ran through all the mouths of the rejoicing crowd: Victorinus! Victorinus! There was a sudden burst of delight that they saw him, and a sudden hush so that they could hear him. He pronounced the true faith with an admirable boldness, and everyone wanted to draw him into their very heart; and by their love and joy they did draw him there, for those were the hands they drew him with.

Good God, what is it that happens in a man, that he should rejoice more over the salvation of a soul that had been despaired of, and freed from greater danger, than if there had always been hope for it or the danger had been less? For You too, merciful Father, rejoice more over one man who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance. And we hear with great gladness, every time we hear it, with what joy the sheep that had strayed is brought back on the shepherd's shoulders, and the coin is put back in Your treasury with the neighbours celebrating alongside the woman who found it. And the joy of the solemn service of Your house forces tears out of us, when it is read in Your house about Your younger son, that he was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found. For You rejoice in us, and in Your holy angels, holy through holy love. For You are always the same; and everything that does not stay the same and does not last for ever, You know for ever in the same way.

What then happens in the soul, when it is more delighted at finding or recovering the things it loves than if it had always had them? Other things testify to this too, and everything is full of witnesses crying out, "That is how it is." The victorious general celebrates his triumph — and he would not have conquered if he had not fought, and the more danger there was in the battle the more joy there is in the triumph. The storm throws the sailors about and threatens shipwreck; they all go pale at the approach of death; then the sky and the sea grow calm, and they are as overjoyed as they had been terrified. A friend is ill, and his pulse is alarming; everyone who wants him to recover is sick in mind along with him. He gets better, and though he cannot yet walk with his old strength, there is a joy that was not there before, when he walked about sound and strong. Even the pleasures of human life are things people get at by difficulties — not only difficulties that fall on us unlooked for and against our will, but trouble we deliberately choose and go looking for. Eating and drinking give no pleasure unless the pinch of hunger and thirst comes first. Heavy drinkers eat salty things to work up an uncomfortable heat, which the drink then quenches, and that gives pleasure. And it is the custom that a girl who is engaged should not be handed over at once, in case a husband should hold cheap a woman he had not sighed after as a fiancée.

This law holds in foul and cursed joy; it holds in permitted and lawful joy; it holds in the very purest perfection of friendship; it holds in the man who was dead and lived again, was lost and was found. Everywhere the greater joy is ushered in by the greater pain. What does this mean, Lord my God, when You are everlastingly a joy to Yourself, and some things around You rejoice in You for ever? What does it mean that this portion of things ebbs and flows like this, in turn displeased and reconciled? Is this their allotted measure? Is this all You have assigned them, when from the highest heavens to the lowest earth, from the beginning of the world to the end of the ages, from the angel to the worm, from the first motion to the last, You set each thing in its place and bring each about in its season, everything good after its kind? How high You are in the highest and how deep in the deepest! And You never leave, and we can scarcely get back to You.

Get up, Lord, and act; stir us up and call us back; kindle us and draw us; set us on fire, grow sweet to us; let us love now, let us run. Do not many people come back to You out of a deeper hell of blindness than Victorinus, and come near and are lit up, receiving that light — and those who receive it receive from You the power to become Your sons? But if they are less known to everybody, then even the people who know them rejoice less for them. For when many rejoice together, each of them also has a more abundant joy, because they set each other alight. And also because people known to many have more influence towards salvation, and lead the way for many to follow. And so those who went before them rejoice greatly in them too, because they are not rejoicing in them alone. Far be it that in Your tent the rich should be preferred to the poor, or the noble to the low-born; seeing that You have rather chosen the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and the low things of this world and the things despised You have chosen, and the things that are not, so that You might bring to nothing the things that are. And yet even that least of Your apostles, by whose tongue You sounded out these words, when through his campaign Paulus the proconsul had his pride conquered and was made to pass under the easy yoke of Your Christ, and became a subject of the great king — even he chose to be called Paul instead of his former name Saul, as evidence of so great a victory. For the enemy is more defeated in a man he has more hold over, and through whom he has hold of more people. And he has more hold over the proud, through their high birth, and through them of more people, through their authority. So the more the heart of Victorinus was valued, which the devil had held as an impregnable possession, and the tongue of Victorinus, that mighty and sharp weapon with which he had killed many, the more abundantly ought Your sons to rejoice — because our king has bound the strong man, and they saw his vessels taken from him and cleaned and made fit for Your honour, and become useful to the Lord for every good work.

But when that man of Yours, Simplicianus, told me this about Victorinus, I was on fire to imitate him — which was exactly why he had told it to me. And when he added how in the days of the emperor Julian a law was made forbidding Christians to teach the liberal arts or oratory, and how Victorinus obeyed that law and chose to give up the school of words rather than Your Word, by which You make the tongues of the dumb eloquent, he seemed to me not so much resolute as fortunate, in having found a chance to wait on You alone. And that was what I was sighing for — tied up as I was, not with somebody else's irons but by my own iron will. My will was held by the enemy, and out of it he had made a chain and bound me with it. For out of a twisted will came lust; and lust served became habit; and habit not resisted became necessity. By these links, joined together as it were, which is why I called it a chain, a hard slavery held me fast. But the new will that had begun to be in me, to serve You freely and to want to enjoy You, God, the only reliable pleasure, was not yet able to overcome my old wilfulness, which age had made strong. So my two wills, one new and one old, one of the flesh and one of the spirit, struggled inside me, and by their quarrelling they tore my soul apart.

So I understood from my own experience what I had read: how the flesh craves against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. I was on both sides myself; but I was more myself in the part I approved of than in the part I disapproved of. For in the second part it was now mostly not me, since in much of it I was suffering against my will rather than acting willingly. And yet it was through me that habit had got this power of making war on me, because I had come willingly where I did not want to be. And who has any right to complain, if a just punishment follows the sinner? I no longer had my old excuse — that the reason I still hesitated to rise above the world and serve You was that the truth was not fully established for me — because now it was. But I was still tied to the service of the earth and refused to fight under Your flag; and I was as afraid of being freed of all my encumbrances as I ought to have been of being encumbered with them.

So I was held down pleasantly by the baggage of this present world, as a man is by sleep; and the thoughts I turned over about You were like the efforts of somebody trying to wake, who is overcome by a heavy drowsiness and sinks back into it. Nobody wants to sleep for ever, and in everybody's sober judgement being awake is better; and yet a man who feels a heavy lethargy in all his limbs usually puts off shaking off sleep, and, though half annoyed with himself, gives in to it with pleasure even after it is time to get up. In the same way I was sure it would be much better to give myself up to Your love than to give myself over to my own appetite; but although the first course satisfied me and had the better of the argument, the second pleased me and had the better of me. And I had nothing to answer when You called to me, Wake up, sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light. When You showed me on every side that what You said was true, I was convicted by the truth and had nothing at all to answer with except those dull, drowsy words: "In a minute." "Soon." "Just leave me a little longer." But "soon, soon" never came to now, and my "little longer" went on a long time. It was no use my delighting in Your law according to the inner man, when another law in my limbs fought against the law of my mind and took me prisoner under the law of sin that was in my limbs. For the law of sin is the violence of habit, by which the mind is dragged and held even against its will — and deservedly, since it fell into the habit willingly. So who was to rescue me, wretched as I was, from the body of this death, but Your grace alone, through Jesus Christ our Lord?

And how You rescued me from the chains of desire, which held me most tightly to the craving of the flesh, and from the drudgery of worldly business, I shall now tell, and confess to Your name, Lord, my helper and my redeemer. In the middle of growing anxiety I was going about my usual work and sighing to You every day. I went to Your church whenever I was free from the business under whose burden I groaned. Alypius was with me, released after his third term from his legal work and waiting for someone to sell his advice to, as I sold the skill of speaking, if teaching can impart it. Nebridius had by now, out of consideration for our friendship, agreed to teach under Verecundus, a citizen and grammarian of Milan and a very close friend of us all, who badly wanted, and claimed by the rights of friendship, the faithful help he greatly needed from our circle. Nebridius was not drawn to this by any desire for advantage, since he could have made much more of his learning if he had wanted to; but being the kindest and gentlest of friends, he would not fail in a good turn or brush off our request. He handled it very discreetly, though, avoiding becoming known to people who count as great in this world, and avoiding the distraction of mind that goes with it, wanting to keep his mind free and at leisure for as many hours as possible to look for or read or hear something about wisdom.

Then one day, when Nebridius was away — I do not remember why — a man called Ponticianus came to see Alypius and me, a fellow African and a high official at the emperor's court. What he wanted with us I do not know, but we sat down to talk; and it happened that on a table in front of us, meant for some game, he noticed a book, took it up, opened it, and, contrary to what he expected, found it was the apostle Paul. He had thought it would be one of the books I was wearing myself out teaching. At that he smiled and looked at me, and said how glad and how surprised he was to have suddenly come across this book, and this book alone, in front of me. For he was a Christian, and baptised, and often bowed himself before You, our God, in church, in frequent and sustained prayer. When I told him that I was taking great pains over those Scriptures, a conversation started, prompted by something he said, about Antony the Egyptian monk, whose name was held in high honour among Your servants, though it was unknown to us until that hour. When he discovered this, he dwelt on the subject the longer, informing us and marvelling at our ignorance of so great a man. And we sat astonished, hearing Your wonderful works attested so fully, in times so recent, almost our own, and done in the true faith and the Catholic Church. We were all amazed: we that they were so great, and he that they had never reached us.

From there his talk turned to the communities in the monasteries, and their holy ways, a sweet-smelling incense to You, and the fruitful deserts of the wilderness, which we knew nothing about. And there was a monastery at Milan, full of good brothers, outside the city walls, under the fostering care of Ambrose — and we did not know about it. He went on talking and we listened in intent silence. And he told us how one afternoon at Trier, when the emperor was taken up with the games, he and three companions went out for a walk in some gardens near the city walls; and as they happened to walk in pairs, one went aside with him and the other two wandered off by themselves. And these two, in their wandering, came on a small house lived in by certain servants of Yours, poor in spirit, of whom is the kingdom of heaven; and there they found a little book containing the life of Antony. One of them began to read it, and to admire it, and to catch fire from it; and as he read, to think about taking up such a life himself, and giving up his official career to serve You. And these two were of the kind they call agents for public affairs. Then suddenly, filled with a holy love and a sober shame, angry with himself, he turned his eyes on his friend and said: "Tell me, I beg you, what are we hoping to get by all this labour of ours? What are we aiming at? What are we serving for? Can our hopes at court rise higher than being the emperor's favourites? And what in that is not fragile and full of dangers? And through how many dangers do we arrive at a greater danger? And when do we get there? Whereas a friend of God — if I want it, I become one right now." So he spoke; and, in labour with the birth of a new life, he turned his eyes back to the book and read on, and was changed inside, where You could see; and his mind was stripped of the world, as soon appeared. For as he read, and the waves of his heart rolled up and down, he raged at himself a while, then saw clearly and decided on a better course; and being Yours by now, he said to his friend, "I have broken free of those hopes of ours and made up my mind to serve God; and I am beginning on it now, this hour, in this place. If you do not want to imitate me, do not stand in my way." The other answered that he would stay with him, to share so glorious a reward and so glorious a service. And so both of them, being Yours now, were building the tower at the necessary cost: giving up everything they had and following You.

Then Ponticianus and the other man, who had been walking in another part of the garden, came looking for them and found them there, and reminded them that they should get back, since the day was nearly over. But the two told them their decision and their intention, and how that resolve had begun and settled in them, and begged them, if they would not join, at least not to make trouble about it. And the others, though not changed at all from what they had been, still wept for themselves, so he said, and congratulated them piously, and commended themselves to their prayers; and so, with their hearts still lingering on the earth, they went off to the palace. But the other two, fixing their hearts on heaven, stayed in that little house. And both of them were engaged to be married; and when their fiancées heard about it, they too dedicated their virginity to God.

That was Ponticianus' story. But while he was speaking, Lord, You were turning me round to face myself, taking me out from behind my own back where I had put myself so as not to look at myself, and setting me in front of my own face, so that I might see how foul I was, how crooked and dirty, spotted and ulcerated. And I looked, and I was horrified — and there was nowhere I could run to away from myself. And if I tried to turn my eyes away from me, he went on with his story, and You set me over against myself again and pushed me in front of my own eyes, so that I might find out my wickedness and hate it. I had known it, but I had pretended not to see it, turned a blind eye and forgotten it.

But now, the more warmly I loved the men whose healthy resolve I was hearing about, who had handed themselves over to You entirely to be cured, the more I loathed myself in comparison with them. Some twelve years of my life had gone by since my nineteenth, when on reading Cicero's Hortensius I had been stirred to a serious love of wisdom; and still I was putting off giving up merely earthly happiness and devoting myself to the search for that other thing, when not only the finding of it but the very search for it was to be preferred to the treasures and kingdoms of this world even when already found, and to bodily pleasures even when spread around me at my command. But I, wretched, most wretched, at the very beginning of my adolescence had begged You for chastity and said, "Give me chastity and self-control, but not yet." For I was afraid You would hear me too soon and cure me too soon of the disease of lust, which I wanted satisfied rather than put out. And I had wandered down crooked roads into a sacrilegious superstition, not that I was sure of it, but I preferred it to the alternatives, which I did not investigate religiously but attacked maliciously.

And I had thought that the reason I put off from day to day rejecting the hopes of this world and following You alone was that nothing certain appeared to steer my course by. And now the day had come when I was to be laid bare to myself, and my conscience was to reproach me. "Where are you now, my tongue? You said that while the truth was uncertain you did not care to throw off the baggage of empty things. Now it is certain, and that burden is still weighing you down, while people who have neither worn themselves out searching for it nor spent ten years and more thinking about it have had their shoulders lightened and been given wings to fly away." So I was gnawed at inside and thrown into a horrible confusion of shame, while Ponticianus talked. And when he had brought his story and his business to a close, he went his way, and I went into myself.

What did I not say against myself? With what whips of condemnation did I not lash my soul, to make it follow me as I struggled to go after You! And it drew back; it refused, and did not excuse itself. Every argument was used up and refuted; what was left was a mute shrinking; and it dreaded, as it would dread death, being held back from the flow of that habit it was wasting to death in.

Then, in this great struggle of my inner household, which I had raised so violently against my own soul in the chamber of my heart, troubled in mind and in face, I turned on Alypius. "What is the matter with us?" I burst out. "What is it? What did you hear? The unlearned get up and take heaven by force, and here we are with our learning and no heart, wallowing in flesh and blood! Are we ashamed to follow because others have gone ahead — and not ashamed of not even following?" Something like that I said, and my fever of mind tore me away from him, while he stared at me in astonishment and said nothing. For it was not my usual tone; and my forehead, my cheeks, my eyes, my colour, my voice said more of what was in my mind than the words I spoke.

There was a small garden belonging to our lodging, which we had the use of, as we had of the whole house, since the owner, our landlord, was not living there. The tumult in my chest had driven me out there, where nobody could interrupt the burning quarrel I had started with myself, until it should come out as You knew and I did not. I was only healthily out of my mind and dying in order to live, knowing what an evil thing I was and not knowing what good thing I was shortly to become. So I went off into the garden and Alypius came after me. His being there did not disturb my privacy; and how could he have left me in such a state? We sat down as far from the house as we could. I was troubled in spirit, and violently indignant that I was not entering into Your will and Your covenant, my God, which every bone in my body cried out to me to enter, and praised to the skies. And we do not get there by ships or carriages or on foot — not even as far as I had come from the house to the place where we were sitting. For to go there, and to arrive there, was nothing but to will to go, but to will it strongly and completely; not to twist and turn a crippled, half-divided will this way and that, with one part sinking as another rose.

Lastly, in the very fever of my hesitation, I made with my body a lot of the movements that people sometimes want to make and cannot, because they lack the limbs, or the limbs are tied, or weakened by illness, or hindered somehow. If I tore my hair, or hit my forehead, or locked my fingers together round my knee, I did it because I willed it. But I might have willed it and not done it, if my limbs had not had the power of movement to obey. So there were many things I did where willing was not by itself being able; and I did not do the thing I wanted incomparably more to do, and which I would be able to do the moment I willed it — because the moment I willed it, I would be willing it wholly. For in that case the ability was the same thing as the will, and to will was to do. And yet it was not done; and my body obeyed the feeblest willing of my soul more readily, moving its limbs at a nod, than my soul obeyed itself in carrying out, by the will alone, this one momentous act of will.

Where does this monstrous thing come from, and why? Let Your mercy shine out so that I can ask, in case the hidden punishments of men and the darkest agonies of the sons of Adam may perhaps answer me. Where does this monstrous thing come from, and why? The mind commands the body and is obeyed instantly; the mind commands itself and meets resistance. The mind orders the hand to move, and there is such readiness that the order is barely distinguishable from the obedience — and yet the mind is mind and the hand is body. The mind orders the mind, its own self, to will, and it does not do it. Where does this monstrous thing come from, and why? It orders itself, I say, to will, and would not give the order unless it willed; and what it orders is not done. But it does not will completely, and so it does not order completely. It orders only so far as it wills; and the thing ordered is not done exactly so far as it does not will. For the will orders that there be a will — not another will, but itself. But it does not order completely, and so what it orders does not happen. If the will were complete it would not even order itself to be, because it would be already. So it is not monstrous to will partly and refuse partly; it is a disease of the mind, which does not stand up wholly, being lifted by truth and weighed down by habit. And that is why there are two wills: because one of them is not complete, and what the one lacks the other has.

Let them perish from Your presence, God, as empty talkers and seducers of the soul do perish — the people who notice that in deliberating there are two wills, and then claim there are two minds in us of two kinds, one good and one evil. They are the evil ones themselves while they hold these evil views; and they will become good when they hold the truth and agree with the truth, so that Your apostle can say to them: you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. But they want to be light not in the Lord but in themselves, imagining the nature of the soul to be what God is; and so they are made a thicker darkness by a dreadful arrogance, since they have gone further back from You, the true light that lights every man who comes into the world. Watch what you say, and blush for it; come near to him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be ashamed. When I was deliberating about serving the Lord my God now, as I had long meant to, it was I who willed and I who refused: I, myself. I neither willed completely nor refused completely. So I was at war with myself and torn apart by myself. And this tearing happened to me against my will, and pointed not to the presence of another mind but to the punishment of my own. So it was no longer I who was doing it, but the sin that lived in me: the punishment of a sin committed more freely, in that I was a son of Adam.

For if there are as many contrary natures as there are conflicting wills, there will be not two but many. If a man is deliberating whether to go to their meeting-house or to the theatre, these Manichees cry out, "There you are: two natures. One good, pulling this way; one bad, pulling back that way." Where else, they say, could this hesitation between conflicting wills come from? But I say both are bad: the one that pulls towards them just as much as the one that pulls back to the theatre. They do not believe the will that pulls towards them is anything but good. Then what if one of us were deliberating, and in the struggle of his two wills were torn between going to the theatre and going to our church? Would these Manichees not be at a loss for an answer? For either they must admit, which they would hate to do, that the will leading to our church is good, just as theirs is who have received their mysteries and are held by them; or they must suppose two evil natures and two evil souls in conflict in one man, and then what they say will not be true, that one is good and the other bad; or they must be converted to the truth and stop denying that when a man deliberates, one soul wavers between contrary wills.

So let them stop saying, when they see two conflicting wills in one man, that the conflict is between two contrary souls of two contrary substances from two contrary principles, one good and one bad. For You, the true God, disprove and check and convict them. Take a case where both wills are bad: a man deliberating whether to kill a man with poison or with a sword; whether to seize this piece of somebody else's property or that one, when he cannot have both; whether to buy pleasure with extravagance or keep his money out of greed; whether to go to the races or the theatre, if both are on the same day; or, thirdly, to burgle somebody's house, if he gets the chance; or, fourthly, to commit adultery, if he has the opportunity at the same time — all these coinciding at the same moment, and all equally wanted, and none of them possible at once. They tear the mind between four, or, given the vast variety of things people want, even more conflicting wills; and yet the Manichees do not claim there are that many different substances. And the same holds for good wills. For I ask them: is it good to take pleasure in reading the apostle? Is it good to take pleasure in a sober psalm? Is it good to discuss the gospel? They will answer, to each, that it is good. What then if all of them give equal pleasure, and all at the same moment? Do these different wills not pull the mind about while it deliberates which to choose? And yet they are all good, and are at odds until one is chosen, and the whole will, which was divided among many, is carried towards it. So too when eternity delights us from above, and the pleasure of a temporary good holds us down below, it is one and the same soul that does not will this or that with a whole will; and that is why it is torn apart with painful perplexities, setting one thing first because of the truth, and not setting the other aside because of habit.

So I was sick in the soul and tormented, accusing myself far more bitterly than usual, rolling and turning in my chain until it should be wholly broken — the chain that now held me only just, but did still hold me. And You, Lord, pressed on me in my inward parts with a severe mercy, redoubling the lashes of fear and shame, in case I should give way again and, not bursting that one slight remaining tie, it should recover its strength and bind me tighter. For I said to myself, "Let it be done now, let it be done now." And as I spoke I very nearly did it. I all but did it, and did not do it; and yet I did not sink back to where I had been, but held my ground close by and caught my breath. And I tried again, and fell a little less short, and a little less, and all but touched it and took hold of it — and still did not reach it, or touch it, or take hold of it, hesitating to die to death and live to life. The worse that I was used to had more power over me than the better that I was not used to; and the very moment when I was to become other than I was, the nearer it came to me the greater the horror it struck into me. And it did not strike me back or turn me away; it held me in suspense.

The sheerest trifles of trifles and vanities of vanities, my old mistresses, still held me. They tugged at the garment of my flesh and whispered softly, "Are you throwing us off? And from this moment shall we never be with you again? And from this moment shall this and that be forbidden you for ever?" And what was it they suggested in what I have called "this and that" — what did they suggest, my God? Let Your mercy turn it away from the soul of Your servant. What filth they suggested, what disgrace! And by now I heard them much less than half, since they were not showing themselves openly and contradicting me but muttering behind my back, as it were, and secretly plucking at me as I went away, to make me look round at them. And yet they did hold me up, so that I hesitated to tear myself free of them and shake them off and leap over to where I was being called — while a violent habit kept saying to me, "Do you imagine you can live without them?"

But by now it spoke very faintly. For on the side I had set my face towards, and trembled to go, there appeared to me the chaste dignity of Self-Control: serene, and cheerful without being loose, honestly enticing me to come and not to hesitate, and stretching out to receive and embrace me, her holy hands full of crowds of good examples. There were so many young men and girls there, a multitude of the young and of every age, dignified widows and old women who had never married; and Self-Control herself in all of them, not barren but a fruitful mother of children of joy, by You her husband, Lord. And she smiled at me with a persuasive mockery, as if to say, "Can you not do what these young men and these girls can do? Or can any of them do it in themselves, and not rather in the Lord their God? The Lord their God gave me to them. Why are you standing on yourself, and so not standing at all? Throw yourself on him; do not be afraid, he will not pull back and let you fall. Throw yourself on him without fear; he will catch you and heal you." And I blushed deeply, because I could still hear the muttering of those trifles and was hanging in suspense. And again she seemed to say: "Stop your ears against those unclean parts of you on the earth, so that they may be put to death. They tell you about delights, but not as the law of the Lord your God does."

This argument in my heart was self against self, and nothing else. And Alypius, sitting close beside me, silently waited to see how my unusual state of feeling would come out.

But when deep reflection had drawn up all my misery from the secret bottom of my soul and heaped it in the sight of my heart, a huge storm rose, bringing a huge downpour of tears. And so that I might let the whole of it out with the noises it naturally makes, I got up and left Alypius; solitude struck me as better suited to the business of weeping. So I went far enough off that even his presence would not be a weight on me. That was the state I was in, and he noticed something of it; for I suppose I had said something in which the sound of my voice was choked with tears, and had got up on that. So he stayed where we had been sitting, utterly astonished. I threw myself down somehow under a fig tree and gave my tears free rein; and the floods poured out of my eyes, an acceptable sacrifice to You. And I said a great deal to You — not in these words, but to this effect: And You, Lord, how long? How long, Lord? Will You be angry for ever? Do not remember our old wrongdoings — for I felt I was still held by them. And I sent up these sorrowful words: How long, how long? Tomorrow and tomorrow? Why not now? Why is there not an end of my uncleanness this very hour?

I was saying this and weeping in the bitterest contrition of my heart, when suddenly I heard a voice from a neighbouring house, a boy's or a girl's, I do not know which, chanting and repeating over and over: "Take up and read; take up and read." At once my expression changed, and I began to think as hard as I could whether children ever sing such words in any kind of game; and I could not remember ever hearing anything like it. So I checked the flood of my tears and got up, taking it to be nothing but a command from God to open the book and read the first chapter I found. For I had heard about Antony that he came in during a reading of the gospel and took what was being read as spoken to him: Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me. And by that oracle he was converted to You at once. So I hurried back to where Alypius was sitting, since that was where I had put down the volume of the apostle when I got up. I snatched it, opened it, and read in silence the passage my eyes first fell on: Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in strife and envy; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. I did not want to read any further, and there was no need: for instantly, as the sentence ended, it was as though a light of certainty flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt vanished away.

Then, putting my finger or some other marker in the book, I closed it, and with a calm face told Alypius. And he told me what had been going on in him, which I did not know. He asked to see what I had read. I showed him, and he looked further on than I had read, and I did not know what came next. What came next was, Receive the man who is weak in the faith. He applied it to himself and told me so. And he was strengthened by that message; and by a good resolve entirely in keeping with his character, in which he had always been far better than I was, he joined me without any of the upheaval and delay. From there we went in to my mother and told her; she was overjoyed. We described in order how it had happened; she leapt for joy and triumphed, and blessed You, who are able to do more than we ask or think. For she could see that You had given her more for me than she had been in the habit of begging for with her pitiful and sorrowful groaning. For You converted me to Yourself so completely that I looked for neither a wife nor any hope of this world, standing on that rule of faith where You had shown me to her in a vision so many years before. And You turned her mourning into a joy far richer than she had wanted, and far more precious and pure than she had once asked for in wanting grandchildren of my body.

Book Nine: Baptism, Ostia, and the Death of Monica

Lord, I am Your servant; I am Your servant and the son of Your handmaid. You have broken my chains apart. I will offer You the sacrifice of praise. Let my heart and my tongue praise You, and let all my bones say, Lord, who is like You? Let them say it, and answer me, and say to my soul, I am your salvation. Who am I, and what am I? What evil has there not been, either in my actions, or, if not in my actions, in my words, or, if not in my words, in my will? But You, Lord, are good and merciful, and Your right hand looked into the depth of my death and emptied the pit of corruption out of the bottom of my heart. And this whole gift of Yours was to make me refuse what I willed and will what You willed. But through all those years, out of what low and deep recess was my free will called out in a moment, so that I could put my neck under Your easy yoke and my shoulders under Your light burden, Christ Jesus, my helper and my redeemer? How sweet it suddenly became to go without the sweetness of those toys! What I had dreaded losing was now a joy to let go. For You threw them out of me, true and highest sweetness. You threw them out, and came in Yourself in their place: sweeter than any pleasure, though not to flesh and blood; brighter than any light, and more hidden than any depth; higher than any honour, but not to those who are high in their own opinion. Now my soul was free of the biting cares of canvassing and acquiring, and of wallowing in filth, and of scratching the itch of lust. And I talked to You like an infant learning to speak — to my brightness, my riches, my health, the Lord my God.

And I decided, in Your sight, not to tear my tongue's service noisily away from the market in words, but to withdraw it quietly: so that young men who were not students of Your law or of Your peace, but of lying nonsense and legal skirmishing, should no longer buy weapons for their madness at my mouth. And very conveniently, there were only a few days left before the vintage holidays, and I decided to see them out and then resign in the ordinary way — and having been bought by You, never to go back on sale again. So our plan was known to You, and to men, apart from our own friends, it was not. For we had agreed among ourselves not to let it out to anybody; although, as we climbed up out of the valley of tears singing that song of ascents, You had given us sharp arrows and burning coals against the subtle tongue that appears to be advising us and would thwart us instead, and would eat us up out of love, as it eats its dinner.

You had pierced our hearts with Your love, and we carried Your words fixed in our insides, so to speak; and the examples of Your servants, whom You had turned from black to bright and from dead to living, all piled up together in the storehouse of our thoughts, kindled and burned up our heavy sluggishness so that we should not sink into the pit. They set us on fire so fiercely that all the blasts of subtle tongues from people opposing us could only inflame us further, not put us out. Still, since for the sake of Your name, which You have made holy across the earth, this vow and purpose of ours might well find people to praise it, it seemed like showing off not to wait for the holidays that were now so close, but to quit early from a public profession that everybody could see. Then everyone looking at what I had done, and noticing how near the vintage was that I had wanted to anticipate, would talk about me a great deal, as if I had wanted to look like somebody important. And what good would it have done me for people to speculate and argue about my intentions, and for what was good in us to be spoken of as evil?

There was another thing that had worried me at first. That very summer my lungs had begun to give way under too much literary work, so that I breathed deeply with difficulty and had a pain in my chest showing they were damaged, and I could not manage any full or extended speaking. This had worried me, because it nearly forced me to lay down the burden of teaching out of necessity, or at least to interrupt it if I could be cured and recover. But once the full desire for leisure — so that I might see that You are the Lord — had risen in me and settled there, then, my God, You know, I actually began to be glad that I had this secondary excuse, and a genuine one, that might soften the offence taken by people who, for their sons' sake, wished me never to have the freedom of Your sons. So, full of that gladness, I saw the interval out; it may have been some twenty days, and they were endured like a man. Endured, because the greed that used to carry part of this heavy business had left me, and I was on my own, and would have been overwhelmed if patience had not taken its place. Perhaps some of Your servants, my brothers, will say I sinned in this, in that with my heart wholly set on Your service I allowed myself to sit even one hour in the chair of lies. I shall not argue about it. But have You not, most merciful Lord, pardoned and remitted this sin too, along with my other most horrible and deadly sins, in the holy water?

Verecundus was worn down with worry about this blessedness of ours, because he saw that being held back by ties that bound him tightly, he would be separated from us. He was not yet a Christian himself, though his wife was one of the faithful; and this, more rigidly than any other chain, held him back from the journey we had now begun. He would not, he said, be a Christian on any other terms than the ones he could not manage. Even so, he courteously offered to let us stay at his country house as long as we were there. You will reward him, Lord, in the resurrection of the just, seeing that You have already given him the portion of the righteous. For although, while we were away and he was in Rome, he was seized by bodily illness, and being made a Christian and one of the faithful in the course of it, left this life — even so, You had mercy not only on him but on us, so that we should not be tortured by unbearable grief in remembering our friend's exceptional kindness to us and being unable to count him among Your flock. Thanks be to You, our God: we are Yours. Your promptings and consolations tell us so. Faithful to Your promises, You are now repaying Verecundus for his country house at Cassiciacum, where we rested in You from the fever of the world, with the eternal freshness of Your paradise; because You have forgiven him his sins upon earth, in that rich mountain, the mountain that yields milk, Your own mountain.

He had sorrow at that time; Nebridius had joy. For although he too, not being a Christian yet, had fallen into the pit of that most destructive error and believed the flesh of Your Son to be a phantom, he came out of it and believed as we did — not yet furnished with any of Your church's sacraments, but a most passionate searcher after truth. Not long after our conversion and rebirth by Your baptism, when he too was a faithful member of the Catholic Church and was serving You in perfect chastity and self-control among his own people in Africa, his whole household having been made Christian through him first, You released him from the flesh; and now he lives in Abraham's bosom. Whatever it is that this bosom means, there lives my Nebridius, my sweet friend, and Your son, Lord, adopted from being a freedman: there he lives. What other place could there be for such a soul? There he lives, in the place he used to ask me so many questions about, poor inexperienced man that I was. Now he does not put his ear to my mouth, but his spiritual mouth to Your fountain, and drinks as much wisdom as he can take in, in proportion to his thirst, endlessly happy. And I do not think he is so drunk on it that he forgets me, seeing that You, Lord, whom he drinks, are mindful of us. So that was our state then, comforting Verecundus, who was grieving, as far as friendship allowed, that our conversion had gone the way it did, and urging him to become faithful according to his own condition, that is, of a married man; and waiting for Nebridius to follow us, which he was on the very point of doing, so close was he. And so those days rolled by at last — they seemed long and many, because of the love I had for the untroubled freedom in which I would be able to sing to You from the marrow of my bones: My heart has said to You, I have sought Your face; Your face, Lord, will I seek.

Now the day came when I was actually to be free of my professorship of rhetoric, as in my mind I already was. And it was done. You rescued my tongue, as You had already rescued my heart. And I blessed You, rejoicing, and went off with all my household to the villa. What I did there in writing, which was by now enlisted in Your service — though still panting from the school of pride, as though in a breathing space — my books can testify: both what I debated with others and what I debated with myself alone in Your presence. And what I debated with Nebridius, who was away, my letters testify. And when shall I have time to recount all Your great benefits to us at that time, especially since I am hurrying on to still greater mercies? For my memory calls me back, and it is a pleasure to me, Lord, to confess to You by what inward goads You tamed me, and how You levelled me, lowering the mountains and hills of my high imaginings, straightening my crookedness and smoothing my rough roads. And how You also brought the brother of my heart, Alypius, under the name of Your only-begotten, our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ — a name he would not at first agree to have put in our writings, preferring that they should smell of the lofty cedars of the schools, which the Lord has now brought down, rather than of the wholesome herbs of the church, the antidote against serpents.

In what tones I spoke to You, my God, when I read the Psalms of David, those faithful songs and sounds of devotion which leave no room for a swollen spirit — still a catechumen, and a beginner in Your real love, resting at that villa with Alypius, another catechumen, and my mother staying close by us, in a woman's clothes with a man's faith, with the calm of age, a mother's love, a Christian's devotion. What tones I used to You in those Psalms, and how they set me alight towards You, and made me burn to recite them, if I could, through the whole world, against the pride of the human race! And yet they are sung through the whole world, and nobody can hide from Your heat.

With what violent and bitter sorrow I was angry at the Manichees — and then again pitied them, because they did not know those sacraments, those medicines, and were raging against the antidote that could have cured their raving. How I wished they had been somewhere near me then, without my knowing they were there, and could have watched my face and heard my words when I read the fourth Psalm in that time of rest, and could have seen how that Psalm worked on me: When I called, the God of my righteousness heard me; in trouble You gave me room. Have mercy on me, Lord, and hear my prayer. If only they could hear what I said over those words, without my knowing they heard, in case they thought I was saying it for their benefit! Because in truth I would not have said the same things, or said them the same way, if I had known they could see and hear me; and if I had said them, they would not have taken them the way they came out when I spoke by myself and for myself in front of You, out of the natural feelings of my soul.

I trembled with fear and then caught fire with hope and with delight in Your mercy, Father; and all of it came out through my eyes and my voice, when Your good Spirit turned to us and said, Sons of men, how long will you be slow of heart? Why do you love emptiness and go looking for lies? For I had loved emptiness and gone looking for lies. And You, Lord, had already magnified Your holy one, raising him from the dead and setting him at Your right hand, from where he was to send his promise from on high, the comforter, the Spirit of truth. And he had already sent him, and I did not know it. He had sent him, because he was now magnified, rising again from the dead and going up into heaven. Until then, the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. And the prophet cries out, How long will you be slow of heart? Why do you love emptiness and go looking for lies? Know this: that the Lord has magnified his holy one. He cries out, How long? He cries out, Know this. And I, for all that time, not knowing, loved emptiness and looked for lies. So I heard and trembled, because it was spoken to people like the one I remembered being. In the phantoms I had taken for truths there was emptiness and lying; and I said a great deal aloud, earnestly and forcefully, in the bitterness of my memory. If only the people who still love emptiness and go looking for lies had heard it! Perhaps they would have been troubled and vomited it up, and You would have heard them when they cried out to You; for he died a real death in the flesh for us, who now pleads with You on our behalf.

I read on: Be angry, and do not sin. And how I was moved, my God, having now learned to be angry with myself over the past, so as not to sin in the future! And justly angry, since it was not some other nature belonging to a people of darkness that had sinned for me, as the people say who are not angry with themselves, and store up wrath against the day of wrath and of the revelation of Your just judgement. And my good things were now not outside me, and not looked for with the eyes of the flesh in the sun of this world; for those who want joy from outside soon grow empty and spend themselves on things seen and temporary, and in their starving thoughts they lick at the very shadows. If only they were worn out with their hunger and said, Who will show us good things? And we would say, and they would hear: The light of Your face is stamped on us. For we are not the light that lights every man; we are lit by You, so that having once been darkness we may be light in You. If only they could see the eternal light within, which, having tasted it, I was sorry I could not show them, so long as they kept bringing me their heart in their eyes, roving abroad away from You while they said, Who will show us good things? For there, where I was angry with myself in my own room, where I was inwardly stung, where I had made my sacrifice, killing my old self and beginning the plan of a new life, putting my trust in You — there You had begun to grow sweet to me, and had put gladness in my heart. And I cried out as I read it outwardly, finding it inwardly. And I did not want to be multiplied with worldly goods, wasting time and being wasted by time, when in Your eternal simple being I had other corn and wine and oil.

And with a loud cry of my heart I cried out at the next verse: peace! and the Selfsame! What was he saying — I will lie down and sleep? For who will stop us, when what is written comes to pass, Death is swallowed up in victory? And You are supremely the Selfsame, who do not change; and in You is a rest that forgets all labour, since there is nobody else with You, and we are not to go looking for all those other things that are not what You are. But You, Lord, alone have made me live in hope. I read, and caught fire; and I could not find what to do about those deaf and dead people, of whom I had been one myself — a pestilent creature, a bitter and blind bawler against those writings that are sweetened with the honey of heaven and lit with Your own light. And I was eaten up with zeal against the enemies of this Scripture.

When shall I recall everything that happened in those holidays? And yet I have not forgotten, and I will not pass over, the severity of Your whip and the wonderful speed of Your mercy. You tormented me then with toothache; and when it had reached the point where I could not speak, it came into my heart to ask all the friends who were there to pray to You for me, the God of every kind of health. And I wrote this on wax and gave it to them to read. And the moment we had knelt down in humble devotion, the pain went away. But what pain it had been, and how did it go? I was frightened, my Lord and my God, for I had never experienced anything like it since infancy. And the power of Your nod sank deep into me; and rejoicing in faith I praised Your name. And that faith would not let me be easy about my past sins, which were not yet forgiven me by Your baptism.

When the vintage holiday was over I gave notice to the people of Milan to find their students another master to sell them words, since I had both chosen to serve You and was no longer up to the professorship, with my difficulty in breathing and the pain in my chest. And by letter I told Your bishop, the holy man Ambrose, about my former errors and my present desires, asking his advice on which of Your Scriptures I had best read to become readier and fitter to receive so great a grace. He recommended the prophet Isaiah — I think because Isaiah more than the rest foreshadows the gospel and the calling of the Gentiles. But I did not understand the first passage of it, and imagining the whole book was like that, I put it aside to take up again when I had more practice in our Lord's own words.

Then, when the time came for me to give in my name, we left the country and went back to Milan. Alypius wanted to be born again in You along with me, being already clothed in the humility that suits Your sacraments; and he was a most valiant tamer of the body, to the point of walking barefoot over the frozen ground of Italy, which was an unusual venture. With us we took the boy Adeodatus, born in the flesh of my sin. You had made him excellently. He was not quite fifteen, and in intelligence he was ahead of many serious and learned men. I confess Your gifts to You, Lord my God, creator of everything and abundantly able to reshape our deformities; for I had no part in that boy except the sin. That we brought him up in Your discipline was inspired by You and by nobody else. I confess Your gifts to You. There is a book of ours called The Teacher; it is a dialogue between him and me. You know that everything given there to the person talking with me was his own thinking, in his sixteenth year. I found much else in him, more admirable still. That talent frightened me. And who but You could be the maker of such wonders? You soon took his life from the earth; and I now remember him without anxiety, with nothing to fear for his childhood or his youth or for the whole of him. Him we took with us, our contemporary in grace, to be brought up in Your discipline; and we were baptised, and anxiety about our past life left us. Nor could I get enough, in those days, of the marvellous sweetness of considering the depth of Your plans for the salvation of mankind. How I wept at Your hymns and canticles, cut to the quick by the voices of Your sweet-singing church! The voices flowed into my ears and the truth was distilled into my heart, and the feelings of my devotion overflowed, and the tears ran down, and I was happy in them.

It was not long since the church at Milan had begun to use this kind of consolation and encouragement, with the brothers joining in eagerly with harmony of voice and heart. For it had been a year, or not much more, since Justina, mother of the boy emperor Valentinian, had persecuted Your servant Ambrose in favour of her heresy, which the Arians had seduced her into. The devout people kept watch in the church, ready to die with their bishop, Your servant. There my mother, Your handmaid, taking a leading part in those anxieties and vigils, lived for prayer. We ourselves, not yet warmed by the heat of Your Spirit, were still stirred by the sight of the astonished and disturbed city. It was then that it was first laid down that hymns and psalms should be sung after the manner of the Eastern churches, so that the people should not grow faint through the tedium of their grief; and from that day to this the custom has been kept, with many, indeed almost all, of Your congregations in other parts of the world following it.

Then in a vision You revealed to that bishop of Yours where the bodies of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius lay hidden, whom You had kept uncorrupted in Your secret store for so many years, so that You might bring them out at the right moment to check the fury of a woman, though she was an empress. For when they were found and dug up and carried with the proper honour to the Ambrosian basilica, not only were people troubled by unclean spirits cured, with the devils confessing themselves, but a certain man who had been blind for many years, a citizen well known in the town, asked what all the confused rejoicing was about; and hearing the answer, he leapt up and asked his guide to take him there. Once there, he begged to be allowed to touch the bier of Your saints with his handkerchief — Your saints, whose death is precious in Your sight. When he had done it and put the handkerchief to his eyes, they were opened at once. From there the story spread; from there Your praises glowed and shone; and from there the mind of that enemy of Yours, though not turned to a sound faith, was at least turned back from her fury of persecution. Thanks be to You, my God. Where have You brought my memory from and to, that I should confess these things to You as well, which, great as they are, I had passed over and forgotten? And even then, when the scent of Your ointments was so strong, we did not run after You. That is why I wept the more at the singing of Your hymns — having sighed after You for so long, and at last breathing You in, as far as breath can enter this house of grass we live in.

You, who make men live of one mind in one house, joined Euodius to us as well, a young man from our own town. Being an officer at court, he had been converted to You and baptised before us, and had given up his secular service and buckled himself to Yours. We were together, and about to live together in our devout purpose. We looked for where we might serve You most usefully, and were on our way back to Africa together — and having got as far as Ostia, my mother left this life. I am leaving out a great deal, because I am hurrying on. Accept my confessions and thanksgivings, my God, for the countless things I say nothing about. But I shall not leave out whatever my soul can bring forth about that handmaid of Yours who brought me forth: in the flesh, so that I might be born into this temporary light, and in her heart, so that I might be born into the eternal one. It is not her gifts I want to speak of but Yours in her; for she neither made nor educated herself. You created her, and her father and mother had no idea what would come of them. And it was the sceptre of Your Christ, the discipline of Your only Son, in a Christian household, a good member of Your church, that brought her up in reverence for You.

And yet, for her good upbringing, she used to give credit not so much to her mother's diligence as to that of a certain very old servant, who had carried her father as a child the way small children get carried on the backs of older girls. For that reason, and for her great age and excellent way of life, she was well respected in that Christian household by the heads of it. So the charge of her master's daughters was entrusted to her, and she took it seriously, restraining them firmly when necessary with a holy severity and teaching them with a grave good sense. Except at the hours when they were fed very temperately at their parents' table, she would not let them drink even water, however parched they were — heading off a bad habit, and adding this wholesome advice: "You drink water now because you have no power to get wine. But when you are married and made mistresses of cellars and storerooms, you will despise water, and the habit of drinking will still be there." By this method of teaching, and by the authority she had, she held back the greediness of childhood and shaped the girls' very thirst to such an excellent moderation that they no longer wanted what they should not have.

And yet, as Your handmaid told me, her son, a love of wine had crept up on her. For when, as the custom was, she was told by her parents to draw wine from the cask, being a sober girl, she would hold the jug under the tap and, before pouring the wine into the flagon, sip a little with the tip of her lips; more than that her instincts refused. She did this not out of any craving for drink but out of the exuberance of youth, which boils over into playful mischief and is usually kept down in the young by the seriousness of their elders. And so, adding to that little a daily little more — for whoever despises small things will fall little by little — she had fallen into the habit of greedily draining her small cup nearly full of wine. Where was that discreet old woman then, and her firm prohibitions? Would anything have helped against a secret disease, if Your healing hand, Lord, had not been watching over us? With her father and mother and guardians away and You present, You who create, who call, and who work something towards the salvation of our souls even through the people set over us — what did You do then, my God? How did You cure her? How did You heal her? Did You not bring out of another soul a hard, sharp taunt, like a surgeon's knife out of Your secret store, and remove all that foulness with one cut?

For a maidservant who used to go down to the cellar with her fell into an argument, as happens, with her young mistress when they were alone, and taunted her with this fault in the most bitter and insulting terms, calling her a wine-swiller. Stung to the quick by that taunt, she saw how foul her fault was, and immediately condemned it and gave it up. As flattering friends corrupt us, so reproachful enemies mostly correct us. And yet You repay them not for what You do through them but for what they intended themselves. For that girl in her anger meant to hurt her young mistress, not to reform her; and she did it in private, either because that was where and when the quarrel happened to find them, or in case she should get into trouble herself for bringing it up so late. But You, Lord, governor of everything in heaven and earth, who turn the deepest currents to Your own purposes and direct the turbulent tide of the ages, healed one soul by the very unhealthiness of another — so that nobody who notices this should credit it to his own power, even when somebody he wanted to see reformed is reformed by words of his.

Brought up like this, modestly and soberly, and made subject to her parents by You rather than to You by her parents, as soon as she was of marriageable age she was given to a husband, and served him as her lord. And she did her best to win him over to You, preaching You to him by the way she lived; by which You adorned her, and made her reverently lovable and admirable to her husband. And she put up with his unfaithfulness in such a way as never to have a single quarrel with him about it, because she looked for Your mercy on him — that believing in You he might be made chaste. Besides this, he was as hot in his temper as he was in his affections; but she had learned not to resist an angry husband, not only in action but not even in words. Only when he had smoothed down and was calm and in a state to take it would she explain what she had done, if he had happened to take offence too hastily. In fact, while many women with gentler husbands still carried the marks of beatings on their faces, and would criticise their husbands' behaviour in casual conversation, she would criticise their tongues, giving them serious advice in the form of a joke: that from the moment they heard the marriage contract read to them they should count it as an indenture making them servants, and so, remembering their position, should not set themselves up against their masters. And when they, knowing what a bad-tempered husband she put up with, marvelled that it had never been heard or noticed by any sign that Patricius had beaten his wife, or that there had been so much as a day's domestic quarrel between them, and asked her the reason in confidence, she taught them the practice I have described. Those wives who followed it found the good of it and thanked her; those who did not found no relief, and suffered.

Her mother-in-law, too, was at first set against her by the whispering of malicious servants; and she so overcame her by attentiveness and persistent endurance and mildness that the older woman of her own accord told her son about the meddling tongues that had disturbed the domestic peace between herself and her daughter-in-law, and asked him to correct them. And when, in obedience to his mother and for the good order of the household, he had corrected the offenders with a beating, at the wish of the woman who had reported them, she promised the same reward to anyone else who spoke ill of her daughter-in-law to please her; and after that nobody dared, and they lived together with a remarkable sweetness of mutual kindness.

You also gave this great gift, my God, my mercy, to that good handmaid of Yours in whose womb You created me: that between any people who were quarrelling, wherever she could, she showed herself such a peacemaker that although she heard the bitterest things from both sides — the kind of thing that swollen and undigested anger breaks out into, when the raw material of hatred is breathed out in sour talk to a friend who is there about an enemy who is not — she would never disclose anything from one to the other except what might tend towards their reconciliation. This might seem a small good to me, if I did not know to my sorrow countless people who, through some horrible and widely spreading infection of sin, not only report to angry people what was said about them in anger, but add things that were never said at all. Whereas ordinary humanity ought to think it a small thing not to feed or increase ill will by bad words, unless one also works to put it out with good ones. That is what she was like, with You, her most inward teacher, teaching her in the school of the heart.

In the end she won her own husband over to You, at the very end of his earthly life; and she had no cause to complain of anything in him as a believer that she had put up with from him before he was one. She was also the servant of Your servants. Whichever of them knew her found much in her to praise and honour and love You for, because through the testimony of the fruits of a holy life they could feel Your presence in her heart. For she had been the wife of one man, had repaid her parents, had run her household devoutly, was well spoken of for her good works, had brought up children, going into labour over them again each time she saw them straying from You. And last of all, Lord, of all of us Your servants — whom by Your own gift You allow to speak — us who before she fell asleep in You lived united together, having received the grace of Your baptism, she took care of as though she had been mother of us all, and served as though she had been the child of us all.

The day was now coming on when she was to leave this life — a day You knew well and we did not — and it happened, arranged, as I believe, by Your own secret ways, that she and I were standing alone, leaning in a window that looked into the garden of the house where we were staying at Ostia. There, far from the noise of people, we were recovering from the exhaustion of a long journey and preparing for the voyage. So we were talking together, alone, very sweetly; and forgetting the things behind and reaching forward to the things ahead, we were asking each other, in the presence of the truth, which is You, what the eternal life of the saints would be like, which no eye has seen and no ear has heard and which has not entered into any human heart. But we gasped with the mouth of our heart after those heavenly streams of Your fountain, the fountain of life which is with You, so that being sprinkled from it according to our capacity, we might somehow think about so high a mystery.

And when our conversation had reached the point that the highest delight of the bodily senses, in the very purest material light, was, compared with the sweetness of that life, not only not worth comparing but not worth mentioning, we lifted ourselves up with a still more glowing love towards the Selfsame, and passed step by step through all bodily things, even the sky itself, from which the sun and moon and stars shine on the earth. And we soared higher still, by inward thought and talk and wonder at Your works; and we came to our own minds, and went beyond them, to arrive at that region of never-failing plenty where You feed Israel for ever on the food of truth, and where life is the Wisdom by whom all these things are made, and everything that has been and shall be. And she is not made, but is, as she has been, and so shall be for ever — or rather, "has been" and "shall be" are not in her, only "is", since she is eternal; for "has been" and "shall be" are not eternal. And while we were talking and panting after her, with one whole effort of our heart we just touched her; and we sighed, and left there, bound to her, the first fruits of the Spirit, and came back down to the noises our mouths make, where a spoken word has a beginning and an end. And what is like Your Word, our Lord, who remains in himself without growing old, and makes all things new?

We were saying this: suppose that for someone the tumult of the flesh fell silent; silent the images of earth and water and air; silent the poles of the sky; silent the soul to herself, going beyond herself by not thinking about herself; silent all dreams and imagined revelations, every tongue and every sign and everything that exists only by passing away — since all of them say, if anyone can hear, We did not make ourselves; he made us who remains for ever. Suppose that having said this they too fell silent, having only turned our ears towards the one who made them; and he alone spoke, not through them but by himself, so that we might hear his word, not through any tongue of flesh, nor an angel's voice, nor a clap of thunder, nor in the dark riddle of a likeness, but might hear the one we love in these things, might hear his very self without them — as the two of us were now straining, and in a flash of thought touched that eternal wisdom which remains above everything. Suppose this could be prolonged, and all other visions of a wholly different kind withdrawn, and this one alone should seize and absorb and wrap up the man who saw it in those inward joys, so that life could be for ever like that one moment of understanding we had just been sighing after. Would this not be, Enter into your master's joy? And when will that be? When we shall all rise again, though we shall not all be changed.

That is what I was saying — and even if not in exactly this way and in these same words, still, Lord, You know that on the day when we were talking about these things, and this world with all its delights became worthless to us as we spoke, my mother said: "Son, for my part I take no further pleasure in anything in this life. What I am still doing here, and why I am here, I do not know, now that my hopes in this world have been fulfilled. There was one thing I wanted to stay alive a while for, and that was to see you a Catholic Christian before I died. My God has done this for me more than abundantly, since I now see you despising earthly happiness as well, and made his servant. What am I doing here?"

What answer I gave her to this I do not remember. For scarcely five days later, or not much more, she went down with a fever; and one day in that illness she fainted and was withdrawn for a while from the things around her. We ran to her; but she was soon brought back to her senses, and looking at me and my brother standing by her, she asked us, "Where was I?" And then, looking hard at us, dazed with grief: "Here," she said, "you will bury your mother." I kept quiet and held back my tears. But my brother said something, wishing for her, as the happier lot, that she might die not in a foreign place but in her own country. At that she looked anxious and checked him with her eyes, for still having a taste for such things; and then she looked at me and said, "See what he says." And soon after, to both of us: "Lay this body anywhere; do not let any concern about that trouble you. This one thing I ask: that you remember me at the altar of the Lord, wherever you may be." And having got this thought out in whatever words she could, she fell silent, being wearied by her worsening illness.

But I, considering Your gifts, unseen God, which You pour into the hearts of Your faithful, out of which wonderful fruits grow, rejoiced and gave thanks to You, remembering what I had known before: how careful and anxious she had always been about her burial place, which she had provided and prepared for herself beside her husband's body. Because they had lived in great harmony together, she had also wanted — so little can the human mind take in things divine — to have this addition to that happiness, and to have it remembered among men, that after her pilgrimage across the seas the earthly part of this united pair had been allowed to be united under the same earth. But when this empty wish had begun to fade from her heart through the fullness of Your goodness I did not know; and I was delighted and full of wonder that she had said what she said — though indeed in that conversation of ours at the window, when she said, "What am I still doing here?", there had been no sign of any wish to die in her own country. I heard afterwards, too, that while we were at Ostia she talked one day, with a mother's confidence, when I was not there, with some of my friends about contempt for this life and the blessing of death. And when they were amazed at the courage You had given a woman, and asked whether she was not afraid to leave her body so far from her own city, she answered, "Nothing is far from God; and there is no danger that at the end of the world he will not know where to raise me up from." So on the ninth day of her illness, in the fifty-sixth year of her life and the thirty-third of mine, that religious and holy soul was freed from the body.

I closed her eyes; and an enormous grief flowed into my heart and was overflowing into tears, while at the same time my eyes, under the violent command of my mind, drank their own spring completely dry. And it went badly with me in that struggle. But when she breathed her last, the boy Adeodatus burst out into a loud lament; and being checked by all of us, he fell silent. In the same way a childish feeling in me, which was finding its outlet in weeping through my heart's youthful voice, was checked and silenced. For we did not think it right to mark that funeral with tearful lamentation and groaning, since that is mostly how people express grief for the dead as though they were unhappy or altogether finished — whereas she was neither unhappy in her death nor altogether finished. Of that we were assured on good grounds: the evidence of her good life and her unpretended faith.

What was it, then, that hurt me so badly inside, if not a fresh wound made by the sudden tearing away of that sweetest and dearest habit of living together? I did take joy in her testimony, when, in that last illness of hers, mixing her endearments with what I did for her, she called me dutiful, and mentioned with great affection that she had never heard a harsh or reproachful sound come out of my mouth against her. And yet, my God, who made us, what comparison is there between the honour I paid her and her slavery for me? So, deprived of so great a comfort in her, my soul was wounded, and that life was torn apart, which had been made one out of hers and mine together.

Once the boy had been quieted from his weeping, Euodius took up the psalter and began to sing, and our whole household answered him, the psalm: I will sing of mercy and judgement to You, Lord. And hearing what we were doing, many brothers and religious women gathered; and while those whose office it was made the arrangements for the burial in the usual way, I, in another part of the house where it was fitting, talked about something suited to the occasion with those who thought it right not to leave me. And with this balm of truth I eased the torment that You knew about and they did not, as they listened intently and supposed I had no feeling of grief at all. But in Your hearing, where none of them could hear, I blamed the weakness of my feelings and held back the flood of my grief; and it gave way to me a little, and then came back like a tide — though not so as to burst out in tears or change my expression. And I knew what I was holding down in my heart. And being very displeased that these human things had such power over me, things which must necessarily happen in the due order and appointment of our natural condition, I grieved over my grief with a fresh grief, and so was worn down by a double sorrow.

And so the body was carried to the burial; we went and came back without tears. Not even in the prayers we poured out to You, when the sacrifice of our ransom was offered for her, with the body already by the graveside before being laid in it, as the custom is there — not even during those prayers did I weep. Yet all that day I was heavily sad in secret, and with a troubled mind I asked You as best I could to heal my grief. And You did not, impressing on my memory, I believe, by this one instance, how strong the bond of every habit is, even on a soul that no longer feeds on a deceiving word. It also seemed a good idea to go and take a bath, having heard that the bath is called balneum from the Greek balaneion because it drives sadness out of the mind. And this too I confess to Your mercy, Father of the fatherless: that I bathed, and was the same afterwards as before. The bitterness of my grief could not be sweated out of my heart. Then I slept, and woke again, and found my grief had softened considerably. And as I was alone in my bed, I remembered those true verses of Your Ambrose. For You are the

	Maker of all things, Lord
	  and ruler of the height,
	who, dressing the day in light, have poured
	  soft sleep across the night,
	so that our tired limbs
	  may find their strength renewed,
	and hearts that sink and falter rise,
	  and sorrows be subdued.

And then little by little I got back my old way of thinking about Your handmaid: her holy way of life towards You, her holy tenderness and attentiveness towards us, which I had suddenly been deprived of. And I wanted to weep in Your sight, for her and for myself, on her behalf and on my own. And I let the tears I had been holding back overflow as much as they wanted, spreading my heart out on them; and it found rest in them, because it was in Your hearing and not in the hearing of some man who would have put a scornful interpretation on my weeping. And now, Lord, I confess it to You in writing. Let anyone read it who will and interpret it how he will; and if he finds it a sin that I wept for my mother for a small part of an hour — the mother who was dead for the time being to my eyes, who for so many years had wept for me so that I might live in Yours — let him not laugh at me, but rather, if he is a man of large charity, let him weep himself for my sins to You, the Father of all the brothers of Your Christ.

But now, with my heart cured of that wound, in which it might have seemed blameworthy for an earthly feeling, I pour out to You, our God, on behalf of that handmaid of Yours, a quite different kind of tears, flowing from a spirit shaken by thoughts of the dangers facing every soul that dies in Adam. And although she had been made alive in Christ even before her release from the flesh, and had lived to the praise of Your name in her faith and her way of life, still I do not dare to say that from the time You gave her new birth in baptism no word ever came out of her mouth against Your commandment. Your Son, the truth, has said: whoever says to his brother, You fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. And it will go badly even with the most praiseworthy human life, if You set mercy aside and examine it. But because You are not severe in enquiring after sins, we confidently hope to find some place with You. And whoever counts up his real merits to You, what is he counting up but Your own gifts? If only men would know themselves to be men, and whoever boasts would boast in the Lord.

So I, my praise and my life, God of my heart, setting aside for a moment her good deeds, for which I thank You with joy, now beg You for my mother's sins. Hear me, I entreat You, by the medicine of our wounds, who hung on the tree and now sits at Your right hand and pleads with You for us. I know that she acted mercifully, and forgave her debtors their debts from her heart. Forgive her debts too, whatever she may have run up in all those years since the water of salvation. Forgive her, Lord, forgive, I beg You; do not enter into judgement with her. Let Your mercy be lifted above Your justice, since Your words are true and You have promised mercy to the merciful — and You made them merciful in the first place, who will have mercy on whom You will have mercy, and will have compassion on whom You have had compassion.

And I believe You have already done what I ask; but accept, Lord, the freewill offerings of my mouth. For when the day of her dissolution was close, she gave no thought to having her body sumptuously wrapped or embalmed with spices, and did not want a choice monument or to be buried in her own country. These things she did not lay on us. She only wanted her name remembered at Your altar, which she had served without missing a single day, and from which she knew the holy sacrifice was distributed by which the record of debt against us is wiped out; through which the enemy was defeated, who, adding up our offences and looking for something to charge us with, found nothing in the one in whom we conquer. Who shall give him back the innocent blood? Who shall repay him the price he bought us with, and so take us away from him? To the sacrament of that ransom Your handmaid bound her soul by the bond of faith. Let nobody separate her from Your protection; let neither the lion nor the dragon get between by force or by trickery. For she will not answer that she owes nothing, in case she is convicted and seized by the crafty accuser; she will answer that her sins have been forgiven her by the one to whom nobody can repay the price that he, who owed nothing, paid for us.

So may she rest in peace with the husband before and after whom she never had another; whom she obeyed, patiently bringing forth fruit for You, so that she might win him too for You. And inspire, Lord my God, inspire Your servants my brothers, Your sons my masters, whom I serve with my voice and heart and pen: inspire all of them who read these confessions to remember at Your altar Monica Your handmaid, along with Patricius, once her husband, through whose bodies You brought me into this life, though how I do not know. Let them with devout affection remember my parents in this passing light; and my brothers under You our Father in our Catholic mother; and my fellow citizens in that eternal Jerusalem which Your pilgrim people sigh after from their setting out until their return. So that my mother's last request of me may be fulfilled for her more abundantly through the prayers of many, brought by these confessions of mine, than it could be through my prayers alone.

Book Ten: Memory

Let me know You, Lord, who know me; let me know You as I am known. Power of my soul, come into it and make it fit for Yourself, so that You may have and hold it without spot or wrinkle. This is my hope, and that is why I speak; and in this hope I rejoice, whenever my rejoicing is healthy. Other things in this life deserve less grief the more they are grieved over, and deserve more grief the less people grieve over them. For You love the truth, and the man who does the truth comes to the light. This is what I want to do in my heart in front of You, in confession — and in my writing, in front of many witnesses.

And from You, Lord, to whose eyes the depths of a man's conscience are naked, what could be hidden in me even if I refused to confess it? I would be hiding You from me, not me from You. But now, since my groaning is evidence that I am displeased with myself, You shine out and are pleasing and loved and longed for; so that I may be ashamed of myself and give myself up and choose You, and please neither You nor myself except in You. To You, then, Lord, I am open, whatever I am; and with what benefit I confess to You I have already said. And I do not do it with words and sounds of the flesh, but with the words of my soul and the cry of the thought that Your ear knows. For when I am bad, confessing to You is nothing but being displeased with myself; and when I am good, it is nothing but not taking the credit for it — because You, Lord, bless the godly man, but first You make him righteous while he is ungodly. So my confession, my God, in Your sight, is made silently and not silently: silently as far as sound goes, and crying out as far as feeling goes. For I say nothing right to men that You have not heard from me first; and You hear nothing of the kind from me that You have not first said to me.

So what have I to do with men, that they should hear my confessions — as if they could heal all my weaknesses? A race curious to know other people's lives and lazy about mending their own. Why do they want to hear from me what I am, when they will not hear from You what they are themselves? And how do they know, when they hear about me from me, whether I am telling the truth, seeing that no man knows what is in a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? But if they hear about themselves from You, they cannot say, "The Lord is lying." For what is hearing about themselves from You but knowing themselves? And who knows himself and says, "That is false," unless he is lying himself? But because love believes all things — at least among those it knits to itself and makes one — I too, Lord, will confess to You in such a way that men may hear, to whom I cannot prove that I am confessing truly. And yet they believe me, those whose ears love opens to me.

But You, my inmost physician, make plain to me what good it does. The confessions of my past sins, which You have forgiven and covered, so that You might bless me in Yourself, changing my soul by faith and by Your sacrament — those confessions, when they are read and heard, stir up the heart, so that it does not sleep in despair and say, "I cannot," but wakes up in the love of Your mercy and the sweetness of Your grace, by which anyone who is weak is strong, once through it he has become aware of his own weakness. And good people are glad to hear of the past evils of those who are now free of them: not because they are evils, but because they have been and are not. But with what benefit, Lord my God, to whom my conscience confesses daily, trusting more in the hope of Your mercy than in her own innocence — with what benefit, I ask, do I in this book confess to men as well, in Your presence, what I now am and not what I have been? That other benefit I have seen and spoken of. But what I now am, at the very moment of making these confessions, a good many people want to know, who have known me and who have not, who have heard from me or about me; and their ear is not at my heart, where I am, whatever I am. So they want to hear me confess what I am inside, where neither their eye nor their ear nor their understanding can reach; they want it, and are ready to believe — but will they know? For love, which makes them good, tells them that I do not lie in my confessions; and it is love in them that believes me.

But what benefit would they get from hearing it? Do they want to be glad along with me, when they hear how near I come to You by Your gift, and to pray for me when they hear how far I am held back by my own weight? To such people I shall reveal myself. For it is no small benefit, Lord my God, that thanks should be given to You by many on our behalf, and that You should be asked by many for us. Let a brotherly mind love in me what You teach us is to be loved, and lament in me what You teach us is to be lamented. Let it be a brotherly mind and not a stranger's — not the mind of those foreign children whose mouth talks emptiness and whose right hand is a right hand of wickedness, but the brotherly mind that rejoices for me when it approves of me and is sorry for me when it disapproves, because whether it approves or disapproves it loves me. To such people I shall reveal myself: they will breathe more easily at my good deeds and sigh over my bad ones. My good deeds are Your arrangements and Your gifts; my bad ones are my offences and Your judgements. Let them breathe more easily at the one and sigh at the other; and let hymns and weeping go up into Your sight out of the hearts of my brothers, who are Your censers. And You, Lord, take pleasure in the incense of Your holy temple; have mercy on me according to Your great mercy, for Your own name's sake; and in no way abandoning what You have begun, complete what is unfinished in me.

This is the benefit of confessing what I am, not what I have been: to confess it not only in front of You, in a secret exultation with trembling and a secret sorrow with hope, but also in the ears of the believing sons of men, who share my joy and are partners in my mortality, my fellow citizens and fellow pilgrims, some ahead of me and some following, companions on my road. These are Your servants and my brothers, whom You want to be Your sons; my masters, whom You have ordered me to serve if I want to live with You and from You. But this Word of Yours would be a small thing if it only gave orders by speaking, and did not go ahead by doing. So I do this in deed and in word; I do this under Your wings — and in far too much danger, if my soul were not made subject to You under Your wings, and my weakness known to You. I am a small child, but my Father lives for ever, and my guardian is enough for me. For he is the one who both fathered me and defends me; and You Yourself are all my good — You, almighty, who are with me before ever I am with You. So to those You have ordered me to serve, I shall reveal not what I have been but what I now am and what I still am. And yet I do not pass judgement on myself either. This, then, is how I would like to be heard.

For it is You, Lord, who judge me; because although nobody knows what is in a man but the spirit of the man which is in him, there is nevertheless something in a man that not even the spirit in him knows. But You, Lord, know all of him, since You made him. And I, though I despise myself in Your sight and reckon myself dust and ashes, still know something of You that I do not know of myself. And truly, now we see through a glass darkly, and not yet face to face. So as long as I am away from You I am more present to myself than to You; and yet I know of You that You cannot suffer, while about myself I do not know which temptations I can resist and which I cannot. And there is hope, because You are faithful, and will not let us be tempted beyond what we are able to bear, but will with the temptation also make a way of escape so that we can bear it. So I will confess what I know about myself, and I will confess what I do not know about myself. And that is because what I do know about myself, I know by Your shining on me; and what I do not know about myself, I go on not knowing until my darkness is made like noon in Your face.

Not with any doubt but with a settled certainty do I love You, Lord. You struck my heart with Your word, and I loved You. And the heavens too, and the earth and everything in them, tell me on every side to love You, and never stop saying so to everybody, so that they are without excuse. But more deeply You will have mercy on whom You will have mercy, and have compassion on whom You have had compassion; otherwise the heavens and the earth are speaking Your praises into deaf ears.

But what do I love, when I love You? Not the beauty of bodies, nor the loveliness of the passing seasons; not the brightness of light, so welcome to our eyes; not the sweet melodies of songs of every kind; not the fragrant smell of flowers and ointments and spices; not manna and honey; not limbs that are pleasant to embrace. None of these is what I love when I love my God. And yet I do love a kind of light, and a melody, and a fragrance, and a food, and an embrace, when I love my God: the light and melody and fragrance and food and embrace of my inner man — where there shines for my soul what no space can contain, and there sounds what time cannot carry away, and there smells what no breeze scatters, and there tastes what no eating diminishes, and there clings what no satisfaction parts us from. That is what I love when I love my God.

And what is this? I asked the earth, and it answered, "I am not he"; and everything in it said the same. I asked the sea and the deeps and the living creatures that creep in them, and they answered, "We are not your God; look above us." I asked the moving air, and the whole air with its inhabitants answered, "Anaximenes was mistaken; I am not God." I asked the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars: "We are not the God you are looking for either," they said. And I said to all the things that stand around the doorway of my flesh, "You have told me about my God, that you are not he; tell me something about him." And they cried out in a loud voice, "He made us." My questioning of them was my attention to them, and their form and beauty were the answer. And I turned to myself and said to myself, "Who are you?" And I answered, "A man." And there present themselves to me in me a soul and a body, the one outside and the other within. Which of these should I look for my God by? I had looked for him in the body, from earth up to heaven, as far as I could send my messengers, the beams of my eyes. But the inner is the better, since it was to the inner as presiding judge that all the bodily messengers reported the answers of heaven and earth and everything in them, when they said, "We are not God; he made us." These things my inner man knew through the service of the outer: I the inner knew them, I, the mind, through the senses of my body. I asked the whole structure of the world about my God, and it answered, "I am not he; he made me."

Is this bodily shape not visible to everyone whose senses work? Then why does it not say the same thing to everybody? Animals large and small see it and cannot ask it, because they have no reason set over their senses to judge what the senses report. But men can ask, so that the invisible things of God are clearly seen and understood by the things that are made. Yet by loving those things men are made subject to them, and subjects cannot judge. Nor do the creatures answer people who ask, unless the people can judge. And the creatures do not change their voice — that is, their appearance — so as to look one way to one man and another way to another, if one merely sees and another sees and asks. Appearing the same way to both, it is dumb to one and speaks to the other. Or rather it speaks to both, and only those understand who compare the voice they receive from outside with the truth inside. For truth says to me, "Neither heaven nor earth nor any other body is your God." Their very nature says this to anyone who sees them: "We are a mass, and a mass is less in one part of itself than in the whole." Now I am speaking to you, my soul; you are my better part, for you give life to the mass of my body, which no body can give to a body. But your God is even to you the life of your life.

What then do I love, when I love my God? Who is he, above the summit of my soul? By my very soul I shall climb up to him. I shall go beyond that power by which I am joined to my body and fill its whole frame with life; for by that power I cannot find my God, since if I could, a horse or a mule with no understanding could find him, seeing it is the same power by which their bodies live too. There is another power, not only the one by which I animate my flesh but the one by which I give it sensation, which the Lord has built for me: ordering the eye not to hear and the ear not to see, but the eye to be what I see through and the ear what I hear through, and giving each of the other senses its own particular seat and function; which are many, and which I, being one mind, work through. I shall go beyond this power of mine too, for horses and mules have this as well, since they perceive through the body too.

So I shall go beyond this power of my nature also, climbing by degrees to the one who made me. And I come to the fields and vast palaces of memory, where the treasures of countless images are stored, brought in from things of all kinds perceived by the senses. There is stored up as well everything else we think, by enlarging or reducing or in any other way varying the things the senses have reached; and whatever else has been entrusted to it and laid up there, which forgetfulness has not yet swallowed and buried. When I go in there, I ask for whatever I want to be brought out, and some things come instantly, while others have to be looked for longer and are fetched, as it were, out of some more inward container. Others come rushing out in crowds, and while one thing is wanted and asked for they leap forward as if to say, "Perhaps it is me?" These I drive away with the hand of my heart from the face of my remembering, until what I want is unveiled and comes into view out of its hiding place. Other things come up readily in unbroken order as they are called for, the ones in front making way for the ones behind; and as they make way they are hidden from view, ready to come again whenever I want. All this happens when I recite something by heart.

There everything is kept, sorted and under general headings, each having come in by its own entrance: light and all the colours and shapes of bodies by the eyes; all kinds of sound by the ears; all smells by the entrance of the nostrils; all tastes by the mouth; and by the sensation of the whole body, what is hard or soft, hot or cold, rough or smooth, heavy or light, whether outside the body or inside it. All these that great harbour of the memory receives in its countless secret and indescribable folds, to be available and brought out when needed, each having come in by its own gate and been stored there. Nor do the things themselves come in; only the images of the things perceived are there ready for thought to recall. How those images are formed, who can say — though it is quite plain which sense brought each of them in and stored it. For even while I am sitting in darkness and silence, I can produce colours in my memory if I want, and tell black from white and any other colours I please; and sounds do not break in and disturb the image drawn in by my eyes that I am reviewing, though they are there too, lying dormant and stored away separately. For I call for those as well and they appear at once. And though my tongue is still and my throat silent, I can sing as much as I like; and those images of colours, which are there all the same, do not push in and interrupt when another store is called for, which flowed in through my ears. And so with the other things heaped in by the other senses: I recall them at will. I can tell the smell of lilies from violets while smelling nothing; and I prefer honey to sweet wine, and smooth to rough, while tasting and touching nothing at the time, only remembering.

All this I do inside, in that huge court of my memory. For there heaven and earth and sea are present to me, and everything I could think about in them, apart from what I have forgotten. There too I meet myself, and recall myself, and when and where I did what, and how I felt about it. There is everything I remember, either from my own experience or on somebody else's word. Out of the same store I continually combine fresh and fresh likenesses of things I have experienced, or believed on the strength of what I have experienced, with the past; and from these I infer future actions and events and hopes, and reflect on all of these as present. "I will do this or that," I say to myself in that great container of my mind, stocked with the images of so many great things — "and this or that will follow." "If only this or that could happen!" "God forbid this or that!" That is how I talk to myself; and while I talk, the images of everything I mention are there, out of the same treasury of memory. And I could not speak of any of them if the images were missing.

Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, my God: a vast and boundless room. Who has ever reached the bottom of it? And yet this is a power of mine, and belongs to my nature; and I do not myself take in everything that I am. So the mind is too narrow to hold itself. And where can what it does not hold of itself be? Outside it, and not inside? Then how does it not take itself in? An extraordinary astonishment comes over me at this; I am seized with amazement.

And men go off to marvel at the heights of mountains, and the huge waves of the sea, and the broad courses of rivers, and the sweep of the ocean, and the circling of the stars — and they pass themselves by. They do not marvel that when I spoke of all these things I was not seeing them with my eyes, and yet could not have spoken of them unless I were at that moment actually seeing, inwardly in my memory, the mountains and waves and rivers and stars I had seen, and the ocean that I take on trust — and seeing them with the same vast distances between them as when I saw them outside. And yet I did not draw them into myself by seeing them, when I looked at them with my eyes; they themselves are not in me, only their images. And I know by which bodily sense each of them was stamped on me.

But it is not only these things that the immeasurable capacity of my memory holds. Here too is everything I learned of the liberal arts and have not yet forgotten, moved as it were to some inner place which is not a place at all. And it is not the images of them that are there but the things themselves. For whatever I know of literature, or of the art of argument, or of how many kinds of question there are, exists in my memory in such a way that I have not taken in the image and left out the thing; it is not as if it had sounded and passed away like a voice fixed on the ear by an impression, which could be recalled as if it were still sounding when it is not; or as a smell, which while it passes and evaporates into the air affects the sense of smell and so conveys into the memory an image of itself, which we renew by remembering; or as food, which certainly has no taste any more once it is in the stomach and yet still in a manner tastes in the memory; or as anything the body perceives by touch, which the memory still conceives after it has been taken away from us. For those things are not transferred into the memory; only their images are caught up, with an admirable speed, and stored in remarkable cabinets, so to speak, and from there wonderfully brought out again by the act of remembering.

But now, when I hear that there are three kinds of question — whether a thing is, what it is, and what sort it is — I do indeed hold the images of the sounds that make up those words, and know that those sounds passed with a noise through the air and are now gone. But the things themselves that those sounds signify I never reached with any bodily sense, and never made out anywhere except in my mind; and it is not their images I have laid up in my memory but the things themselves. How they got into me, let them say if they can; for I have gone over all the entrances of my flesh and cannot find which one they came in by. The eyes say, "If those images were coloured, we reported them." The ears say, "If they made a sound, we announced them." The nostrils say, "If they smelled, they came past us." Taste says, "Unless they have a flavour, do not ask me." Touch says, "If it has no size, I did not handle it; and if I did not handle it, I gave no notice of it." So where and how did these things get into my memory? I do not know how. When I learned them, I was not taking somebody else's word for them but recognising them in my own mind; and approving them as true, I entrusted them to my memory, laying them up so as to bring them out whenever I wanted. So they were in my heart before I learned them, and yet they were not in my memory. Where then? And why, when they were spoken, did I recognise them and say, "That is right, that is true", unless they were already in the memory, but thrown back and buried in deeper recesses, so that if somebody else's prompting had not drawn them out, I might have been unable to conceive them at all?

So we find that to learn things of this kind — things whose images we do not take in through the senses, but which we perceive inwardly by themselves, without images, as they are — is nothing but to gather up by thinking, and by attending to make sure, the things the memory already held scattered and unarranged, so that they are laid ready to hand in that same memory where before they lay unknown, scattered and neglected, and so come readily to a mind grown familiar with them. And how many things of this sort my memory carries that have already been found out and, as I said, laid ready to hand — things we are said to have learned and come to know! If I stop calling them to mind even for a short time, they sink again and slip back, as it were, into deeper recesses, so that they have to be thought out from there again as if they were new, since they have nowhere else to be; they must be gathered together again in order to be known, that is, collected out of their scattering. This is where the Latin word for thinking comes from: cogo means to collect, and cogito, to think, means to collect again. And the mind has taken this word for its own, so that what is properly called thinking is not what is collected in any old way but what is re-collected, that is, brought together in the mind.

The memory also contains countless principles and laws of numbers and dimensions, none of them stamped there by any bodily sense, since they have no colour or sound or taste or smell or feel. I have heard the sound of the words that stand for them when they are discussed; but the sounds are one thing and the things another. The sounds are different in Greek and Latin; the things are neither Greek nor Latin nor any other language. I have seen architects' lines, the very finest, like a spider's thread; but those are still different — they are not the images of the lines my bodily eye showed me. Anyone knows them who recognises them inside himself without any conception whatever of a body. I have also perceived the numbers of the things we count with all the senses of my body; but the numbers we count with are different, and are not the images of those, and therefore they truly are. Let the man who cannot see them laugh at me for saying this, and I shall pity him for laughing.

All these things I remember, and I remember how I learned them. I have also heard, and remember, many things falsely objected against them; and though the objections are false, it is not false that I remember them. And I remember distinguishing between those truths and these falsehoods brought against them. And I can see that distinguishing them now is one thing, and remembering that I often distinguished them when I often thought about them is another. So I remember having often understood these things; and what I now make out and understand, I lay up in my memory, so that later I may remember that I understood it now. So I also remember having remembered; just as later, if I call to mind that I have been able to remember these things now, it will be by the power of memory that I call it to mind.

The same memory also contains the feelings of my mind — not in the way my mind itself contains them when it feels them, but in a quite different way, according to a power of its own. For without rejoicing I remember having rejoiced, and without sorrow I recall past sorrow. I look back without fear on having once been afraid, and call to mind a past desire without desire. Sometimes the opposite happens, and I remember a past sorrow with joy, and a past joy with sorrow. There is nothing remarkable in this as far as the body goes, since the mind is one thing and the body another; so if I remember a past bodily pain with joy, that is not so surprising. But this memory itself is mind. When we give something into somebody's charge to be kept in memory, we say, "Make sure you keep it in mind"; and when we forget, we say, "It did not come to my mind," or, "It slipped my mind," calling the memory itself the mind. That being so, how is it that when I remember a past sorrow with joy, the mind has joy and the memory has sorrow — the mind being joyful over the joyfulness in it, and the memory not being sad over the sadness in it? Does memory perhaps not belong to the mind? Who would say that? So the memory is, so to speak, the stomach of the mind, and joy and sadness are like sweet and bitter food, which, when committed to the memory, are passed into that stomach, where they can be stored but cannot be tasted. It is ridiculous to imagine these are really alike — and yet they are not entirely unlike.

But now, it is out of my memory that I bring it when I say there are four disturbances of the mind: desire, joy, fear, sorrow. And whatever I can argue about them, dividing each into its subordinate kinds and defining it, I find in my memory what to say and bring it out from there — and yet I am not disturbed by any of these disturbances when I remember them by calling them to mind. And before I recalled and brought them back, they were there, which is why they could be brought out by recollection. Perhaps, then, they come out of the memory as food is brought up out of the stomach by chewing the cud. Then why does the man who is arguing and recollecting like this not taste in the mouth of his thinking the sweetness of joy or the bitterness of sorrow? Is the comparison unlike in this, because it is not alike in every respect? For who would willingly talk about these things if, every time we named grief or fear, we were forced to be sad or afraid? And yet we could not talk about them if we did not find in our memory not only the sounds of the names, according to the images stamped there by the senses of the body, but ideas of the things themselves — which we never received by any bodily entrance, but which the mind, perceiving them by the experience of its own passions, committed to the memory, or which the memory retained of itself without being given them.

But whether by images or not, who can readily say? I name a stone, I name the sun, the things themselves not being present to my senses but their images to my memory. I name a bodily pain, and it is not present to me when nothing aches; yet unless its image were present in my memory I should not know what to say about it, or be able to tell pain from pleasure in discussion. I name bodily health; and being sound in body, the thing itself is present with me — and yet unless its image were also present in my memory, I could not possibly recall what the sound of the name means. And a sick man, hearing health named, would not recognise what was said, unless the same image were retained by the power of memory, though the thing itself were absent from his body. I name the numbers we count with; and it is not their images but the numbers themselves that are present in my memory. I name the image of the sun, and that image is present in my memory — for I do not recall the image of its image; the image itself is present to me as I call it to mind. I name memory, and I recognise what I name. And where do I recognise it, but in memory itself? Is memory also present to itself by an image, and not by itself?

And what about when I name forgetfulness, and recognise what I name? Where would I recognise it from, if I did not remember it? I am not talking about the sound of the word but about the thing it means; and if I had forgotten that, I could not recognise what the sound means. So when I remember memory, memory itself is present to itself through itself; but when I remember forgetfulness, both memory and forgetfulness are present — memory, by which I remember, and forgetfulness, which I remember. But what is forgetfulness except the absence of memory? How then is it present for me to remember it, when its being present makes remembering impossible? But if what we remember we hold in memory, and if without remembering forgetfulness we could never recognise the thing meant when we heard the word, then forgetfulness is retained by the memory. So it is present, so that we do not forget it — and being present, we forget. Are we to understand from this that forgetfulness, when we remember it, is present to the memory not by itself but by its image? Because if it were present by itself, it would not make us remember but forget. Who will search this out? Who will grasp how it works?

Lord, I certainly labour at it, and labour in myself; I have become a heavy soil needing too much sweat of the brow. We are not now investigating the regions of the sky, or measuring the distances of the stars, or asking how the earth is balanced. It is I myself who remember; I, the mind. There is nothing so remarkable if what I am not is far from me. But what is nearer to me than myself? And look: the power of my own memory is not understood by me, and I cannot so much as name myself without it. For what am I to say, when it is plain to me that I remember forgetfulness? Am I to say that what I remember is not in my memory? Or am I to say that forgetfulness is in my memory precisely so that I should not forget? Both are utterly absurd. What third way is there? How can I say the image of forgetfulness is retained by my memory and not forgetfulness itself, when I remember it? And how could I say even that, seeing that when the image of anything is stamped on the memory the thing itself must be present first for the image to be stamped from? For that is how I remember Carthage, and every place I have been, and the faces of men I have seen, and the things reported by the other senses, and the health or sickness of my body. When those things were present, my memory took images from them, which, being present with me, I could look at and bring back in my mind when I remembered them in their absence. If, then, this forgetfulness is held in the memory through its image and not through itself, then plainly it must once have been present for the image to be taken. But when it was present, how did it write its image in the memory, seeing that forgetfulness by being present rubs out even what it finds already noted down? And yet, in whatever way — and that way is past conceiving and past explaining — I am certain that I do remember forgetfulness itself, the very thing by which what we remember is rubbed out.

Great is the power of memory, a fearful thing, my God, a deep and boundless complexity; and this thing is the mind, and this is myself. What am I then, my God? What kind of nature am I? A life various and manifold and enormously immense. Look, in the plains and caves and caverns of my memory, countless and countlessly full of countless kinds of things — either by images, as with all bodies, or by being actually there, as with the arts, or by certain notions or impressions, as with the feelings of the mind, which the memory holds even when the mind is not feeling them, since whatever is in the memory is also in the mind — over all these I run and fly; I dive in on this side and on that as far as I can, and there is no end to it. So great is the power of memory, so great the power of life, even in a man who is mortal.

What shall I do, then, my true life, my God? I shall go beyond this power of mine that is called memory; I shall go beyond it, so that I may come near to You, sweet light. What do You say to me? See, I am climbing up through my mind towards You who remain above me. Yes, I shall now go beyond this power of mine that is called memory, wanting to reach You where You can be reached, and to hold fast to You where one can hold fast to You. For even animals and birds have memory; otherwise they could not find their way back to their dens and nests, or do many other things they are used to; indeed they could not get used to anything except by memory. So I shall go beyond memory too, so as to reach him who has separated me from the four-footed beasts and made me wiser than the birds of the air. I shall go beyond memory too — and where shall I find You, truly good and certain sweetness? And where shall I find You? If I find You outside my memory, then I do not hold You in my memory. And how shall I find You, if I do not remember You?

For the woman who had lost her coin and looked for it with a light would never have found it unless she remembered it. When it was found, how would she have known it was the right one unless she remembered it? I remember looking for and finding many things; and I know this from it, that when I was looking for one of them and was asked, "Is this it? Is that it?" I kept saying no until the thing I was looking for was held out to me. If I had not remembered it, whatever it was, then even if it were held out to me I still would not find it, because I could not recognise it. And that is always the way when we look for and find something lost. Even so, when something disappears from sight by accident but not from the memory — any visible object — its image is still kept inside, and it is looked for until it is restored to sight; and when it is found, it is recognised by the image that is within. And we do not say we have found what was lost unless we recognise it; and we cannot recognise it unless we remember it. So it was lost to the eyes but kept in the memory.

But what about when the memory itself loses something, as happens when we forget and go looking so as to recollect? Where, in the end, do we search, but in the memory itself? And there, if one thing happens to be offered instead of another, we reject it until what we are looking for comes to meet us; and when it does, we say, "This is it" — which we could not say unless we recognised it, or recognise it unless we remembered it. So we certainly had forgotten it. Or had the whole not escaped us, but the lost part was being looked for by the part we still had hold of, because the memory felt it was not carrying along everything it usually did, and, crippled by having its old habit cut short, demanded back what it was missing? For instance, if we see or think of somebody we know, and having forgotten his name try to recover it, then whatever else occurs to us will not connect with him, because it was not in the habit of being thought of along with him, and so it is rejected — until the right one presents itself, and our knowledge settles on it evenly as its accustomed object. And where does that come from, if not out of the memory itself? Even when we recognise it on being reminded by somebody else, that is where it comes from; for we do not accept it as something new, but on recollecting it we agree that the name given is the right one. If it had been completely rubbed out of the mind, we would not remember it even when reminded. For we have not yet completely forgotten what we remember having forgotten. And what we have completely forgotten, being lost, we cannot even look for.

How then do I look for You, Lord? For when I look for You, my God, I am looking for a happy life. I will look for You, so that my soul may live; for my body lives by my soul and my soul lives by You. How then do I look for a happy life, seeing that I do not have it until I can say, where I ought to say it, "This is enough"? How do I look for it? By remembering, as though I had forgotten it and remembered that I had forgotten it? Or by wanting to learn it as something unknown, either never having known it, or having forgotten it so thoroughly that I do not even remember forgetting it? Is a happy life not what everybody wants, and nobody at all does not want? Where have they known it, that they want it so? Where have they seen it, that they love it so? Certainly we have it, though how I do not know.

And there is another way of having it, by which a man is happy when he has it; and there are people who are blessed in hope. These have it in a lesser sense than those who have it in fact — and yet they are better off than those who are happy neither in fact nor in hope. And even these last, if they did not have it in some way, would not want to be happy as they do; and that they do want it is quite certain. So they have known it somehow, and have it by some sort of knowledge; what sort, I do not know, and I am puzzled whether it is in the memory. If it is, then we were once happy — whether each of us separately, or in the man who first sinned, in whom we all died and from whom we are all born into misery, I am not asking now. I only ask whether the happy life is in the memory. For we could not love it unless we knew it. We hear the name, and we all admit we want the thing; it is not the mere sound that pleases us. When a Greek hears the word in Latin he is not pleased, since he does not know what has been said; but we Latin speakers are pleased, and so would he be if he heard it in Greek — because the thing itself is neither Greek nor Latin, and Greeks and Latins and speakers of every other language long for it just as eagerly. So it is known to everybody; for if they could all be asked with one voice, "Would you like to be happy?" they would answer without hesitation that they would. And that could not be, unless the thing the name stands for were kept in their memory.

But is it kept there in the way a man who has seen Carthage remembers Carthage? No; a happy life is not seen with the eye, because it is not a body. Then as we remember numbers? No; a man who has those in his knowledge does not go on trying to attain them, whereas a happy life we have in our knowledge and therefore love, and still want to attain, so as to be happy. Then as we remember eloquence? No; for although on hearing that word too some people call the thing to mind who are not yet eloquent, and many want to be, from which it appears that it is in their knowledge — even so, they have observed other people being eloquent with their bodily senses, and have been delighted, and want to be like them. Though indeed they would not be delighted without some inward knowledge of it, or want to be like them unless they were delighted. But a happy life is something we do not experience in others by any bodily sense. Then as we remember joy? Perhaps; for I remember my joy even when I am sad, as I remember a happy life when I am unhappy. And I never saw, heard, smelled, tasted or touched my joy with any bodily sense; I experienced it in my mind when I rejoiced, and the knowledge of it stuck in my memory, so that I can recall it sometimes with disgust and sometimes with longing, depending on what sort of thing it was I remember having rejoiced in. For I have been steeped in a kind of joy even by foul things, which I now detest and curse when I recall them; and at other times by good and honourable things, which I recall with longing, though perhaps they are no longer here — and so I recall a former joy with sadness.

Where then, and when, did I experience my happy life, that I should remember it and love it and long for it? And it is not only I, or a few others; all of us would gladly be happy. And unless we knew it by some sort of definite knowledge, we would not want it with so definite a will. But how is it that if two men are asked whether they want to go to the wars, one might answer that he does and the other that he does not; but if they were asked whether they wanted to be happy, both would say at once and without hesitation that they did? And the only reason the one goes to the wars and the other does not is to be happy. Is it perhaps that one looks for his joy in this and another in that, and they all agree in wanting to be happy, as they would agree, if asked, that they wanted to have joy — and this joy is what they call a happy life? So although one gets this joy by one means and another by another, they all have one end they are trying to reach: joy. And this being something everybody must say they have experienced, it is therefore found in the memory and recognised whenever the phrase "a happy life" is mentioned.

Far be it, Lord, far be it from the heart of Your servant who is confessing to You here, far be it that whatever the joy might be, I should therefore think myself happy. For there is a joy that is not given to the ungodly but to those who love You for Your own sake, whose joy You Yourself are. And this is the happy life: to rejoice towards You, from You, for You. This is it, and there is no other. Those who think there is another are chasing some other joy, and not the true one — though even their will is not turned away from some semblance of joy.

So it is not certain that everybody wants to be happy, since those who do not want to rejoice in You, which is the only happy life, do not truly want a happy life. Or does everybody want it, but, because the flesh craves against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh so that they cannot do what they want, they fall back on what they can do and are satisfied with that — because what they cannot do, they do not want strongly enough to make themselves able? For if I ask anybody whether he would rather have his joy in truth or in falsehood, he will hesitate as little to say "in the truth" as to say that he wants to be happy. For a happy life is joy in the truth; and that is a joy in You, who are the truth, God my light, health of my face, my God. This is the happy life that everybody wants; this life, which alone is happy, everybody wants; joy in the truth is what everybody wants. I have met plenty of people who wanted to deceive; not one who wanted to be deceived. So where did they come to know this happy life, except where they also know the truth? For they love the truth too, since they do not want to be deceived. And when they love a happy life, which is nothing but rejoicing in the truth, then they love the truth as well — which they would not love if there were not some trace of it in their memory. Why then do they not rejoice in it? Why are they not happy? Because they are more strongly taken up with other things, which have more power to make them miserable than the thing they so faintly remember has to make them happy. There is still a little light in men; let them walk, let them walk, in case the darkness overtakes them.

But why does truth breed hatred, and why does Your man, preaching the truth, become an enemy to them, when a happy life is loved, which is nothing but rejoicing in the truth? It must be that truth is loved in such a way that people who love something else would like the thing they love to be the truth; and since they do not want to be deceived, they will not be convinced that they are. So they hate the truth for the sake of the thing they loved instead of it. They love the truth when it shows them light and hate it when it shows them up. Since they do not want to be deceived and do want to deceive, they love it when it reveals itself to them and hate it when it reveals them. And truth will pay them back for this: those who did not want to be shown up by it, it shows up against their will, and does not show itself to them. That is how the human mind is — blind and sick, foul and ugly, wanting to be hidden, and refusing to let anything be hidden from itself. And it gets the opposite of what it wants: it is not hidden from the truth, and the truth is hidden from it. And yet even in this misery it would rather rejoice in truths than in falsehoods. It will be happy, then, when it rejoices, with no distraction interrupting, in that one truth by whom everything true is true.

See what a space I have crossed in my memory looking for You, Lord; and I have not found You outside it. Nor have I found anything about You except what I have kept in my memory since I first learned You. For since I learned You, I have not forgotten You. Where I found truth, there I found my God, who is the truth itself; and since I learned that, I have not forgotten it. So since I learned You, You have lived in my memory, and there I find You when I call You to mind and take delight in You. These are my holy delights, which You have given me in Your mercy, having regard to my poverty.

But where in my memory do You live, Lord? Where do You live there? What kind of lodging have You made for Yourself? What kind of sanctuary have You built for Yourself? You have given my memory this honour, that You live in it — but in what quarter of it You live is what I am now considering. For in thinking about You I went past the parts of it that animals have too, since I did not find You there among the images of bodily things. And I came to the parts where I put the feelings of my mind, and did not find You there. And I went into the very seat of my mind, which it has in my memory, since the mind remembers itself too; and You were not there either. For as You are not a bodily image, and not the feeling of a living creature, as when we rejoice or grieve or desire or fear or remember or forget or the like, so neither are You the mind itself — because You are the Lord God of the mind. And all these things change, while You remain unchangeable above them all; and yet You have consented to live in my memory ever since I learned You. And why am I now asking in what part of it You live, as though there were parts in it? I am sure that You live in it, since I have remembered You ever since I learned You, and it is there that I find You when I call You to mind.

Where then did I find You, that I might learn You? For You were not in my memory before I learned You. Where then did I find You, that I might learn You, but in Yourself above me? There is no place; we go backwards and forwards, and there is no place. Everywhere, truth, You give audience to everyone who asks Your advice, and answer them all at once, though they ask about all sorts of different things. Clearly You answer, though not everybody clearly hears. Everyone consults You about what they want, though they do not always hear what they want. Your best servant is the one who looks not so much to hear from You what he himself wants, as rather to want what he hears from You.

Late have I loved You, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved You! And look, You were within me, and I was outside, and it was out there that I looked for You; deformed as I was, I flung myself on the beautiful things You have made. You were with me, and I was not with You. Those things kept me far away from You, things which would not exist at all unless they existed in You. You called and shouted and shattered my deafness. You flashed and blazed and scattered my blindness. You breathed out fragrance, and I drew in my breath and I pant for You. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.

When I hold fast to You with the whole of myself, I shall nowhere have grief or labour, and my life shall wholly live, being wholly full of You. But since now You lift up whoever You fill, and I am not full of You, I am a burden to myself. My deplorable joys fight with my joyful sorrows, and which side has won I do not know. I am wretched: Lord, have pity on me. My bad sorrows fight with my good joys, and which side has won I do not know. I am wretched: Lord, have pity on me. I am wretched: look, I am not hiding my wounds. You are the doctor and I am the patient; You are merciful and I am miserable. Is not a man's life on earth all trial? Who wants troubles and difficulties? You command them to be endured, not to be loved. Nobody loves what he endures, though he may love enduring; for although he is glad that he endures, he would rather there were nothing for him to endure. In hard times I long for good ones; in good times I dread the hard ones. What middle ground is there between the two, where a man's life is not all trial? A curse on the world's prosperity, twice over: for fear of adversity, and for the corruption of joy. A curse on the world's adversity, twice over, and a third time: for the longing for prosperity, and because adversity itself is a hard thing, and because it may shatter our endurance. Is a man's life on earth not all trial, without a single break?

And all my hope is nowhere but in Your exceedingly great mercy. Give what You command, and command what You will. You command us self-control; and when I knew, says one, that nobody can be self-controlled unless God gives it, this itself was part of wisdom, to know whose gift it is. By self-control we are indeed gathered up and brought back into one, out of the many we were scattered into. For a man loves You too little if he loves anything alongside You that he does not love for Your sake. Love, always burning and never burning out! Charity, my God, set me alight. You command self-control: give what You command, and command what You will.

You command me self-control from the appetite of the flesh, the appetite of the eyes, and the ambition of the world. You command self-control from concubinage; and as for marriage itself, You have counselled something better than what You have permitted. And since You gave it, it was done, even before I became a minister of Your sacrament. But there still live in my memory, which I have said so much about, the images of such things as my bad habit fixed there. They come at me powerless while I am awake; but in sleep they come not only to give pleasure but even to win consent and something very like reality. So far does the illusion of an image prevail, in my soul and in my flesh, that when I am asleep, false visions persuade me to what true ones cannot when I am awake. Am I not then myself, Lord my God? And yet how much difference there is between myself and myself, in the moment when I pass from waking to sleeping, or come back from sleeping to waking! Where is reason then, which resists such suggestions when I am awake, and stands unshaken even if the things themselves are pressed on it? Is it shut up along with my eyes? Is it lulled asleep along with the senses of the body? And how is it that even in sleep we often do resist, and, remembering our resolve and staying chastely in it, give no consent to such enticements? And yet there is enough difference that when it goes the other way, we come back on waking to a clear conscience — and by that very difference we discover that we did not do what we are nevertheless sorry was in some way done in us.

Are You not mighty enough, God almighty, to heal all the diseases of my soul, and by Your more abundant grace to put out even the impure motions of my sleep? You will increase Your gifts in me more and more, Lord, so that my soul may follow me to You, disentangled from the birdlime of craving; so that it does not rebel against itself, and even in dreams does not consent to those debasing corruptions through images of sense — let alone commit them to the point of the body's pollution. It is not hard for the Almighty, who is able to do more than we ask or think, to bring it about that nothing of this sort should have the very slightest influence over the pure affections even of a sleeper, not even the sort of influence that a thought could hold back: and to bring it about not only over a lifetime but at my present age. But what I still am in this kind of evil of mine I have confessed to my good Lord, rejoicing with trembling in what You have given me, and mourning over what is still unfinished in me; and hoping that You will bring Your mercies to completion in me, right up to that perfect peace which my outward and inward man will have with You, when death is swallowed up in victory.

There is another evil of the day, and I wish the day's own evil were enough for it. By eating and drinking we repair the daily wearing away of our body, until You destroy both the stomach and the food, when You shall kill my emptiness with a wonderful fullness and clothe this corruptible thing with an eternal incorruption. But for now the necessity is sweet to me, and I fight against that sweetness so as not to be taken prisoner; and I carry on a daily war by fasting, often bringing my body into subjection — and my pains are removed by pleasure. For hunger and thirst are a kind of pain: they burn and kill like a fever, unless the medicine of food comes to our aid. And since that is ready to hand through the comfort of Your gifts, with which land and water and air serve our weakness, our calamity gets called gratification.

You have taught me this: that I should set about taking food as medicine. But while I am passing from the discomfort of emptiness to the contentment of being filled, the trap of craving is set for me in that very passage. For the passing is itself a pleasure, and there is no other way to get where we must go. And since health is the reason for eating and drinking, a dangerous pleasure attaches itself as an attendant, and mostly tries to get in front, so that it is for her sake that I do what I say I am doing, or want to do, for the sake of health. And the two do not have the same measure: what is enough for health is too little for pleasure. And it is often uncertain whether it is the body's necessary care still asking for sustenance, or a voluptuous deceitfulness of greed offering its services. The unhappy soul is glad of that uncertainty, and prepares an excuse in it to shield itself, glad that it is not clear what would be enough for a moderate health, so that under the cloak of health it can disguise the business of gratification. These temptations I try to resist daily, and I call on Your right hand and refer my perplexities to You, since I still have no settled policy about them.

I hear the voice of my God commanding: Do not let your hearts be weighed down with overeating and drunkenness. Drunkenness is far from me; may You have mercy, so that it does not come near. But overeating sometimes creeps up on Your servant; may You have mercy, so that it may be far from me. For nobody can be self-controlled unless You give it. Many things You give us when we pray for them; and whatever good we received before we prayed, we received from You — and indeed we received it beforehand so that we might afterwards know this. I was never a drunkard, but I have known drunkards made sober by You. So it was from You that those who were never such should not become such, as it was from You that those who had been such should not always be so; and it was from You that both should know who it was from. I heard another word of Yours: Do not go after your appetites, and turn away from your own pleasure. And by Your kindness I have heard a saying I have greatly loved: neither if we eat shall we have more, nor if we do not eat shall we have less — which is to say that the one will not make me rich, nor the other wretched. And I heard another: I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content with it; I know how to have plenty and how to go without. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. There is a soldier of the heavenly camp, and not the dust that we are. But remember, Lord, that we are dust, and that You made man out of dust; and he was lost and is found. And he could not do this of himself, because the man I loved so much, saying this by the in-breathing of Your inspiration, was made of the same dust. I can do all things, he says, through him who strengthens me. Strengthen me, so that I can. Give what You command, and command what You will. He admits that he has received; and when he boasts, he boasts in the Lord. And I have heard another begging that he might receive: Take from me, he says, the desires of the belly. From which it appears, my holy God, that You give when what You command to be done is done.

You have taught me, good Father, that to the pure all things are pure, but that it is bad for a man who eats and gives offence by eating; and that every creature of Yours is good and nothing is to be refused that is received with thanksgiving; and that food does not commend us to God; and that no man should judge us over food or drink; and that the man who eats should not despise the man who does not, and the man who does not eat should not judge the man who does. These things I have learned; thanks be to You, praise be to You, my God, my master, knocking at my ears and lighting up my heart. Deliver me from every temptation. It is not uncleanness in food I am afraid of but the uncleanness of craving. I know that Noah was allowed to eat every kind of meat that was fit for food; that Elijah was fed on meat; that John, endowed with an admirable abstinence, was not polluted by feeding on living creatures, namely locusts. And I know that Esau was tricked by craving lentils, and that David blamed himself for wanting a drink of water, and that our king was tempted not over meat but over bread. And so the people in the desert also deserved rebuke, not for wanting meat but because in their desire for food they grumbled against the Lord.

Set among these temptations, then, I struggle daily against craving in eating and drinking. For it is not the sort of thing I can settle to cut off once and for all and never touch again, as I could with concubinage. The bridle of the throat has to be held tempered between slackness and stiffness. And who is there, Lord, who is not carried somewhat beyond the limits of necessity? Whoever he is, he is a great man; let him make Your name great. But I am not such a man, for I am a sinful man. And yet I too magnify Your name; and he who has overcome the world makes intercession to You for my sins, counting me among the weak members of his body, because Your eyes have seen what is unfinished in him, and in Your book all shall be written.

The attractions of smell do not concern me much. When they are missing I do not miss them; when they are there I do not refuse them; and I am always ready to be without them. So it seems to me — and perhaps I am deceived. For that too is a mournful darkness, by which my own capacities are hidden from me, so that when my mind asks itself about its own powers it does not readily dare to believe itself, because even what is in it is mostly hidden until experience brings it out. And nobody ought to feel safe in a life the whole of which is called a trial: a man who has been capable of turning from worse to better may just as well be turned from better to worse. Our only hope, our only confidence, our only sure promise is Your mercy.

The delights of the ear had bound and mastered me more firmly, and You loosened me and set me free. Now I do rest a little in the melodies that Your words breathe a soul into, when they are sung with a sweet and well-tuned voice — though not so as to be stuck there, since I can get free whenever I want. But along with the words, which are their life and by which they gain admission to me, the melodies look for a place of some honour in my affections, and I can hardly find them a suitable one. Sometimes I seem to myself to give them more honour than is fitting, when I feel that our minds are raised to a flame of devotion more holily and more fervently by the holy words themselves when they are sung than when they are not; and that the various feelings of our spirit have, by a sweet variety, their own proper measures in the voice and the singing, which stir them up by some hidden correspondence. But this contentment of the flesh, to which the soul must not be handed over to be enfeebled, often deceives me — the senses not waiting on reason patiently enough to follow her, but, having been let in merely for her sake, trying to run ahead and lead her. So in these things I sin without noticing, and notice afterwards.

At other times, over-anxious to avoid this very deception, I go wrong in being too strict — sometimes so far as to wish the whole melody of the sweet music used for David's psalter banished from my ears and from the church's too. And the safer way seems to me the one I have often been told about Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who made the reader recite the psalm with so slight an inflection of the voice that it was nearer speaking than singing. And yet again, when I remember the tears I shed at the psalm-singing of Your church in the first days of my recovered faith, and how at this time I am moved not by the singing but by the things sung, when they are sung with a clear voice and the most suitable setting, then I acknowledge the great usefulness of this practice. So I waver between the danger of pleasure and the proved wholesomeness, and I am inclined — though not pronouncing an irrevocable opinion — to approve the custom of singing in church, so that by the delight of the ears weaker minds may rise to a feeling of devotion. Yet when it happens that I am more moved by the voice than by the words being sung, I confess that I have sinned and deserve punishment, and then I would rather not hear the music. Look at the state I am in: weep with me, and weep for me, all of you who regulate your own feelings inwardly so that good action follows. Those of you who do not act, these things do not touch you. But You, Lord my God, listen; look, and see, and have mercy and heal me, You in whose presence I have become a problem to myself; and that is my weakness.

There remains the pleasure of these eyes of my flesh, to make my confessions about in the hearing of the ears of Your temple, those brotherly and devout ears; and so to conclude the temptations of the appetite of the flesh, which still attack me while I groan and long to be clothed with my house from heaven. The eyes love beautiful and varied shapes, and bright and soft colours. Let these not occupy my soul; let God occupy it instead, who made these things — very good indeed, but he is my good, not they. And they affect me while I am awake all day long, and I get no rest from them, as I do from music, and sometimes in silence from all voices. For this queen of colours, the light, bathing everything we look at, wherever I am during the day, gliding past me in all its various forms, soothes me even when I am busy with other things and not noticing it. And it winds itself in so strongly that if it is suddenly taken away it is looked for with longing, and if it stays away long it saddens the mind.

Light, which Tobit saw when, his own eyes closed, he taught his son the way of life, and went before him with the feet of charity, never straying! Light, which Isaac saw when his fleshly eyes were heavy and closed with age, and it was granted him to bless his sons without knowing which was which, and by blessing them to know them. Light, which Jacob saw when he too, blind with great age, with an illumined heart shed light in the persons of his sons on the different tribes of a future people, foreshadowed in them; and laid his hands, crossed in a mystery, on his grandsons by Joseph, not as their father corrected him by his outward eye, but as he himself inwardly discerned. This is the light; it is one, and all are one who see and love it. But that bodily light I was speaking of seasons the life of this world for its blind lovers with an enticing and dangerous sweetness. But those who know how to praise You for it, "Lord, creator of everything", take it up into Your hymns and are not taken up by it into their sleep. That is what I want to be. These seductions of the eyes I resist, so that my feet, which I walk Your road on, may not be trapped. And I lift my invisible eyes to You, so that You may pull my feet out of the snare. You pull them out again and again, since they get caught. You never stop pulling them out, while I keep tangling myself in the traps laid on every side; because You who keep Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

What countless trifles men have added, made by all sorts of arts and manufactures, in our clothes and shoes and utensils and works of every kind, and in pictures and images too, far beyond any necessary and moderate use and any devout meaning — added just to tempt their own eyes! Outwardly following what they make themselves, and inwardly abandoning him by whom they were made themselves, and destroying what they were made to be. But I, my God and my glory, sing a hymn to You for this too, and dedicate praise to him who dedicates me; because those beautiful patterns which pass through men's souls into their skilful hands come from that beauty which is above our souls, which my soul sighs after day and night. But the makers and followers of the outward beauties take from there their rule for judging beauty, and not their rule for using it. And he is there, though they do not notice him, so that they might not wander off but keep their strength for You, and not scatter it abroad on pleasurable exhaustion. And I, though I say this and see it, get my own steps tangled in these outward beauties; and You pull me out, Lord, You pull me out, because Your loving-kindness is before my eyes. For I am wretchedly caught, and You mercifully pull me out — sometimes without my noticing, when I had only lightly touched them; at other times painfully, because I had stuck fast.

To this is added another form of temptation, dangerous in more ways. Besides the craving of the flesh, which consists in the delight of all the senses and pleasures, and in which its slaves waste away and perish far from You, the soul has, through the same bodily senses, a certain empty and prying desire, dressed up under the title of knowledge and learning: not of taking delight in the flesh, but of making experiments through the flesh. Since its seat is the appetite for knowledge, and sight is the sense chiefly used to gain knowledge, it is called in the language of Scripture the lust of the eyes. For seeing belongs properly to the eyes; and yet we use the word of the other senses too when we set them to look for knowledge. We do not say, listen how it flashes, or smell how it glows, or taste how it shines, or feel how it gleams; all of these are said to be seen. And yet we say not only, see how it shines, which the eyes alone can perceive, but also, see how it sounds, see how it smells, see how it tastes, see how hard it is. And so the general experience of the senses is called, as I say, the lust of the eyes, because the function of seeing, in which the eyes have the first claim, is taken over by the other senses on the analogy of sight when they go looking for any knowledge.

But from this it can be seen more plainly where the object of the senses is pleasure and where it is curiosity. Pleasure looks for objects that are beautiful, tuneful, fragrant, tasty, soft; curiosity looks for the opposite as well, for the sake of the trial — not for the sake of suffering the annoyance, but out of the appetite for trying and knowing. For what pleasure is there in seeing something in a mangled corpse that makes you shudder? And yet if one is lying nearby, they crowd round to be made sad and to turn pale. They are afraid to see it even in their sleep — as if anyone had forced them to see it while they were awake, or any report of its beauty had drawn them there! It is the same with the other senses, which it would take a long time to go through. From this disease of curiosity come all the strange sights put on in the theatre. From it men go on to search out the hidden powers of nature, which is beside our purpose, which it does no good to know, and which men want for nothing but the knowing. From it too, if magical arts are enquired into with the same aim of perverted knowledge. From it too, in religion itself, God is put to the test, when signs and wonders are demanded of him not for any good purpose but simply to try him out.

In this vast wilderness full of traps and dangers, I have cut off and thrown out of my heart a great many of them, as You have given me to do, God of my salvation. And yet when do I dare to say — since so many things of this kind buzz round our daily life on every side — when do I dare to say that none of this catches my attention or arouses an idle interest in me? It is true that the theatres do not carry me away now, and I do not care to know the courses of the stars, and my soul never consulted the ghosts of the dead; I detest all sacrilegious mysteries. And yet, Lord my God, to whom I owe humble and single-hearted service, by what tricks and suggestions does the enemy work on me to want some sign! But I beg You, by our king and by our pure and holy country Jerusalem, that as any consenting to it is far from me, so may it be further and further off still. But when I pray to You for somebody's salvation, my aim and intention are quite different. You give me, and will go on giving me, the will to follow You willingly, doing what You want.

Even so, in how many petty and contemptible things is our curiosity tempted daily, and how often do we give way? Who can count them? How often do we start out as though we were merely putting up with people telling us pointless stories, so as not to offend the weak, and then gradually take an interest in them? I no longer go to the circus to see a dog chasing a hare; but out in the country, if I pass one, that chase may distract me even from some weighty thought and pull me after it — not that I turn my horse aside, but I still turn my mind that way. And unless You, having made me see my own weakness, quickly warned me either to rise towards You by some thought arising from the sight itself, or else to despise it altogether and pass on, I stand there dully fixed on it. And what about when I am sitting at home and a lizard catching flies, or a spider tangling them as they blunder into her nets, takes my attention? Is it a different thing because they are only small creatures? I go on from them to praise You, the wonderful creator and orderer of everything — but that is not what draws my attention first. It is one thing to get up quickly and another not to fall. And my life is full of such things; and my one hope is Your wonderful great mercy. For when our heart becomes the container of such things and is overloaded with crowds of this abundant emptiness, then our prayers are often interrupted and distracted by it too; and while in Your presence we direct the voice of our heart to Your ears, this business of the greatest importance is broken off by the rushing in of I do not know what idle thoughts. Are we to count this too among the things of slight importance? Or can anything bring us back to hope except Your complete mercy, since You have begun to change us?

And You know how far You have already changed me, You who first healed me of the appetite for justifying myself, so that You might forgive all the rest of my wrongdoing, and heal all my weaknesses, and redeem my life from corruption, and crown me with mercy and pity, and satisfy my desire with good things. You who curbed my pride with reverence for You, and tamed my neck to Your yoke. And now I carry it and it is light to me, because that is what You promised and what You have done; and it truly was so, and I did not know it, when I was afraid to take it up.

But, Lord — You alone are Lord without pride, because You are the only true Lord and have no lord over You — has this third kind of temptation stopped in me too, or can it stop through this whole life? I mean, wanting to be feared and loved by men, for no other purpose than to get from it a joy which is no joy at all. It is a wretched life and a foul boastfulness. This above all is why men neither purely love nor purely fear You. And that is why You resist the proud and give grace to the humble; and why You thunder down on the ambitions of the world, and the foundations of the mountains shake. Since certain offices of human society make it necessary to be loved and feared by people, the enemy of our true blessedness presses hard on us, spreading his traps of "well done, well done" everywhere, so that when we snatch greedily at them we may be caught off guard, and part our joy from Your truth and settle it in the deceptions of men; and be pleased at being loved and feared, not for Your sake but in Your place. And so, having been made like him, he can have us for his own, not in the bonds of love but in the chains of punishment — he who planned to set his throne in the north, so that dark and frozen we might serve him, imitating You in a perverse and crooked way.

But we, Lord, are Your little flock; keep us for Your own, stretch Your wings over us and let us fly under them. Be our glory; let us be loved for Your sake, and let Your word be feared in us. A man who wants to be praised by men when You blame him will not be defended by men when You judge him, or rescued when You condemn him. But when it is not the sinner who is praised for the desires of his soul, nor the man who acts irreligiously who is called blessed, but a man is praised for some gift You have given him, and he takes more pleasure in the praise for himself than in having the gift he is praised for — then he too is praised while You disapprove; and the man who did the praising is better than the man praised. For the one took pleasure in a gift of God in a man, and the other was better pleased with the gift of a man than with the gift of God.

By these temptations we are attacked daily, Lord; we are attacked without a break. Our daily furnace is the human tongue. And here too You command us self-control. Give what You command, and command what You will. You know the groans of my heart on this matter, and the floods from my eyes. For I cannot find out how far I am cleansed of this plague, and I am very much afraid of my hidden sins, which Your eyes know and mine do not. In other kinds of temptation I have some means of examining myself; in this one, hardly any. In holding my mind back from the pleasures of the flesh and from idle curiosity, I can see how far I have got when I do without them, either by giving them up or by not having them, since then I can ask myself how much more or less troublesome it is not to have them. And riches, which are wanted so as to serve one or two or all three of these cravings — if the soul cannot tell whether it despises them while it has them, they can be thrown away so that it can test itself. But to be without praise, and test our powers that way, must we live badly, indeed so abandonedly and atrociously that nobody could know us without detesting us? What greater madness could be said or thought of? But if praise usually accompanies a good life and good works, and ought to, we should no more give up its company than give up the good life itself. And yet I do not know whether I can do well or badly without something, unless it is taken away.

What then do I confess to You about this kind of temptation, Lord? What, except that I am delighted by praise — but delighted more by truth itself than by praise? For if it were put to me whether I would rather be deranged and wrong about everything and praised by everybody, or consistent and quite settled in the truth and blamed by everybody, I know which I would choose. And yet I could wish that somebody else's approval did not even add to my joy over any good in me. But I admit it does add to it, and not only that: disapproval reduces it. And when I am troubled by this wretchedness of mine, an excuse occurs to me — and how much it is worth, You know, God, since it leaves me uncertain. For You have commanded us not only self-control, that is, what to hold our love back from, but righteousness too, that is, where to bestow it; and You have wanted us to love not only You but our neighbour as well. So often, when I am pleased by intelligent praise, I seem to myself to be pleased at my neighbour's competence or promise, or to be sorry for a fault in him when I hear him disparage either what he does not understand or what is good. For sometimes I am sorry at praise given to me, either when things are praised in me that I do not like in myself, or when smaller and slighter goods are valued more highly than they deserve. But again, how do I know whether I feel this way because I do not want the man praising me to disagree with me about myself — not because I am concerned for him, but because the same good things that please me in myself please me more when they please somebody else as well? For somehow I am not being praised when my judgement of myself is not being praised, since either things are praised that displease me, or things are praised more that please me less. So am I in doubt about myself in this matter?

Look: in You, truth, I see that I ought not to be moved by praise of myself for my own sake, but for my neighbour's good. And whether that is how it is with me I do not know. Here I know less about myself than about You. I beg You now, my God, reveal me to myself as well, so that I may confess to my brothers, who are to pray for me, where I find myself crippled. Let me examine myself again more carefully. If in the praise given me I am moved by my neighbour's good, why am I less moved when somebody else is unjustly disparaged than when it is me? Why am I more stung by an insult thrown at me than by one thrown just as unjustly at somebody else in front of me? Do I not know this either? Or is it in the end that I deceive myself, and do not do the truth before You in my heart and my tongue? Put this madness far from me, Lord, in case my own mouth becomes to me the sinner's oil that makes my head fat. I am poor and needy, and I am at my best when in hidden groans I displease myself and look for Your mercy, until what is lacking in my defective state is made new and complete, on into that peace which the eye of the proud does not know.

And yet the word that comes out of the mouth, and deeds that people know about, bring with them a most dangerous temptation through the love of praise, which canvasses and collects people's votes so as to establish a certain excellence of our own. It tempts even when I am condemning it in myself, on the very ground that I am condemning it; and it often boasts more emptily about its very contempt for empty boasting — so that it is no longer contempt for empty boasting that it boasts of, since it is not despising it while it is boasting of it.

Inside, too, inside there is another evil, arising out of a similar temptation, by which men become empty, pleasing themselves in themselves although they do not please others, or displease them, or do not care whether they please them. But in pleasing themselves they greatly displease You, not only by taking pleasure in things that are not good as though they were, but in Your good things as though they were their own; or if as Yours, then as though for their own merits; or even if as coming from Your grace, then not with a brotherly rejoicing but grudging that grace to others. In all these dangers and labours and the like You can see the trembling of my heart; and I feel my wounds being cured by You rather than never being inflicted by me.

Where have You not walked with me, truth, teaching me what to beware of and what to want, whenever I brought You what I could find down here and asked Your advice? With my outward senses, as far as I could, I surveyed the world, and observed the life my body has from me, and these senses of mine. From there I went into the recesses of my memory, those many spacious chambers wonderfully furnished with countless stores; and I considered it and stood aghast, being able to make out none of these things without You, and finding that none of them was You. Nor was I myself the one who found these things out — I who went over them all and worked to distinguish them and value each according to its worth, taking some things on the report of my senses and questioning others that I felt to be mixed up with myself, counting and distinguishing the reporters themselves, and in the great treasure house of my memory turning some things over, storing others up, drawing others out. Nor was I myself when I did this — that is, the power in me by which I did it was not I; and it was not You either, for You are the abiding light which I consulted about all these things, whether they were, and what they were, and how they were to be valued. And I heard You directing and commanding me. And this I often do; this delights me; and whenever I can get free of my necessary duties, this is the pleasure I fall back on. And in all these things I run over while consulting You, I can find no safe place for my soul except in You, where my scattered parts may be gathered and nothing of me may leave You. And sometimes You let me into a state of feeling deep inside me that is most unusual, rising to a strange sweetness, which, if it were completed in me, I do not know what there would be in it that did not belong to the life to come. But through my miserable encumbrances I sink back down into these lower things and am swept back by my old habit, and am held, and weep greatly, and am greatly held. So heavily does the burden of a bad habit weigh on us. Here I can stay and would not; there I would and cannot; and both ways I am miserable.

So I have considered the sicknesses of my sins under that threefold craving, and have called Your right hand to my help. For it was with a wounded heart that I looked at Your brightness, and, struck back, I said, "Who can get there? I am cast away from the sight of Your eyes." You are the truth presiding over everything; and I in my greed did not want to lose You but wanted to possess a lie along with You — just as nobody wants to tell a lie in such a way as to be ignorant of the truth himself. So I lost You, because You will not be possessed along with a lie.

Whom could I find to reconcile me to You? Was I to turn to the angels? With what prayers? With what sacraments? Many people trying to come back to You and unable to manage it by themselves have tried this, I hear, and fallen into a craving for strange visions, and been judged fit to be deceived. For being high-minded they looked for You by the pride of learning, puffing out their chests rather than beating them; and so by the agreement of their hearts they drew to themselves the princes of the air, fellow conspirators in their pride, by whom they were deceived through magical influences while looking for a mediator to be cleansed by — and there was none. For it was the devil, transforming himself into an angel of light. And it greatly enticed proud flesh that he had no body of flesh. For they were mortal and sinners; but You, Lord, to whom they proudly sought to be reconciled, are immortal and without sin. Now a mediator between God and man must have something like God about him and something like man; otherwise, if he were like man in both respects he would be far from God, and if like God in both he would be too unlike man — and either way he would not be a mediator. That deceitful mediator, then, by whom in Your secret judgements pride deserved to be deluded, has one thing in common with man, namely sin; another he would like to seem to have in common with God, and, not being clothed in mortal flesh, would boast of being immortal. But since the wages of sin is death, this he does have in common with men: that along with them he is condemned to death.

But the true mediator, whom in Your secret mercy You have shown to the humble and sent so that by his example they might learn that same humility, that mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, appeared between mortal sinners and the immortal just one: mortal along with men, just along with God. So that, because the wages of righteousness is life and peace, he might by a righteousness joined to God cancel the death of sinners now made righteous — the death he chose to have in common with them. So he was shown to the holy men of old, so that they, through faith in his passion to come, as we through faith in it past, might be saved. For as man he was a mediator; but as the Word he was not in the middle between God and man, being equal with God, and God with God, and together one God.

How You have loved us, good Father, who did not spare Your only Son but handed him over for us who were ungodly! How You have loved us, for whom he who thought it no robbery to be equal with You was made obedient even to the death of the cross — he alone free among the dead, having the power to lay down his life and the power to take it up again; for us to You both victor and victim, and victor because victim; for us to You both priest and sacrifice, and priest because sacrifice; making us Your sons instead of Your servants by being born of You and serving us. So my hope in him is strong, that You will heal all my weaknesses through him who sits at Your right hand and pleads for us — otherwise I should despair. For my weaknesses are many and great, many and great; but Your medicine is mightier. We might have imagined Your Word to be far from any union with man, and despaired of ourselves, if he had not been made flesh and lived among us.

Frightened by my sins and by the weight of my misery, I had turned it over in my heart and made up my mind to run away into the wilderness. But You forbade me and gave me strength, saying: Christ died for all, so that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them. See, Lord, I throw my care on You, so that I may live and consider the wonderful things of Your law. You know my lack of skill and my weaknesses; teach me and heal me. He, Your only Son, in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden, has redeemed me with his blood. Let the proud not speak evil of me, because I think about my ransom, and eat and drink it and share it out; and being poor, I wanted to be filled from him, among those who eat and are satisfied — and they who seek the Lord shall praise him.

Book Eleven: Time and Eternity

Lord, since eternity is Yours, can You be ignorant of what I say to You? Or do You see in time what happens in time? Then why am I laying out so many accounts before You? Certainly not so that You might learn them from me, but to stir up my own devotion and my readers' towards You, so that we may all say, Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. I have said it already and I shall say it again: I do this for love of Your love. For we pray, too, and yet truth has said, Your Father knows what you need before you ask. So it is our feelings that we lay open to You, confessing our own miseries and Your mercies to us, so that You may free us completely, since You have begun; so that we may stop being wretched in ourselves and be blessed in You — seeing You have called us to become poor in spirit, and gentle, and mourners, and hungry and thirsty for righteousness, and merciful, and pure in heart, and peacemakers. See, I have told You many things, as well as I could and as I wanted to, because You first wanted me to confess to You, my Lord God. For You are good, and Your mercy lasts for ever.

But how could I manage with the tongue of my pen to tell all Your encouragements, and all Your terrors and comforts and guidings, by which You brought me to preach Your word and give Your sacrament to Your people? And even if I could tell them in order, the drops of time are precious to me; and I have long been burning to meditate on Your law, and to confess to You in it both my skill and my lack of skill, the daybreak of Your enlightening and the remains of my darkness, until weakness is swallowed up by strength. And I do not want anything else to steal the hours I find free from the necessities of refreshing my body and my mind's powers, and from the service we owe to men, or which we pay them even when we do not owe it.

Lord my God, listen to my prayer, and let Your mercy hear my desire; for it is anxious not for myself alone but wants to serve brotherly love, and You see my heart, that this is so. I would sacrifice to You the service of my thought and my tongue; give me something that I may offer You. For I am poor and needy, and You are rich to all who call on You — You, who beyond the reach of care, care for us. Circumcise all rashness and all lying from both my inward and my outward lips; let Your Scriptures be my pure delight; let me neither be deceived in them nor deceive out of them. Lord, listen and take pity, Lord my God, light of the blind and strength of the weak, and light of those who see and strength of the strong as well: listen to my soul, and hear it crying out of the depths. For if Your ears are not with us in the depths too, where are we to go? Where cry out? The day is Yours and the night is Yours; at Your nod the moments fly by. Grant out of them a space for our thinking on the hidden things of Your law, and do not shut it against us who knock. For it is not for nothing that You wanted the dark secrets of so many pages written; and those forests are not without their deer, who retire into them and range and walk and feed and lie down and chew the cud. Complete me, Lord, and reveal them to me. Your voice is my joy; Your voice exceeds abundance of pleasures. Give me what I love; for I do love, and even that You gave me. Do not abandon Your own gifts, and do not despise Your green plant that is thirsty. Let me confess to You whatever I find in Your books, and hear the voice of praise, and drink in You, and consider the wonderful things out of Your law — from the very beginning, in which You made heaven and earth, right through to the everlasting reign of Your holy city with You.

Lord, have mercy on me and hear my desire. For it is not, I think, of the earth: not of gold and silver and precious stones, or fine clothes, or honours and offices, or the pleasures of the flesh, or even the necessities of the body for this pilgrim life of ours — all of which shall be added to those who seek Your kingdom and Your righteousness. See, Lord my God, where my desire lies. The wicked have told me of delights, but not like Your law, Lord. That is where my desire lies. See, Father, look and see and approve; and may it be pleasing in the sight of Your mercy that I should find grace before You, so that the inner parts of Your words may be opened to me as I knock. I beg You by our Lord Jesus Christ Your Son, the man of Your right hand, the Son of man, whom You have established for Yourself as mediator between us and You; through whom You sought us when we were not seeking You, and sought us so that we might seek You; Your Word, through whom You made all things, and me among them; Your only-begotten, through whom You called the believing people to adoption, and me among them. I beg You by him, who sits at Your right hand and pleads with You for us, in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden. It is these I am looking for in Your books. Moses wrote of him; he says so himself; the truth says so.

I would like to hear and understand how "In the beginning You made heaven and earth." Moses wrote this; wrote it and went away, passed from here from You to You; and he is not in front of me now. If he were, I would take hold of him and ask him, and beg him in Your name to open these things to me, and would put the ears of my body to the sounds bursting from his mouth. And if he spoke Hebrew, it would strike my senses in vain and none of it would touch my mind; but if Latin, I would know what he said. But how would I know whether he was telling the truth? And if I knew even that, would I know it from him? Truly it would be within me, within, in the chamber of my thoughts, that truth — neither Hebrew nor Greek nor Latin nor barbarian, without organs of voice or tongue, without the sound of syllables — would say, "It is true," and I would say at once and confidently to that man of Yours, "You are telling the truth." So since I cannot ask him, I ask You, truth, of whom he was full when he spoke truth: You, my God, I beg, forgive my sins; and You who gave Your servant the gift of saying these things, give me too the gift of understanding them.

Look: heaven and earth exist, and they proclaim that they were created, since they change and vary. Whereas whatever has not been made and yet exists has nothing in it that it did not have before — and that is what changing and varying is. They proclaim also that they did not make themselves: "We exist because we have been made; so we did not exist before we existed, in a way that would let us make ourselves." And the evidence of the fact is the voice of those who say it. So it was You, Lord, who made them; You who are beautiful, since they are beautiful; You who are good, since they are good; You who are, since they are. And yet they are not beautiful or good or existent in the way that You their creator are: compared with You they are neither beautiful nor good, nor do they exist. This we know, thanks be to You. And our knowledge, compared with Your knowledge, is ignorance.

But how did You make heaven and earth? What was the engine of so mighty a fabrication? It was not like a human craftsman shaping one body out of another according to the judgement of his mind, which can somehow invest a thing with the form it sees inside itself by its inward eye. And where would he get the power to do that, unless You had made that mind? And he invests with a form something that already exists and has being — clay or stone or wood or gold or something of the sort. And where would those come from, if You had not appointed them? You made the craftsman his body; You made the mind that commands his limbs; You made the material he makes anything out of; You made the grasp by which he takes in his art and sees inside what he is doing outside; You made his bodily senses, by which, as by an interpreter, he can convey from mind to matter what he is doing, and report back to his mind what has been done, so that inside it may consult the truth presiding over it as to whether it has been done well. All these praise You, the creator of everything.

But how do You make them? How, God, did You make heaven and earth? Certainly it was not in heaven or on earth that You made heaven and earth; nor in the air or the waters, since these too belong to heaven and earth; nor did You make the whole world in the whole world, since there was no place to make it in before it was made, that it might exist. Nor did You hold anything in Your hand to make heaven and earth out of. Where would You have got that from, which You had not made, to make something else out of? For what exists, except because You exist? So You spoke, and they were made; and in Your Word You made them.

But how did You speak? In the way the voice came out of the cloud saying, This is my beloved Son? For that voice passed by and passed away; it began and ended; the syllables sounded and passed, the second after the first, the third after the second, and so on in order until the last after all the rest, and silence after the last. From which it is abundantly clear and plain that it was the movement of a creature that expressed it — a movement in time, serving Your eternal will. And these words of Yours, created for a moment, the outward ear reported to the intelligent soul, whose inward ear lay listening to Your eternal Word. But the soul compared these words sounding in time with that eternal Word of Yours in silence, and said, "It is different, utterly different. These words are far beneath me, and they do not exist, since they run away and pass; but the Word of my Lord remains above me for ever." If, then, You said in sounding and passing words that heaven and earth should be made, and so made heaven and earth, then there was a bodily creature before heaven and earth, by whose movements in time that voice could run its course in time. But there was nothing bodily before heaven and earth; or if there was, then surely You had created it without such a passing voice, in order to make out of it the passing voice by which to say, Let heaven and earth be made. For whatever it was that such a voice was made out of, unless it were made by You it could not exist at all. So by what Word did You speak, so that a body might be made, out of which these words might in turn be made?

So You are calling us to understand the Word — God with You, God — which is spoken eternally, and by which all things are spoken eternally. For what was spoken was not spoken one thing after another, one concluded so that the next might be spoken, but everything together and eternally. Otherwise we have time and change, and not a true eternity or a true immortality. This I know, my God, and I give thanks. I know it and confess it to You, Lord; and along with me, whoever is not ungrateful to sure truth knows it and blesses You. We know, Lord, we know: since in so far as anything is not what it was, and is what it was not, so far it dies and rises. So nothing of Your Word gives way or takes another's place, because it is truly immortal and eternal. And therefore to the Word co-eternal with You, You say all You say at once and eternally; and whatever You say shall be made, is made; and You do not make in any way except by saying. And yet the things You make by saying are not all made at once, or everlasting.

Why, Lord my God, I ask You? I see it after a fashion, but how to express it I do not know — unless it is that whatever begins to be and stops being, begins and stops at the moment when it is known in Your eternal reason that it ought to begin or stop; and in that reason nothing begins or stops. This is Your Word, which is also "the beginning, because it also speaks to us". So in the gospel he speaks through the flesh, and this sounded outwardly in men's ears, so that it might be believed and sought inwardly and found in the eternal truth, where the good and only master teaches all his disciples. There, Lord, I hear Your voice speaking to me, because the one who teaches us is speaking to us, while the one who does not teach us, though he speaks, is not speaking to us. And who teaches us now but the unchangeable truth? For even when we are warned through a changeable creature, we are only being led to the unchangeable truth, where we learn truly, standing and hearing him and rejoicing greatly at the bridegroom's voice, which restores us to him from whom we come. And therefore he is the beginning: because unless he stayed, there would be nowhere to come back to when we went astray. And when we come back from error, it is by knowing; and so that we may know, he teaches us, because he is the beginning, and speaks to us.

In this beginning, God, You have made heaven and earth: in Your Word, in Your Son, in Your power, in Your wisdom, in Your truth, wonderfully speaking and wonderfully making. Who shall take it in? Who shall declare it? What is it that gleams through me and strikes my heart without hurting it, so that I shudder and catch fire? I shudder in so far as I am unlike it; I catch fire in so far as I am like it. It is wisdom, wisdom itself, that gleams through me, cutting through my cloudiness — which closes over me again as I faint away from it, through the darkness that gathers on me for my punishment. For my strength is brought low in need, so that I cannot carry my own blessings, until You, Lord, who have been gracious to all my wrongdoing, heal all my weaknesses. For You will also redeem my life from corruption and crown me with loving-kindness and tender mercies, and satisfy my desire with good things, because my youth shall be renewed like an eagle's. For we are saved in hope, and so we wait with patience for Your promises. Let anyone who can, hear You speaking inwardly out of Your oracle; I shall boldly cry out, How wonderful are Your works, Lord — in wisdom You have made them all. And this wisdom is the beginning, and it was in that beginning that You made heaven and earth.

Are they not full of their old leaven, the people who say to us, "What was God doing before he made heaven and earth? For if he was unoccupied and doing nothing," they say, "why does he not go on doing nothing, from now on and for ever, as he did before? If some new movement arose in God, and a new will to make a creature he had never made before, how could that be a true eternity, in which a will arises that was not there before? For the will of God is not a creature but is prior to the creature, since nothing could be created unless the will of the creator had come first. So the will of God belongs to his very substance. And if something has arisen in God's substance that was not there before, then that substance cannot truly be called eternal. But if God's will has been from eternity that the creature should exist, why was the creature not from eternity too?"

People who talk this way do not yet understand You, wisdom of God, light of souls; they do not yet understand how the things are made that are made by You and in You. And yet they try to grasp eternal things, while their heart flutters between the movements of things past and things to come, and is still unsteady. Who will hold that heart still and fix it, so that it stands for a moment and for a moment catches the glory of that ever-fixed eternity, and compares it with the times, which are never fixed, and sees that it cannot be compared? And that a long time cannot become long except out of many movements passing by, which cannot be prolonged all together; whereas in the eternal nothing passes, but the whole is present, while no span of time is present all at once? And that all past time is driven on by time to come, and all time to come follows on the past, and all past and future is created and flows out of what is always present? Who will hold the heart of man so that it may stand still and see how eternity, always standing still, neither past nor to come, utters times past and times to come? Can my hand do this, or the hand of my mouth by speech bring about so great a thing?

See how I answer the man who asks, "What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?" I do not answer as somebody is said to have answered flippantly, dodging the pressure of the question: "He was preparing hell for people who pry into mysteries." Answering an enquiry is one thing; making fun of the enquirer is another. So that is not my answer. I would rather answer "I do not know" about what I do not know, than answer in a way that raises a laugh against a man who asks deep questions and wins praise for a man who gives false ones. But I say that You, our God, are the creator of every creature; and if by the name "heaven and earth" every creature is meant, then I say boldly that before God made heaven and earth he did not make anything. For if he made something, what did he make except a creature? And I wish I knew everything I want to know for my own good as well as I know that no creature was made before any creature was made.

But if some roving brain ranges over the images of times gone by, and is amazed that You, the God almighty and all-creating and all-sustaining, the maker of heaven and earth, held back from so great a work for countless ages before You would make it, let him wake up and consider that he is amazed at illusions. For where could countless ages have passed that You did not make, You who are the author and creator of all ages? Or what times could there be that were not made by You? Or how could they pass, if they never existed? So since You are the creator of all times, if there was any time before You made heaven and earth, why do they say You gave up working? That very time You made, and times could not pass before You made those times. But if there was no time before heaven and earth, why is it asked what You were doing then? For there was no "then" when there was no time.

Nor do You come before time by time; otherwise You would not come before all times. You come before all past things by the loftiness of an ever-present eternity, and You go beyond all future things because they are future, and when they come they will be past; but You are the same, and Your years do not run out. Your years neither come nor go, while ours both come and go, so that they may all come. Your years stand together, because they do stand; departing years are not pushed out by arriving ones, since they do not pass away — whereas ours will all exist only when they no longer exist. Your years are a single day; and Your day is not a daily one but a Today, seeing that Your Today does not give way to a tomorrow, since neither does it take the place of a yesterday. Your Today is eternity; and therefore You fathered the co-eternal one, to whom You said, Today I have begotten You. You have made all things; and before all times You are, and there was no time in which there was no time.

So there was no time at which You had not made anything, since You made time itself. And no times are co-eternal with You, because You remain; and if they remained, they would not be times.

For what is time? Who can readily and briefly explain it? Who can even take it in in thought, so as to say a word about it? And yet what do we mention more familiarly and knowingly in conversation than time? And we understand it when we speak of it, and understand it when we hear somebody else speak of it. What is time, then? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who asks, I do not know. And yet I say boldly that I know this much: that if nothing passed away there would be no past time, and if nothing were coming there would be no future time, and if nothing existed there would be no present time. So how do those two times exist, the past and the future, seeing that the past now is not and the future is not yet? And as for the present, if it were always present and never passed into the past, it would not be time at all but eternity. So if present time only comes into existence, if it is to be time, by passing into the past, how can we say that it exists either — when the cause of its existing is that it shall not exist? So that we cannot truly say that time exists, except because it is tending not to exist.

And yet we say "a long time" and "a short time" — and still, only of past or future time. A long time past we call, for instance, a hundred years ago; and a long time to come, a hundred years hence. And a short time past we call, say, ten days ago; and a short time to come, ten days hence. But in what sense is something long or short that does not exist? For the past is not now, and the future is not yet. So let us not say "it is long", but of the past, "it was long", and of the future, "it will be long."

Lord, my light, will Your truth not laugh at man here too? For that past time which was long: was it long when it was already past, or when it was still present? It could be long when there was something there that could be long; but once past it no longer existed, and so what did not exist at all could not be long either. So let us not say, "past time was long", since we shall not find anything that was long, seeing that once it was past it no longer existed. Let us say instead, "that present time was long" — because when it was present it was long. It had not yet passed away into non-existence, and so there was something there that could be long; but once it was past, what ceased to exist ceased to be long as well.

Let us see, then, soul of man, whether present time can be long; for it is given to you to feel and to measure lengths of time. What will you answer me? Are a hundred years, when present, a long time? Look first at whether a hundred years can be present. For if the first of these years is now running, it is present, but the other ninety-nine are to come and so are not yet; and if the second year is running, one is now past, another present, and the rest to come. And so if we take any year in the middle of the hundred to be present, all the ones before it are past and all the ones after it are to come; so a hundred years cannot be present. But see at least whether the one now running is present. For if the current month is its first, the rest are to come; if the second, the first is already past and the rest are not yet. So the year now running is not present either; and if it is not present as a whole, then the year is not present. For twelve months make a year, of which whichever one is running is present, while the rest are past or to come. Though the current month is not present either, but only one day of it — the rest being to come if it is the first, past if the last, and if any in the middle, then part past and part to come.

See how the present time, which alone we found could be called long, is cut down to the length of barely one day. But let us examine that too, since not even one day is present as a whole. It is made up of twenty-four hours of night and day, of which the first has the rest to come, and the last has them past, and any in the middle has those before it past and those behind it to come. And that one hour passes away in flying particles. Whatever of it has flown away is past; whatever remains is to come. If an instant of time can be conceived that cannot be divided into the smallest particles of moments, that alone is what may be called present. And it flies with such speed from future into past that it cannot be extended by the slightest pause; for if it could, it would be divided into past and future. The present has no extension.

So where is the time we can call long? Is it the future? Of the future we do not say, "it is long", because it does not yet exist so as to be long; we say, "it will be long". So when will it be? If even then, while it is still to come, it will not be long — since what can be long does not yet exist — and if it will therefore be long only when, out of a future that does not yet exist, it begins to exist and has become present, so that there is something there that can be long: then present time cries out, in the words above, that it cannot be long.

And yet, Lord, we do perceive intervals of time and compare them, and say that some are shorter and others longer. We even measure how much longer or shorter this time is than that, and answer, "This is double, or triple"; or, "That is single, or just the same as this." But we measure times as they pass, by perceiving them. As for the past, which no longer exists, or the future, which does not exist yet, who can measure them? Unless a man dares to say that what does not exist can be measured. So when time is passing it can be perceived and measured; but once past it cannot, because it does not exist.

I am asking, Father, not asserting: my God, direct me and guide me. Who will tell me that there are not three times, past, present and future, as we learned as boys and taught boys ourselves — but only the present, because the other two do not exist? Or do they exist too, and when it becomes present out of the future, does it come out of some hidden place, and when it retreats from present into past, does it go into one? For where did the men who foretold things to come see them, if they did not yet exist? What does not exist cannot be seen. And men who relate things past could not relate them if they did not make them out in their minds; and if those things did not exist, they could not be made out at all. So things past and things to come do exist.

Let me look further, Lord. My hope, do not let my purpose be thrown into confusion. If times past and to come exist, I want to know where they are. And even if I cannot manage that, I do know that wherever they are, they are not there as future or as past, but as present. For if they are future there too, they are not there yet; and if they are past there too, they are no longer there. So wherever whatever exists is, it is only as present. Although when past events are related, it is not the things themselves that are drawn out of the memory, which are past, but words conceived from the images of the things, which as they passed left their traces in the mind through the senses. My childhood, which no longer exists, is in past time, which no longer exists; but now, when I recall its image and describe it, I am looking at it in the present, because it is still in my memory. Whether there is a similar cause for foretelling things to come — so that images of things which do not yet exist may be perceived beforehand, already existing — I confess, my God, I do not know. But this I do know: that we generally think ahead about our future actions, and that this forethinking is present, while the action we are thinking ahead about does not yet exist, because it is to come. And when we have set about it and begun to do what we were thinking of, then the action will exist, because then it is no longer future but present.

Whichever way, then, this secret pre-perceiving of things to come works, only what exists can be seen. And what now exists is not future but present. So when things to come are said to be seen, it is not the things themselves that are seen, which do not yet exist — that is, which are to be — but perhaps their causes or their signs, which already exist. So they are not future but present to those who now see the thing from which the future is foreconceived in the mind and foretold. And these foreconceptions exist now; and those who foretell those things are looking at conceptions present in front of them. Let the great variety of things supply me an example. I look at the dawn; I predict that the sun is about to rise. What I am looking at is present; what I am signalling ahead is to come — not the sun, which already exists, but the sunrise, which does not exist yet. And yet if I did not picture the sunrise itself in my mind, as I am doing now while I speak of it, I could not foretell it. But the dawn light I make out in the sky is not the sunrise, though it comes before it; and neither is that picture in my mind. Those two are seen as present now, so that the other, which is to be, may be foretold. So future things do not yet exist; and if they do not yet exist, they do not exist; and if they do not exist, they cannot be seen. But they can be foretold from present things, which already exist and are seen.

You then, ruler of Your creation: by what means do You teach souls things to come? For You taught Your prophets. By what means do You, to whom nothing is to come, teach things to come — or rather, teach present things about the future? For what does not exist cannot be taught. This road is too far beyond my sight; it is too mighty for me, I cannot reach it. But from You I can, when You grant it, sweet light of my hidden eyes.

What is clear and plain now is that neither things to come nor things past exist. Nor is it properly said that there are three times, past, present and to come; but perhaps it might properly be said that there are three times: a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future. For these three do exist in some fashion in the soul, and I do not see them anywhere else: the present of things past is memory; the present of things present is sight; the present of things future is expectation. If we may put it that way, then I see three times, and I admit there are three. Let it also be said that there are three times, past, present and to come, in our incorrect way of speaking. I do not object or argue or find fault, so long as what is said is understood — that neither what is to be exists now, nor what is past. There are very few things we say properly; most things we say improperly, and still what is meant is understood.

I said just now that we measure times as they pass, so as to be able to say that this time is twice as long as that, or that this is just the same as that, and so with any other measurable parts of time. So, as I said, we measure times as they pass. And if anyone asked me how I know, I might answer: I know that we do measure, and that we cannot measure things that do not exist, and that things past and to come do not exist. But how do we measure present time, seeing it has no extension? It is measured while it is passing, and when it has passed it is not measured, since there will be nothing there to measure. But where does it pass from, and by what road, and where to, while it is being measured? Where from, but from the future? By what road, but through the present? Where to, but into the past? So from what does not yet exist, through what has no extension, into what no longer exists. And yet what are we measuring, if not time in some extension? For we do not say single and double and triple and equal, or anything else of the sort that we say about time, except of extensions of time. So in what extension do we measure time as it passes? In the future, which it passes from? But we do not measure what does not yet exist. In the present, which it passes through? But an extension of no size we do not measure. In the past, which it passes into? But we do not measure what no longer exists either.

My soul is on fire to know this most intricate riddle. Do not shut it away, Lord my God, good Father; through Christ I beg You, do not shut these familiar yet hidden things away from my longing, so that it is stopped from getting into them; let them dawn through Your enlightening mercy, Lord. Whom shall I ask about these things? And to whom shall I confess my ignorance more usefully than to You, to whom these studies of mine, so violently kindled towards Your Scriptures, are no trouble? Give me what I love; for I do love, and even that You gave me. Give, Father, who truly know how to give good gifts to Your children. Give, because I have taken it on myself to know, and there is trouble in front of me until You open it up. By Christ I beg You, in his name, holy of holies, let nobody disturb me. For I believed, and therefore I speak. This is my hope; this is what I live for, that I may contemplate the delights of the Lord. You have made my days grow old, and they pass away, and how, I do not know. And we talk about time and time, times and times: "How long since he said this?" "How long since he did that?" "How long since I saw that?" "This syllable takes twice the time of that short one." These are the words we speak and hear, and are understood and understand. They are utterly obvious and ordinary, and the very same things are also far too deeply hidden, and their discovery would be something new.

I once heard a learned man say that time is constituted by the motions of the sun, the moon and the stars, and I did not agree. Why should the motions of all bodies not be times just as well? Or if the lights of heaven stopped and a potter's wheel went round, would there be no time for us to measure those turnings by, and to say either that it moved with equal intervals, or that if it turned sometimes slower and sometimes faster, some turns were longer and others shorter? Or, while we said this, would we not be speaking in time ourselves? Or would there be in our words some short syllables and some long, except because these sounded in a shorter time and those in a longer? God, grant men to see in a small thing the principles common to things great and small. The stars and lights of heaven are also for signs and for seasons and for years and for days; they are. And yet I would not say that the going round of that wooden wheel was a day, nor would he say that it was therefore not time.

I want to know the force and nature of time, by which we measure the motions of bodies and say, for example, that this motion is twice as long as that. For I ask this. "Day" means not only the sun's stay above the earth, according to which day is one thing and night another, but also its whole circuit from east round to east again, according to which we say "so many days have passed", the night being included when we say "so many days", and the nights not counted separately. Seeing, then, that a day is completed by the motion of the sun and by his circuit from east round to east, I ask: does the motion alone make the day, or the length of time in which the motion is completed, or both? If the first, then we should have a day even if the sun finished his course in as small a space of time as an hour. If the second, then it would not make a day if between one sunrise and the next there were only as short a stay as an hour; the sun would have to go round twenty-four times to complete one day. If both, then neither could be called a day: not if the sun ran his whole round in the space of an hour, and not if, while the sun stood still, as much time went by as the sun usually takes to run his whole course from morning to morning.

So I shall not now ask what it is that is called a day, but what time is — the time by which, measuring the circuit of the sun, we should say that it was finished in half the time it usually takes, if it were finished in as small a space as twelve hours; and comparing the two, should call this a single time and that a double one, even supposing the sun to run his round from east to east sometimes in the single and sometimes in the double time. So let nobody tell me that the motions of the heavenly bodies constitute times; because when at one man's prayer the sun stood still until he could finish his victorious battle, the sun stood still and time went on. For that battle was fought and finished in its own allotted space of time. So I perceive time to be a kind of extension. But do I perceive it, or only seem to perceive it? You, light and truth, will show me.

Do You tell me to agree, if somebody defines time as "the motion of a body"? You do not. That no body is moved except in time, I hear; that You say. But that the motion of a body is time, I do not hear; You do not say it. For when a body is moved, I measure by time how long it moves, from the moment it began to move until it stopped. And if I did not see when it began, and it goes on moving so that I do not see when it ends, I cannot measure it — except perhaps from the moment I began looking until I stop. And if I look a long while, I can only say it was a long time, and not how long, because when we say "how long" we do it by comparison: "this is as long as that", or "twice as long as that", or the like. But when we can mark the distances of the places the moving body goes from and to, or of its parts if it turns as on a lathe, then we can say precisely in how much time the motion of that body, or of its part, from this place to that, was completed. So since the motion of a body is one thing, and what we measure its length by is another, who cannot see which of the two is rather to be called time? And if a body is sometimes moving and sometimes standing still, then we measure by time not only its motion but its standing still as well; and we say, "It stood still as long as it moved", or "It stood still twice or three times as long as it moved", or any other proportion our measuring has either established or guessed at — more or less, as we usually say. So time is not the motion of a body.

And I confess to You, Lord, that I still do not know what time is; and again I confess to You, Lord, that I know I am saying this in time, and that having spoken about time for a long while, that very "long while" is not long except by a lapse of time. So how do I know this, when I do not know what time is? Or is it perhaps that I do not know how to express what I do know? How wretched I am, that I do not even know what I do not know. Look, my God, I am not lying in front of You; my heart is as I speak. You will light my candle; You, Lord my God, will lighten my darkness.

Does my soul not most truly confess to You that I do measure times? So do I measure, my God, and not know what I am measuring? I measure the motion of a body by time; and do I not measure the time itself? Or could I really measure the motion of a body — how long it went on, and in how long a stretch it could get from this place to that — without measuring the time it moved in? And this time itself, how do I measure it? Do we measure a longer time by a shorter one, as we measure the length of a beam by the length of a forearm? For that is how we seem to measure the length of a long syllable by the length of a short one, and to say that this is double that. So we measure the lengths of stanzas by the lengths of the lines, and the lengths of the lines by the lengths of the feet, and the lengths of the feet by the lengths of the syllables, and the lengths of the long syllables by the lengths of the short ones — not measuring by the pages, since then we would be measuring spaces and not times, but as we utter the words and they pass by, and we say, "It is a long stanza, being made of so many lines; long lines, since they consist of so many feet; long feet, since they are drawn out through so many syllables; a long syllable, since it is double a short one." But we do not get any certain measure of time this way either, since it may be that a shorter line, pronounced more fully, takes up more time than a longer one pronounced in a hurry. And the same for a line, a foot, a syllable.

So it seemed to me that time is nothing but a stretching out — of what, I do not know; and I wonder whether it is not of the mind itself. For what, I ask You, my God, am I measuring when I say either indefinitely, "This is a longer time than that", or definitely, "This is double that"? That I am measuring time I know; and yet I am not measuring future time, since it does not yet exist; nor present time, since it is not stretched out over any extension; nor past time, since it no longer exists. So what am I measuring? Times as they pass, and not times past? That is what I said.

Courage, my mind, and push on hard. God is our helper; he made us, and not we ourselves. Push on to where truth begins to dawn. Suppose the voice of a body begins to sound, and does sound, and goes on sounding; and then it stops. There is silence now, and that voice is past and is no longer a voice. Before it sounded it was to come, and could not be measured because it did not yet exist; and now it cannot be measured, because it no longer exists. So it could be measured while it was sounding, because then there was something there that could be measured. But even then it was not standing still; it was passing on and passing away. Could it be measured all the more for that? For while it was passing it was being stretched over some extension of time, so that it could be measured — since the present has no extension. So if it could be measured then, suppose another voice has begun to sound and is still sounding in one continuous tenor without any break. Let us measure it while it sounds; since once it has stopped sounding it will be past and there will be nothing left to measure. Let us measure it, then, and say how much it is. But it is still sounding, and it cannot be measured except from the moment it began to the moment it stopped; for the interval between is exactly what we measure, namely from some beginning to some end. So a voice that has not yet ended cannot be measured, so as to say how long or short it is, or to call it equal to another, or double a single one, or anything of the kind. But when it has ended, it no longer exists. How can it be measured then? And yet we do measure times — and not the times that do not yet exist, nor those that no longer exist, nor those that are not stretched out by any duration, nor those that have no boundaries. So we measure neither times to come, nor times past, nor present times, nor passing times; and yet we do measure times.

Deus Creator omnium — this line of eight syllables alternates short and long. The four short ones, the first, third, fifth and seventh, are single in relation to the four long ones, the second, fourth, sixth and eighth. Each of these has twice the time of each of those. I pronounce them, I report on them, and I find it so, as anyone's plain sense perceives. By plain sense, then, I measure a long syllable by a short one, and I sensibly find it to have twice as much. But when one sounds after the other, if the first is short and the second long, how am I to hold on to the short one, and how, in measuring, am I to apply it to the long one so as to find that this has twice as much — seeing the long one does not begin to sound until the short one stops? And do I measure that very long syllable as present, when I do not measure it until it has ended? And its ending is its passing away. So what is it that I am measuring? Where is the short syllable I measure with? Where is the long one I measure? Both have sounded, have flown, have passed away, are no more. And yet I measure, and answer confidently, so far as one can rely on a practised sense, that this syllable is single and that one double in extension of time. And I could not do this unless they were already past and finished. So it is not the syllables themselves, which no longer exist, that I measure, but something in my memory, which stays fixed there.

It is in you, my mind, that I measure times. Do not interrupt me — that is, do not interrupt yourself with the tumult of your own impressions. In you I measure times. The impression that passing things make in you stays behind when they are gone; and it is this, still present, that I measure, not the things that passed by to make the impression. This is what I measure when I measure times. So either this is time, or I do not measure times at all.

And what about when we measure silence, and say that this silence lasted as long as that voice did? Do we not stretch out our thought to the measure of a voice, as if it were sounding, so as to be able to report on the intervals of silence in a given space of time? For though the voice and the tongue are still, in thought we go over poems and lines and any other discourse, or the dimensions of motions, and report on their lengths of time, how much this is compared with that, exactly as if we were pronouncing them aloud. If a man wanted to utter a prolonged sound, and had settled in his thought how long it should be, he has already gone through a stretch of time in silence, and, committing it to memory, he begins to utter the sound, which goes on until it is brought to the end he had proposed. Or rather, it has sounded and will sound: the part of it that is finished has sounded, and the rest will sound. And so it goes on, until the present attention carries the future over into the past, the past growing by the shrinking of the future, until by the using-up of the future the whole is past.

But how is that future shrunk or used up, when it does not yet exist? And how is that past increased, when it no longer exists — except that in the mind that does all this there are three things going on? For it expects, and it attends, and it remembers; so that what it expects passes, through what it attends to, into what it remembers. Who then denies that things to come do not yet exist? And yet there is in the mind an expectation of things to come. And who denies that past things no longer exist? And yet there is still in the mind a memory of things past. And who denies that present time has no extension, since it passes away in a moment? And yet our attention lasts, and through it what will be present goes on to become absent. So it is not future time that is long, since it does not yet exist; a long future is a long expectation of the future. And it is not past time that is long, since it no longer exists; a long past is a long memory of the past.

Suppose I am about to recite a psalm I know. Before I begin, my expectation is stretched over the whole of it; but once I have begun, however much of it I peel off into the past is stretched along my memory. So the life of this action of mine is divided between my memory, as to what I have recited, and my expectation, as to what I am about to recite. And attention is present with me, so that through it what was future may be carried over and become past. And the more this is done again and again, the more the expectation is shortened and the memory lengthened, until the whole expectation is used up, when the whole action is finished and has passed into memory. And what happens in the whole psalm happens in each separate part of it and each separate syllable. The same holds in that longer action of which this psalm may be a part; the same holds in the whole life of a man, of which all the man's actions are parts; the same holds through the whole age of the sons of men, of which all men's lives are parts.

But because Your loving-kindness is better than all lives, look: my life is nothing but a being pulled apart, and Your right hand held me up — in my Lord, the Son of man, the mediator between You, the one, and us, the many; many too through our many distractions among many things. So that through him I might take hold of the one in whom I have been taken hold of, and be gathered up again out of my old way of life to follow the one: forgetting what lies behind, and not pulled apart but stretched out — not towards things that shall be and shall pass away, but towards the things that lie ahead; not distractedly but intently, following on for the prize of my heavenly calling, where I may hear the voice of Your praise and contemplate Your delights, which neither come nor pass away. But now my years are spent in mourning. And You, Lord, are my comfort, my everlasting Father; and I have been split up among times whose order I do not know; and my thoughts, the very inmost parts of my soul, are torn and mangled by tumultuous varieties, until I flow together into You, purified and melted down by the fire of Your love.

And now I shall stand and grow firm in You, in my mould, which is Your truth. And I shall not put up with the questions of people who, by a diseased craving that is its own punishment, thirst for more than they can hold, and say, "What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?" Or, "How did it come into his mind to make anything, having never made anything before?" Grant them, Lord, to think carefully about what they are saying, and to discover that "never" cannot be said where there is no time. So when he is said "never to have made", what is that but to say he made it "at no time"? So let them see that time cannot exist without created being, and stop talking this nonsense. May they also be stretched out towards the things that lie ahead, and understand that You are before all times, the eternal creator of all times, and that no times are co-eternal with You, and no creature, even if there is some creature before all times.

Lord my God, what a depth is that recess of Your mysteries, and how far the consequences of my sins have thrown me from it! Heal my eyes, so that I may share the joy of Your light. Certainly, if there were a mind gifted with such vast knowledge and foreknowledge as to know everything past and to come the way I know a psalm I know well, that mind would be extraordinarily wonderful and frighteningly amazing: nothing past and nothing to come in later ages would be any more hidden from it than, when I sang that psalm, it was hidden from me what and how much of it had gone by from the beginning, and what and how much was left to the end. But far be it, You who are the creator of the universe, the creator of souls and bodies — far be it that You should know all things past and to come in any such way. Far, far more wonderfully and far more mysteriously do You know them. For the feelings of a man singing something he knows, or listening to a song he knows well, are varied and his senses divided by his expectation of the words to come and his memory of the ones past; and nothing of the kind happens to You, unchangeably eternal, that is, the eternal creator of minds. So just as You in the beginning knew heaven and earth without any variation in Your knowledge, so in the beginning You made heaven and earth without any division in Your action. Whoever understands this, let him confess to You; and whoever does not understand, let him confess to You. How high You are, and the humble in heart are Your dwelling place; for You raise up those who are bowed down, and they do not fall, since You are their raising up.

Book Twelve: Heaven and Earth

My heart, Lord, touched by the words of Your holy Scripture, is very busy in the middle of this poverty of my life. And that is why, most of the time, the poverty of human understanding is rich in words: because enquiring has more to say than discovering, and asking takes longer than getting, and our hand that knocks has more work to do than our hand that receives. We hold the promise; who shall cancel it? If God is for us, who can be against us? Ask, and you shall have; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened. These are Your own promises; and who need be afraid of being cheated, when it is the truth that promises?

The lowliness of my tongue confesses to Your highness that You made heaven and earth: this sky I see, and this earth I walk on, from which comes the earth I carry about with me. You made it. But where is that heaven of heavens, Lord, which we hear of in the words of the psalm: The heaven of heavens belongs to the Lord, but the earth he has given to the children of men? Where is that heaven which we do not see, and to which everything we do see is earth? For this bodily whole, not being wholly everywhere, has received its share of beauty in these lower parts, of which the lowest is this earth of ours; but to that heaven of heavens, even the sky over our earth is only earth. Indeed both these great bodies may not absurdly be called earth in relation to that unknown heaven, which is the Lord's and not the sons' of men.

And this earth was invisible and without form, and there was some depth of an abyss over which there was no light, because it had no shape. So You commanded it to be written that darkness was over the face of the deep. And what is that but the absence of light? For if there had been light, where would it have been, except above everything, lighting it? So where light was not, what was the presence of darkness but the absence of light? Darkness was over it, then, because light was not over it, as where there is no sound there is silence. And what is it to have silence there, except to have no sound there? Have You not taught this soul that confesses to You, Lord? Have You not taught me, Lord, that before You formed and diversified this formless matter there was nothing — no colour, no shape, no body, no spirit? And yet not altogether nothing; for there was a certain formlessness, without any beauty.

Then what should it be called, so that it might be conveyed in some measure to duller minds, except by some ordinary word? And what in all the world can be found nearer to an absolute formlessness than earth and the deep? Occupying the lowest level, they are less beautiful than the higher parts, which are all transparent and shining. So why should I not conceive the formlessness of matter — which You had created without beauty, to make this beautiful world out of — to be suitably suggested to men by the name of earth invisible and without form?

So that when thought looks for what the senses can conceive under this, and says to itself, "It is no intelligible form, like life or justice, since it is the matter of bodies; and it is no object of the senses, since being invisible and without form there was nothing in it for sight or sense" — while a man's thought says this to itself, it may be trying either to know it by being ignorant of it, or to be ignorant of it by knowing it.

But if I wanted, Lord, to confess to You with my tongue and my pen everything You have taught me about that matter — whose name I had heard before without understanding it, when people who did not understand it told me about it, so that I conceived of it as having countless different forms, and therefore did not conceive of it at all, my mind tossing up and down foul and horrible "forms" out of all order, but "forms" all the same; and I called it formless not because it lacked all form but because it had the kind my mind would turn away from if it were presented, as strange and jarring, and human weakness would be troubled by. And still what I conceived was formless not by being deprived of all form but in comparison with more beautiful forms; and true reason did persuade me that I had to strip it entirely of every last remnant of form, if I wanted to conceive matter absolutely without form. And I could not. It was easier for me to imagine that a thing deprived of all form did not exist at all than to conceive of something between form and nothing — neither formed nor nothing, a formless almost-nothing. So my mind gave up questioning my spirit about it, my spirit being full of images of formed bodies and changing and varying them at will. And I turned to bodies themselves and looked more deeply into their changeableness, by which they stop being what they were and begin to be what they were not; and I suspected that this very shifting from form to form takes place through a certain formless state, and not through sheer nothing. But I longed to know this, not merely to suspect it. If my voice and my pen were to confess to You everything, all the knots You untied for me in this question, what reader could hold out to take it all in? And my heart shall not for all that stop honouring You, and singing praise, for the things it is not able to express.

For the changeableness of changeable things is itself capable of all the forms those changeable things get changed into. And what is this changeableness? Is it soul? Is it body? Is it whatever it is that constitutes soul or body? If one could say "a nothing-something", an "is-that-is-not", I would say that was it. And yet in some way it did already exist, in being capable of receiving these visible and composite shapes.

But where did it get this degree of being from, if not from You, from whom all things come in so far as they are? But so much the further from You the more unlike You they are — for it is not a farness of place. So You, Lord, who are not one thing in one place and something else in another, but the selfsame, and the selfsame, and the selfsame, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, did in the beginning, which is from You, in Your wisdom, which was born of Your own substance, create something, and that out of nothing. For You created heaven and earth not out of Yourself, since then they would have been equal to Your only-begotten Son and thereby to You as well; and there is no way it would be right for anything to be equal to You that was not from You. And there was nothing else besides You out of which You might create them, God, one Trinity and threefold unity. So it was out of nothing that You created heaven and earth: a great thing and a small thing; for You are almighty and good, to make everything good, both the great sky and the tiny earth. You existed, and there was nothing besides out of which You created heaven and earth: two sorts of thing, one near to You and the other near to nothing; one which You alone should be above, and one which nothing should be below.

But that heaven of heavens was for Yourself, Lord. And the earth which You gave to the sons of men to see and touch was not the earth we now see and touch. For it was invisible and without form, and there was a deep over which there was no light — or, darkness was above the deep, that is, more than in the deep. Because this deep of waters, visible now, has even in its depths a light suited to its nature, perceptible in some degree to the fishes and creeping things at the bottom. But that whole deep was almost nothing, because up to that point it was altogether without form; and yet there was already something there that could be formed. For You, Lord, made the world out of a matter without form, which You made out of nothing as next to nothing, so as to make out of it the great things that we sons of men marvel at.

For this bodily sky is truly wonderful; and about that firmament between water and water, on the second day, after the creation of light, You said, Let it be made, and it was made. And that firmament You called heaven — the sky, that is, over this earth and sea, which You made on the third day by giving a visible shape to the formless matter You had made before all days. For You had already made a heaven before all days; but that was the heaven of this heaven, since in the beginning You had made heaven and earth. But this earth which You made was formless matter, because it was invisible and without form, and darkness was over the deep. And out of this invisible and formless earth, out of this formlessness, this almost-nothing, You could make all these things that this changeable world consists of, without ever consisting steadily; whose very changeableness shows itself in this, that times can be observed and counted in it. For times are made by the alterations of things, as the shapes are varied and turned whose matter is the invisible earth I have spoken of.

And so the Spirit, the teacher of Your servant, when it tells us that in the beginning You created heaven and earth, says nothing of times, nothing of days. For truly that heaven of heavens which You created in the beginning is some intelligent creature which, though in no way co-eternal with You, the Trinity, nevertheless shares in Your eternity, and through the sweetness of that most happy contemplation of You strongly restrains its own changeableness; and without any fall since its first creation, holding close to You, is set beyond all the rolling change of times. And that very formlessness of the earth, invisible and without form, is not counted among the days either. For where there is no shape and no order, nothing comes or goes; and where that is not, plainly there are no days, and no succession of stretches of time.

Let the light, the truth, the light of my heart and not my own darkness, speak to me. I fell away into that darkness and was blacked out; but even from there, even from there I loved You. I went astray and remembered You. I heard Your voice behind me calling me back, and hardly heard it through the uproar of the enemies of peace. And now, look, I am coming back, distressed and panting after Your fountain. Let nobody stop me. Of this I shall drink, and so live. Let me not be my own life; from myself I lived badly; I was death to myself; and I come alive again in You. Speak to me; talk with me. I have believed Your books, and their words are utterly full of mystery.

You have already told me with a strong voice, Lord, in my inner ear, that You are eternal, You who alone have immortality; since You cannot be changed in shape or in motion, and Your will is not altered by times — seeing that no will that varies is immortal. This is clear to me in Your sight; and let it be made clearer and clearer to me, I beg You, and in the making clear of it, let me soberly stay under Your wings. You have also told me with a strong voice, Lord, in my inner ear, that You have made all the natures and substances which are not what You are and yet exist; and that the only thing that is not from You is what does not exist; and the movement of the will away from You who are, towards what exists in a lesser degree, because such a movement is transgression and sin; and that nobody's sin either harms You or disturbs the order of Your rule, first or last. This is clear to me in Your sight; and let it be made clearer and clearer to me, I beg You; and in the making clear of it, let me soberly stay under Your wings.

You have also told me with a strong voice, in my inner ear, that neither is that creature co-eternal with You whose happiness You alone are, and which with the most persevering purity, drawing its nourishment from You, nowhere and at no time puts forth its natural changeableness; and which, with You always present to it, and keeping itself towards You with its whole love, having no future to expect and carrying nothing it remembers into the past, is neither altered by any change nor pulled apart into times. Blessed creature, if such there is, for holding close to Your blessedness; blessed in You, its eternal inhabitant and its enlightener! And I cannot find a name I would sooner give the heaven of heavens which is the Lord's than Your house — which contemplates Your delights without any lapse into going out to something else; one pure mind, most harmoniously one, by that settled state of peace of the holy spirits who are citizens of Your city in heavenly places, far above the heavenly places we can see.

By this a soul whose pilgrimage has been made long and far away may understand, if she now thirsts for You, if her tears have now become her bread while they say to her every day, Where is your God? — if she now asks one thing of You and wants it, that she may live in Your house all the days of her life. And what is her life but You? And what are Your days but Your eternity, like Your years which do not run out, because You are always the same? By this, then, may the soul that is able understand how far You are above all times, eternal — seeing that Your house, which at no time went off into a far country, though it is not co-eternal with You, yet by continually and unfailingly holding close to You suffers no changeableness of times. This is clear to me in Your sight; and let it be made clearer and clearer to me, I beg You; and in the making clear of it, let me soberly stay under Your wings.

There is, I do not know what, a kind of formlessness in the changes of these last and lowest creatures. And who will tell me — unless it is somebody who through the emptiness of his own heart wanders and tosses himself about among his own fancies — who but such a man would tell me that if every shape were so worn away and used up that there remained only that formlessness through which a thing was changed and turned from one shape into another, that this could produce the succession of times? Plainly it could not; because without a variety of motions there are no times, and there is no variety where there is no shape.

Considering these things, as far as You give me to, my God, as far as You stir me up to knock, and as far as You open to me when I knock, I find that You have made two things not within the compass of time, neither of which is co-eternal with You. One is so formed that without any pause in its contemplation and without any interval of change, though changeable, yet unchanged, it may thoroughly enjoy Your eternity and unchangeableness. The other was so formless that it had nothing in it that could be changed from one form to another, of motion or of rest, so as to become subject to time. But You did not leave this formless, because before all days, in the beginning, You created heaven and earth: the two things I have been speaking of. But the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was over the deep. In these words the formlessness is conveyed to us — so that minds unable to conceive an utter absence of all form without arriving at nothing may be drawn on by degrees — out of which another heaven might be created, along with a visible and well-formed earth; and the waters variously ordered; and whatever else in the forming of the world is recorded to have been created, and created not without days; and that as being of such a nature that the successive changes of times could take place in them, since they are subject to appointed alterations of motions and forms.

This, then, is what I understand, my God, when I hear Your Scripture saying, In the beginning God made heaven and earth, and the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was over the deep, and not mentioning what day You created them. This is what I understand. It is because of the heaven of heavens — that intelligent heaven, whose intelligences know everything at once, not in part, not darkly, not through a glass, but as a whole, plainly, face to face; not this thing now and that thing next, but, as I said, knowing everything at once, without any succession of times — and because of the earth invisible and without form, which is also without any succession of times, the succession that gives us "this thing now, that thing next", since where there is no form there is no distinction of things. It is on account of these two, then, a primal formed thing and a primal formless thing — the one heaven, but the heaven of heaven; the other earth, but the earth invisible and without form — it is because of these two that I understand Your Scripture to have said, without mentioning days, In the beginning God created heaven and earth. For it immediately added which earth it was talking about; and also, in that the firmament is recorded as created on the second day and called heaven, it conveys to us which heaven it had spoken of before, without mentioning days.

What a wondrous depth Your words have! Their surface is in front of us, inviting little children; and yet they are a wondrous depth, my God, a wondrous depth! It is awesome to look into: an awe of honour and a trembling of love. Its enemies I hate violently; if only You would kill them with Your two-edged sword, so that they might stop being enemies to it — for that is the way I love to see them killed to themselves, that they may live to You. But there are others who are not fault-finders but admirers of the book of Genesis. "The Spirit of God," they say, "who wrote these things through his servant Moses, would not have wanted these words understood in that way. He would not have wanted it understood as you say, but otherwise, as we say." To them, with You, God of all, as judge, I answer this.

"Will you say it is false, what truth tells me with a strong voice in my inner ear about the eternity of the creator: that his substance is in no way changed by time, and his will is not separate from his substance? So that he does not will one thing now and another next, but once and at once and always wills everything that he wills; not again and again, and not now this and now that; and does not afterwards will what he did not will before, or stop willing what he willed before, because such a will is changeable, and nothing changeable is eternal — and our God is eternal. And again, what he tells me in my inner ear: the expectation of things to come becomes sight when they have come, and this same sight becomes memory when they are past. Now all thought that varies like this is changeable; and nothing changeable is eternal — and our God is eternal." These things I infer and put together, and find that my God, the eternal God, has not made any creature by any new act of will, and that his knowledge admits nothing transitory. "What will you say to that, objectors? Are these things false?" "No," they say. "What then? Is it false that every nature already formed, and every matter capable of form, exists only from him who is supremely good, because he supremely is?" "We do not deny that either," they say. "What then? Do you deny that there is a certain lofty creature, holding to the true and truly eternal God with so chaste a love that although it is not co-eternal with him it is still not detached from him, and does not dissolve into the variety and succession of times, but rests in the truest contemplation of him alone?" Because You, God, show Yourself to the man who loves You as much as You command, and are enough for him; and so he does not turn away from You, or towards himself. This is the house of God, not made of earthly stuff, and not of any heavenly bulk either, but spiritual, and a partaker in Your eternity, because it never lapses, for ever. For You have made it fast for ever and ever; You have given it a law which it shall not pass. And yet it is not co-eternal with You, God, because it is not without a beginning: it was made.

For although we find no time before it, since wisdom was created before all things — not that wisdom which is altogether equal and co-eternal with You, our God, its Father, and by which all things were created, and in which, as the beginning, You created heaven and earth, but the wisdom that is created, that is, the intelligent nature which by contemplating the light is itself light. For this too, though created, is called wisdom. And as much difference as there is between the light that lights and the light that is lit, so much there is between the wisdom that creates and the wisdom that is created; as between the righteousness that makes righteous and the righteousness that is made by being justified. For we too are called Your righteousness; a certain servant of Yours says so: That we might be made the righteousness of God in him. So since a certain created wisdom was created before all things — the rational and intelligent mind of that chaste city of Yours, our mother which is above and is free and eternal in the heavens (in what heavens, if not in those that praise You, the heaven of heavens? Because this too is the heaven of heavens belonging to the Lord) — although we find no time before it, since what was created before all things also comes before the creature of time, still the eternity of the creator himself is before it, from whom, being created, it took its beginning: not a beginning of time, since time did not exist yet, but of its creation.

So it is from You, our God, in such a way as to be altogether other than You, and not the selfsame. Because although we find no time before it, and not even in it, since it is always fit to look on Your face and is never drawn away from it, and so is not varied by any change — still there is in it a liability to change, from which it would grow dark and cold, except that by a strong love holding close to You, like perpetual noon, it shines and glows from You. House of light and delight! I have loved your beauty, and the place where the glory of my Lord lives, your builder and owner. Let my wandering sigh after you; and I say to him who made you, let him take possession of me too, in you, since he made me as well. I have gone astray like a lost sheep; and yet on the shoulders of my shepherd, your builder, I hope to be carried back to you.

"What do you say to me, objectors, whom I was addressing, who nevertheless believe Moses to have been the holy servant of God and his books the oracles of the Holy Spirit? Is this house of God not eternal in the heavens, in its own measure, though not co-eternal with God — when you look for changes of times in it in vain, because you will not find them? For that to which it is always good to hold fast to God surpasses all extension and all revolving periods of time." "It is," they say. "Then out of everything my heart cried out to my God, when inwardly it heard the voice of his praise — what part of it do you say is false? Is it that the matter was without form, in which, because there was no form, there was no order? But where there was no order there could be no succession of times; and yet this 'almost nothing', in so far as it was not altogether nothing, certainly came from him from whom whatever is comes, in whatever degree it is." "That too," they say, "we do not deny."

With these people I now talk a little in Your presence, my God, who grant that all these things are true which Your truth whispers to my soul. As for those who deny them, let them bark and deafen themselves as much as they like; I shall try to persuade them to be quiet and to open a way in themselves for Your word. And if they refuse and push me away, I beg You, my God, do not be silent to me. Speak truly in my heart, for only You speak that way. And I shall leave them alone, blowing on the dust outside and raising it into their own eyes; and I shall go into my room and sing a song of loves to You there, groaning with groans too deep for words on my journey, and remembering Jerusalem, with my heart lifted up towards it: Jerusalem my country, Jerusalem my mother, and Yourself who rule over it, its enlightener, father, guardian, husband, pure and strong delight and solid joy and all good things beyond words, and all at once, because You are the one sovereign and true good. And I shall not be turned away until You gather everything that I am out of this scattered and disordered state into the peace of that dearest mother of ours, where the first fruits of my spirit already are, and from which I am assured of these things; and until You shape and confirm it for ever, my God, my mercy.

But those who do not call all these truths false, who honour Your holy Scripture as set out by holy Moses, putting it, as we do, at the summit of authority to be followed, and yet contradict me on some point — to them I answer this. Judge for Yourself, our God, between my confessions and these men's contradictions.

For they say, "Even if these things are true, Moses did not mean those two when, by revelation of the Spirit, he said, In the beginning God created heaven and earth. He did not mean by the word heaven that spiritual or intelligent creature which always looks on the face of God, or by the word earth that formless matter." "What then?" "That man of God," they say, "meant what we say; this is what he was declaring by those words." "What?" "By the name of heaven and earth," they say, "he wanted first to signify, in a general and compressed way, all this visible world, so as afterwards, by listing the several days, to lay out in detail and piece by piece all the things which the Holy Spirit was pleased to announce this way. For the people he was speaking to were so rough and unspiritual that he thought them fit to be trusted only with the knowledge of God's visible works." They do agree, however, that the words earth invisible and without form, and that dark deep, out of which it is afterwards shown that all these visible things we know were made and arranged during those days, may not unreasonably be understood of this formless first matter.

But what if somebody else says that this same formlessness and confusion of matter was first conveyed under the name of heaven and earth for this reason: that out of it this visible world was created and completed, with all the natures that appear most obviously in it, and that this world is often called by the name of heaven and earth? And what if another says that invisible and visible nature is not inappropriately called heaven and earth, and that the whole creation which God made in his wisdom, that is, in the beginning, was covered by those two words — but that, since all things are made not of the substance of God but out of nothing (because they are not what God is, and there is a changeable nature in all of them, whether they endure, as the eternal house of God does, or are changed, as the soul and body of man are), therefore the common matter of all things visible and invisible, as yet unformed though capable of form, out of which both heaven and earth were to be created (that is, the invisible and the visible creature, once formed), was given the same names as the earth invisible and without form and the darkness upon the deep — but with this distinction, that by the earth invisible and without form is understood bodily matter before it has been qualified by any form, and by the darkness upon the deep, spiritual matter, before it underwent any restraint on its unlimited fluidity or received any light from wisdom?

There is still room for a man to say, if he likes, that the already completed and formed natures, visible and invisible, are not what is meant by the name of heaven and earth when we read, In the beginning God made heaven and earth; but that the still unformed beginning of things, the stuff apt to receive form and making, was called by those names, because it contained confusedly, not yet distinguished by their qualities and forms, all those things which, now sorted into order, are called heaven and earth, the one being the spiritual and the other the bodily creation.

Having heard and carefully considered all this, I shall not quarrel over words; that is good for nothing but the ruin of the hearers. But the law is good for building up, if a man uses it lawfully, since its end is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and unfeigned faith. And our master knew well which two commandments he hung all the law and the prophets on. So what harm does it do me, my God, light of my eyes in secret, while I zealously confess these things — since different things may be understood under these words which are nevertheless all true — what harm, I say, does it do me if I think the writer meant something other than somebody else thinks he meant? All of us readers are certainly trying to trace out and understand the meaning of the man we are reading; and since we believe he speaks the truth, we do not dare to imagine he said anything we ourselves know or think to be false. So while every man tries to understand in the holy Scriptures the same thing the writer understood, what harm is there if a man understands something You, the light of all truth-speaking minds, show him to be true, even though the man he is reading did not understand this — seeing that he too understood a truth, though not this truth?

For it is true, Lord, that You made heaven and earth. And it is true too that the beginning is Your wisdom, in which You create everything. And true again that this visible world has for its greater part the heaven and the earth, which briefly take in all made and created natures. And true too that whatever is changeable gives us to understand a certain lack of form, by which it receives a form, or is changed, or turned. It is true that whatever holds so fast to the unchangeable form that although it is liable to change it is never changed, is subject to no times. It is true that the formlessness which is almost nothing cannot be subject to the alteration of times. It is true that the thing something is made out of may, by a certain manner of speaking, be called by the name of the thing made out of it; so that the formlessness out of which heaven and earth were made might be called heaven and earth. It is true that of things having form, none is nearer to having no form than the earth and the deep. It is true that not only every created and formed thing but everything capable of being created and formed was made by You, from whom all things come. It is true that whatever is formed out of what had no form was unformed before it was formed.

Out of these truths, which are not doubted by those whose inward eye You have enabled to see such things, and who unshakeably believe Your servant Moses to have spoken in the Spirit of truth — out of all of these, then, one is taken by the man who says, In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth, meaning "in his Word co-eternal with himself, God made the intelligible and the sensible, or the spiritual and the bodily creature." Another is taken by the man who says, In the beginning God made heaven and earth, meaning "in his Word co-eternal with himself, God made the whole bulk of this bodily world, together with all the visible and known creatures it contains." Another by the man who says, In the beginning God made heaven and earth, meaning "in his Word co-eternal with himself, God made the formless matter of creatures spiritual and bodily." Another by the man who says, In the beginning God created heaven and earth, meaning "in his Word co-eternal with himself, God created the formless matter of the bodily creature, in which heaven and earth still lay confused, which, now distinguished and formed, we see today in the bulk of this world." Another by the man who says, In the beginning God made heaven and earth, meaning "at the very beginning of creating and working, God made that formless matter, confusedly containing in itself both heaven and earth; out of which, being formed, they now stand out and are visible, with everything in them."

And as for understanding the words that follow, out of all those truths one man chooses this for himself, who says, But the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep, meaning "the bodily thing God made was as yet a formless matter of bodily things, without order and without light." Another says, The earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep, meaning "this whole thing, which is called heaven and earth, was still a formless and dark matter, out of which the bodily heaven and the bodily earth were to be made, with all the things in them that our bodily senses know." Another says, The earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep, meaning "this whole thing, which is called heaven and earth, was still a formless and dark matter, out of which was to be made both that intelligible heaven, elsewhere called the heaven of heavens, and the earth, that is, the whole bodily nature, under which name this bodily sky is included as well; in a word, out of which every visible and invisible creature was to be created." Another says, of The earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep, that "Scripture did not call that formlessness by the name of heaven and earth; the formlessness already existed, and it is what he called the earth invisible and without form, and the darkness upon the deep; and he had said before that God made heaven and earth, namely the spiritual and the bodily creature." Another says, The earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep, meaning "there already was a certain formless matter, of which Scripture said before that God made heaven and earth, namely the whole bodily bulk of the world, divided into two great parts, upper and lower, with all the common and familiar creatures in them."

Suppose somebody tried to argue against these last two opinions like this. "If you will not allow that this formlessness of matter seems to be called by the name of heaven and earth, then there was something God had not made, out of which to make heaven and earth; for Scripture has not told us that God made this matter, unless we understand it to be meant by the name of heaven and earth, or of earth alone, when it says, In the beginning God made the heaven and earth. So that in what follows, and the earth was invisible and without form, although it pleased him to call the formless matter that, we are to understand no other matter than the one God made, of which it is written above, God made heaven and earth." The supporters of either of those two last opinions will answer, on hearing this: "We do not deny that this formless matter was created by God, the God from whom all things come, and all very good. Just as we say that what is created and formed is a greater good, so we admit that what is made capable of creation and form is a lesser good, but good all the same. What we say is that Scripture has not written down that God made this formlessness, just as it has not written down many other things — the cherubim and seraphim, and the ones the apostle distinctly speaks of, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers. And that God made all these is perfectly obvious. Or if in the words he made heaven and earth everything is included, what shall we say of the waters over which the Spirit of God moved? If they are included in the word earth, then how can formless matter be meant by that name of earth, when we can see how beautiful the waters are? Or if it is taken that way, why is it written that the firmament was made out of that same formlessness and called heaven, and not written that the waters were made? For the waters do not stay formless and invisible, since we watch them flowing so beautifully. But if they received that beauty when God said, Let the waters under the firmament be gathered together, so that the gathering itself is their forming, what is to be said about the waters above the firmament? If they were formless they would not have deserved so honourable a place, and it is not written by what word they were formed. So if Genesis is silent about God's making of something which nevertheless neither sound faith nor well-grounded understanding doubts that God did make; and if no sober teaching will dare to claim these waters are co-eternal with God on the grounds that we find them mentioned in the book of Genesis without finding when they were created — why then, since truth teaches us, should we not understand that formless matter, which this Scripture calls the earth invisible and without form and the dark deep, to have been created by God out of nothing, and therefore not co-eternal with him, even though this history has left out when it was created?"

Having heard and taken in all this, as far as my weak capacity allows — and I confess it to You, Lord, who know it — I see that two sorts of disagreement can arise when something is put into words by truthful reporters. One concerns the truth of the things; the other concerns the meaning of the reporter. For we ask one question about the making of the creation, namely what is true; and quite another about what Moses, that excellent minister of Your faith, wanted his reader and hearer to understand by those words. As for the first sort, away with everyone who imagines he knows as a truth something that is false; and as for the second, away with everyone too who imagines Moses wrote things that are false. But let me be united in You, Lord, with the others, and take delight in You with those who feed on Your truth, in the largeness of love; and let us come together to the words of Your book and look in them for Your meaning, through the meaning of Your servant, by whose pen You handed them out.

But which of us, among the many truths that occur to enquirers in these words as they are understood in different ways, will so hit on that one meaning as to be able to say, "This is what Moses thought", and "This is what he wanted understood in that history", with the same confidence as he would say, "This is true", whether Moses thought it or not? For look, my God: I, Your servant, who in this book have vowed a sacrifice of confession to You, and pray that by Your mercy I may pay my vows to You — can I, with the same confidence with which I say that in Your unchangeable Word You created all things visible and invisible, also say that Moses meant nothing but this when he wrote, In the beginning God made heaven and earth? No. Because I do not see in his mind that he was thinking of this when he wrote these things, in the way I do see it to be certain in Your truth. He might have had his thoughts on God's beginning to create when he said in the beginning; and by heaven and earth in this place he might have meant no formed and completed nature, whether spiritual or bodily, but both of them just begun and still formless. For I can see that whichever of the two had been said, it might have been said truly; but which of the two he was thinking of in these words I cannot see. Although whether it was one of these, or some other sense I have not mentioned here, that so great a man saw in his mind when he uttered these words, I have no doubt that he saw it truly and expressed it fittingly.

So let nobody harass me by saying, "Moses did not think what you say but what I say." For if he asked me, "How do you know that Moses thought what you infer from his words?" I ought to take it in good part and would answer, perhaps, as I have above, or at greater length if he would not give way. But when he says, "Moses did not mean what you say but what I say," and yet does not deny that what each of us says may both be true — then, my God, life of the poor, in whose heart there is no contradiction, pour a softening dew into my heart, so that I may patiently put up with people who say this to me: not because they have a divine Spirit and have seen in the heart of Your servant what they say, but because they are proud, not knowing Moses' opinion but loving their own, not because it is the truth but because it is theirs. Otherwise they would love another true opinion just as much, as I love what they say when they say something true — not because it is theirs but because it is true, and on that very ground not theirs, because it is true. But if they love it because it is true, then it is both theirs and mine, being common to all lovers of truth. But when they insist that Moses did not mean what I say but what they say, that I do not like and do not love. Even if it were so, their rashness belongs not to knowledge but to over-boldness, and its parent was not insight but vanity.

And that, Lord, is why Your judgements are terrible: seeing that Your truth is neither mine nor his nor anybody else's, but belongs to all of us, whom You call publicly to share in it, warning us terribly not to treat it as our private property, in case we are deprived of it. For whoever claims as his own what You offer to everyone to enjoy, and wants what belongs to all to be his, is driven out of what is common into what is his own — that is, out of truth into a lie. For whoever speaks a lie speaks it out of his own.

Listen, God, best of judges; truth itself, listen to what I shall say to this objector. Listen, for I speak in front of You and in front of my brothers, who use Your law lawfully to the end of love. Listen and see, if it pleases You, what I shall say to him. This is the brotherly and peaceable word I give him back: "If we both see that what you say is true, and both see that what I say is true, then where, I ask you, do we see it? Not I in you, and not you in me, but both of us in the unchangeable truth itself, which is above our souls." So since we are not fighting over the light of the Lord God itself, why are we fighting over the thoughts of our neighbour, which we cannot see the way the unchangeable truth is seen? For if Moses himself appeared to us and said, "This is what I meant," we still would not see it, but would believe it. So let us not be puffed up, one against another, beyond what is written. Let us love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind, and our neighbour as ourselves. And unless we believe that Moses meant, in whatever he did mean in those books, to serve these two commandments of love, we shall make God a liar by imagining our fellow servant's mind to be other than what he has taught us. See now how foolish it is, out of such an abundance of perfectly true meanings as can be drawn out of those words, to insist rashly on which of them Moses chiefly meant, and by destructive quarrelling to offend against love itself, for whose sake he said everything he said, and whose words we are setting out to expound.

And yet I, my God, lifter-up of my humility and rest of my labour, who hear my confessions and forgive my sins — since You command me to love my neighbour as myself, I cannot believe that You gave a smaller gift to Moses Your faithful servant than I would wish or want You to have given me, had I been born when he was and had You set me in that office, so that through the service of my heart and my tongue those books might be given out which for so long afterwards were to profit all nations, and from such a height of authority were to overtop everything said by false and proud teachings. Truly, if I had then been Moses — for we all come from the same lump, and what is man, except that You are mindful of him? — if I had then been what he was, and been commanded by You to write the book of Genesis, I would have wanted such a power of expression and such a style given to me that those who cannot yet understand how God creates would not reject what I said as beyond them; and those who had got that far would find that whatever true opinion they had reached by thinking was not left out of those few words of Your servant; and that if another man had discovered another truth by the light of truth, that too should not fail to be discoverable in the same words.

For just as a spring within a narrow compass is more abundant, and supplies a flow for more streams over wider spaces, than any one of those streams which after a long distance is drawn off from the same spring, so the account given by that steward of Yours, which was to benefit many people who would discuss it, overflows out of a narrow allowance of language into streams of the clearest truth, from which every man may draw for himself such truth as he can on these subjects — one man one truth, another another, by longer roundabout stretches of talk.

For some people, when they read or hear these words, imagine that God, like a man or some mass endowed with unlimited power, by some new and sudden decision created heaven and earth outside himself, at a certain distance, as it were: two great bodies, above and below, in which everything was to be contained. And when they hear, God said, Let it be made, and it was made, they imagine words that began and ended, sounding in time and passing away, after whose departure the thing that had been commanded came into being; and whatever else of the sort their familiarity with the material world would suggest. In these people, still small children and unspiritual, while their weakness is carried along by this humble kind of speech as in a mother's arms, faith is wholesomely built up, by which they hold it certain that God made all the natures their eye sees around them in such admirable variety. And if anyone despises these words as too simple, and with a proud weakness stretches himself out beyond the sheltering nest, he will, alas, fall badly. Have pity, Lord God, in case passers-by trample the unfledged bird; and send Your angel to put it back in the nest, so that it may live until it can fly.

But there are others for whom these words are no longer a nest but a deep shady orchard; and they see the fruit hidden in it, and fly joyfully round and seek it out with cheerful calls and pluck it. For in reading or hearing these words they see that all times past and to come are surpassed by Your eternal and stable remaining; and yet that there is no creature formed in time that You did not make. Whose will, because it is the same as what You are, made everything, not by any change of will and not by a will that did not exist before; and these things were not made out of Yourself, in Your own likeness, which is the form of all things, but out of nothing: a formless unlikeness, which was to be formed by Your likeness, returning to Your unity according to its appointed capacity, so far as is given to each thing in its kind, and might all be made very good — whether they stay around You, or, removed by degrees in time and place, make or undergo the beautiful variations of the universe. These things they see and rejoice at, in the small degree they can here, in the light of Your truth.

Another man bends his mind on the words, In the beginning God made heaven and earth, and sees in them wisdom, which is the beginning because it also speaks to us. Another likewise bends his mind on the same words and by beginning understands the start of created things: in the beginning he made, as if it said, he first made. And among those who understand in the beginning to mean "in Your wisdom You created heaven and earth", one believes that the matter out of which heaven and earth were to be created is what is called heaven and earth there; another that they are natures already formed and distinguished; another that one is a formed nature, and a spiritual one, under the name heaven, and the other a formless bodily matter under the name earth. And those again who take the names heaven and earth to mean matter still formless, out of which heaven and earth were to be formed, do not all understand it the same way either: one takes it as the matter out of which both the intelligible and the sensible creation were to be completed; another only as the matter out of which this sensible bodily mass was to be made, holding in its vast lap these visible and ordinary natures. Nor do those who believe that creatures already ordered and arranged are what is called heaven and earth here all understand the same thing: one takes it as both the invisible and the visible, the other as the visible only, in which we see this bright sky and dark earth with the things they contain.

But a man who understands in the beginning he made in no other sense than "at first he made" can only truly understand heaven and earth as the matter of heaven and earth, that is, as the whole intelligible and bodily creation. For if he wanted to understand it as the universe already formed, it may fairly be asked of him, "If God made this first, what did he make afterwards?" And after the universe he will find nothing, whereupon he must hear another question against his will: "How did God make this first, if there was nothing after it?" But when he says that God first made matter formless and then formed it, there is nothing absurd about it, so long as he is qualified to tell what comes before by eternity, what by time, what by choice, and what in origin. By eternity, as God is before all things; by time, as the flower is before the fruit; by choice, as the fruit is before the flower; by origin, as the sound is before the tune.

Of these four, the first and last are understood with extreme difficulty, the two in the middle easily. For it is a rare and too lofty a vision to see Your eternity, Lord, unchangeably making changeable things, and so being before them. And who again is sharp-sighted enough to make out without great trouble how the sound is therefore before the tune? Because a tune is a formed sound; and a thing not formed can exist, whereas what does not exist cannot be formed. So the matter is before the thing made, and not because it makes the thing, seeing it is itself rather made; and it is not before by any interval of time. For we do not first in time utter formless sounds without singing and then afterwards adapt and shape them into the form of a melody, as wood or silver is shaped into a chest or a vessel. Such materials do also come before, in time, the forms of the things made out of them; but in singing it is not so, for when a song is sung its sound is heard, and there is not first a formless sound afterwards formed into a melody. For every sound passes away as soon as it is made, and you cannot find anything to call back and compose by art. So the melody is concentrated in its sound, and that sound of it is its matter. And this is formed so as to be a tune; and therefore, as I said, the matter of the sound is before the form of the tune — not before by any power it has to make the tune, for a sound is in no way the craftsman of the tune, but something bodily, subjected to the soul that sings, to make a tune out of. And it is not first in time, since it is given out along with the tune. And it is not first in choice, since a sound is not better than a tune, a tune being not only a sound but a beautiful sound. But it is first in origin, because a tune does not receive form so as to become a sound; a sound receives a form so as to become a tune.

By this example let anyone who can understand how the matter of things was made first and called heaven and earth, because heaven and earth were made out of it. And yet it was not made first in time, because it is the forms of things that give rise to time; and that matter was formless, whereas now it is, in time, an object of the senses, together with its form. And yet nothing can be said about that matter except as though it came earlier in time, whereas in value it is last, since formed things are superior to formless ones; and it is preceded by the eternity of the creator, so that there might be something out of nothing, out of which something might be created.

In this diversity of true opinions, let truth herself produce concord. And may our God have mercy on us, so that we may use the law lawfully, the end of the commandment being pure love. And if anyone asks me by this rule, "Which of these was Your servant Moses' meaning?" — this would not be the language of my confessions if I did not confess to You, "I do not know." And yet I do know that those senses are true, except for the unspiritual ones, about which I have said what seemed necessary. And even those hopeful little children who think that way have this benefit, that the words of Your book do not frighten them, delivering high things humbly, and a copious meaning in few words. And all of us who, I confess, see and express the truth delivered in those words, let us love one another, and love together You our God, the fountain of truth, if it is truth we are thirsty for and not empty things. And let us so honour this servant of Yours, the steward of this Scripture, full of Your Spirit, as to believe that when by Your revelation he wrote these things, he intended the meaning that stands out among them for light of truth and for fruitfulness of profit.

So when one man says, "Moses meant what I mean", and another, "No, he meant what I mean", I think I speak more reverently when I say, "Why not both, if both are true?" And if there is a third or a fourth — indeed if anyone sees any other truth in those words — why may he not be believed to have seen all of them, this man through whom the one God tuned the holy Scriptures to the understanding of many, who would see in them things that were true but different? For I certainly say this, and I say it fearlessly from my heart: if I were to write anything that was to have supreme authority, I would rather write in such a way that whatever truth anyone could grasp about these matters could be conveyed by my words, than set down one meaning of my own so clearly as to exclude all the rest, which, not being false, could not offend me. So I shall not be so rash, my God, as not to believe that You granted as much to that great man. Without doubt, when he wrote those words, he perceived and had in mind whatever truth we have been able to find in them — and whatever we have not been able to find, and are still not able to, but which may be found in them.

Finally, Lord, who are God and not flesh and blood: if the man saw less, could anything be hidden from Your good Spirit, who shall lead me into the land of uprightness — anything that You Yourself were going to reveal by those words to readers in times to come, even though the man through whom they were spoken had in mind, perhaps among many true meanings, some one of them? And if that is how it is, let the meaning he had in mind be the highest of all. But to us, Lord, either reveal that same meaning, or any other true one You please; so that whether You show us the same thing You showed Your servant, or something else by way of those words, You may feed us and error may not deceive us. See, Lord my God, how much we have written on a few words — how much! What strength of ours, what ages would be enough for all Your books at this rate? So allow me to confess to You more briefly in them, and to choose some one true, certain and good sense that You inspire in me, even where many may occur — this being the law of my confession: that if I should say what Your minister intended, that is right and best, since that is what I should aim at; and if I should not manage it, that I should still say what Your truth willed to tell me by his words, since it was Your truth that revealed to him too what it willed.

Book Thirteen: The Days of Creation

I call on You, my God, my mercy, who created me and did not forget me when I forgot You. I call You into my soul, which You are preparing for Yourself by the longing You breathe into her. Do not abandon me now that I am calling on You, when You went ahead of me before I called, and pressed me with all sorts of repeated calls so that I might hear You from far off, and turn round, and call on You who were calling after me. For You, Lord, wiped out all my bad deserts, so as not to pay back into my hands what I fell away from You with; and You went ahead of all my good deserts, so as to pay back the work of Your own hands, with which You made me. Because before I existed, You existed; and I was nothing that You could grant existence to. And yet here I am, out of Your goodness, which came before everything You have made me of and made me into. For You had no need of me, and I am no such good thing as to be of help to You, my Lord and God: not by serving You as though You would grow tired of working, or as though Your power would be less if my service were missing; not by cultivating Your service as if it were a piece of land that must lie uncultivated unless I cultivated You. I serve and worship You so that I may receive well-being from You, from whom it comes that I have a being capable of well-being at all.

For it is out of the fullness of Your goodness that Your creation exists: so that a good which could bring You no profit at all, and was not out of You, in case it should be equal to You, might still exist, since it could be made by You. What claim on You did heaven and earth have, which You made in the beginning? Let those spiritual and bodily natures which You made in Your wisdom say what claim they had on You to depend on You — even in that state of theirs, just begun and formless, whether spiritual or bodily, ready to fall away into an unrestrained liberty and a far-off unlikeness to You. The spiritual, though without form, is superior to the bodily even when the bodily is formed; and the bodily, though without form, is better than it would be if it were altogether nothing. And they depend on Your Word as formless things, unless by that same Word they are brought back to Your unity, given form, and made all very good by You, the one sovereign good. What claim did they have on You even to be formless, when they would not have been even that except from You?

What claim did bodily matter have on You even to be invisible and without form? It would not have been even that if You had not made it; and therefore, because it did not exist, it could have no claim on You to be made. Or how could the just-begun spiritual creature have had a claim on You even to ebb and flow darkly like the deep, unlike You, unless it had been turned by the same Word to the one by whom it was created, and been so lit by him as to become light — not equally with him, but conformed to the form which is equal to You? For as in a body, existing is not the same thing as being beautiful, since otherwise it could not be ugly, so likewise for a created spirit, living is not the same thing as living wisely, since otherwise it would be wise unchangeably. But it is good for it always to hold fast to You, in case the light it has gained by turning to You is lost by turning away from You, and it slips back into a life like the dark deep. For we ourselves also, who as to the soul are a spiritual creature, once turned away from You our light, were in that life darkness; and we still labour among the remains of our darkness, until in Your only Son we become Your righteousness, like the mountains of God. For we have been Your judgements, which are like the great deep.

What You said at the beginning of creation, Let there be light, and there was light, I take, not unsuitably, to be about the spiritual creature: because there was already a kind of life for You to illuminate. But just as it had no claim on You for a life that could be enlightened, so neither, now that it existed, had it any claim to be enlightened. For its formless state could not be pleasing to You unless it became light — and became light not by simply existing but by looking at the illuminating light and holding fast to it. So that its living, and living happily, it owes to nothing but Your grace, having been turned by a change for the better towards the one who cannot be changed for worse or better, which is what You alone are, because You alone simply are. For You it is not one thing to live and another to live blessedly, since You are Your own blessedness.

What then could be lacking to Your good, which You Yourself are, even if these things had either never existed or remained without form — these things which You made not out of any lack but out of the fullness of Your goodness, holding them in and turning them into form, not as though Your joy were completed by them? For to You, being perfect, their imperfection is displeasing; and so they were perfected by You and please You — not as though You were imperfect and were to be perfected by their perfecting. For Your good Spirit was borne over the waters and not borne up by them, as if he rested on them. Those on whom Your good Spirit is said to rest, he causes to rest in himself. But Your incorruptible and unchangeable will, in itself all-sufficient for itself, was borne over that life You had created, for which living is not the same as living happily, since it lives even while ebbing and flowing in its own darkness. And it remains for it to be turned to him by whom it was made, and to live more and more by the fountain of life, and in his light to see light, and be perfected and enlightened and made beautiful.

Now the Trinity appears to me in a glass darkly, which is You, my God — because You, Father, in him who is the beginning of our wisdom, which is Your wisdom, born of Yourself, equal to You and co-eternal, that is, in Your Son, created heaven and earth. We have now said much about the heaven of heavens, and about the earth invisible and without form, and about the dark deep, with reference to the wandering instability of its spiritual deformity, unless it had been turned towards him from whom it had the degree of life it then had, and by his enlightening became a beautiful life, and the heaven of that heaven which was afterwards set between water and water. And under the name of God I now took the Father, who made these things, and under the name of Beginning the Son, in whom he made these things; and believing, as I did, in my God as Trinity, I searched further in his holy words — and there was Your Spirit moving over the waters. There is the Trinity, my God: Father and Son and Holy Spirit, creator of all creation.

But what was the reason, truth-speaking light? To You I lift up my heart; let it not teach me empty things; scatter its darkness. Tell me, I beg You, by our mother, love — tell me the reason, I beg You, why after the mention of heaven, and of the earth invisible and without form, and darkness upon the deep, Your Scripture should only then mention Your Spirit. Was it because it was fitting that knowledge of him should be conveyed as being "borne above", and this could not be said unless the thing over which Your Spirit may be understood to have been borne were mentioned first? For he was not borne above the Father or the Son, and could not rightly be said to be borne above if he were borne over nothing. So first the thing had to be mentioned that he might be borne over, and then he, whom it was fitting to speak of only as being borne. But why was it not fitting for knowledge of him to be conveyed otherwise than as being borne above?

Let anyone who can, follow Your apostle here with his understanding, where he says: Because Your love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us; and where, on the subject of spiritual gifts, he teaches and shows us a more excellent way of love; and where he bends his knee to You for us, so that we may know the surpassing knowledge of the love of Christ. And that is why from the beginning he was borne surpassingly above the waters. Whom shall I say this to? And how am I to speak of the weight of evil desires, pulling down to the steep abyss, and of how love raises us up again by Your Spirit, who was borne above the waters? Whom shall I say it to, and how? For it is not in space that we sink and rise. What could be more like, and yet what less? They are affections, they are loves: the uncleanness of our spirit flowing away downwards under the load of cares, and the holiness of Yours raising us up by love of an untroubled rest, so that we may lift our hearts to You, where Your Spirit is borne above the waters, and come to that surpassing rest when our soul has passed through the waters that give no footing.

Angels fell away, and the soul of man fell away, and so marked out the abyss in that dark depth, ready for the whole spiritual creation, if You had not said from the beginning, Let there be light — and there was light, and every obedient intelligence of Your heavenly city held fast to You and rested in Your Spirit, who is borne unchangeably over everything changeable. Otherwise even the heaven of heavens would have been in itself a dark deep; but now it is light in the Lord. For even in that miserable restlessness of the spirits who fell away and discovered their own darkness when stripped of the clothing of Your light, You reveal well enough how noble a thing You made the reasoning creature: nothing less than You will be enough to give it a happy rest, and so not even itself. For You, our God, will lighten our darkness; from You our garment of light rises; and then our darkness shall be as noonday. Give Yourself to me, my God, restore Yourself to me. I love, and if that is too little, let me love more strongly. I cannot measure so as to know how much love is still lacking in me, before my life may run into Your embrace and never turn away until it is hidden in the hidden place of Your presence. This only I know: that it goes badly with me except in You — not only outside myself but inside myself too; and all abundance that is not my God is emptiness to me.

But was neither the Father nor the Son borne above the waters? If this means in space, like a body, then neither was the Holy Spirit. But if it means the unchangeable surpassingness of divinity above everything changeable, then Father and Son and Holy Spirit were all borne above the waters. Why then is it said of Your Spirit only? Why is it said of him alone, as though he had been in a place, who is not in a place, and of whom alone it is written that he is Your gift? In Your gift we rest; there we enjoy You. Our rest is our place. Love lifts us there, and Your good Spirit lifts our lowliness up from the gates of death. In Your good pleasure is our peace. A body strives by its own weight towards its own place. Weight does not pull only downwards, but towards a thing's own place. Fire tends upwards, a stone downwards. They are driven by their own weight; they look for their own places. Oil poured under water is lifted above the water; water poured on oil sinks below the oil. They are driven by their own weights to look for their own places. When they are out of their order they are restless; put back in order, they are at rest. My weight is my love; by it I am carried wherever I am carried. By Your gift we are set alight and carried upwards; we glow inwardly and go forward. We climb Your paths that are in our heart, and sing a song of ascents; we glow inwardly with Your fire, with Your good fire, and we go, because we are going upwards to the peace of Jerusalem — for I was glad when they said to me, We will go up to the house of the Lord. There Your good pleasure has placed us, so that we may want nothing else but to stay there for ever.

Blessed creature, which, being itself other than You, has known no other condition than this: that as soon as it was made it was, without any interval, carried aloft by Your gift, which is borne above everything changeable — carried aloft by that call in which You said, Let there be light, and there was light. Whereas in us this happened at different times, in that we were darkness and are made light; but of that creature it is only said what it would have been if it had not been enlightened. And this is said as though it had been unsettled and dark before, so that the cause by which it was made otherwise might appear: namely that being turned to the unfailing light it became light. Let anyone who can, understand this; let him ask You for it. Why should he trouble me, as though I could enlighten any man who comes into this world?

Which of us takes in the almighty Trinity? And yet which of us does not speak of it, if it is indeed that we are speaking of? Rare is the soul that, while speaking of it, knows what it is speaking of. And people argue and struggle, and without peace nobody sees that vision. I wish people would consider these three things that are in themselves. These three are indeed something quite other than the Trinity; I only say where they may practise on themselves, and there test and feel how far off they are. The three I mean are: to be, to know, and to will. For I am, and I know, and I will. I am knowing and willing; and I know myself to be and to will; and I will to be and to know. In these three, then, let anyone who can make out how inseparable a life there is — one life, one mind, one essence; and how inseparable a distinction there is, and yet a distinction. Surely a man has it in front of him; let him look into himself and see, and tell me. But when he discovers something and can say something about these three, let him not therefore think he has found the unchangeable one who is above them, who is unchangeably, and knows unchangeably, and wills unchangeably. And whether because of these three there is also a Trinity in God, or whether all three are in each, so that the three belong to each, or whether both at once, wonderfully, simply and yet manifoldly, itself a boundary to itself within itself, yet unbounded, by which it is and is known to itself and is enough for itself, unchangeably the selfsame by the abundant greatness of its unity — who can readily conceive this? Who could express it in any way at all? Who would pronounce on it rashly?

Go on with your confession, my faith; say to the Lord your God: Holy, holy, holy, Lord my God, in Your name we have been baptised — Father, Son and Holy Spirit; in Your name we baptise — Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because among us too, in his Christ, God made heaven and earth, namely the spiritual and the unspiritual people of his church. And our earth, before it received the form of doctrine, was invisible and without form, and we were covered with the darkness of ignorance. For You corrected man for his wrongdoing, and Your judgements were like the great deep to him. But because Your Spirit was borne above the waters, Your mercy did not abandon our misery, and You said, Let there be light — Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent: let there be light. And because our soul was troubled within us, we remembered You, Lord, from the land of Jordan, and that mountain equal to Yourself but made small for our sakes; and our darkness displeased us, and we turned to You, and there was light. And we were once darkness, and are now light in the Lord.

But so far by faith and not by sight; for we are saved by hope, and hope that is seen is not hope. So far deep still calls to deep, but now in the voice of Your waterfalls. So far the man who says, I could not speak to you as spiritual but as unspiritual — even he does not yet think he has taken hold of it, and forgets the things that are behind and reaches forward to the things ahead, and groans under his burden, and his soul thirsts for the living God as the deer for the water-brooks, and says, When shall I come? — wanting to be clothed with his house from heaven; and calls to this lower deep, saying, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind; and, Do not be children in understanding, but in malice be children, so that in understanding you may be grown up; and, Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? But now no longer in his own voice, but in Yours, who sent Your Spirit from above through him who went up on high and opened the floodgates of his gifts, so that the force of his streams might gladden the city of God. It is for him that this friend of the bridegroom sighs, having now the first fruits of the Spirit laid up with him, and yet still groaning inwardly, waiting for the adoption, that is, the redemption of his body. For him he sighs, being a member of the bride; for him he is jealous, being a friend of the bridegroom; for him and not for himself he is jealous, because it is in the voice of Your waterfalls and not in his own voice that he calls to that other depth, over which, being jealous, he is afraid — in case, as the serpent tricked Eve by his cunning, so their minds should be corrupted from the purity that is in our bridegroom, Your only Son. What a light of beauty that will be, when we shall see him as he is, and those tears have passed away which have been my food day and night, while they say to me every day, Where is Your God now?

I too say it, my God: where are You? See where You are! In You I breathe a little, when I pour out my soul by myself in the voice of joy and praise, the sound of a man keeping festival. And then it grows sad again, because it slips back and becomes a deep — or rather perceives that it is still a deep. My faith speaks to it, the faith You have lit to light my feet in the night: why are you sad, my soul, and why do you trouble me? Hope in the Lord; his word is a lamp to your feet. Hope and endure, until the night is over — the mother of the wicked, the anger of the Lord — of which we too were once children, who were once darkness, and whose leavings we still carry about in our body, dead because of sin; until the day breaks and the shadows run away. Hope in the Lord: in the morning I shall stand in Your presence and contemplate You; I shall confess to You for ever. In the morning I shall stand in Your presence and see the health of my face, my God, who will also bring our mortal bodies to life by the Spirit who lives in us, because in mercy he has been borne over our inner dark and floating deep. From him we have received a down payment on this pilgrimage, that we should now be light, while we are saved by hope, and are children of the light and children of the day, and not children of the night or of the darkness — which nevertheless we once were. Between them and us, in this uncertainty of human knowledge, You alone divide, You who test our hearts and call the light day and the darkness night. For who tells us apart but You? And what do we have that we have not received from You? Out of the same lump vessels are made for honour, and others out of it for dishonour.

And who except You, our God, made for us that firmament of authority over us in Your divine Scripture? For it is said, The sky shall be folded up like a scroll; and now it is stretched over us like a skin. For Your divine Scripture has a higher authority since the mortals through whom You gave it out to us underwent their mortality. And You know, Lord, You know how You clothed men in skins when they became mortal through sin. So You have stretched out the firmament of Your book like a skin — Your harmonising words, which You spread over us by the ministry of mortal men. For it was by their very deaths that the solid firmament of authority in Your words, as set out by them, was more loftily stretched over everyone under it; while they were alive here it was not stretched so high. You had not yet spread the heavens out like a skin; You had not yet enlarged in every direction the glory of their deaths.

Let us look, Lord, at the heavens, the work of Your fingers; clear from our eyes the cloud You have spread beneath them. There is Your testimony, which gives wisdom to little ones; complete Your praise, my God, out of the mouths of babies and infants. For we know no other books that so destroy pride, that so destroy the enemy and the defender who resists Your reconciling by defending his own sins. I know of no other words so pure, Lord, that so persuade me to confess, and make my neck pliant to Your yoke, and invite me to serve You for nothing. Let me understand them, good Father; grant this to me, who am set under them, since it was for those set under them that You established them.

There are other waters above this firmament, immortal, I believe, and separated from earthly corruption. Let them praise Your name — let them praise You, the people above the heavens, Your angels, who have no need to gaze up at this firmament or to learn Your Word by reading. For they always look on Your face, and there they read, without any syllables in time, what Your eternal will wills. They read, they choose, they love. They are always reading, and what they read never passes away; for by choosing and by loving they read the very unchangeableness of Your counsel. Their book is never closed, their scroll never rolled up, since You Yourself are this to them, and are so eternally; because You have set them above this firmament, which You have firmly settled over the weakness of the people below, where they might gaze up and learn Your mercy, which announces in time You who made times. For Your mercy, Lord, is in the heavens, and Your truth reaches to the clouds. The clouds pass away, but the sky remains. The preachers of Your word pass out of this life into another; but Your Scripture is spread out over the peoples to the end of the world. And yet heaven and earth also shall pass away, but Your words shall not pass away. Because the scroll shall be rolled up, and the grass it was spread over shall pass away with its beauty; but Your Word remains for ever, which now appears to us under the dark image of the clouds, and through the glass of the heavens, and not as it is. Because we too, though we are the beloved of Your Son, it has not yet appeared what we shall be. He looks through the lattice of our flesh, and he spoke tenderly to us, and set us alight, and we ran after his scent. But when he appears, then we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. As he is, Lord, will our sight be.

For only You know altogether as You are — You who are unchangeably, and know unchangeably, and will unchangeably. And Your being knows and wills unchangeably; and Your knowing is and wills unchangeably; and Your willing is and knows unchangeably. And it does not seem right in Your eyes that as the unchangeable light knows itself, so it should be known by the thing that is lit and changeable. And so my soul is like a land where there is no water, because just as it cannot light itself by itself, so it cannot satisfy itself by itself. For so is the fountain of life with You, just as in Your light we shall see light.

Who gathered the embittered into one society? For they all have one end, a temporary and earthly happiness, and everything they do is to get it, though they toss up and down with a countless variety of cares. Who but You, Lord, said, Let the waters be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear, which thirsts for You? For the sea is Yours, and You made it, and Your hands prepared the dry land. And it is not the bitterness of men's wills but the gathering of the waters that is called sea; for You hold back the wicked desires of men's souls and set their limits, how far they may be allowed to go, so that their waves break against each other; and so You make it a sea, by the order of Your rule over all things.

But the souls that thirst for You and appear before You, separated by other boundaries from the society of the sea, You water with a sweet spring, so that the earth may bring forth her fruit; and at Your command, Lord God, our soul may bud with works of mercy after their kind, loving our neighbour in the relief of his bodily needs, and having seed in itself after its likeness, when out of a feeling of our own weakness we have compassion enough to relieve the needy, helping them as we would want to be helped if we were in the same need. And not only in easy things, like a plant yielding seed, but in the protection of our help, with our best strength, like a tree yielding fruit: that is, doing good by rescuing a man who suffers wrong out of the hand of the powerful, and giving him the shelter of protection by the strength of a just judgement.

So, Lord, so, I beg You, let there spring up, as You do and as You give cheerfulness and ability — let truth spring out of the earth, and righteousness look down from heaven, and let there be lights in the firmament. Let us break our bread for the hungry and bring the homeless poor into our house. Let us clothe the naked, and not despise those of our own flesh. And when these fruits have sprung up out of the earth, see that it is good; and let our temporary light break out; and let us, arriving from this lower fruitfulness of action at the delight of contemplation, and taking hold of the Word of life above, appear like lights in the world, holding fast to the firmament of Your Scripture. For there You teach us to divide between things of the mind and things of the senses, as between day and night; or between souls given to things of the mind and souls given to things of the senses. So that now it is not only You in the secret of Your judgement, as before the firmament was made, who divide between the light and the darkness, but Your spiritual children too, set and ranked in the same firmament, now that Your grace is laid open throughout the world, may give light on the earth and divide between the day and the night, and be for signs of the times: that old things have passed away, and all things have become new; that our salvation is nearer than when we first believed; that the night is far gone and the day is at hand; and that You will crown Your year with blessing, sending the labourers of Your goodness into Your harvest, in whose sowing others have laboured, and sending them also into another field whose harvest shall be at the end. So You grant the prayers of the man who asks, and bless the years of the just; but You are the same, and in Your years, which do not run out, You prepare a barn for our passing years.

For by an eternal counsel You bestow heavenly blessings on the earth in their proper seasons. To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, like the greater light, for those who delight in the light of clear truth, as it were to rule the day. To another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit, like the lesser light; to another faith; to another the gift of healing; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another the discerning of spirits; to another different kinds of tongues. And all these are like stars. For all these the one and the same Spirit works, giving to each man his own as he wills, and making stars appear plainly, for the profit of all. But the word of knowledge, which contains all the sacraments, which vary in their seasons like the moon, and those other notices of gifts which are reckoned up in order like stars — in so far as they fall short of that brightness of wisdom which gladdens the day I spoke of, they are only for the ruling of the night. For they are necessary to the kind of people that even Your most prudent servant could not speak to as spiritual but only as unspiritual: he who speaks wisdom among those who are grown up. But the natural man, like a baby in Christ fed on milk until he is strong enough for solid food and his eye is able to look at the sun, let him not live in a night forsaken by all light, but be content with the light of the moon and the stars. So You speak to us, our all-wise God, in Your book, Your firmament, so that we may make everything out in an admirable contemplation, though as yet in signs and in times and in days and in years.

But first, wash yourselves, be clean; put away evil from your souls and from before my eyes, so that the dry land may appear. Learn to do good, judge for the fatherless, plead for the widow, so that the earth may bring forth green plants for food, and the tree bearing fruit; and come, let us reason together, says the Lord, so that there may be lights in the firmament of heaven and they may shine on the earth.

That rich man asked the good master what he should do to gain eternal life. Let the good master tell him — whom he took for no more than a man, but he is good because he is God — let him tell him that if he wants to enter into life he must keep the commandments; let him put away from himself the bitterness of malice and wickedness; not kill, not commit adultery, not steal, not bear false witness; so that the dry land may appear and bring forth the honouring of father and mother and the love of our neighbour. All these, he says, I have kept. Then where do so many thorns come from, if the earth is fruitful? Go and root up the spreading thickets of greed; sell what you have, and be filled with fruit by giving to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and follow the Lord if you want to be perfect, joining those among whom he speaks wisdom, who knows what to allot to the day and to the night — so that you too may know it, and so that for you there may be lights in the firmament of heaven, which there will not be unless your heart is there; and that will not be either, unless your treasure is there, as you have heard from the good master. But that barren earth was grieved, and the thorns choked the word.

But you, chosen generation, you weak things of the world, who have left everything to follow the Lord: go after him and confound the mighty; go after him, beautiful feet, and shine in the firmament, so that the heavens may declare his glory, dividing between the light of the mature — though not like the angels — and the darkness of the little ones, who are nevertheless not despised. Shine over the earth; and let the day, lit by the sun, pour out to the day the speech of wisdom; and let the night, shining with the moon, show to the night the word of knowledge. The moon and the stars shine for the night, and the night does not blot them out, since they give it what light it has. For when God said, as it were, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven, there came suddenly a sound from heaven, like a rushing mighty wind, and there appeared divided tongues as of fire, and one sat on each of them. And lights were made in the firmament of heaven, holding the word of life. Run everywhere, holy fires, beautiful fires; for you are the light of the world, and you are not put under a bucket. He whom you hold fast to is lifted high, and has lifted you high. Run to and fro, and be known to all nations.

Let the sea also conceive and bring forth your works; and let the waters bring forth the moving creature that has life. For you, separating the precious from the worthless, are made the mouth of God, by whom he says, Let the waters bring forth — not the living creature the earth brings forth, but the moving creature that has life, and the birds that fly above the earth. For Your sacraments, God, by the ministry of Your holy ones, have moved among the waves of the world's temptations, to make the Gentiles holy in Your name, in Your baptism. And in the middle of all this many great wonders were worked, like great whales; and the voices of Your messengers flying above the earth, in the open firmament of Your book, which was set over them as the authority they were to fly under, wherever they went. For there is no speech or language where their voice is not heard, since their sound has gone through all the earth and their words to the end of the world, because You, Lord, multiplied them by blessing them.

Am I speaking untruly, or mixing things up and confusing them, and failing to distinguish between the clear knowledge of these things in the firmament of heaven and the material works in the wavy sea and under the firmament of heaven? For of those things whose knowledge is substantial and defined, without any increase by generation — lights of wisdom and knowledge, as it were — even of those the material workings are many and various; and one thing growing out of another, they are multiplied by Your blessing, God, who have refreshed the fastidiousness of mortal senses, so that one thing in the understanding of our mind may be set out and expressed in many ways by the motions of the body. It is the waters that have brought these sacraments forth, but in Your word. The needs of a people estranged from the eternity of Your truth have brought them forth, but in Your gospel; because the waters themselves cast them out, and the diseased bitterness of the waters was the reason they were sent out in Your Word.

Everything You have made is beautiful now; and yet You Yourself, who made it all, are unspeakably more beautiful. And if Adam had not fallen away from You, the brackishness of the sea would never have flowed out of him — that is, the human race, so deeply curious and stormily swelling and restlessly tumbling up and down. And then there would have been no need for Your stewards to work in many waters, in a bodily and perceptible way, at mysterious doings and sayings. For that is what those moving and flying creatures now seem to me to mean: that people initiated and consecrated by bodily sacraments should not get any further unless their soul had a spiritual life, and unless after the word of admission it looked forward to completion.

And by this, in Your Word, it is not the deepness of the sea but the earth separated from the bitterness of the waters that brings forth, not the moving creature that has life but the living soul. For now it no longer needs baptism, as the heathen do and as it did itself when it was covered with the waters — for there is no other entrance into the kingdom of heaven, since You have appointed that this should be the entrance. Nor does it look for marvellous miracles to produce belief; for it is not the kind that will not believe unless it sees signs and wonders, now that the faithful earth has been separated from the waters that were bitter with unbelief, and tongues are a sign not for those who believe but for those who do not. So the earth You have founded on the waters does not need that flying kind which at Your word the waters brought forth. Send Your word into it by Your messengers; for we speak of their working, and yet it is You who work in them, so that they may work out a living soul in it. The earth brings it forth, because the earth is the reason they work this in the soul, as the sea was the reason they worked on the moving creatures that have life and the birds that fly under the firmament of heaven, which the earth does not need — although it feeds on that fish taken out of the deep, at that table You have prepared in the presence of those who believe. For that was why he was taken out of the deep: so that he might feed the dry land. And the bird, though bred in the sea, is nevertheless multiplied on the earth. For it was man's unbelief that made the first preachings of the evangelists necessary; and yet the faithful too are encouraged and blessed by them in many ways, from day to day. But the living soul takes its beginning from the earth: for it profits only those who are already among the faithful to hold themselves back from the love of this world, so that their soul may live for You — the soul that was dead while it lived in pleasures. In death-bringing pleasures, Lord; for You, Lord, are the life-giving delight of the pure heart.

Now let Your ministers work on the earth — not as on the waters of unbelief, by preaching and speaking through miracles and sacraments and mysterious words, in which ignorance, the mother of wonder, might be intent on them out of reverence for those secret signs. For that is the entrance into faith for the sons of Adam who have forgotten You, while they hide themselves from Your face and become a dark deep. But let Your ministers now work as on dry land, separated from the whirlpools of the great deep; and let them be a pattern to the faithful by living in front of them and stirring them up to imitation. For that is how men hear, so as not only to hear but to do. Seek the Lord, and your soul shall live, so that the earth may bring forth the living soul. Do not be conformed to the world. Hold yourselves back from it: the soul lives by avoiding what it dies by wanting. Hold yourselves back from the ungoverned wildness of pride, the sluggish self-indulgence of luxury, and the falsely named knowledge — so that the wild beasts may be tamed, the cattle broken to the yoke, the serpents made harmless. For these are the movements of our mind, under an allegory: the haughtiness of pride, the pleasure of lust and the poison of curiosity are the movements of a dead soul. For a soul does not die so as to lose all movement; it dies by abandoning the fountain of life, and so is taken up by this passing world and conformed to it.

But Your word, God, is the fountain of eternal life and does not pass away. So this departure of the soul is held back by Your word, when it is said to us, Do not be conformed to this world — so that the earth may bring forth a living soul in the fountain of life: that is, a soul made self-controlled in Your Word, by Your evangelists, by following the followers of Your Christ. For this is after his kind, because a man usually imitates his friend. Be as I am, he says, for I am as you are. So in this living soul there will be good beasts, in gentleness of action — for You have commanded, Go about your business gently, and so you will be loved by everyone. And good cattle, which neither have too much if they eat nor go short if they do not. And good serpents, not dangerous enough to do harm but wise enough to be careful, and searching into this temporal nature only so far as is enough for eternity to be clearly seen and understood by the things that are made. For these creatures are obedient to reason when, being held back from fatally getting the better of us, they live and are good.

For look, Lord our God, our creator, when our affections have been held back from the love of the world, by which we died through living badly, and have begun to be a living soul through living well; and the word You spoke through Your apostle is made good in us, Do not be conformed to this world — then that follows which You immediately added: But be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Not now after your kind, as though following a neighbour who went before you, and not living by the example of some better man. For You did not say, "Let man be made after his kind", but, Let us make man after our own image and likeness — so that we might test what Your will is. For it was to this end that that steward of Yours, who fathered children by the gospel, said this, so that he should not have them for ever as babies whom he would have to feed on milk and cherish like a nurse: Be transformed, he says, by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. And so You do not say, "Let man be made", but Let us make man. And You did not say, "according to his kind", but after our image and likeness. For a man renewed in his mind, and looking at and understanding Your truth, does not need a man as his director, so as to follow after his kind; by Your direction he tests what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of Yours. Indeed You teach him, now that he is capable of it, to make out the Trinity in the unity and the unity in the Trinity. And so to the words said in the plural, Let us make man, there is added in the singular, And God made man; and to the words said in the plural, After our likeness, there is added in the singular, After the image of God. So a man is renewed in the knowledge of God, after the image of him who created him; and being made spiritual, he judges all things — all things that are to be judged — while he himself is judged by nobody.

And that he judges all things answers to his having dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air, and over all the cattle and the wild beasts, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. He does this by the understanding of his mind, by which he perceives the things of the Spirit of God; whereas otherwise, a man set in a position of honour had no understanding, and is compared to the brute beasts and has become like them. So in Your church, our God, according to the grace You have given it — for we are Your workmanship created for good works — it is not only those who are set over others spiritually but those who are spiritually subject to those set over them. For it was in this way that You made man male and female, in Your spiritual grace, where, as regards the sex of the body, there is neither male nor female, because there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free. Spiritual people, whether they are set over others or obey, judge spiritually. They do not judge the spiritual knowledge that shines in the firmament, since they ought not to judge so supreme an authority; and they may not judge Your book itself, even where something in it does not shine clearly, since we submit our understanding to it and hold it certain that even what is closed to our sight is rightly and truly said. For a man, though now spiritual and renewed in the knowledge of God after the image of him who created him, ought to be a doer of the law and not a judge of it. Nor does he judge that distinction between spiritual and unspiritual men which is known to Your eyes, our God, and which they have not yet revealed to us by their works, so that we might know them by their fruits; but You, Lord, already know them, and have divided and called them in secret before ever the firmament was made. Nor does he, spiritual though he is, judge the restless people of this world; for what has he to do with judging those who are outside, when he does not know which of them will later come into the sweetness of Your grace, and which will stay in the perpetual bitterness of irreligion?

So man, whom You made after Your own image, did not receive dominion over the lights of heaven, or over that hidden heaven itself, or over the day and the night which You named before the foundation of the sky, or over the gathering of the waters which is the sea. He received dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over all the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creeping things that creep on the earth. For he judges and approves what he finds right and rejects what he finds wrong: whether in the celebration of the sacraments by which those are initiated whom Your mercy searches out in many waters; or in that in which the Fish is set out, taken out of the deep, which the devout earth feeds on; or in the expressions and signs of words, subject to the authority of Your book — signs which come out of the mouth and sound out, flying as it were under the firmament, in interpreting, expounding, discussing, arguing, blessing or praying to You, so that the people may answer, Amen. And the reason all these words have to be pronounced aloud is the deep of this world and the blindness of the flesh, which cannot see thoughts; so that there is a need to speak aloud into the ears. So that although flying birds are multiplied on the earth, they take their beginning from the waters. The spiritual man also judges by approving what is right and rejecting what he finds wrong in the works and lives of the faithful: their alms, which are like the earth bringing forth fruit; and the living soul, living by the taming of the affections, in chastity, in fasting, in holy meditation; and those things that are perceived by the senses of the body. Over all these he is now said to judge, in which he also has the power of correction.

But what is this, and what kind of mystery is it? You bless mankind, Lord, so that they may increase and multiply and fill the earth. Are You not giving us a hint to understand something by that? Why did You not bless the light too, which You called day, or the firmament of heaven, or the lights, or the stars, or the earth, or the sea? I might say that You, God, who created us in Your image — I might say that it had been Your good pleasure to give this blessing to man alone, if You had not blessed the fishes and the whales in the same way, so that they should increase and multiply and fill the waters of the sea, and blessed the birds so that they should be multiplied on the earth. I might likewise say that this blessing belonged properly to creatures that are bred of their own kind, if I had found it given to the fruit trees and plants and beasts of the earth. But as it is, it is not said to the plants or the trees or the beasts or the serpents, Increase and multiply — although all these, as much as fishes or birds or men, do increase by generation and continue their kind.

What shall I say then, truth, my light? That it was said idly and without meaning? Far be it, Father of devotion, far be it from a minister of Your word to say so. And if I do not understand what You mean by that phrase, let my betters, that is, those with more understanding than I have, make better use of it, as You, my God, have given each man to understand. But let my confession also be pleasing in Your eyes, in which I confess to You that I believe, Lord, that You did not say this in vain; and I shall not suppress what this passage suggests to me. For it is true; and I cannot see what should stop me from understanding the figurative sayings of Your Bible this way. For I know that a thing understood in one way by the mind can be signified in many ways by bodily expressions, and that a thing signified in one way by bodily expression can be understood in many ways in the mind. Consider the single love of God and of our neighbour: by how many sacraments and countless languages, and in each separate language by how many countless ways of speaking, is it bodily expressed! In this way the offspring of the waters increase and multiply. Consider again, whoever is reading this: what Scripture delivers and the voice pronounces in one way only, In the beginning God created heaven and earth — is it not understood in many ways, not through any cheat of error but by various kinds of true meaning? In this way the offspring of man increase and multiply.

So if we take the natures of the things themselves not allegorically but literally, then the phrase increase and multiply fits everything that comes from seed. But if we take the words as spoken figuratively, which I rather suppose is Scripture's purpose, since it surely does not ascribe this blessing superfluously to the offspring of water creatures and of men alone — then we find multitude belonging to spiritual creatures as well as bodily ones, as in heaven and earth; and to the righteous and the unrighteous, as in light and darkness; and to the holy authors who have been the ministers of the law to us, as in the firmament settled between the waters and the waters; and to the society of people still in the bitterness of unbelief, as in the sea; and to the zeal of holy souls, as in the dry land; and to the works of mercy belonging to this present life, as in the plants bearing seed and the trees bearing fruit; and to the spiritual gifts set out for building up, as in the lights of heaven; and to affections shaped to temperance, as in the living soul. In all these cases we meet multitudes and abundance and increase. But what should increase and multiply in such a way that one thing may be expressed in many ways, and one expression understood in many ways, we do not find, except in signs bodily expressed and things conceived in the mind. By signs bodily pronounced we understand the generations of the waters, made necessary by the depth of the flesh; by things conceived in the mind, human generations, on account of the fruitfulness of reason. And this is why we believe You, Lord, to have said to these kinds, Increase and multiply. For in this blessing I take You to have granted us a power and a faculty both for expressing in several ways what we understand in one, and for understanding in several ways what we read delivered obscurely in one. So the waters of the sea are filled, which are not moved except by different meanings; and so the earth too is filled with human increase, whose dryness shows in its longing, and reason rules over it.

I would also say, Lord my God, what the following Scripture reminds me of; yes, I shall say it and not be afraid. For I shall say the truth, with You inspiring me with what You wanted me to bring out of those words. By no other inspiration than Yours do I believe myself to speak truth, seeing that You are the truth and every man a liar. So whoever speaks a lie speaks out of his own; and so, in order to speak truth, I shall speak out of Yours. You have given us for food every plant bearing seed that is on all the earth, and every tree that has in it the fruit of a tree yielding seed. And not to us alone, but to all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth and all creeping things — but to the fishes and the great whales You have not given them. Now we said that by these fruits of the earth were signified, and figured in an allegory, the works of mercy provided for the necessities of this life out of the fruitful earth. Such an earth was the devout Onesiphorus, on whose house You had mercy, because he often refreshed Your Paul and was not ashamed of his chain. So did the brothers too, and such fruit did they bear, who out of Macedonia supplied what he lacked. But how he grieved over some trees that did not give him the fruit that was owed to him, where he says, At my first defence nobody stood by me, but everyone deserted me. I pray God it may not be charged against them. For these fruits are owed to those who minister spiritual teaching to us out of their understanding of the divine mysteries; and they are owed to them as men; and owed to them too as the living soul, which offers itself as an example in all self-control; and owed to them too as flying creatures, for their blessings which are multiplied over the earth, because their sound went out into all lands.

But those are fed by these fruits who take delight in them; and those are not delighted by them whose god is their belly. For even in those who yield the fruits, it is not the things yielded that are the fruit but the mind they yield them with. So the man who served God and not his own belly — I can plainly see why he rejoiced. I see it, and I rejoice with him. He had received from the Philippians what they had sent him by Epaphroditus; and yet I can see why he rejoiced. For what he rejoiced at is what he fed on; for, speaking truly, I rejoiced greatly in the Lord, he says, that now at last your care for me has flowered again, in which you were careful before, but it had become wearisome to you. So these Philippians had dried up with a long weariness and had withered, as it were, as to bearing this fruit of a good work; and he rejoices for them, that they have flowered again — not for himself, that they had supplied his needs. So he adds, Not that I speak from want; for I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content with it. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to have plenty; everywhere and in everything I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to have plenty and to go without. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

What is it, then, that you are rejoicing at, great Paul? What are you rejoicing at? What are you feeding on, man renewed in the knowledge of God after the image of him who created you, living soul of so much self-control, tongue like the flying birds, speaking mysteries — for it is to such creatures that this food is owed? What is it that feeds you? Joy. Let us hear what follows: Nevertheless you have done well, in that you shared in my affliction. This is what he rejoices at; this is what he feeds on: because they had done well, and not because his difficulty was eased — he who says to You, You have made room for me when I was in distress. For he knew how to have plenty and how to go without, in You who strengthen him. For you Philippians know too, he says, that at the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, but you alone. For even in Thessalonica you sent once and again for my needs. It is to these good works that he now rejoices they have returned; and he is glad that they have flowered again, as when a fruitful field takes back its green.

Was it for his own needs, because he said, You sent for my needs? Is that what he is rejoicing at? Certainly not. But how do we know? Because he says immediately afterwards, Not that I want a gift, but I want fruit. I have learned from You, my God, to distinguish between a gift and fruit. A gift is the thing itself that a man gives when he supplies us with these necessities: money, food, drink, clothing, shelter, help. But the fruit is the good and right will of the giver. For the good master did not only say, Whoever receives a prophet, but added, in the name of a prophet. And he did not only say, Whoever receives a righteous man, but added, in the name of a righteous man. So the one shall truly receive a prophet's reward and the other a righteous man's. And he does not only say, Whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of my little ones, but adds, in the name of a disciple; and so concludes, Truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward. The gift is to receive a prophet, to receive a righteous man, to give a cup of cold water to a disciple; but the fruit is to do it in the name of a prophet, in the name of a righteous man, in the name of a disciple. Elijah was fed with fruit by the widow who knew she was feeding a man of God and fed him for that reason; but by the raven he was fed with a gift. And it was not Elijah's inner man that was fed that way but only the outer, which might also have died for want of that food.

So I shall say what is true in Your sight, Lord. When unspiritual men and unbelievers, for whose winning and initiation the introductory sacraments and the mighty workings of miracles are necessary — which we take to be signified by the name of fishes and whales — undertake to refresh Your servant bodily, or help him in some other way with something useful for this present life, and yet do not know why this is to be done or to what end, then they are not feeding these men, and these men are not fed by them; because the one lot do not act out of a holy and right intention, and the other do not rejoice at gifts whose fruit they cannot yet see. For the mind feeds on what it is glad of. And so the fishes and whales do not feed on the food the earth does not bring forth until after it has been separated and divided from the bitterness of the waves of the sea.

And You, God, saw everything You had made, and it was very good. And we too see the same, and everything is very good. Of each kind of Your works, when You had said, "let them be", and they were, You saw of each that it was good. Seven times I have counted it written that You saw that what You had made was good; and this is the eighth, that You saw everything You had made, and it was not only good but very good, being now all together. Separately they were only good; all together they were both good and very good. All beautiful bodies say the same, since a body made of members that are all beautiful is far more beautiful than the same members are by themselves, by whose well-ordered blending the whole is completed — although the members separately are beautiful too.

And I looked closely to find whether it was seven times or eight that You saw Your works were good, when they pleased You; and in Your seeing I found no times at all, by which I might understand how often You saw what You had made. And I said, "Lord, is this Scripture of Yours not true, since You are true, and being the truth have put it forth? Then why do You tell me that in Your seeing there are no times, when this Scripture of Yours tells me that what You made each day You saw to be good — and when I counted them, I found how many times?" And to this You answer me, for You are my God, and with a strong voice You tell Your servant in his inner ear, breaking through my deafness and crying out: "Man, what my Scripture says, I say. And yet Scripture speaks in time, while time has no relation to my Word, because my Word exists in an eternity equal to my own. So the things you see through my Spirit, I see; just as what you speak by my Spirit, I speak. And so when you see those things in time, I do not see them in time; just as when you speak in time, I do not speak them in time."

And I heard, Lord my God, and drank a drop of sweetness out of Your truth, and understood that there are certain men who dislike Your works and say that You made many of them under compulsion of necessity, such as the fabric of the heavens and the harmony of the stars; and that You made them not out of what was Yours, but that they were created elsewhere and from other sources, for You to bring together and compact and combine, when out of Your conquered enemies You raised the walls of the universe, so that they, tied down by the structure, should not be able to rebel against You again. And as for other things, they say You neither made them nor even put them together — all flesh, and all the very small creatures, and everything that has its root in the earth; but that a mind at enmity with You, and another nature not created by You and contrary to You, produced and framed these things in the lower stages of the world. They are deranged who say this, because they do not see Your works by Your Spirit, and do not recognise You in them.

But those who see these things by Your Spirit, You see in them. So when they see that these things are good, it is You who see that they are good; and whatever pleases for Your sake, it is You who please in it; and whatever pleases us through Your Spirit, pleases You in us. For what man knows the things of a man, except the spirit of a man which is in him? Even so nobody knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we, he says, have received not the spirit of this world but the Spirit which is from God, so that we may know the things freely given us by God. And I am reminded: "Truly nobody knows the things of God except the Spirit of God; then how do we too know what things are given us by God?" The answer given me is: "Because the things we know by his Spirit, even these nobody knows but the Spirit of God. For as it was rightly said to those who were to speak by the Spirit of God, It is not you who speak, so it is rightly said to those who know through the Spirit of God, It is not you who know. And no less rightly is it said to those who see through the Spirit of God, It is not you who see; so that whatever they see through the Spirit of God to be good, it is not they but God who sees that it is good."

So it is one thing for a man to think something bad which is good, as the men I mentioned do; another for a man to see that something good is good, as Your creatures please many people because they are good, in whom nevertheless You are not what pleases, since they would rather enjoy the creatures than You; and another again for a man, when he sees that a thing is good, for God to see in him that it is good — so that he may be loved in what he has made, who cannot be loved except by the Holy Spirit he has given. Because the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us; and it is by him that we see that whatever exists in any degree is good. For it comes from him who is not in any degree, but who is what he is.

Thanks be to You, Lord. We look at heaven and earth, whether the bodily part, higher and lower, or the spiritual and bodily creation. And in the adorning of these parts, which the whole mass of the world, or rather the whole creation, consists of, we see light made and divided from the darkness. We see the firmament of heaven, whether that primary body of the world between the spiritual waters above and the bodily waters below, or — since this too is called heaven — this space of air through which the birds of heaven wander, between those waters that are carried above them in vapour and drip down as dew on clear nights, and the heavier waters that flow along the earth. We look at the face of the waters gathered together in the fields of the sea; and the dry land, both empty and then formed so as to be visible and ordered, and the material of plants and trees. We look at the lights shining from above: the sun to suffice for the day, and the moon and stars to cheer the night; and by all of these times are to be marked and signified. We see on all sides a moist element, filled with fishes and beasts and birds, because the thickness of the air which holds up the flights of birds is thickened by the exhalation of the waters. We look at the face of the earth decked with earthly creatures, and man, created after Your image and likeness, set over all irrational creatures by that very image and likeness of Yours, which is the power of reason and understanding. And as in his soul there is one power that has command by directing, and another made subject so that it should obey, so also for the man there was made, bodily, a woman, who in the mind of her reasoning understanding should have an equality of nature, but in the sex of her body should be subject in the same way to the sex of her husband, as the appetite for doing is glad to take the skill of right-doing from the reason of the mind. These things we look at, and separately they are good, and all together very good.

Let Your works praise You, so that we may love You; and let us love You, so that Your works may praise You — works that from time have a beginning and an end, a rising and a setting, growth and decay, form and loss of form. So they have their succession of morning and evening, partly in secret and partly in the open; for they were made out of nothing, by You, not out of You; not out of any matter that was not Yours or that existed before, but out of matter created along with them — that is, created by You at the same time — because You gave form to its formless state without any interval of time. For seeing that the matter of heaven and earth is one thing and the form another, You made the matter out of nothing at all, but the form of the world out of the matter without form; and yet both together, so that the form followed the matter with no interval of delay.

We have also examined what You wanted foreshadowed, whether by the creation or by the telling of things in such an order. And we have seen that things separately are good and together very good — in Your Word, in Your only-begotten: both heaven and earth, the head and the body of the church, in Your predestination before all times, with no morning and evening. But when You began to carry out in time the things predestined, so that You might reveal hidden things and put our disorders right — for our sins hung over us and we had sunk into the dark deep, and Your good Spirit was borne over us to help us at the right moment; and You made the ungodly righteous and divided them from the wicked; and You made the firmament of the authority of Your book between those placed above, who were to be teachable towards You, and those below, who were to be subject to them. And You gathered the society of unbelievers together into one conspiracy, so that the zeal of the faithful might show, and they might bring forth works of mercy, distributing their earthly riches to the poor so as to gain heavenly ones. And after this You lit certain lights in the firmament, Your holy ones, holding the word of life and shining with an eminent authority set on high through spiritual gifts. And after that again, for the initiation of the unbelieving Gentiles, You produced out of bodily matter the sacraments and visible miracles and forms of words according to the firmament of Your book, by which the faithful should be blessed and multiplied. Next You formed the living soul of the faithful, through affections well ordered by the strength of self-control. And after that, the mind subject to You alone and needing to imitate no human authority You have renewed after Your image and likeness; and You made its rational actions subject to the excellence of the understanding, as the woman is to the man. And for all the offices of Your ministry, necessary for the perfecting of the faithful in this life, You willed that good things should be given by those same faithful for their temporary use, fruitful for the givers in the time to come. All these things we see, and they are very good, because You see them in us — You who have given us Your Spirit, by which we might see them, and in them love You.

Lord God, give us peace, since You have given us everything: the peace of rest, the peace of the Sabbath, which has no evening. For all this most beautiful array of things, very good as it is, must pass away when it has finished its course; for in them there was morning and evening.

But the seventh day has no evening and no setting, because You have made it holy to last for ever. So that what You did after Your works, which were very good, resting on the seventh day — although You made them in unbroken rest — may be announced to us beforehand by the voice of Your book: that we too, after our works, which are very good precisely because You have given them to us, shall rest in You as well, in the Sabbath of eternal life.

For then You will rest in us, as now You work in us; and so that will be Your rest through us, as these are Your works through us. But You, Lord, are always working and always at rest. You do not see in time, or move in time, or rest in a time; and yet You make the things that are seen in time, and the times themselves, and the rest that results from time.

So we see these things You have made, because they exist; but they exist because You see them. And we see outwardly that they exist, and inwardly that they are good; but You saw them there, once made, where You had seen them as still to be made. And we were moved at a later time to do good, after our hearts had conceived of Your Spirit; but in the earlier time we were moved to do evil, abandoning You. But You, the one good God, never stopped doing good. And we too have some good works, by Your gift, but not eternal ones; and after them we trust to rest in Your great hallowing. But You, being the good which needs no good, are always at rest, because Your rest is Yourself. And what man can teach a man to understand this? Or what angel, an angel? Or what angel, a man? Let it be asked of You, sought in You, knocked for at You. So, so shall it be received; so shall it be found; so shall it be opened. Amen.

	Gratias tibi, Domine — thanks be to You, Lord.