Confessions 8.12–9.2

So I was pressed down sweetly by the burden of the world, as often happens in sleep; and the thoughts with which I meditated on you were like the efforts of people who want to wake up but are overcome by the depth of their drowsiness and sink back again. And as there is no one who wants to sleep forever, and in everyone's sound judgment it is better to be awake, yet a man usually puts off shaking off sleep when a heavy torpor is in his limbs, and though he is already displeased with it, he enjoys it all the more willingly, even though the time to get up has come: so I was certain that it was better to give myself up to your love than to yield to my own desire; but the one pleased and convinced me, the other attracted and bound me. For I had nothing to answer you when you said to me, "Rise, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light"; and when you showed me on every side that you spoke the truth, I had nothing at all to answer, convicted by the truth, except slow and sleepy words: "Soon," "Yes, soon," "Let me be a little while." But "soon, soon" had no end, and "a little while" went on for a long while. In vain did I delight in your law according to the inner man, when another law in my members fought against the law of my mind and led me captive in the law of sin which was in my members. For the law of sin is the violence of habit, by which the mind is dragged and held even against its will, deservedly, since it slipped into it willingly. Wretched man that I was, who would deliver me from the body of this death, except your grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord?

And now I will tell how you set me free from the bond of desire for sexual intercourse, by which I was held most tightly, and from the slavery of worldly business, and I will confess to your name, O Lord, "my helper and my redeemer." I carried on as usual, with growing anxiety, and every day I sighed to you; I went often to your church, as much as I was free from the business under whose weight I groaned. Alypius was with me, free from his work as a legal expert after his third term as assessor, waiting for others to whom he could again sell his advice, as I sold the skill of speaking, if teaching can supply it. Nebridius, for his part, had yielded to our friendship so far as to be assistant teacher to Verecundus, a citizen and grammarian of Milan and a very close friend to all of us, who earnestly wanted, and by right of friendship demanded, faithful help from our number, which he badly needed. So it was not desire for gain that drew Nebridius there (he could have made more from his learning, had he wished), but as a most sweet and gentle friend he would not, out of kindness, scorn our request. But he did it very prudently, taking care not to become known to persons great in the eyes of this world, and avoiding all disturbance of mind among them, for he wanted his mind free and at leisure for as many hours as possible to seek, read, or hear something about wisdom.

One day, then (I do not remember the reason why Nebridius was absent), there came to our house, to Alypius and me, a certain Ponticianus, a fellow citizen of ours insofar as he was an African, who held a distinguished post at the palace; I do not know what he wanted of us. And we sat down to talk. And by chance he noticed a book on the gaming table in front of us; he picked it up, opened it, and found the apostle Paul, quite unexpectedly, for he had thought it was one of the books whose teaching was wearing me out. Then, smiling and looking at me, he expressed his joy and surprise that he had suddenly found these writings, and these alone, before my eyes. For he was a Christian and one of the faithful, and he often prostrated himself before you, our God, in church, in frequent and lengthy prayers. When I told him that I was giving the greatest attention to those Scriptures, a conversation began in which he spoke of Antony, the Egyptian monk, whose name was highly renowned among your servants, though until that hour it had been unknown to us. When he learned this, he dwelt on that subject, making known so great a man to us who did not know him, and marveling at our ignorance. And we were astonished to hear of your wonders, so well attested, in recent memory and almost in our own times, in the true faith and the catholic church. We were all amazed: we because they were so great, and he because we had not heard of them.

From there his talk turned to the flocks in the monasteries and their way of life, fragrant with your sweetness, and the fruitful wildernesses of the desert, of which we knew nothing. And there was a monastery at Milan, outside the city walls, full of good brothers, under the fostering care of Ambrose, and we did not know it. He went on and kept talking, and we listened in silence. So it came about that he told how once (I do not know when, but it was at Trier), while the emperor was held by the afternoon show at the circus, he and three companions went out to walk in the gardens next to the walls; and there, as they happened to stroll in pairs, one went off apart with him, and the other two likewise wandered off apart. But those two, as they wandered, came upon a certain cottage where some of your servants lived, "poor in spirit, of whom is the kingdom of heaven," and found there a book in which the life of Antony was written. One of them began to read it, and to marvel and be set on fire, and while reading to think of taking up such a life, leaving his worldly service, and serving you. They were among those called agents in affairs. Then, suddenly filled with holy love and sober shame, angry with himself, he turned his eyes on his friend and said to him: "Tell me, please, with all these labors of ours, what are we striving to reach? What are we looking for? For what cause are we serving? Can our hope at the palace be any greater than to be friends of the emperor? And there what is not fragile and full of dangers? And through how many dangers does one arrive at a greater danger? And when will that be? But a friend of God, if I want it, look, I become one now." He said this, and, troubled with the birth pangs of a new life, he turned his eyes back to the pages; and he read and was changed within, where you saw, and his mind was stripped of the world, as soon became clear. For while he read and rolled the waves of his heart, he groaned aloud at one point, and discerned and decided on the better course; and, now yours, he said to his friend: "I have now broken away from that hope of ours and decided to serve God, and I begin this from this hour, in this place. If you do not want to imitate me, do not oppose me." The other replied that he would cling to him as a comrade in so great a reward and so great a service. And both, now yours, were building the tower at the fitting cost, leaving all they had and following you. Then Ponticianus and the one who was walking with him in other parts of the garden, looking for them, came to the same place, and finding them, reminded them to return, since the day was already declining. But they told of their decision and purpose, and how this will had arisen and been strengthened in them, and asked them not to trouble them if they refused to join them. The two, though not changed from their former state, nevertheless wept for themselves, as he said, and piously congratulated the others and commended themselves to their prayers, and dragging their hearts along the earth they went off to the palace, while the others, fixing their hearts on heaven, stayed in the cottage. And both had fiancées, who, when they heard of it, also dedicated their virginity to you.

This is what Ponticianus told us. But you, Lord, while he was speaking, turned me back upon myself, taking me from behind my own back, where I had placed myself while I did not want to look at myself; and you set me before my own face, so that I might see how foul I was, how twisted and filthy, spotted and ulcerous. And I saw, and I was horrified, and there was nowhere for me to flee from myself. And if I tried to turn my gaze away from myself, he went on telling what he was telling, and you again set me before myself and thrust me into my own eyes, so that I might find my iniquity and hate it. I had known it, but I pretended not to, and kept it down, and forgot it.

Then indeed, the more ardently I loved those men of whose healthy affections I was hearing, because they had given themselves wholly to you to be healed, the more I hated myself with loathing when I compared myself with them. For many years of mine had flowed away with me, perhaps twelve years, since in my nineteenth year, on reading Cicero's Hortensius, I had been roused to the pursuit of wisdom; and I kept putting off despising earthly happiness and giving myself to the search for wisdom, when not the finding but the mere seeking of it ought to have been preferred even to treasures found and kingdoms of the nations and bodily pleasures flowing round me at a nod. But I, a very wretched young man, more wretched at the very start of my youth, had even asked you for chastity and said, "Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." For I was afraid that you would hear me quickly and quickly heal me of the disease of lust, which I preferred to have satisfied rather than extinguished. And I had gone along crooked ways in a sacrilegious superstition, not indeed certain of it, but as it were preferring it to the rest, which I did not seek piously but fought against as an enemy.

And I had thought that I was putting off despising worldly hope and following you alone because nothing certain appeared to me by which to direct my course. And the day had come when I was stripped naked before myself and my conscience scolded me: "Where is my tongue now? Surely you used to say that you would not throw off the burden of vanity for the sake of an uncertain truth. Look, now it is certain, and that burden still weighs you down, while those who were not so worn out with searching and have not meditated on these things for ten years or more receive wings on freer shoulders." So I was gnawed within and violently confounded with dreadful shame while Ponticianus spoke of such things. When his talk and the business for which he had come were finished, he went away, and I went back to myself. What did I not say against myself? With what lashes of rebuke did I not scourge my soul to make it follow me as I tried to go after you? And it resisted; it refused, and it offered no excuse. All its arguments were used up and refuted; there remained only a mute trembling, and it dreaded, as if it were death, being held back from the flow of habit by which it was wasting away to death.

Then, in that great struggle of my inner house, which I had stirred up violently with my soul in our chamber, my heart, troubled in face as much as in mind, I turned on Alypius and cried out: "What is wrong with us? What is this that you have heard? The unlearned rise up and take heaven by force, and we with our learning, look where we are wallowing in flesh and blood! Is it because they have gone ahead that we are ashamed to follow, and not ashamed not even to follow?" I said something of this kind, and my turmoil tore me away from him, while he said nothing and stared at me in astonishment. For I did not sound as I usually did. My brow, cheeks, eyes, color, and tone of voice spoke my mind more than the words I uttered. There was a little garden at our lodging, which we used as we did the whole house, for our host, the owner of the house, did not live there. The tumult in my breast had carried me there, where no one would hinder the burning quarrel I had begun with myself until it came to the end which you knew, but I did not. I was only going mad to be made sane, and dying to be made alive, knowing what evil I was, and not knowing what good I was soon to be. So I withdrew into the garden, and Alypius followed step by step. For my privacy was no less private when he was there; and how could he leave me in such a state? We sat down as far from the building as we could. I was groaning in spirit, indignant with the most turbulent indignation, that I did not enter into your will and covenant, my God, into which all my bones cried out that I must go, and praised it to the skies. And one did not go there by ships or chariots or on foot, not even as far as I had gone from the house to the place where we were sitting. For not only to go but also to arrive there was nothing other than to will to go, but to will strongly and wholly, not to turn and toss this way and that a half-wounded will, struggling with one part rising up and the other falling down.

In the very heat of my hesitation I did many things with my body which people sometimes want to do but cannot, if they do not have the limbs themselves, or if these are bound with chains, or weakened by illness, or hindered in some other way. If I tore my hair, if I struck my forehead, if I clasped my knee with interlocked fingers, I did it because I willed it. But I could have willed it and not done it, if my limbs had not obeyed. So I did many things where willing was not the same as being able; and I did not do the thing that pleased me with incomparably greater desire, and which I could have done as soon as I willed, because as soon as I willed it, I would certainly will it. For there the ability is the same as the will, and to will is itself already to do; and yet it was not done. And the body obeyed the slightest will of the soul more easily, moving its limbs at a nod, than the soul obeyed itself in carrying out its great will in the will alone.

Where does this monstrous thing come from? And why is it so? Let your mercy shine, and let me ask, if perhaps the hidden depths of men's punishments and the darkest afflictions of the sons of Adam can answer me. Where does this monstrous thing come from? And why is it so? The mind commands the body, and it obeys at once; the mind commands itself, and it is resisted. The mind commands the hand to move, and it is so easy that command can hardly be told apart from obedience; and yet the mind is mind, while the hand is body. The mind commands the mind to will, and it is not another mind, and yet it does not do it. Where does this monstrous thing come from? And why is it so? It commands, I say, that it will, and it would not command unless it willed, and yet it does not do what it commands. But it does not will wholly; therefore it does not command wholly. For it commands to the extent that it wills, and what it commands is not done to the extent that it does not will, since the will commands that there be a will, and not another, but itself. So it is not a full will that commands; and therefore what it commands does not happen. For if the will were full, it would not command that it be, because it would already be. So it is not monstrous partly to will and partly not to will; it is a sickness of the mind, which does not rise up wholly, lifted up by truth but weighed down by habit. And so there are two wills, because one of them is not whole, and what is present to the one is lacking to the other.

Let them perish from your presence, O God, as they do perish, the "vain talkers and seducers of the mind," who, having noticed two wills in deliberation, assert that there are two natures of two minds, one good and the other evil. They themselves are truly evil when they hold these evil views, and these same people will be good if they hold true views and assent to the truth, so that your apostle may say to them, "You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord." For they, wanting to be light not in the Lord but in themselves, by thinking that the nature of the soul is what God is, have become thicker darkness, because by their dreadful arrogance they have withdrawn further from you, from you, "the true light that enlightens every man coming into this world." Pay attention to what you are saying, and blush, and "come to him and be enlightened, and your faces will not blush." When I was deliberating about serving the Lord my God, as I had long intended, it was I who willed and I who did not will; it was I. I neither fully willed nor fully refused. So I was at war with myself and was torn apart by myself, and this very tearing apart happened against my will; yet it showed not the nature of another mind but the punishment of my own. And so it was no longer I who did it, "but the sin that dwells in me," from the punishment of a sin more freely committed, because I was a son of Adam.

For if there are as many contrary natures as there are wills resisting one another, there will be not two but many. If someone deliberates whether to go to their meeting or to the theater, these people cry out: "Look, two natures: a good one leads him this way, a bad one draws him back that way. For where else does this hesitation between opposing wills come from?" But I say that both are bad, both the one that leads to them and the one that draws back to the theater. But they believe that only the one by which one goes to them is good. What then? If one of us deliberates, and wavers between two wills quarreling with each other, whether to go to the theater or to our church, will not these people also waver about what to answer? For either they will admit, which they do not want to, that it is by a good will that one goes to our church, as those go there who have been initiated into its sacraments and are held by them; or they will think that two evil natures and two evil minds are in conflict in one man, and then what they usually say, that one is good and the other evil, will not be true; or they will be converted to the truth and will not deny that, when anyone deliberates, one soul is tossed about by different wills.

So let them no longer say, when they perceive two wills opposing each other in one man, that two contrary minds, from two contrary substances and two contrary principles, one good and the other evil, are in conflict. For you, truthful God, refute them and rebuke and convict them, as in the case where both wills are evil: when someone deliberates whether to kill a man by poison or by the sword; whether to seize this or that piece of another's land, when he cannot seize both; whether to buy pleasure by extravagance or keep his money by avarice; whether to go to the circus or the theater, if both are showing on the same day. I add a third: or to steal from another's house, if the opportunity arises; and I add a fourth: or to commit adultery, if the chance opens up at the same time; if all these come together at one point in time, and all are equally desired, though they cannot be done at once. For they tear the mind apart with four wills opposing one another, or even more, given the great number of things that are desired; and yet they do not usually speak of such a great multitude of different substances. So also with good wills. For I ask them whether it is good to delight in reading the apostle, and whether it is good to delight in a sober psalm, and whether it is good to discuss the gospel. They will answer to each, "It is good." What then? If all of these delight us equally and at one and the same time, do not different wills stretch a man's heart while he deliberates which we should take up first? And all of them are good, and they contend with one another until one is chosen, to which the whole will, which was divided among many, is then carried as one. So too, when eternity delights us from above and the pleasure of a temporal good holds us back from below, it is the same soul willing this or that, but not with its whole will; and so it is torn apart with grievous distress, while it prefers the one because of its truth but does not set aside the other because of habit.

So I was sick and tormented, accusing myself far more bitterly than usual, and twisting and turning in my chain until it would be broken completely, since I was now held by only a little of it. But I was still held. And you pressed upon me in my hidden depths, Lord, with a severe mercy redoubling the lashes of fear and shame, lest I give up again and that very small and slender remnant not be broken, but grow strong again and bind me more firmly. For I kept saying within myself, "Let it be now, let it be now," and with the word I was already moving toward the decision. I was almost doing it, and I did not do it; yet I did not slip back into my former state, but stood close by and caught my breath. And I tried again, and I was a little less far from it, and a little less, and now, now I was touching it and holding it; and I was not there, and did not touch it or hold it, hesitating to die to death and live to life. The ingrained worse had more power in me than the unaccustomed better, and the very moment of time at which I was to become something else struck me with greater horror the nearer it came; but it did not drive me back or turn me away, it held me in suspense.

Trifles of trifles and vanities of vanities, my old loves, held me back, and they plucked at my garment of flesh and whispered softly: "Are you sending us away?" and "From this moment we shall no longer be with you, for ever," and "From this moment this and that will no longer be allowed you, for ever." And what did they suggest by 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 shameful things! And now I heard them far less than half as loudly, not as if they openly contradicted me by coming to meet me face to face, but as if muttering behind my back and furtively plucking at me as I went away, to make me look back. Yet they delayed me as I hesitated to tear myself away and shake myself free of them and leap across to where I was being called, while violent habit said to me, "Do you think you can live without them?"

But now it said this very half-heartedly. For on the side toward which I had turned my face, and to which I trembled to cross over, there was opening up the chaste dignity of Continence, serene and cheerful without wantonness, honorably coaxing me to come and not hesitate, and stretching out to receive and embrace me her holy hands, full of flocks of good examples. There were so many boys and girls, there were many young people and every age, grave widows and aged virgins, and in all of them Continence herself, not at all barren, but a fruitful "mother of children," of joys from you, Lord, her husband. And she laughed at me with an encouraging laugh, as if to say: "Can you not do what these men and these women have done? Or can these men and women do it in themselves, and not in the Lord their God? The Lord their God gave me to them. Why do you stand in yourself, and so do not stand? Cast yourself on him; do not be afraid. He will not withdraw so that you fall. Cast yourself on him without fear; he will receive you and heal you." And I blushed deeply, because I still heard the murmurs of those trifles, and I hung there hesitating. And again she seemed to say: "Stop your ears against those unclean members of yours on the earth, so that they may be put to death. They tell you of delights, but not such as the law of the Lord your God." This controversy in my heart was nothing but myself against myself. And Alypius, fixed at my side, silently awaited the outcome of my unusual agitation.

But when deep reflection had drawn out from its secret depths and heaped up all my misery in the sight of my heart, a mighty storm arose, bringing a mighty shower of tears. And to pour it all out with its own cries, I rose up from Alypius (solitude seemed to me more fitting for the business of weeping) and withdrew further, so that even his presence would not be a burden to me. That was how I was then, and he sensed it; for I had said something, I think, in which the sound of my voice was already heavy with tears, and so I had risen. He stayed, therefore, where we had been sitting, utterly astonished. I flung myself down, I do not know how, under a certain fig tree, and gave free rein to my tears, and the rivers of my eyes burst forth, an acceptable sacrifice to you; and I said many things to you, not indeed in these words but in this sense: "And you, Lord, how long? How long, Lord, will you be angry to the end? Do not remember our old iniquities." For I felt that I was held by them. I cried out pitiful words: "How long, how long? Tomorrow and tomorrow? Why not now? Why not an end to my shame this very hour?"

I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart. And suddenly I hear a voice from the neighboring house, chanting and repeating over and over, whether a boy's or a girl's I do not know: "Take up and read, take up and read." At once my expression changed, and I began to think most intently whether children usually chanted anything like this in some kind of game, and I could not remember ever having heard it anywhere. So, checking the rush of my tears, I got up, interpreting it as nothing other than a divine command to me to open the book and read the first chapter I should find. For I had heard of Antony that, coming in by chance on a reading of the gospel, he had been admonished as if what was read was said to himself: "Go, sell all that you have, give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me," and that by such an oracle he had at once been converted to you. So I hurried back to the place where Alypius was sitting, for I had put down the book of the apostle there when I got up. I seized it, opened it, and read in silence the passage on which my eyes first fell: "Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and wantonness, not in strife and envy; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts." I did not want to read further, nor was there any need. For immediately, with the end of this sentence, as if a light of certainty had been poured into my heart, all the darkness of doubt fled away.

Then, putting my finger or some other marker in the book, I closed it, and with a calm face now I told Alypius. And he, in turn, told me what was happening in him, which I did not know. He asked to see what I had read; I showed him, and he looked further than I had read. I did not know what followed. What followed was: "Receive him who is weak in the faith." He applied this to himself and disclosed it to me. And strengthened by this admonition, he joined me in my decision and good purpose, which was very well suited to his character (in which he had long been far, far better than I), without any troubled hesitation. Then we go in to my mother and tell her: she rejoices. We tell her how it happened: she exults and triumphs and blessed you, "who are able to do beyond what we ask or understand," because she saw that you had granted her so much more concerning me than she used to ask with her pitiful and tearful groans. For you converted me to yourself, so that I sought neither a wife nor any hope of this world, standing on that rule of faith on which you had shown me to her so many years before; and you "turned her mourning into joy," far more abundantly than she had wanted, and far more dear and chaste than the joy she sought from grandchildren of my flesh.

O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant and the son of your handmaid. You have broken my bonds; 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, if not in my deeds, then in my words, or if not in my words, then in my will? But you, Lord, are good and merciful, and your right hand looked into the depth of my death and drained from the bottom of my heart the abyss of corruption. And this was the whole of it: not to will what I willed, and to will what you willed. But where was my free choice through so many long years, and from what deep and hidden recess was it called forth in a moment, so that I might bend my neck to your gentle yoke and my shoulders to your light burden, Christ Jesus, "my helper and my redeemer"? How sweet it suddenly became to me to be without the sweetness of trifles; and what I had feared to lose, it was now a joy to let go. For you cast them out from me, you, the true and highest sweetness; you cast them out and entered in their place, sweeter than every pleasure, though not to flesh and blood; brighter than every light, yet more inward than any secret; higher than every honor, though not to those who are high in their own eyes. Now my mind was free from the gnawing cares of seeking office and gain and of wallowing and scratching the itch of lusts, and I was chattering away to you, my glory and my riches and my salvation, the Lord my God.

And it seemed good to me in your sight not to snatch the service of my tongue away from the market of talkativeness with a commotion, but to withdraw it quietly, so that boys who were meditating not on your law, not on your peace, but on lying follies and the battles of the courts, should no longer buy from my mouth weapons for their madness. And conveniently, only a very few days remained until the vintage holidays, and I decided to endure them, so as to leave in the ordinary way, and, redeemed by you, not return to put myself up for sale again. So our plan was known to you, but not to men except our own friends. And we had agreed among ourselves that it should not be spread about to anyone, although you had given us, as we went up from the valley of weeping and sang "the song of ascents," sharp arrows and destroying coals against the deceitful tongue that opposes under the guise of giving advice and, as with food, consumes by loving.