Confessions

“You are great, Lord, and greatly to be praised”: “great is your power, and of your wisdom there is no number.” And a human being, some portion of your creation, wants to praise you: a human being carrying his mortality about with him, carrying about the evidence of his sin and the evidence that you “resist the proud”; and still a human being, some portion of your creation, wants to praise you. You stir him up so that he delights to praise you, because you made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. Grant me, Lord, to know and understand whether it comes first to call upon you or to praise you, and whether knowing you comes first or calling upon you. But who calls upon you without knowing you? For one who does not know you may call upon something else instead of you. Or rather, are you called upon so that you may be known? “But how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe without a preacher?” And “they shall praise the Lord who seek him.” For those who seek him find him, and those who find him will praise him. Let me seek you, Lord, calling upon you, and let me call upon you believing in you, for you have been preached to us. My faith calls upon you, Lord, the faith you gave me, which you breathed into me through the humanity of your Son, through the ministry of your preacher.

And how shall I call upon my God, my God and Lord, since surely when I call upon him I shall be calling him into myself? And what place is there in me into which my God may come into me? Into what place may God come into me, the God “who made heaven and earth”? Is there anything in me, Lord my God, that can contain you? Or do heaven and earth, which you made and in which you made me, contain you? Or, since nothing that exists would exist without you, does it follow that whatever exists contains you? Since, then, I too exist, why do I ask you to come into me, when I would not exist unless you were in me? For I am not yet in the underworld, and yet you are there too: for “if I go down into the underworld, you are there.” So I would not exist, my God, I would not exist at all, unless you were in me. Or rather, I would not exist unless I were in you, “from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things.” Even so, Lord, even so. Where do I call you to, since I am in you? Or from where would you come into me? For where could I withdraw outside heaven and earth, so that my God might come into me from there, he who said, “I fill heaven and earth”?

Do heaven and earth, then, contain you, since you fill them? Or do you fill them and there is still some of you left over, since they do not contain you? And where do you pour out whatever of you remains once heaven and earth are filled? Or do you have no need to be contained anywhere, you who contain all things, since what you fill you fill by containing it? For the vessels that are full of you do not make you stable, because even if they are broken you are not spilled out. And when you are poured out upon us, you do not lie on the ground; rather you raise us up. You are not scattered; rather you gather us together. But you who fill all things, you fill them all with the whole of yourself. Or, since all things cannot contain the whole of you, do they contain a part of you, and do all things contain the same part at once? Or does each thing contain its own part, larger things larger parts and smaller things smaller? Is some part of you then larger and some smaller? Or are you wholly everywhere, and does nothing contain the whole of you?

What, then, is my God? What, I ask, but the Lord God? “For who is Lord but the Lord? Or who is God but our God?” Most high, most good, most mighty, most almighty, most merciful and most just, most hidden and most present, most beautiful and most strong, abiding and incomprehensible, unchangeable yet changing all things, never new, never old, renewing all things and “bringing the proud to old age, and they do not know it”; always acting, always at rest, gathering and not in need, bearing and filling and protecting, creating and nourishing and perfecting, seeking though you lack nothing. You love, yet without passion; you are jealous, yet untroubled; you repent, yet without grief; you are angry, yet calm; you change your works but not your plan; you take back what you find and yet never lost; never in need, yet you rejoice in gains; never greedy, yet you demand interest. More than is owed is paid to you, so that you become a debtor, and yet who has anything that is not yours? You pay debts though you owe no one; you forgive debts and lose nothing. And what have we said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? Or what does anyone say when he speaks of you? And woe to those who are silent about you, since even the talkative are mute.

Who will grant me to rest in you? Who will grant me that you come into my heart and make it drunk, so that I forget my evils and embrace my one good, you? What are you to me? Have mercy, so that I may speak. What am I myself to you, that you command me to love you, and if I do not, you are angry with me and threaten me with enormous miseries? Is it a small misery in itself if I do not love you? Alas for me! Tell me, by your mercies, Lord my God, what you are to me. “Say to my soul: I am your salvation.” Say it so that I may hear. See, the ears of my heart are before you, Lord; open them and “say to my soul: I am your salvation.” I will run after this voice and lay hold of you. Do not hide your face from me: let me die, so that I may not die, in order to see it.

The house of my soul is too narrow for you to come into it: let it be enlarged by you. It is in ruins: repair it. It has things in it that offend your eyes: I confess it and I know it. But who will cleanse it? Or to whom but you shall I cry, “Cleanse me from my secret faults, Lord, and spare your servant from the faults of others”? “I believe, and therefore I speak.” Lord, you know. Have I not declared my offenses against myself to you, my God, “and you forgave the wickedness of my heart”? I do not contend in judgment with you, who are the truth; and I do not want to deceive myself, “lest my iniquity lie to itself.” So I do not contend in judgment with you, because “if you, Lord, mark iniquities, Lord, who shall stand?”

Yet allow me to speak before your mercy, me, “dust and ashes”; allow me still to speak, since, see, it is your mercy I am speaking to, and not a human being who would mock me. Perhaps you too mock me, but “you will turn and have mercy on me.” For what is it I want to say, Lord, except that I do not know where I came from into this, shall I call it, dying life or living death? I do not know. And the comforts of your mercies received me, as I have heard from the parents of my flesh, from whom and in whom you formed me in time; for I myself do not remember. So the comforts of human milk received me; and neither my mother nor my nurses filled their own breasts, but you gave me the nourishment of infancy through them, according to your ordinance and the riches you have laid down even to the very foundation of things. You also gave me not to want more than you gave, and gave to those who nursed me the will to give me what you gave them; for with an ordered affection they wanted to give me what they had in abundance from you. For the good that came to me from them was good for them; yet it was not from them but through them, since all good things are from you, God, and “from my God is all my salvation.” This I noticed afterwards, when you cried out to me through these very things that you bestow, within and without. For at that time I knew how to suck and to be content with what pleased me, and to cry at what hurt my flesh, nothing more.

Afterwards I began to smile as well, first in sleep, then awake. This was told me about myself and I believed it, since we see other infants do so; for I do not remember these things of my own. And see, little by little I began to sense where I was, and I wanted to show my wishes to those who could fulfill them, and I could not, because the wishes were inside and they were outside, and by none of their senses could they enter into my soul. So I threw about my limbs and my cries, signs resembling my wishes, the few I could make and such as I could make; for they were not really like them. And when I was not obeyed, either because I was not understood or because it would have harmed me, I was indignant with my elders for not submitting to me, and with free people for not serving me, and I took revenge on them by crying. That infants are like this I have learned from those I could learn from; and that I was like this myself my nurses, without knowing it, have shown me better than those who knew.

And see, my infancy died long ago, and I am alive. But you, Lord, who both live forever and in whom nothing dies, since before the beginnings of the ages and before everything that can even be called “before,” you are, and you are God and Lord of all that you have created; and with you stand the causes of all unstable things, and the unchangeable origins of all changeable things abide, and the eternal reasons of all irrational and temporal things live: tell me, your suppliant, God, and in your mercy tell me, your wretched one, whether my infancy followed some earlier age of mine that had already died. Is it the one I spent in my mother's womb? For about that too something has been told me, and I have myself seen pregnant women. And what before that, my sweetness, my God? Was I anywhere, or anyone? For I have no one to tell me this: neither father nor mother could, nor the experience of others, nor my own memory. Or do you laugh at me for asking such things, and command me to praise you and confess to you for what I do know?

I confess to you, Lord of heaven and earth, giving praise to you for my beginnings and my infancy, which I do not remember; and you have granted a human being to infer these things about himself from others and to believe much about himself even on the authority of mere women. For I existed and lived even then, and already at the end of infancy I was looking for signs by which to make my feelings known to others. Where could such a living being come from, if not from you, Lord? Or will anyone be the craftsman of his own making? Or is there any channel drawn from elsewhere by which being and life flow into us, except that you make us, Lord, for whom being and living are not two different things, because to be supremely and to live supremely are one and the same? For you are supreme and you do not change, and today is not completed in you, and yet it is completed in you, because all these things too are in you; for they would have no way of passing if you did not contain them. And since “your years do not fail,” your years are a single today. How many of our days and our fathers' days have already passed through your today, and received from it their measure and whatever existence they had; and still others will pass and receive, and exist in whatever way they will. “But you are the same,” and all of tomorrow and beyond, and all of yesterday and before, you will make today, you have made today. What is it to me if someone does not understand this? Let him too rejoice and say, “What is this?” Let him rejoice even so, and love to find you by not finding, rather than by finding not to find you.

Hear me, God. Woe to the sins of human beings! And a human being says this, and you have mercy on him, because you made him, and you did not make the sin in him. Who reminds me of the sin of my infancy? For “no one is clean from sin before you, not even an infant whose life on earth is a single day.” Who reminds me? Some little child, anyone at all, in whom I see what I do not remember of myself? What then was my sin at that time? That I gaped for the breast, crying? For if I did that now, gaping not for the breast but for food suited to my years, I would be laughed at and rebuked, quite rightly. So then I was doing things that deserved rebuke, but since I could not understand the one rebuking me, neither custom nor reason allowed me to be rebuked. For as we grow we root these things out and throw them away; and I have never seen anyone who, when cleaning something, knowingly throws away what is good. Or were these things good, for that time of life: to cry for things that would have been harmful if given, to be bitterly indignant at people who were not subject to me, free people and elders, and those who gave me birth, and many others besides who were wiser and did not obey at a nod of my will, and to try to hurt them by striking out as hard as I could, because commands were not obeyed which would have been obeyed to my harm? So it is the weakness of infants' limbs that is innocent, not the infants' minds. I have seen and known a jealous little one: he could not yet speak, and he glared, pale, with a bitter look at his foster brother. Who does not know this? Mothers and nurses say they cure such things by who knows what remedies. Unless this too is innocence: not to tolerate a sharer, one in the greatest need and still living on that one food, at a fountain of milk flowing richly and in abundance. But these things are gently tolerated, not because they are nothing or small, but because they will pass away as age advances. You may prove this by the fact that the very same things cannot be borne calmly when they are caught in someone older.

So you, Lord my God, who gave the infant life and a body, which, as we see, you furnished with senses, fitted together with limbs, adorned with form, and in which you implanted all the impulses of a living being for its wholeness and safety: you command me to praise you for these things and to confess to you and “to sing to your name, Most High,” because you are God, almighty and good, even if you had made only these things, which no one else can make but you, the One, from whom is every measure, the most beautiful, who forms all things and orders all things by your law. This age, then, Lord, which I do not remember living, about which I have believed others and which I have inferred that I passed from other infants, though that inference is quite trustworthy, I am reluctant to count as part of this life of mine that I live in this world. For as far as the darkness of my forgetting is concerned, it is equal to the life I lived in my mother's womb. But if “I was conceived in iniquity and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb,” where, I beg you, my God, where, Lord, was I, your servant, where or when was I innocent? But see, I pass over that time: what have I now to do with a time of which I recall no trace?

Did I not, moving on from infancy, come to boyhood? Or rather, did boyhood come into me and succeed infancy? Nor did infancy depart; for where did it go? And yet it was no longer there. For I was no longer an infant who could not speak, but already a boy who spoke. And I remember this; and how I had learned to speak I realized later. For it was not that my elders taught me, offering me words in some fixed order of instruction as they did the alphabet a little later; but I myself, with the mind you gave me, my God, when I wanted to express the feelings of my heart with groans and various sounds and various movements of my limbs, so that my will would be obeyed, and could not express everything I wanted to everyone I wanted to, I pondered in memory. When they named something and, as they said the word, moved their body toward something, I saw and grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they wanted to point it out. That they meant this was made plain by the movement of their bodies, the natural language, as it were, of all peoples, made by the face and the glance of the eyes, by the action of the other limbs, and by the tone of voice that shows the mind's feeling in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding things. So little by little I gathered what things the words stood for, which I heard often, set in their places in various sentences; and once my mouth had been trained to these signs, I began to express my own wishes by them. Thus I shared with those among whom I lived the signs for expressing our wishes, and I entered more deeply into the stormy fellowship of human life, depending on the authority of my parents and the nod of my elders.

God, my God, what miseries and mockeries I experienced there, since the right way for a boy to live was set before me as obeying those who urged me to flourish in this world and to excel in the arts of the tongue, which serve human honor and false riches! Then I was sent to school to learn letters, and I, poor wretch, did not know what use there was in them. And yet if I was slow at learning, I was beaten. For this was approved by my elders, and many who had lived this life before us had built the hard roads along which we were forced to pass, with labor and sorrow multiplied for the sons of Adam. But we found, Lord, people who prayed to you, and we learned from them to think of you, as far as we could, as someone great who, even without appearing to our senses, could hear us and help us. For as a boy I began to pray to you, my help and my refuge, and in calling upon you I broke the knots of my tongue; and small as I was, I prayed to you with no small feeling that I might not be beaten at school. And when you did not hear me, which was not to make me foolish, my beatings, then a great and heavy evil to me, were laughed at by grown-ups, even by my own parents, who wanted no harm to come to me.

Is there anyone, Lord, of so great a spirit, clinging to you with such immense love, is there anyone, I say (for a kind of dullness can also do this), is there anyone, then, who by clinging to you in devotion is so greatly moved that he thinks so little of the rack and the hooks and such various tortures, to escape which people pray to you in great fear all over the world, that he loves those who dread them most bitterly, just as our parents laughed at the torments we boys suffered from our teachers? For we did not fear them any less, or pray to you any less to escape them; and yet we sinned by writing or reading or thinking about our lessons less than was demanded of us. For we did not lack memory or ability, Lord, which you willed us to have sufficiently for that age; but we loved to play, and we were punished for it by those who were certainly doing the same sort of thing. But the trifles of adults are called business, while when boys do the same sort of thing they are punished by adults; and no one pities the boys, or the adults, or both. Unless, perhaps, some good judge of things approves of my being beaten because as a boy I played ball and the game kept me from learning my letters quickly, letters with which, as an adult, I would play a more disgraceful game. Or was the very man who beat me doing anything different? If he was beaten by a fellow teacher in some trivial dispute, he was more tormented by bile and envy than I was when beaten at ball by a playmate.

And yet I sinned, Lord my God, orderer and creator of all natural things, but only the orderer of sins; Lord my God, I sinned by acting against the commands of my parents and those teachers. For I could later have made good use of the letters that my elders wanted me to learn, whatever their motive. For I was not disobedient because I chose better things, but out of love of play, loving proud victories in contests and having my ears tickled with false stories so that they itched more hotly, the same curiosity flashing more and more through my eyes toward the shows, the games of adults. Yet those who put on these shows are so distinguished by that rank that almost everyone wishes it for their little ones; and yet they gladly let them be beaten if such shows keep them from the study by which they want them to reach the point of putting on such shows. Look on these things mercifully, Lord, and deliver us who now call upon you; deliver also those who do not yet call upon you, so that they may call upon you and you may deliver them.

For even as a boy I had heard of the eternal life promised to us through the humility of the Lord our God, who came down to our pride; and I was already being signed with the sign of his cross and seasoned with his salt from the time I left the womb of my mother, who greatly hoped in you. You saw, Lord, when I was still a boy and one day suddenly burned with fever from a stomach seizure and was near death, you saw, my God, since you were already my guardian, with what urgency of mind and what faith I begged for the baptism of your Christ, my God and Lord, from the devotion of my mother and of the mother of us all, your church. And the mother of my flesh was distressed, since with a chaste heart in your faith she was in more loving labor for my eternal salvation; and she would have hastened to have me initiated into the saving sacraments and washed, confessing you, Lord Jesus, for the forgiveness of sins, had I not suddenly recovered. So my cleansing was postponed, as though I must necessarily be further defiled if I lived, since, evidently, after that washing the guilt in the filth of sins would be greater and more dangerous. So I already believed, as did she and the whole household, except my father alone; yet he did not overcome in me the right of my mother's devotion so as to keep me from believing in Christ, as he had not yet believed. For she was anxious that you, my God, should be my father rather than he; and in this you helped her to prevail over her husband, whom she, the better of the two, served, because in this too she was serving you, who certainly command it.

I ask you, my God, I would like to know, if you also would have it so, for what purpose my baptism was put off at that time: was it for my good that the reins of sinning were, as it were, loosened for me, or were they not loosened? Why is it, then, that even now we hear on all sides about one person and another: “Let him alone, let him do it; he is not yet baptized”? And yet in the health of the body we do not say, “Let him be wounded more; he is not yet healed.” How much better it would have been if I had been healed quickly, and if by my family's diligence and my own it had been arranged that the health of my soul, once received, should be kept safe under your protection, who had given it. Much better indeed. But how many and how great were the waves of temptation that seemed to threaten after boyhood! My mother already knew them, and she preferred to entrust to them the clay from which I might later be formed rather than the image itself.

Yet in boyhood itself, for which less was feared on my account than for adolescence, I did not love letters and I hated being pressed to learn them; and yet I was pressed, and good was done to me, though I did not do good: for I would not have learned unless I had been forced. For no one does good against his will, even if what he does is good. Nor did those who pressed me do good; but good was done to me by you, my God. For they did not consider to what end I would put what they forced me to learn, except to satisfying the insatiable desires of a wealthy poverty and a shameful glory. But you, by whom “the hairs of our head are numbered,” used the error of all who pressed me to learn for my benefit, and used my own error, who did not want to learn, for my punishment, a punishment which so small a boy and so great a sinner well deserved. So you did me good by means of those who did not do good, and you justly repaid me for my own sin. For you have commanded, and so it is, that every disordered mind is its own punishment.

But why I hated Greek, which I was taught as a little boy, is not clear enough to me even now. For I had come to love Latin, not the elementary lessons of the first teachers, but what those called grammarians teach. The first lessons, in which one learns to read and write and count, I found no less burdensome and painful than all of Greek. Yet where did this too come from, except from sin and the vanity of life, by which I was “flesh, a wind that goes and does not return”? For those first letters were surely better, because more certain, by which there came to be in me, and has come to be, and I still have it, the ability both to read whatever I find written and to write whatever I wish myself, than those in which I was forced to memorize the wanderings of some Aeneas or other, forgetting my own wanderings, and to weep for Dido dead because she killed herself for love, while meanwhile I bore dry-eyed, most wretched, my own death in these things, away from you, God my life.

For what is more wretched than a wretch who does not pity himself, and who weeps for the death of Dido, which came about through loving Aeneas, but does not weep for his own death, which came about through not loving you, God, light of my heart, bread of the inner mouth of my soul, and power that weds my mind and the bosom of my thought? I did not love you, and I committed fornication away from you, and as I committed fornication, “Well done! Well done!” sounded all around me. For “the friendship of this world is fornication” away from you; and “Well done! Well done!” is said so that one is ashamed not to be like that. And I did not weep for this; and I wept for Dido, “dead, who sought her end by the sword,” while I myself followed after the lowest of your creatures, having abandoned you, earth going into earth. And if I had been forbidden to read these things, I would have grieved, because I would not be reading what made me grieve. Such madness is thought a more honorable and richer learning than that by which I learned to read and write.

But now let my God cry out in my soul, and let your truth say to me: “It is not so, it is not so. That earlier teaching is far better.” For see, I am more ready to forget the wanderings of Aeneas and everything of that kind than to forget how to write and read. True, curtains hang at the doors of the grammar schools; but they signify not so much the honor of a mystery as the covering of error. Let them not cry out against me, those whom I no longer fear, while I confess to you what my soul desires, my God, and find rest in rebuking my evil ways, so that I may love your good ways. Let the sellers and buyers of grammar not cry out against me; for if I put the question to them whether it is true, as the poet says, that Aeneas once came to Carthage, the less learned will answer that they do not know, and the more learned will even deny that it is true. But if I ask with what letters Aeneas's name is written, all who have learned these things will answer me truly, according to the agreement and convention by which people have settled these signs among themselves. Likewise, if I ask which of these one would forget with greater harm to this life, reading and writing or those poetic fictions, who does not see what anyone will answer who has not utterly forgotten himself? So I sinned as a boy when I preferred those empty things to these more useful ones in my affection, or rather hated these and loved those. For “one and one are two, two and two are four” was a hateful chant to me, while the wooden horse full of armed men, and the burning of Troy, and “the very ghost of Creusa” were a most delightful spectacle of vanity.

Why, then, did I also hate Greek literature, which sings of such things? For Homer too was skilled at weaving such tales, and is most sweetly vain; and yet to me as a boy he was bitter. I believe Virgil is the same to Greek boys, when they are forced to learn him as I was forced to learn Homer. The difficulty, clearly, the difficulty of learning a foreign language thoroughly, sprinkled gall, as it were, over all the Greek charms of the fabulous stories. For I did not know any of those words, and I was pressed hard with savage threats and punishments to know them. Now, as an infant I certainly knew no Latin either, and yet I learned it by paying attention, without any fear or torment, amid the coaxing of nurses and the jokes of those who smiled at me and the joy of those who played with me. I learned it without the painful burden of people pressing me, since my own heart pressed me to bring forth what it had conceived, which would not have been possible unless I had learned some words, not from people teaching, but from people talking, into whose ears I in turn brought forth whatever I felt. From this it is quite clear that free curiosity has greater power for learning these things than fearful compulsion. But compulsion restrains the free flow of curiosity by your laws, God, your laws, from the teachers' canes to the trials of the martyrs; for your laws have power to mix in wholesome bitternesses that call us back to you from the pestilent pleasure by which we withdrew from you.

“Hear my prayer, Lord,” so that my soul may not fail under your discipline, and that I may not fail in confessing to you your mercies, by which you rescued me from all my most evil ways, that you might become sweet to me above all the seductions I pursued, and that I might love you most strongly and clasp your hand with all my heart, and that you might rescue me from every temptation to the end. For see, you, Lord, “my King and my God,” let whatever useful thing I learned as a boy serve you; let what I speak and write and read and count serve you. For when I was learning vain things, you gave me discipline, and you forgave me the sins of my delight in those vain things. I learned many useful words in them; but they can also be learned in things that are not vain, and that is the safe way in which boys should walk.

But woe to you, torrent of human custom! Who withstands you? How long before you dry up? How long will you roll the children of Eve into the great and fearful sea, which even those who have climbed aboard the wood can scarcely cross? Did I not read in you of Jupiter both thundering and committing adultery? Of course he could not do both; but it was written so that real adultery might have authority for imitation, with false thunder acting as its pander. And which of the cloaked schoolmasters listens with a sober ear to a man of their own dust crying out and saying: “Homer invented these things and transferred human things to the gods; I would rather he had transferred divine things to us”? But it is truer to say that he did indeed invent them, but by attributing divine qualities to disgraceful men, so that disgraceful deeds would not be thought disgraceful, and whoever did them would seem to imitate not abandoned men but the gods of heaven.

And yet, hellish torrent, the sons of men are thrown into you, with fees paid, so that they may learn these things; and a great to-do is made when this is done publicly in the forum, in full view of laws that decree salaries over and above the fees; and you strike your rocks and roar, saying, “From this words are learned; from this is gained eloquence, most necessary for persuading people and setting out one's views.” So we would not have known these words, “shower,” “golden,” “lap,” “deceit,” “temples of heaven,” and the other words written in that passage, unless Terence had brought on stage a worthless youth who set Jupiter before himself as an example of debauchery, while he looks at a painting on a wall that showed “how Jupiter, they say, once sent a golden shower into Danae's lap and played a trick on a woman.” And see how he excites himself to lust as if by heavenly instruction: “And what a god!” he says, “who shakes the temples of heaven with a mighty crash. And I, poor little man, should I not do it? Indeed I did it, and gladly.” Not at all, not at all are these words learned more easily through this filth; rather, through these words the filth is committed more confidently. I do not blame the words, which are like choice and precious vessels, but the wine of error that was poured for us in them by drunken teachers; and if we did not drink, we were beaten, and we were not allowed to appeal to any sober judge. And yet, my God, in whose sight my remembering is now free of fear, I learned these things gladly and delighted in them, wretch that I was, and for this I was called a boy of great promise.

Allow me, my God, to say something about my talent, your gift, and the follies on which I wore it away. For a task was set before me that was quite troubling to my soul, with the reward of praise and the fear of disgrace or beatings: to speak the words of Juno, angry and grieving that she “could not turn the king of the Trojans away from Italy,” words I had heard Juno never spoke. But we were forced to follow, astray, in the footsteps of poetic fictions, and to say in prose something like what the poet had said in verse. And the one who spoke most praiseworthily was the one in whom the passion of anger and grief stood out most lifelike, fitting the dignity of the character portrayed, with words that clothed the thoughts appropriately. What was that to me, my true life, my God? Why was I applauded when I declaimed, above many of my contemporaries and fellow students? See, was not all that smoke and wind? Was there nothing else on which my talent and my tongue could be exercised? Your praises, Lord, your praises through your Scriptures would have held up the young shoot of my heart, and it would not have been snatched away through empty trifles, a shameful prey for the birds. For there is more than one way of sacrificing to the rebel angels.

What wonder, then, that I was carried away into vanities and went out away from you, my God, when men were held up to me for imitation who, if they related some deeds of theirs that were not evil with a barbarism or a solecism, were covered with confusion when rebuked, but if they narrated their lusts in correct and well-ordered words, fully and elegantly, were praised and boasted of it? You see these things, Lord, and are silent, “long-suffering and abounding in mercy and truth.” Will you be silent forever? Even now you draw out of this most monstrous abyss the soul that seeks you and thirsts for your delights, whose heart says to you, “I have sought your face; your face, Lord, will I seek.” For I was far from your face in darkened affection. For it is not by feet or by distances of place that one goes away from you or returns to you. Did that younger son of yours look for horses or chariots or ships, or fly away on visible wings, or make his journey by moving his knees, so that, living in a far country, he might squander prodigally what you, a sweet father, had given him when he set out? Sweet because you had given, and sweeter still to him when he returned in need. So it is in lustful affection, that is, darkened affection, that one is far from your face.

See, Lord my God, and see patiently, as you do see, how carefully the sons of men observe the conventions of letters and syllables received from earlier speakers, and neglect the eternal conventions of everlasting salvation received from you; so that one who holds or teaches those old agreements about sounds, if against the rules of grammar he says “’uman being” without aspirating the first syllable, displeases people more than if, against your commandments, he hates a human being, though he is one himself. As if anyone could feel that any enemy is more harmful to him than the very hatred with which he is roused against him, or as if anyone could do more damage by persecuting another than he does to his own heart by his enmity. And certainly the knowledge of letters is not more inward than the conscience inscribed within us, that one should not do to another what one would not wish to suffer. How hidden you are, dwelling on high in silence, God, who alone are great, scattering by an unwearied law the penalty of blindness upon unlawful desires! When a man in search of a reputation for eloquence, before a human judge with a crowd of people standing around, attacks his enemy with the most monstrous hatred, he takes the greatest care not to say “among the men” with a slip of the tongue; but that he may not, by the fury of his mind, take a man away from among men, he takes no care.

On the threshold of such morals I lay as a wretched boy, and that was the training ground for this arena, where I was more afraid of committing a barbarism than careful, if I committed one, not to envy those who did not. I say these things and confess them to you, my God, things for which I was praised by those whom I then thought it the honorable life to please. For I did not see the whirlpool of filth into which I had been cast away from your eyes. For in their eyes, what was fouler than I, when I even displeased such people by deceiving my tutor and teachers and parents with countless lies, out of love of play, eagerness to watch trifling shows, and restless desire to imitate the stage? I also committed thefts from my parents' cellar and table, either at the command of my gluttony or so as to have something to give to boys who sold me their play, though they certainly enjoyed it just as much. In that play too I often hunted for fraudulent victories, myself conquered by a vain desire to excel. For what was I so unwilling to suffer, and what did I so fiercely denounce if I caught it, as the very thing I was doing to others? And if I was caught and denounced, I preferred to rage rather than give in. Is this the innocence of boyhood? It is not, Lord, it is not, I beg you, my God. For these are the very things that pass, from tutors and teachers, nuts and balls and sparrows, to prefects and kings, gold, estates, and slaves; these same things altogether, as the later ages succeed, just as greater punishments succeed the cane. So it was the sign of humility in the small stature of childhood that you, our King, commended when you said, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

Yet thanks be to you, Lord, our God, most excellent and best founder and ruler of the universe, even if you had willed me to be no more than a boy. For even then I existed, I lived and I felt, and I cared for my own well-being, a trace of that most hidden unity from which I came. With an inner sense I guarded the soundness of my senses, and even in my small thoughts about small things I delighted in truth. I did not want to be deceived, I had a strong memory, I was being equipped with speech, I was soothed by friendship, I shunned pain, disgrace, and ignorance. What in such a living being is not wonderful and praiseworthy? But all these are gifts of my God; I did not give them to myself. And they are good, and all these things are me. So he who made me is good, and he himself is my good, and I exult to him for all the good things of which even as a boy I consisted. For my sin was this: that I sought pleasures, heights, and truths not in him but in his creatures, myself and the rest, and so I rushed headlong into pains, confusions, and errors. Thanks be to you, my sweetness, my honor, my confidence, my God; thanks be to you for your gifts; but keep them for me. For so you will keep me, and what you have given me will be increased and perfected, and I myself shall be with you, because you have given me even my existence.

I want to call to mind my past foulness and the carnal corruptions of my soul, not because I love them, but so that I may love you, my God. I do this out of love for your love, going back over my most wicked ways in the bitterness of my remembering, so that you may grow sweet to me, sweetness that does not deceive, sweetness happy and secure, gathering me up from the scattering in which I was torn to pieces, when, turned away from you, the One, I vanished into the many. For in my adolescence I once burned to be glutted with the things below, and I dared to run wild in various shadowy loves; and my beauty wasted away, and I rotted before your eyes, pleasing myself and eager to please the eyes of men. And what was it that delighted me, but to love and be loved?

But the measure was not kept, from mind to mind, as far as the bright boundary of friendship; instead, mists rose from the muddy desire of the flesh and the bubbling spring of puberty, and they clouded and darkened my heart, so that the clear sky of love could not be distinguished from the fog of lust. Both seethed together in confusion, and swept my weak youth over the cliffs of desire and plunged it in a whirlpool of disgraceful acts. Your wrath had grown strong over me, and I did not know it. I had become deaf from the clanking of the chain of my mortality, the punishment of my soul's pride, and I went further from you, and you let me; and I was tossed about and poured out, I flowed away and boiled over in my fornications, and you were silent. O my late-coming joy! You were silent then, and I went further and further from you into more and more barren seeds of sorrows, with a proud dejection and a restless weariness.

Who would have set a measure to my misery, turned the fleeting beauties of the lowest things to good use, and fixed limits to their sweetness, so that the waves of my youth might have broken on the shore of marriage, if calm could not be found in them otherwise, being content with the end of begetting children, as your law prescribes, Lord? For you shape even the offspring of our mortality, able to lay a gentle hand to soften the thorns that were shut out of your paradise. For your omnipotence is not far from us, even when we are far from you. Or at least I should have paid closer attention to the sound from your clouds: “Such people will have trouble in the flesh, but I would spare you”; and “It is good for a man not to touch a woman”; and “He who is without a wife thinks of the things of God, how to please God; but he who is joined in marriage thinks of the things of the world, how to please his wife.” I should have listened more attentively to these words, and, having made myself a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven, I would have awaited your embrace more happily.

But I boiled over, wretch that I was, following the rush of my own current and abandoning you; I went beyond all your lawful bounds, and I did not escape your scourges. For what mortal does? For you were always there, mercifully severe, sprinkling all my unlawful pleasures with the bitterest vexations, so that I might seek a pleasure without vexation; and where I could find that, I would find nothing but you, Lord, nothing but you, who “fashion pain into a precept,” and strike in order to heal, and kill us so that we may not die away from you. Where was I, and how far was I exiled from the delights of your house, in that sixteenth year of the age of my flesh, when the madness of lust, licensed by human shamelessness but forbidden by your laws, took the scepter over me, and I surrendered to it completely? My family took no care to catch me as I fell by means of marriage; their only care was that I should learn to make the best possible speeches and to persuade by eloquence.

In that year my studies were interrupted. I had been brought back from Madauros, the neighboring town where I had already begun to live away from home to study literature and oratory, while the expenses of a longer stay away at Carthage were being gathered, more by my father's determination than his means, for he was a burgess of Thagaste of quite modest means. To whom am I telling this? Not to you, my God; but before you I tell it to my own kind, the human race, however small the portion of it that may come upon these writings of mine. And to what end? So that I and whoever reads this may consider from what depths we must cry to you. And what is nearer to your ears than a confessing heart and a life lived by faith? For who did not then praise my father to the skies because, beyond the resources of his estate, he spent on his son whatever was needed for him to live far away for his studies? For many citizens far richer did nothing of the kind for their children. Yet meanwhile this same father took no trouble about how I was growing up toward you or how chaste I was, provided only that I was eloquent, or rather deserted, uncultivated by you, God, the one true and good Lord of your field, my heart.

But when in that sixteenth year, through a period of leisure caused by the family's straitened means, I began to live with my parents on holiday from all schooling, the brambles of lust grew above my head, and there was no hand to root them out. On the contrary, when my father saw me at the baths growing into manhood and clothed with restless youth, he told my mother with joy, as though already delighted by the thought of grandchildren, rejoicing with that drunkenness in which this world forgets you its creator and loves your creature instead of you, from the invisible wine of its own perverse will, bent toward the lowest things. But in my mother's breast you had already begun your temple and the foundation of your holy dwelling; for he was still a catechumen, and a recent one. So she started up with a holy trembling and fear, and although I was not yet one of the faithful, she feared for me the crooked ways in which those walk who turn their back to you and not their face.

Alas for me! And do I dare to say that you were silent, my God, when I went further from you? Were you really silent to me then? And whose were those words, if not yours, which you sang in my ears through my mother, your faithful one? Yet none of it sank into my heart so that I would do it. For she wanted, and I remember how she warned me privately with great anxiety, that I should not commit fornication, and above all that I should not commit adultery with anyone's wife. These seemed to me a woman's warnings, which I would have blushed to obey. But they were yours, and I did not know it; I thought that you were silent and that she was speaking, when through her you were not silent to me, and in her you were despised by me, by me, her son, “the son of your handmaid, your servant.” But I did not know, and I rushed headlong with such blindness that among my companions I was ashamed of being less shameless, since I heard them boasting of their disgraceful acts and glorying the more, the more disgraceful they were; and I took pleasure in doing it not only for the lust of the deed but also for the praise. What deserves blame but vice? Yet I became more vicious so as not to be blamed; and when there was nothing I had done to put me on a level with the abandoned, I pretended I had done what I had not, so as not to seem more contemptible for being more innocent, or be held cheaper for being more chaste.

See with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon and rolled in its mud as if in cinnamon and precious ointments. And in its very navel, so that I would stick the more firmly, the invisible enemy trampled me and seduced me, because I was easily seduced. For even the mother of my flesh, who had already fled from the midst of Babylon but went more slowly in its other quarters, though she had warned me to be chaste, did not take care about what she had heard of me from her husband, namely, to restrain within the bounds of married affection what she already felt was pestilent and dangerous for the future, if it could not be cut back to the quick. She did not take care of this, because she feared that my prospects would be hindered by the fetter of a wife: not that hope of the world to come which my mother had in you, but the hope of learning, which both my parents wanted me very much to acquire; he, because he thought almost nothing of you and only vain things about me; she, because she thought that the usual course of studies would be not only no hindrance but even some help toward reaching you. So I conjecture, recalling as best I can the characters of my parents. The reins were also let loose for me to play, beyond any measure of strictness, into the dissipation of various passions; and in all of it was a fog, my God, shutting me off from the clear sky of your truth, and “my iniquity came forth as from fatness.”

Theft is certainly punished by your law, Lord, and by the law written in human hearts, which not even iniquity itself erases. For what thief calmly puts up with a thief? Not even a rich one with one driven by want. Yet I wanted to commit theft, and did it, compelled by no need, but by a poverty of justice and a distaste for it, and a glut of iniquity. For I stole what I had in plenty, and much better; nor did I want to enjoy the thing I sought by theft, but the theft itself and the sin. There was a pear tree near our vineyard, laden with fruit tempting neither in appearance nor in taste. We went to shake it and carry off the fruit, a gang of the worst young fellows, late at night, having kept up our games in the streets until then, as was our vicious custom; and we took huge loads from it, not for our own feasting but even to throw to the pigs, though we ate a little of it, provided only that we did what pleased us because it was not allowed. See my heart, God, see my heart, on which you had pity in the depth of the abyss. Let my heart now tell you what it was seeking there, that I should be evil for nothing, and that there should be no cause of my wickedness but wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved to perish, I loved my own falling away, not that for which I fell away, but my falling away itself I loved, a foul soul leaping down from your firm support into destruction, not seeking something through disgrace, but seeking disgrace itself.

There is indeed beauty in beautiful bodies, in gold and silver and all things; in bodily touch, what is fitting counts for most; and for each of the other senses there is a suitable adjustment of bodies. Worldly honor, and the power to command and to prevail, also have their own splendor, from which the appetite for revenge also arises. And yet, to gain all these things, one must not go away from you, Lord, nor stray from your law. And the life we live here has its own allure, because of a certain measure of beauty it has and its harmony with all these lowest beautiful things. Human friendship too is sweet with its dear bond, because of the unity it makes of many souls. For all these things and things like them sin is committed, when, through an immoderate inclination toward them, since they are the lowest goods, the better and highest goods are abandoned: you, Lord our God, and your truth and your law. For these lowest things have their delights too, but not like my God, who made all things, for “in him the just man delights,” and he himself is the delight of the upright in heart.

So when the cause of a crime is investigated, the usual view is that it cannot be believed unless it appears that there could have been a desire to gain one of those goods we called lowest, or a fear of losing them. For they are beautiful and fine, though, compared with the higher goods that make us blessed, they are lowly and base. A man has committed murder. Why did he do it? He loved the man's wife or his estate, or he wanted to rob him to have something to live on, or he feared to lose something of the kind to him, or, having been wronged, he burned to avenge himself. Would he commit murder without a cause, delighted by murder itself? Who would believe it? For even of a certain senseless and exceedingly cruel man it was said that he was evil and cruel for no reason; yet a cause was given: “so that,” he says, “his hand or his mind would not grow sluggish through idleness.” Why that too? Why so? Clearly so that, by that practice in crime, once the city was taken he might gain honors, power, and riches, and be free of fear of the laws and of the difficulties of his situation caused by his lack of means and his consciousness of his crimes. So not even Catiline himself loved his crimes, but certainly something else for whose sake he committed them.

What did I, wretch, love in you, my theft, my crime by night in the sixteenth year of my age? For you were not beautiful, since you were a theft. Or are you anything at all, that I should speak to you? The fruit we stole was beautiful, because it was your creation, most beautiful of all, creator of all, good God, God the highest good and my true good. The fruit was beautiful, but my wretched soul did not desire the fruit itself. For I had plenty of better fruit; I picked those only in order to steal. Once picked, I threw them away, having feasted only on the iniquity, which I enjoyed with delight. For if any of that fruit entered my mouth, the crime was its seasoning. And now, Lord my God, I ask what delighted me in the theft, and see, there is no beauty in it: I do not say the beauty there is in justice and prudence, nor even that in the human mind and memory and senses and vegetative life, nor the beauty of the stars, fair in their places, and of earth and sea full of offspring that succeed by birth those that die; not even the kind of defective and shadowy beauty found in deceiving vices.

For even pride imitates loftiness, whereas you are the one God, exalted above all things. And what does ambition seek but honors and glory, whereas you alone are to be honored above all and are glorious forever? The cruelty of the powerful wants to be feared; but who is to be feared but the one God, from whose power what can be seized or withdrawn, when, where, how, or by whom? The caresses of the lustful want to be loved; but nothing is more caressing than your charity, and nothing is loved more healthily than your truth, beautiful and radiant above all things. Curiosity seems to aspire to a zeal for knowledge, whereas you know all things supremely. Ignorance itself and folly are cloaked under the name of simplicity and innocence, because nothing is found simpler than you. And what is more innocent than you, since it is their own works that are hostile to the wicked? Sloth seeks rest, as it were; but what sure rest is there besides the Lord? Luxury wants to be called fullness and abundance; but you are the fullness and unfailing store of incorruptible sweetness. Prodigality casts a shadow of generosity; but you are the most bountiful giver of all good things. Avarice wants to possess much; and you possess all things. Envy contends for preeminence; what is more preeminent than you? Anger seeks revenge; who avenges more justly than you? Fear shudders at unusual and sudden things that threaten what it loves, while it takes precautions for its safety; but to you what is unusual? what is sudden? Or who separates from you what you love? Or where but with you is there firm security? Sadness pines at the loss of things in which desire delighted, because it would wish that nothing could be taken from it, as nothing can be taken from you.

So the soul commits fornication when it turns away from you and seeks outside you what it cannot find pure and clear except when it returns to you. All who put themselves far from you and exalt themselves against you imitate you perversely. But even by imitating you in this way they show that you are the creator of all nature, and that there is therefore nowhere to withdraw from you altogether. What, then, did I love in that theft, and in what did I imitate my Lord, even viciously and perversely? Did I take pleasure in acting against the law at least by deceit, since I could not by power, so that, a prisoner, I might imitate a crippled freedom by doing with impunity what was not allowed, in a darkened likeness of omnipotence? See, here is that slave fleeing his master and chasing a shadow. O rottenness, O monstrous life and depth of death! Could it please me to do what was not allowed, for no other reason than that it was not allowed?

“What shall I render to the Lord,” that my memory recalls these things and my soul is not afraid because of them? “I will love you, Lord,” and give thanks, and confess to your name, since you have forgiven me such evil and wicked deeds. I credit it to your grace and your mercy that you have melted away my sins like ice. I credit to your grace also whatever evils I did not do; for what could I not have done, I who loved even a crime done for nothing? And I confess that all has been forgiven me, both the evils I did of my own accord and those I did not do because you guided me. What human being, considering his own weakness, dares to credit his chastity and innocence to his own strength, so as to love you less, as if he had less need of your mercy, by which you forgive the sins of those who turn to you? For whoever, called by you, has followed your voice and avoided the things he reads of me as I recall and confess them about myself, let him not mock me, sick as I was, for being healed by that physician through whom it was granted to him not to fall sick, or rather to be less sick; and let him therefore love you as much, or rather even more, because he sees that the one through whom I am freed from the great sicknesses of my sins is the one through whom he is kept from being entangled in such great sicknesses of sin.

“What fruit did I ever have,” wretch that I was, in the things of which I now blush to remember, especially in that theft, in which I loved the theft itself and nothing else, since it was itself nothing and I was the more wretched for it? And yet I would not have done it alone. So I recall my state of mind then: alone I would not have done it at all. So I loved there also the companionship of those with whom I did it. So it is not true that I loved nothing but the theft; or rather, it is true that I loved nothing else, because that companionship too is nothing. What is it really? Who is there to teach me, except the one who enlightens my heart and discerns its shadows? What is it that has come into my mind to inquire into, discuss, and consider? That if I had loved the fruit I stole and wanted to enjoy it, I could have committed that iniquity alone, if that were enough to reach my pleasure, without inflaming the itch of my desire by rubbing against accomplices' minds. But since my pleasure was not in the fruit, it was in the crime itself, which the companionship of fellow sinners produced.

What was that state of mind? It was certainly exceedingly foul, and woe to me who had it. But still, what was it? “Who understands sins?” It was a laugh, as if our hearts were tickled, that we were deceiving those who did not think we would do such things and strongly disapproved. Why, then, did it delight me that I did not do it alone? Is it because no one laughs easily alone? No one does so easily; yet sometimes laughter does overcome people alone and by themselves, with no one else present, if something very ridiculous meets their senses or their mind. But I would not have done that alone; I would not have done it at all alone. See, before you, my God, is the living memory of my soul. Alone I would not have committed that theft, in which I took pleasure not in what I stole but in stealing; and I would not have enjoyed doing it alone at all, nor would I have done it. O friendship too unfriendly, unfathomable seduction of the mind, eagerness to harm arising from play and jest, appetite for another's loss with no desire for my own gain or for revenge; but when someone says, “Let's go, let's do it,” one is ashamed not to be shameless.

Who can untie this most twisted and tangled knot? It is foul; I do not want to look at it, I do not want to see it. I want you, justice and innocence, beautiful and fair with honorable light and a satisfaction that never cloys. With you is true rest and a life that cannot be disturbed. Whoever enters into you “enters into the joy of his Lord,” and will not fear, and will be supremely well in the supreme Good. I slipped away from you and wandered, my God, too far astray from your stability in my youth, and I became to myself a land of want.

I came to Carthage, and all around me there hissed a frying pan of disgraceful loves. I was not yet in love, but I loved to love, and from a more hidden want I hated myself for wanting less. I was looking for something to love, in love with loving, and I hated safety and a path without snares; for I had a hunger within, for the inner food, you yourself, my God, and yet with that hunger I was not hungry, but was without desire for incorruptible food, not because I was full of it, but the emptier I was, the more I loathed it. And so my soul was not healthy; covered in sores, it threw itself outward, wretchedly eager to be scratched by contact with things of sense. But if these things had no soul, they would certainly not be loved. To love and to be loved was sweet to me, all the more if I could also enjoy the body of the one I loved. So I defiled the spring of friendship with the filth of lust, and clouded its brightness with the hell of desire; and yet, foul and dishonorable as I was, in my overflowing vanity I longed to be elegant and sophisticated. I rushed also into love, by which I longed to be captured. My God, my mercy, with how much gall you in your goodness sprinkled that sweetness for me! For I was loved, and I reached the bond of enjoyment, and I was gladly tied up in painful knots, so as to be beaten with the burning iron rods of jealousy and suspicions and fears and angers and quarrels.

I was carried away by theatrical shows, full of images of my own miseries and of fuel for my fire. Why is it that a person wants to feel grief there at sad and tragic events which he would not want to suffer himself? And yet as a spectator he wants to feel grief from them, and the grief itself is his pleasure. What is this but pitiable madness? For each one is moved by them the more, the less healthy he is from such passions; although when a person suffers himself it is usually called misery, and when he suffers with others, mercy. But what kind of mercy is it, after all, in fictitious and staged events? For the listener is not called on to help, but only invited to grieve; and the more he grieves, the more he applauds the author of those images. And if those human calamities, whether ancient or invented, are acted in such a way that the spectator does not grieve, he leaves in disgust and criticizes; but if he grieves, he stays, intent and rejoicing.

So tears are loved, and griefs. Certainly everyone wants to rejoice. Or is it that, while no one likes to be miserable, one does like to be merciful, and since that is not without grief, for this one reason griefs are loved? This too comes from that spring of friendship. But where does it go? Where does it flow? Why does it run down into a torrent of boiling pitch, the monstrous heat of foul lusts, into which it is itself changed and turned by its own will, twisted and thrown down from heavenly clearness? Should mercy then be rejected? By no means. So let griefs sometimes be loved. But beware of uncleanness, my soul, under the protection of my God, “the God of our fathers, praiseworthy and exalted above all forever”; beware of uncleanness. For I do not now lack compassion; but then in the theaters I rejoiced with lovers when they enjoyed one another in disgraceful acts, though they did this only in pretense in the play of the show; and when they lost one another, I was saddened as if merciful; and yet both delighted me. But now I have more pity for one who rejoices in a disgraceful act than for one who is thought to have suffered hardship by losing a pernicious pleasure and forfeiting a miserable happiness. This is certainly the truer mercy, but in it grief does not delight. For though one who grieves over a wretched person is approved for the duty of love, still one who is genuinely merciful would rather there were nothing to grieve over. For if there is such a thing as malevolent benevolence, which is impossible, then someone who truly and sincerely has mercy could wish there to be wretched people so that he could have mercy on them. So some grief is to be approved, but none is to be loved. For this is how you, Lord God, who love souls, have mercy far more deeply and purely than we, and more incorruptibly: you are wounded by no grief. “And who is sufficient for these things?”

But I, wretch that I was, loved to grieve then, and sought for something to grieve over, since in another's misfortune, fictitious and acted in a show, the actor's performance pleased me more and attracted me more strongly the more it drew tears from me. What wonder, when I, an unhappy sheep straying from your flock and impatient of your keeping, was befouled with a disgusting mange? Hence came my love of griefs, not griefs that would pierce me more deeply (for I did not love to suffer such things as I loved to watch), but griefs heard and invented that would scratch me, as it were, on the surface; yet, as with the nails of those who scratch themselves, a burning swelling followed, and rot and horrid pus. Such was my life: was it life, my God?

And your faithful mercy hovered over me from afar. In what iniquities I wasted away! And I followed a sacrilegious curiosity, so that, as I deserted you, it led me down to the depths of faithlessness and the deceitful services of demons, to whom I sacrificed my evil deeds; and in all of them you scourged me! I even dared, during the celebration of your solemn rites, within the walls of your church, to desire and to carry on an affair for procuring the fruits of death; for which you struck me with heavy punishments, but nothing in comparison with my guilt, O you my immense mercy, my God, my refuge from the terrible harmful things among which I wandered with a stiff neck, withdrawing far from you, loving my ways and not yours, loving a runaway's freedom.

Those studies too that were called respectable had their direction, looking toward the litigious law courts, so that I might excel in them, and be the more praised the more deceitful I was. So great is the blindness of human beings, who even glory in their blindness! And I was already top of the class in the school of rhetoric, and I rejoiced proudly and swelled with conceit, though I was far more restrained, Lord, as you know, and completely removed from the “overturnings” carried out by the Overturners (for this ill-omened and devilish name is a sort of badge of sophistication), among whom I lived with a shameless shame, because I was not like them. I was with them and sometimes enjoyed their friendship, though I always abhorred what they did, that is, the overturnings with which they wantonly assailed the modesty of strangers, harassing it for no reason by mockery and so feeding their malicious amusements. Nothing is more like the doings of demons than that. What, then, could they be more truly called than Overturners, since they had themselves first been overturned and perverted, mocked and seduced by deceiving spirits in secret, in the very thing by which they love to mock and deceive others?

Among these, at that unstable age, I was studying the books of eloquence, in which I wanted to excel for a damnable and windy end, out of the joys of human vanity; and in the usual course of study I had come to a book by a certain Cicero, whose tongue almost everyone admires, though not his heart. But that book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy and is called Hortensius. That book changed my affections and turned my prayers to you yourself, Lord, and made my wishes and desires different. Suddenly every vain hope became worthless to me, and with an incredible burning of heart I longed for the immortality of wisdom, and I had begun to rise up to return to you. For it was not to sharpen my tongue, which I seemed to be buying with my mother's money, in my nineteenth year, my father having died two years before; it was not to sharpen my tongue that I used that book, nor was it its style that had persuaded me, but what it said.

How I burned, my God, how I burned to fly back from earthly things to you, and I did not know what you were doing with me! For “with you is wisdom.” But the love of wisdom has a Greek name, philosophy, and it was with this that those writings set me on fire. There are those who lead people astray through philosophy, coloring and painting over their errors with that great, attractive, and honorable name; and almost all who were such in that time and earlier are noted and exposed in that book; and there too is made clear that saving warning of your Spirit through your good and devout servant: “See that no one deceives you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elements of this world and not according to Christ; for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” And at that time, as you know, light of my heart, since these apostolic words were not yet known to me, I was delighted in that exhortation by this alone: that I was stirred up by that discourse to love and seek and pursue and hold and strongly embrace not this or that sect, but wisdom itself, whatever it might be; and I was set on fire and burned. And this alone checked me in so great a blaze: that the name of Christ was not there. For this name, by your mercy, Lord, this name of my Savior, your Son, my tender heart had devoutly drunk in with my mother's very milk and kept deep within; and whatever lacked this name, however learned and polished and truthful, did not carry me away completely.

So I decided to turn my mind to the Holy Scriptures and see what they were like. And see, I behold something not discovered by the proud nor laid bare to children, but lowly in its approach, lofty in its advance, and veiled in mysteries; and I was not the kind of person who could enter into it or bow my neck to its steps. For I did not feel then as I speak now when I turned to that Scripture; it seemed to me unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Cicero. For my swollen pride shrank from its measure, and my sharp sight did not penetrate its inner meaning. Yet it was the kind of thing that grows up with little ones; but I scorned to be a little one, and, puffed up with pride, I thought myself grown up.

So I fell among men proudly raving, exceedingly carnal and talkative, in whose mouths were the snares of the devil and a birdlime made from a mixture of the syllables of your name, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Paraclete, our Comforter, the Holy Spirit. These names never left their mouths, but only as far as the sound and noise of the tongue; otherwise their heart was empty of truth. And they said, “Truth, truth,” and said it to me a great deal, and it was nowhere in them; but they spoke falsehood not only about you, who are truly the Truth, but also about the elements of this world, your creation, about which I ought to have passed beyond even the philosophers who spoke the truth, for love of you, my Father, supremely good, beauty of all beautiful things. O Truth, Truth, how deeply even then the marrow of my mind sighed for you, when they sounded your name to me often and in many ways, by voice alone and in many huge books! And those were the dishes on which, while I hungered for you, they served up to me the sun and moon, your beautiful works, but still your works, not you, and not even your first works. For your spiritual works come before these bodily ones, however bright and heavenly. But I hungered and thirsted not even for those first works, but for you yourself, the Truth, “in whom there is no change nor shadow of turning.” And on those dishes they still set before me splendid phantasms, compared with which it would have been better to love this sun, which is at least real to these eyes, than those false things, by which the mind is deceived through the eyes. And yet, because I thought they were you, I ate, not greedily indeed, because you did not taste in my mouth as you are (for you were not those empty fictions), nor was I nourished by them, but rather drained. Food in dreams is very like the food of those who are awake, yet sleepers are not nourished by it, for they are asleep. But those things were not like you in any way, as you have now told me, because they were bodily phantasms, false bodies; and these real bodies which we see with the eye of flesh, whether heavenly or earthly, are more certain than they. We see them as the beasts and birds do, and they are more certain than when we imagine them. And again, we imagine them with more certainty than when from them we conjecture other greater and infinite bodies, which do not exist at all. On such empty things was I then fed, and not fed. But you, my love, for whom I faint so that I may be strong, are neither these bodies which we see, even in the sky, nor those which we do not see there, because you created these, and you do not count them among your highest creations. How far, then, you are from those phantasms of mine, phantasms of bodies that do not exist at all! Images of bodies that do exist are more certain than they, and bodies more certain than the images; yet you are not bodies. Nor are you the soul, which is the life of bodies (so the life of bodies is better and more certain than bodies); but you are the life of souls, the life of lives, living yourself, and you do not change, life of my soul.

Where were you to me then, and how far away? And I was wandering far away from you, shut out even from the husks of the pigs whom I fed with husks. For how much better were the tales of the grammarians and poets than those traps! For verse and song and Medea flying are certainly more useful than the five elements variously painted to match the five caves of darkness, which do not exist at all and kill the one who believes in them. For verse and song I can turn into real nourishment; and though I sang of Medea flying, I did not assert it, and though I heard it sung, I did not believe it; but those things I did believe. Woe, woe! By what steps was I led down into the depths of hell, toiling and burning for lack of truth, since I sought you, my God (I confess it to you, who had mercy on me even before I confessed), not by the understanding of the mind, by which you willed me to surpass the beasts, but by the sense of the flesh. But you were more inward than my inmost self and higher than my highest. I came upon that bold woman, lacking prudence, Solomon's riddle, sitting on a seat at her door and saying, “Eat hidden bread gladly and drink sweet stolen water.” She seduced me because she found me living outside, in the eye of my flesh, and ruminating within myself such things as I had devoured through it.

For I did not know that other reality, what truly is, and I was, as it were, sharply prodded into siding with foolish deceivers when they asked me where evil comes from, and whether God was bounded by a bodily form and had hair and nails, and whether those were to be thought righteous who had many wives at once and killed people and offered animal sacrifices. Ignorant of these things, I was disturbed by them, and while I was withdrawing from the truth I thought I was going toward it, because I did not know that evil is nothing but the privation of good, down to the point where there is nothing at all. How could I see this, when the seeing of my eyes went no further than bodies and of my mind no further than phantasms? I did not know that God is spirit, not something with limbs extending in length and breadth, nor something whose being is bulk; because bulk is less in its part than in its whole, and if it is infinite, it is less in some part bounded by a definite space than in its infinity, and it is not wholly everywhere, as spirit is, as God is. And what it was in us by which we exist, and by which Scripture says we are “in the image of God,” I was entirely ignorant.

And I did not know the true inner justice that judges not by custom but by the most upright law of almighty God, by which the customs of regions and times were shaped to suit those regions and times, while that law itself is everywhere and always the same, not one thing in one place and another in another; by which Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David, and all those praised by the mouth of God, were righteous. But they are judged unrighteous by the unskilled, who judge “by man's day” and measure the customs of the whole human race by the part that is their own custom. It is as if someone in an armory, not knowing what fits which limb, wanted to cover his head with a greave and shoe his foot with a helmet, and complained that they did not fit well; or as if, on a day when a public holiday was declared from the afternoon hours, someone were angry that he was not allowed to put something up for sale, since it had been allowed in the morning; or as if in a single house he saw something handled by some slave which the one who serves the cups is not permitted to do, or something done behind the stables that is forbidden before the dining table, and were indignant that, since there is one dwelling and one household, the same thing is not allowed everywhere and to everyone. Such are those who are indignant when they hear that something was permitted to the righteous in that age which is not permitted to the righteous in this one, and that God commanded one thing to them and another to these for temporal reasons, though both served the same justice; while in one person, on one day, and in one house they see one thing suiting one limb and another another, and something long permitted no longer permitted after an hour, and something allowed or commanded in one corner which is forbidden and punished in the one next to it. Is justice then varied and changeable? No; but the times over which it presides do not run alike, for they are times. But human beings, whose life on earth is short, since they cannot by their senses connect the causes of earlier ages and other peoples, of which they have no experience, with those of which they have experience, though in a single body or day or house they can easily see what suits which limb, at which moments, in which parts or persons, take offense at the former and submit to the latter.

These things I did not know then and did not notice; they struck my eyes on every side and I did not see. I composed poems, and I was not allowed to place any foot anywhere I liked, but differently in one meter and another, and not the same foot in every place even in a single line; and yet the art by which I composed did not have one rule here and another there, but held them all at once. And I did not see that the justice which good and holy men served held all that it commands together at once, far more excellently and sublimely, and varied in no part, though in varying times it assigned and commanded not all things at once but what was proper to each. And in my blindness I blamed the holy fathers, not only for using present things as God commanded and inspired them, but also for foretelling future things as God revealed them.

Is it ever, anywhere, unjust to love God with all one's heart and with all one's soul and with all one's mind, and to love one's neighbor as oneself? So those shameful acts that are against nature, such as those of the Sodomites, are to be detested and punished everywhere and always. If all nations did them, they would all be held guilty of the same crime by the divine law, which did not make human beings to use one another in this way. For the very fellowship that we ought to have with God is violated when the same nature of which he is the author is polluted by the perversity of lust. But shameful acts against human customs are to be avoided according to the diversity of customs, so that an agreement of a city or nation among itself, confirmed by custom or law, may not be violated by the lust of any citizen or foreigner. For every part that does not fit its whole is unseemly. But when God commands something against the custom or agreement of any people, even if it was never done there, it must be done; and if it has been dropped, it must be restored; and if it had not been established, it must be established. For if a king may command in the city he rules something that neither anyone before him nor he himself had ever commanded, and it is not against the fellowship of that city to obey him (indeed, it is against that fellowship not to obey, for it is a general agreement of human society to obey its kings), how much more must God, ruler of all creation, be served without hesitation in whatever he commands! For just as among the authorities of human society the greater authority is placed above the lesser to be obeyed, so is God above all.

So too with crimes of violence, where there is a lust to harm, whether by insult or by injury, and both either for revenge, as enemy against enemy; or to gain some advantage belonging to another, as the robber against the traveler; or to avoid some evil, as against one who is feared; or from envy, as the less fortunate against the more fortunate, or one who has prospered in something against one he fears will become his equal or grieves to see as his equal; or for the mere pleasure of another's harm, as spectators of gladiators, or those who laugh at and mock anyone at all. These are the chief kinds of iniquity, which sprout from the lust of ruling, of seeing, and of feeling, either one or two of them or all at once; and people live wickedly against the three and the seven, the “psaltery of ten strings,” your Decalogue, God most high and most sweet. But what shameful acts can there be against you, who cannot be corrupted? Or what crimes against you, who cannot be harmed? But you punish what people commit against themselves, because even when they sin against you they act wickedly against their own souls, and “iniquity lies to itself,” whether by corrupting and perverting their nature, which you made and ordered, or by using permitted things immoderately, or by burning for things not permitted, for the use that is against nature. Or they are held guilty for raging against you in mind and words, and “kicking against the goad”; or when, having broken the bounds of human society, they boldly rejoice in private alliances or divisions, according as anything has pleased or offended them. And these things happen when you are forsaken, fountain of life, who are the one true creator and ruler of the universe, and when with private pride a single false thing is loved in a part. So it is by humble devotion that one returns to you, and you cleanse us from evil habit, and are gracious to the sins of those who confess, and “hear the groans of the prisoners,” and loose us from the chains we have made for ourselves, provided we no longer raise against you the horns of a false freedom, through greed to have more and at the cost of losing everything, loving our own private good more than you, the good of all.

But among shameful acts and crimes and so many iniquities there are the sins of those who are making progress, which are blamed by those who judge well according to the rule of perfection, and yet praised in hope of fruit, like the green blade of the grain. And there are some things that resemble a shameful act or a crime and yet are not sins, because they offend neither you, the Lord our God, nor the fellowship of society: as when things suited to the use of life and to the time are acquired, and it is uncertain whether it is from lust of possession; or when acts are punished by lawful authority out of a desire to correct, and it is uncertain whether it is from lust to harm. So many deeds that might seem to people to deserve disapproval are approved by your testimony, and many praised by people are condemned with you as witness, since often the appearance of the deed is one thing, and the intention of the doer another, and the circumstances of the hidden time another. But when you suddenly command something unusual and unforeseen, even something you once forbade, although for the time you hide the reason for your command and although it is against the agreement of some human society, who would doubt that it must be done, since that human society is just which serves you? But blessed are those who know that you commanded it. For all things are done by those who serve you either to show what is needed at present or to foretell things to come.

Not knowing these things, I mocked those holy servants and prophets of yours. And what was I doing when I mocked them, but getting myself mocked by you, led gradually and little by little to such nonsense as to believe that a fig weeps when it is picked, and that its mother tree weeps milky tears? Yet if some saint ate that fig, picked, of course, by another's crime and not his own, he would mix it with his insides and breathe out angels from it, or rather particles of God, as he groaned and belched in prayer; and those particles of the supreme and true God would have remained bound in that fruit unless they were released by the teeth and belly of the elect saint. And I believed, wretch that I was, that more mercy should be shown to the fruits of the earth than to human beings, for whom they grow. For if someone hungry asked for it who was not a Manichee, giving him a mouthful would seem to deserve capital punishment.

And “you sent your hand from on high” and rescued my soul from this deep darkness, when my mother, your faithful one, wept to you for me more than mothers weep for the bodily deaths of their children. For she saw my death by the faith and the spirit which she had from you, and you heard her, Lord. You heard her and did not despise her tears when they streamed down and watered the ground beneath her eyes in every place where she prayed: you heard her. For where else did that dream come from, by which you consoled her, so that she agreed to live with me and to share the same table in the house? She had begun to refuse this, turning away from and loathing the blasphemies of my error. For she saw herself standing on a wooden rule, and a young man coming toward her, radiant, cheerful, and smiling at her, while she was grieving and worn out with grief. When he asked her the reasons for her sadness and her daily tears (in order to teach, as is usual, not to learn), and she answered that she was mourning my perdition, he told her to be at ease and admonished her to pay attention and see that where she was, there I was too. And when she looked, she saw me standing beside her on the same rule. Where did this come from, unless your ears were at her heart, O good and almighty one, who care for each one of us as if you cared for him alone, and for all as for each?

Where did this come from as well: that when she had told me the vision and I tried to twist it to mean that she should rather not despair of becoming what I was, she said at once, without any hesitation, “No. For I was not told, ‘Where he is, there you will be too,’ but, ‘Where you are, there he will be too.’” I confess to you, Lord, my memory of it, as far as I recall (and I have often spoken of it): I was more moved by this answer of yours through my mother, who was not disturbed by so plausible a false interpretation and saw so quickly what was to be seen, which I certainly had not seen before she spoke, than by the dream itself, by which the joy that this devout woman would have so much later was foretold so long before, to console her present anxiety. For nearly nine years followed in which I rolled in that “mire of the deep” and darkness of falsehood, often trying to rise and being dashed down more heavily; while that chaste widow, devout and sober, such as you love, now more hopeful indeed, but no less given to weeping and groaning, did not cease at all her hours of prayer to lament for me to you; and her prayers entered into your sight, and yet you still left me to be rolled and enveloped in that darkness.

And meanwhile you gave another answer, which I recall. (I pass over much, because I am hurrying on to the things that press me more to confess to you, and much I do not remember.) You gave another answer, then, through your priest, a certain bishop brought up in the church and well trained in your books. When that woman asked him to be so kind as to talk with me, refute my errors, unteach me what was evil and teach me what was good (for she used to do this whenever she found suitable people), he refused, very wisely, as I realized later. For he answered that I was still unteachable, because I was puffed up with the novelty of that heresy and had already upset many unskilled people with some petty questions, as she had told him. “But,” he said, “leave him there. Only pray to the Lord for him; he will discover by reading what that error is and how great its impiety.” At the same time he also told her that he too, as a small boy, had been handed over to the Manichees by his mother, who had been led astray, and that he had not only read but even copied out almost all their books, and it had become clear to him, without anyone arguing against him or refuting him, how much that sect was to be avoided; and so he had left it. When he had said this and she would not accept it, but pressed him all the more with entreaties and floods of tears to see me and discuss with me, he, now somewhat irritated, said, “Go away from me. As you live, it cannot be that the son of these tears should perish.” She often recalled in her conversations with me that she took this as if it had sounded from heaven.

Throughout that same period of nine years, from my nineteenth year to my twenty-eighth, we were led astray and led others astray, deceived and deceiving, in various desires: openly through the teachings they call liberal, and secretly under the false name of religion; here proud, there superstitious, everywhere vain. On one side we pursued the emptiness of popular glory, down to theatrical applause and poetry competitions and contests for garlands of hay, the trifles of the shows and the intemperance of lusts; on the other side we sought to be cleansed of these filthy things by bringing food to those who were called the elect and holy, from which, in the workshop of their bellies, they would manufacture for us angels and gods through whom we would be set free. These things I pursued and did with my friends, who were deceived through me and with me. Let the arrogant laugh at me, and those not yet savingly struck down and crushed by you, my God; yet let me confess my disgraces to you in your praise. Allow me, I beg you, and grant me to go round in present memory the past circuits of my error, and to “offer you a sacrifice of jubilation.” For what am I to myself without you but a guide to my own downfall? Or what am I, when all is well with me, but one sucking your milk or feeding on you, the food that does not perish? And what is any human being, since he is only human? But let the strong and powerful laugh at us; and let us, weak and needy, confess to you.

In those years I taught the art of rhetoric, and, overcome by greed, I sold a loquacity that could overcome others. Yet I preferred, Lord, as you know, to have good students, as they are called good, and without guile I taught them guile, not to be used against the life of an innocent person, but sometimes for the life of a guilty one. And you saw from afar, God, my faith slipping on slippery ground and flickering amid much smoke, the faith I showed in that teaching to those who “loved vanity and sought falsehood,” being their companion. In those years I had one woman, not known to me in what is called lawful marriage, but one whom my wandering passion, lacking prudence, had tracked down; yet only one, and I kept faith with her bed. With her I learned by my own experience the difference between the restraint of a marriage covenant, contracted for the sake of begetting children, and the bargain of lustful love, in which offspring is born even against one's wish, though once born it compels love.

I also recall that when I had decided to enter a competition in dramatic poetry, some soothsayer or other sent to ask me what fee I would give him to make me win; and I, detesting and loathing those foul rites, replied that even if the crown were of gold that never perished, I would not allow a fly to be killed for my victory. For he was going to kill living creatures in his sacrifices and, by those honors, seemed likely to invite demons to support me. But I rejected this evil too not out of your chastity, God of my heart. For I did not know how to love you, since I did not know how to think of anything but bodily splendors. And does not a soul that sighs after such fictions commit fornication away from you, and trust in falsehoods, and feed the winds? But of course I did not want sacrifices offered to demons for me, while by that superstition I was sacrificing myself to them. For what else is feeding the winds but feeding them, that is, becoming by one's errors their pleasure and laughingstock?

So I did not stop consulting openly those impostors called astrologers, on the ground that they offered no sacrifice, as it were, and directed no prayers to any spirit for divination. Yet true Christian piety consistently rejects and condemns this too. For “it is good to confess to you, Lord,” and to say, “Have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you,” and not to abuse your indulgence as a license to sin, but to remember the Lord's word: “See, you have been made well; sin no more, lest something worse happen to you.” All this wholesome teaching they try to kill when they say, “The cause of your sinning is inevitably determined by the heavens,” and “Venus did this, or Saturn, or Mars”: evidently so that a human being, flesh and blood and proud rottenness, may be without blame, while the creator and orderer of the heavens and the stars is to be blamed. And who is he but our God, the sweetness and source of justice, who “will render to each according to his works” and “does not despise a contrite and humbled heart”?

There was at that time a shrewd man, highly skilled and very distinguished in the art of medicine, who as proconsul had with his own hand placed that contest crown on my unhealthy head, but not as a physician. For of that disease you are the healer, who “resist the proud but give grace to the humble.” Yet did you fail me even through that old man, or cease to heal my soul? For I had become quite intimate with him and clung to his conversations constantly and attentively (they were without polished diction, but pleasant and weighty from the liveliness of their thought); and when he learned from my talk that I was devoted to the books of the casters of nativities, he warned me kindly and like a father to throw them away and not to waste on that vanity the care and effort needed for useful things. He said that he had learned that art himself, so much so that in his early years he had intended to make it the profession by which he would earn his living; and that, since he had understood Hippocrates, he could certainly have understood those writings too; and yet he had afterwards abandoned them and taken up medicine for no other reason than that he had found them utterly false, and as a serious man he did not want to earn his living by deceiving people. “But you,” he said, “have rhetoric to support you among men, and you pursue this deception out of free interest, not from need of means. So you should all the more believe me about it, since I worked to learn it so thoroughly that I meant to live from it alone.” When I asked him why, then, many true things were foretold by it, he answered as best he could that it was the work of chance, which is spread everywhere throughout nature. For if, when someone consulted the pages of some poet who sang and intended something quite different, a verse often came out marvelously apt to the matter, he said it was no wonder if from a human soul, by some higher instinct and without knowing what was happening within it, not by art but by chance, something sounded that matched the affairs and deeds of the one who asked.

This, then, you provided for me from him or through him, and you sketched in my memory what I would later investigate for myself. But at that time neither he nor my dearest Nebridius, a very good and very chaste young man, who laughed at that whole kind of divination, could persuade me to throw these things away, because the authority of their authors moved me more, and I had not yet found any certain proof, such as I was looking for, that would show me unambiguously that the true things said by astrologers when consulted were said by luck or chance, not by the art of observing the stars.

In those years, when I first began to teach in the town where I was born, I had gained a friend, very dear to me because we shared our studies, of my own age and flowering with me in the flower of youth. He had grown up with me as a boy, and we had gone to school together and played together. But he was not then such a friend as he later became; and even later he was not a friend in the way true friendship is, because it is not true unless you glue it together between those who cling to one another by the “love poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Yet it was sweet to us, ripened by the warmth of shared studies. For I had also turned him away from the true faith, which as a young man he did not hold genuinely and deeply, into the superstitious and pernicious fables for which my mother wept over me. That man was already wandering in mind with me, and my soul could not be without him. And see, you, who press close upon the backs of those who flee from you, God of vengeance and at the same time fountain of mercies, who turn us to yourself in wonderful ways, see, you took the man away from this life when he had scarcely completed a year in my friendship, a friendship sweet to me above all the sweetnesses of that life of mine.

Who can recount your praises that he has experienced in himself alone? What did you do then, my God, and how unsearchable is the abyss of your judgments! For when he was suffering from fever, he lay long unconscious in a deathly sweat; and when he was despaired of, he was baptized without knowing it. I did not care, presuming that his soul would retain what it had received from me rather than what was being done to the body of one unaware. But it was far otherwise. For he revived and recovered, and at once, as soon as I could speak with him (and I could as soon as he could, since I never left him, and we depended on each other too much), I tried to mock, in his presence, the baptism he had received while utterly absent in mind and sense, thinking that he would mock it with me. But he had already learned that he had received it. And he recoiled from me as from an enemy, and with a wonderful and sudden freedom warned me that if I wanted to be his friend I must stop saying such things to him. I, astonished and disturbed, put off all my impulses until he should first recover and be strong enough in health for me to do what I wanted with him. But he was snatched away from my madness, to be kept with you for my consolation: a few days later, while I was away, the fever returned and he died.

With this grief my heart was darkened, and whatever I looked at was death. My home town was torture to me and my father's house a strange unhappiness, and whatever I had shared with him, without him had turned into a monstrous torment. My eyes looked for him everywhere, and he was not given to them; and I hated all things because they did not have him, nor could they now say to me, “See, he is coming,” as they did when he was alive and absent. I had become a great question to myself, and I asked my soul why it was sad and why it troubled me so much, and it had no answer for me. And if I said, “Hope in God,” it rightly did not obey, because the man, most dear, whom it had lost was truer and better than the phantasm in which it was told to hope. Weeping alone was sweet to me, and it had taken my friend's place in the delights of my mind.

And now, Lord, those things have passed, and my wound has been softened by time. May I hear from you, who are the Truth, and move the ear of my heart close to your mouth, so that you may tell me why weeping is sweet to the wretched? Or have you, though present everywhere, cast our misery far from you, and you remain in yourself, while we are tossed about in trials? And yet unless we wept into your ears, nothing of our hope would remain. How is it, then, that sweet fruit is plucked from the bitterness of life, to groan and weep and sigh and lament? Is what is sweet there the hope that you hear us? That is rightly so in prayers, because they have the desire to reach you. But is it so in grief over something lost, and in the mourning in which I was then enveloped? For I did not hope that he would come back to life, nor did I ask this with my tears; I only grieved and wept. For I was wretched, and I had lost my joy. Or is weeping too a bitter thing, and does it delight us out of disgust for the things we used to enjoy, at the time when we shrink from them?

But why do I speak of these things? For now is not the time for inquiring but for confessing to you. I was wretched, and wretched is every mind bound by friendship with mortal things; it is torn apart when it loses them, and then it feels the wretchedness by which it was wretched even before it lost them. So I was at that time, and I wept most bitterly and found rest in bitterness. So wretched was I, and I held that wretched life itself dearer than my friend. For although I wanted to change it, I would not have wanted to lose it more than him; and I do not know whether I would have wanted to lose it even for him, as is told, if it is not invented, of Orestes and Pylades, who wanted to die for each other or together, because not to live together was worse than death for them. But in me some feeling had arisen quite contrary to this: a most heavy weariness of living and a fear of dying. I believe that the more I loved him, the more I hated and feared death, which had taken him from me, as a most savage enemy, and I thought it would suddenly consume all people, since it had been able to take him. That is exactly how I was, I remember. See my heart, my God, see within; see, because I remember, my hope, who cleanse me from the uncleanness of such feelings, directing my eyes to you and plucking my feet from the snare. For I wondered that other mortals lived, since he whom I had loved as though he would never die was dead; and I wondered still more that I, who was his other self, lived when he was dead. Someone put it well when he called his friend “half of his soul.” For I felt that my soul and his soul had been one soul in two bodies; and so life was a horror to me, because I did not want to live as half; and perhaps that is why I feared to die, lest he whom I had loved so much should die wholly. O madness that does not know how to love human beings humanly!

O foolish man, who suffers human things without measure! That is what I was then. So I seethed, sighed, wept, was troubled, and there was neither rest nor counsel. For I carried my soul, torn and bleeding, impatient of being carried by me, and I found nowhere to set it down. It found no rest in pleasant groves, nor in games and songs, nor in sweet-smelling places, nor in elaborate banquets, nor in the pleasure of the bedroom and the couch, nor, finally, in books and poems. Everything was horrible, even the light itself, and whatever was not what he was, was wicked and wearisome, except groaning and tears; for in them alone was there some little rest. But when my soul was taken away from them, a great burden of misery weighed me down. To you, Lord, it should have been lifted to be healed, I knew; but I neither wanted to nor was able to, the more so because when I thought of you, you were not something solid and firm for me. For it was not you, but an empty phantasm, and my error was my god. If I tried to set my soul down there to rest, it slipped through the void and came crashing down on me again, and I remained to myself an unhappy place where I could neither stay nor leave. For where could my heart flee from my heart? Where could I flee from myself? Where would I not follow myself? And yet I fled from my home town. For my eyes looked for him less where they had not been used to seeing him; and from the town of Thagaste I came to Carthage.

Times do not stand idle, nor do they roll by without effect through our senses; they work wonderful works in the mind. See, they came and went day after day, and by coming and going they planted in me other hopes and other memories, and little by little they patched me up again with my former kinds of pleasure, to which that grief of mine gave way. But what followed were, if not other griefs, at least the causes of other griefs. For why had that grief penetrated me so easily and so deeply, unless because I had poured out my soul onto the sand by loving a man who would die as though he would never die? What most restored and revived me was the comfort of other friends, with whom I loved what I loved instead of you; and this was a huge fable and a long lie, by whose adulterous rubbing our minds, itching in the ears, were corrupted. But that fable did not die for me if any of my friends died. There were other things in them that captured my mind more: talking and laughing together, doing kindnesses for one another in turn, reading pleasant books together, joking together and being serious together, disagreeing sometimes without ill will, as a man does with himself, and seasoning our very many agreements with those very rare disagreements; teaching one another something or learning from one another; missing the absent with pain and welcoming those who arrived with joy. By these and similar signs, coming from the hearts of those who love and are loved in return, through the face, the tongue, the eyes, and a thousand most pleasing gestures, our minds were set ablaze as if by kindling, and out of many were made one.

This is what is loved in friends, and loved in such a way that the human conscience feels itself guilty if it does not love one who loves in return, or does not return the love of one who loves, seeking nothing from the other's body but signs of goodwill. Hence that mourning if someone dies, and the darkness of griefs, and the heart drenched as sweetness turns to bitterness, and, from the lost life of the dying, the death of the living. Blessed is the one who loves you, and his friend in you, and his enemy because of you. For he alone loses no one dear to him to whom all are dear in the one who is not lost. And who is this but our God, the God who made heaven and earth and fills them, because by filling them he made them? No one loses you except one who leaves you; and when he leaves you, where does he go, or where does he flee, but from you well pleased to you angry? For where does he not find your law in his own punishment? And “your law is truth,” and the truth is you.

“God of hosts, turn us, and show us your face, and we shall be saved.” For wherever the soul of a human being turns, anywhere other than to you, it is fastened to griefs, even if it is fastened to beautiful things outside you and outside itself. Yet these would be nothing unless they were from you. They rise and set; by rising they begin, as it were, to be, and they grow so as to be perfected, and once perfected they grow old and perish; and not all grow old, but all perish. So when they rise and strive to be, the more quickly they grow so as to be, the more they hasten not to be. Such is their measure. This much you gave them, because they are parts of things that do not all exist at once, but by departing and succeeding one another they all make up the universe of which they are parts. See, so too our speech is completed by sounding signs. For there will not be a whole sentence unless one word departs when it has sounded its parts, so that another may follow. Let my soul praise you for these things, God, creator of all, but let it not be fastened to them with the glue of love through the senses of the body. For they go where they were going, so as not to be, and they tear the soul with pestilent desires, since it wants to be and loves to rest in what it loves. But in them there is nowhere to rest, because they do not stand still: they flee, and who can follow them with the sense of the flesh? Or who can grasp them, even when they are present? For the sense of the flesh is slow, because it is the sense of the flesh: that is its measure. It is sufficient for the other purpose for which it was made, but it is not sufficient to hold things that run past from their due beginning to their due end. For in your Word, through which they are created, there they hear: “From here, and as far as this.”

Do not be vain, my soul, and do not let the ear of your heart grow deaf with the tumult of your vanity. You too, listen: the Word itself cries out for you to return, and there is the place of undisturbed rest, where love is not forsaken if it does not itself forsake. See, those things depart so that others may succeed them, and the lowest universe may consist of all its parts. “But do I depart anywhere?” says the Word of God. There fix your dwelling; there entrust whatever you have from there, my soul, wearied at least by deceptions. Entrust to the Truth whatever you have from the Truth, and you will lose nothing; and your decay will flower again, and “all your diseases will be healed,” and your fleeting parts will be reformed and renewed and bound tightly to you, and they will not lay you down where they descend, but will stand with you and abide before God, who always stands and abides.

Why do you follow your flesh, perversely turned? Let it follow you, once you are turned back. Whatever you perceive through it is in part, and you do not know the whole of which these are parts; and yet they delight you. But if the sense of your flesh were capable of grasping the whole, and had not itself, as your punishment, received a just limitation to a part of the universe, you would want whatever exists in the present to pass away, so that everything might please you more. For what we say, too, you hear through that same sense of the flesh, and you certainly do not want the syllables to stand still, but to fly past so that others may come and you may hear the whole. So it always is with all the things of which some one thing consists, when the things of which it consists do not all exist at once: all of them together delight more than each singly, if all could be perceived. But far better than these is he who made all things, and he is our God, and he does not depart, because nothing succeeds him.

If bodies please you, praise God for them and turn your love back to their maker, lest in the things that please you, you displease him. If souls please you, let them be loved in God, because they too are changeable and are made stable by being fixed in him; otherwise they would pass away and perish. So let them be loved in him, and carry off with you to him as many as you can, and say to them: “Let us love him; he made these things and he is not far away.” For he did not make them and go away; they are from him and in him. See where he is, where truth is tasted: he is most inward to the heart, but the heart has wandered from him. “Return to the heart, you transgressors,” and cling to him who made you. Stand with him, and you will stand; rest in him, and you will be at rest. Where are you going, into rough places? Where are you going? The good that you love is from him; but only insofar as it is toward him is it good and sweet; and it will rightly become bitter, because whatever is from him is wrongly loved if he is abandoned. Why do you still go on and on walking difficult and toilsome ways? There is no rest where you seek it. Seek what you seek, but it is not where you seek it. You seek a happy life in the region of death: it is not there. For how can there be a happy life where there is not even life?

And our very Life came down here and took away our death and killed it out of the abundance of his own life; and he thundered, crying out for us to return from here to him, into that secret place from which he came forth to us, first into the virgin womb itself, where the human creature, mortal flesh, was wedded to him, so as not to be forever mortal; and from there, “like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, he rejoiced like a giant to run his course.” For he did not delay, but ran, crying out by words, deeds, death, life, descent, ascent, crying out for us to return to him. And he departed from our eyes so that we might return to the heart and find him. For he went away, and see, he is here. He did not want to be with us long, and yet he did not leave us. For he went away to the place from which he never withdrew, because “the world was made through him,” and “he was in this world,” and “he came into this world to save sinners.” To him my soul confesses, and he heals it, “because it has sinned against him.” “Sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart?” Even after Life has come down, do you not want to go up and live? But where do you go up, when you are on high and “have set your mouth in heaven”? Come down, so that you may go up, and go up to God. For you fell by going up against God. Tell them these things, so that they may weep in the valley of weeping, and so carry them off with you to God; for you say these things to them by his Spirit, if you say them burning with the fire of love.

These things I did not know then, and I loved lower beauties and went down into the depths, and I said to my friends: “Do we love anything but the beautiful? What then is the beautiful? And what is beauty? What is it that attracts us and wins us to the things we love? For unless there were grace and beauty in them, they could in no way move us toward them.” And I noticed and saw that in bodies themselves there is one thing that is a kind of whole and is therefore beautiful, and another that is fitting because it is suitably adapted to something else, as a part of the body to its whole, or a shoe to a foot, and the like. And this reflection welled up in my mind from my inmost heart, and I wrote books On the Beautiful and the Fitting, two or three, I think; you know, God, for it has slipped my memory. For we do not have them; they have strayed from us, I do not know how.

But what moved me, Lord my God, to dedicate those books to Hierius, an orator of the city of Rome? I did not know him by sight, but I had come to love the man from the reputation for learning that he enjoyed; and I had heard some words of his, and they had pleased me. But he pleased me more because he pleased others, and they praised him to the skies, amazed that a Syrian, first trained in Greek eloquence, had afterwards become a marvelous speaker in Latin too, and was most learned in the things that belong to the study of wisdom. The man was praised, and he was loved in his absence. Does that love enter the heart of the hearer from the mouth of the one who praises? Not at all; but one lover is set on fire by another. For this is why one who is praised is loved: because he is believed to be commended by a praiser whose heart is not deceitful, that is, when one who loves him praises him.

For I loved people then by the judgment of people, not by yours, my God, in whom no one is deceived. But still, why was it not as one loves a famous charioteer or a hunter made notorious by popular enthusiasm, but quite differently and seriously, and in the way I would have liked to be praised myself? For I would not have wanted to be praised and loved as actors are, although I myself praised and loved them; I would rather have chosen to remain unknown than to be known in that way, and even to be hated rather than to be loved like that. Where are these weights of various and different loves distributed in a single soul? What is it that I love in another, which, unless I hated it, I would not detest and reject in myself, since each of us is a human being? For it is not as a good horse is loved by someone who would not want to be a horse even if he could; this must be said also of the actor, who shares our nature. Do I then love in a human being what I hate to be, though I am a human being? The human being himself is a great deep, whose very hairs you, Lord, have numbered, and they are not lost in you; and yet his hairs are easier to count than his feelings and the movements of his heart.

But that rhetorician was of the kind I loved in such a way that I wanted to be like him; and I wandered in conceit and “was carried about by every wind,” and yet was steered by you, very secretly. And how do I know, and how can I confess to you with certainty, that I had loved him more for the love of those who praised him than for the things for which he was praised? Because if those same people had not praised him but criticized him, and had related those very same things with criticism and scorn, I would not have been kindled and stirred toward him; and certainly the things would not have been different, nor the man himself, but only the feelings of those who spoke of him. See where the weak soul lies that does not yet cling to the solidity of truth. As the breezes of tongues blow from the breasts of those who give opinions, so it is carried and turned, twisted and twisted back, and the light is clouded over for it and the truth is not seen. And see, it is before us. And it was a great thing to me if my speech and my studies should become known to that man; if he approved them, I would burn more; but if he disapproved, my heart, vain and empty of your solidity, would be wounded. And yet I gladly turned over in my mind that treatise on the beautiful and the fitting which I had dedicated to him, holding it before the eye of my contemplation, and I admired it with no one to praise it with me.

But I did not yet see the hinge of so great a matter in your art, Almighty, “who alone do wonders”; and my mind went through bodily forms, and I defined and distinguished the beautiful as what is so in itself, and the fitting as what is becoming because it is suited to something else, and I supported this with bodily examples. And I turned to the nature of the mind, and the false opinion I held about spiritual things did not allow me to see the truth. The very force of truth rushed into my eyes, and I turned my throbbing mind away from incorporeal reality to lines and colors and swelling magnitudes; and because I could not see these in the mind, I thought I could not see my mind. And since in virtue I loved peace and in vice I hated discord, I noted unity in the one and a kind of division in the other; and in that unity I thought the rational mind and the nature of truth and of the highest good consisted, while in that division, wretch that I was, I supposed there was some substance of irrational life and a nature of the highest evil, which was not only a substance but actually life, and yet was not from you, my God, “from whom are all things.” And I called the first a Monad, as a mind without any sex, and the second a Dyad, anger in crimes and lust in shameful acts, not knowing what I was saying. For I did not know, nor had I learned, that no substance is evil, and that our mind itself is not the highest and unchangeable good.

For just as there are crimes if that movement of the mind in which impulse lies is vicious and throws itself about insolently and turbulently, and shameful acts if that affection of the soul by which carnal pleasures are drunk in is immoderate, so errors and false opinions defile life if the rational mind itself is vicious. So it was in me then: I did not know that it must be illumined by another light in order to share in truth, because it is not itself the nature of truth. “For you will light my lamp, Lord; my God, you will lighten my darkness”; and “from your fullness we have all received.” For you are “the true light that enlightens every human being coming into this world,” because “in you there is no change nor shadow of turning.”

But I strove toward you and was pushed back by you, so that I might taste death, because “you resist the proud.” And what is prouder than that I should assert, with amazing madness, that I was by nature what you are? For since I was changeable, and this was clear to me from the very fact that I desired to be wise so as to become better from worse, I nevertheless preferred to think that you too were changeable rather than that I was not what you are. So I was pushed back, and you resisted my windy neck, and I imagined bodily forms; and flesh as I was, I accused the flesh, and, “a spirit going away,” I did not return to you; and going on I went into things that do not exist, neither in you nor in me nor in the body, nor were they created for me by your truth, but they were invented by my vanity from bodies. And I would say to your little faithful ones, my fellow citizens, from whom I was exiled without knowing it, I would say to them, chattering and foolish: “Why then does the soul that God made err?” And I did not want it said to me, “Why then does God err?” And I would rather contend that your unchangeable substance was forced to err than confess that my changeable substance had strayed of its own accord and erred as a punishment.

And I was perhaps twenty-six or twenty-seven years old when I wrote those volumes, turning over within me bodily fictions that made a din in the ears of my heart, which I was straining, sweet Truth, toward your inner melody, as I thought about the beautiful and the fitting, longing to stand and hear you and to “rejoice with joy because of the bridegroom's voice”; and I could not, because I was snatched outside by the voices of my error and fell to the depths by the weight of my pride. For you did not “give joy and gladness to my hearing,” nor did my bones exult, since they had not been humbled.

And what did it profit me that when I was about twenty years old some writings of Aristotle came into my hands, which they call the Ten Categories (at whose name, when my teacher, the rhetorician of Carthage, and others who were considered learned, mentioned them with cheeks puffed out with conceit, I gaped in suspense as at something great and divine), and that I read them alone and understood them? When I discussed them with people who said they had understood them with difficulty, with the most learned teachers not only explaining them aloud but drawing many diagrams in the sand, they could tell me nothing about them that I had not already learned reading alone by myself. And they seemed to me to speak quite clearly about substances, such as a man, and what is in them, such as a man's shape, what kind it is, and his stature, how many feet tall, or relationship, whose brother he is, or where he is placed, or when he was born, or whether he stands or sits, or has shoes on or is armed, or does something or suffers something, and whatever innumerable things are found in these nine classes, of which I have given some examples, or in the class of substance itself.

What did this profit me, when it actually hindered me? For thinking that absolutely everything was comprehended in those ten categories, I tried to understand even you, my God, wonderfully simple and unchangeable, in that way, as if you too were the subject of your greatness or beauty, so that these would be in you as in a subject, as in a body; whereas your greatness and your beauty are you yourself, while a body is not great and beautiful by the fact that it is a body, since even if it were less great and less beautiful it would still be a body. For what I thought about you was falsehood, not truth, the fictions of my misery, not the firm foundations of your blessedness. For you had commanded, and so it came to pass in me, that the earth should bring forth thorns and thistles for me, and that with toil I should come to my bread.

And what did it profit me that I, then a most worthless slave of evil desires, read by myself and understood all the books of the so-called liberal arts that I could read? I rejoiced in them, and I did not know where whatever was true and certain in them came from. For I had my back to the light and my face toward the things that are lit; so my face, with which I saw the illuminated things, was not itself illuminated. Whatever I understood without great difficulty and with no one teaching me about the art of speaking and reasoning, about the dimensions of figures, about music and numbers, you know, Lord my God, because both quickness of understanding and sharpness of discernment are your gift. But I did not offer sacrifice to you from it. So it served me not for use but rather for ruin, because I took care to keep so good a portion of my substance in my own power, and I did not keep my strength for you, but went away from you into a far country to squander it on harlot desires. For what did a good thing profit me when I did not use it well? For I did not realize that those arts are understood with great difficulty even by studious and gifted people, except when I tried to explain them to such people, and the most excellent among them was the one who could follow my explanation without lagging.

But what did this profit me, when I thought that you, Lord God, the Truth, were a luminous and immense body and I a fragment of that body? Utter perversity! But so I was; and I do not blush, my God, to confess to you your mercies toward me and to call upon you, I who did not blush then to profess my blasphemies to people and to bark against you. What, then, did it profit me that my mind was nimble in those studies, and that so many knotty books were untied without the help of any human teacher, when I erred shamefully and with sacrilegious foulness in the teaching of piety? Or what great harm was it to your little ones that their minds were far slower, since they did not withdraw far from you, so that they could safely grow their feathers in the nest of your church and nourish the wings of love with the food of sound faith? O Lord our God, “let us hope in the shelter of your wings,” and protect us and carry us. You will carry us; you will carry us both as little ones and “even to old age you will carry us”; for when our strength is you, then it is strength, but when it is our own, it is weakness. Our good lives always with you, and because we turned away from it, we became perverse. Let us return now, Lord, so that we may not be overturned, because our good lives with you without any failing, and it is you yourself; and we do not fear that there will be nowhere to return to because we fell from there. For while we were absent, our house did not fall: your eternity.

Accept the sacrifice of my confessions from the hand of my tongue, which you formed and stirred up to confess to your name; and “heal all my bones, and let them say, Lord, who is like you?” For one who confesses to you does not teach you what is happening within him, because a closed heart does not shut out your eye, nor does human hardness repel your hand; but you loosen it when you will, either in mercy or in punishment, “and there is no one who can hide from your heat.” But let my soul praise you so that it may love you, and let it confess to you your mercies so that it may praise you. Your whole creation does not cease or fall silent in your praises: neither every human spirit, through a mouth turned toward you, nor animals and bodily things, through the mouths of those who contemplate them; so that our soul may rise to you from its weariness, leaning on the things you have made and passing over to you who made them wonderfully; and there is refreshment and true strength.

Let the restless and the wicked go and flee from you. You see them and distinguish their shadows; and see, all things with them are beautiful, while they themselves are foul. And how have they harmed you? Or in what have they dishonored your rule, which is just and whole from the heavens to the lowest things? For where did they flee when they fled from your face? Or where do you not find them? But they fled so as not to see you who see them, and, blinded, to stumble against you (for you forsake nothing that you have made); so that the unjust might stumble against you and be justly troubled, withdrawing themselves from your gentleness and stumbling against your uprightness and falling upon your severity. Evidently they do not know that you are everywhere, you whom no place encloses, and that you alone are present even to those who put themselves far from you. Let them then turn and seek you, because you have not forsaken your creation as they forsook their creator. Let them turn, and see, there you are in their heart, in the heart of those who confess to you and throw themselves upon you and weep in your bosom after their difficult ways; and you gently wipe away their tears, and they weep the more and rejoice in their weeping, because it is you, Lord, not some human being, flesh and blood, but you, Lord, who made them, who remake and console them. And where was I when I was seeking you? You were before me, but I had departed even from myself and could not find myself: how much less you!

I will set out in the sight of my God that twenty-ninth year of my age. A certain bishop of the Manichees had already come to Carthage, Faustus by name, a great snare of the devil; and many were entangled in him by the allure of his smooth speech. Although I praised it, I nevertheless distinguished it from the truth of the things I was eager to learn; and I looked not at the dish of speech but at what food of knowledge that Faustus, so renowned among them, set before me to eat. For his reputation had preceded him, that he was most skilled in all honorable learning and especially well educated in the liberal disciplines. And since I had read many works of the philosophers and retained them in memory, I compared some of their teachings with those long fables of the Manichees, and what the philosophers said seemed to me more probable, those who “were able to know so much that they could assess the world,” though they did not find its Lord at all. For you are great, Lord, and you “regard the lowly, but know the lofty from afar”; you draw near only to the broken of heart, and you are not found by the proud, not even if with curious skill they number the stars and the sand, and measure the regions of the sky, and trace the paths of the heavenly bodies.

For they search these things out with their mind and the intelligence you gave them, and they have discovered much, and foretold many years in advance eclipses of the sun and moon, on what day, at what hour, and how great a part would be eclipsed; and their calculation did not deceive them. It happened as they foretold. And they wrote down the rules they had discovered, and these are read today, and from them it is foretold in what year and what month of the year and what day of the month and what hour of the day, and how much of its light, the moon or the sun will be eclipsed; and it will happen as foretold. People who do not know these things marvel and are amazed, and those who know them exult and are lifted up; and, withdrawing through impious pride and falling away from your light, they foresee an eclipse of the sun so long before, and do not see their own in the present. For they do not ask with reverence where the intelligence comes from by which they investigate these things. And finding that you made them, they do not give themselves to you, so that you may preserve what you made; nor do they slay to you what they had made of themselves, and slaughter their high-flying pride like the birds, and their curiosity, by which they walk the hidden paths of the deep, like the fish of the sea, and their self-indulgence like the beasts of the field, so that you, God, a consuming fire, may burn up their dead cares and re-create them immortally.

But they did not know the way, your Word, through whom you made the things they number, and the very people who number, and the sense by which they perceive what they number, and the mind from which they number; and “of your wisdom there is no number.” But the Only-begotten himself “became for us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification,” and was numbered among us, and paid tribute to Caesar. They did not know this way, by which to come down from themselves to him and through him to go up to him. They did not know this way, and they think themselves lofty with the stars and shining; and see, they have fallen to the earth, “and their foolish heart was darkened.” They say many true things about the creation, and they do not seek with reverence the Truth, the maker of creation, and so they do not find him; or if they find him, “knowing God, they do not honor him as God or give thanks, but become vain in their thoughts, and say that they are wise,” attributing to themselves what is yours; and by this, with most perverse blindness, they strive also to attribute to you what is theirs, namely, bringing lies against you, who are the Truth, and “changing the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and serpents,” and they “change your truth into a lie, and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator.”

Still, I retained many true things said by them about the creation itself, and their account made sense to me through calculations, the order of the seasons, and the visible evidence of the stars; and I compared it with the sayings of Mani, who wrote a great deal on these subjects, raving most copiously; and I found in him no account of the solstices and equinoxes, nor of eclipses, nor of anything of the kind I had learned in the books of worldly wisdom. There I was ordered to believe, and it did not agree with those accounts verified by calculation and by my own eyes, but was far different.

Does anyone who knows these things, Lord God of truth, please you for that reason? For unhappy is the one who knows all those things but does not know you; and happy is the one who knows you, even if he does not know them. And one who knows both you and them is not happier because of them, but is happy because of you alone, if, knowing you, he glorifies you as you are and gives thanks and does not become vain in his thoughts. For just as one who knows how to possess a tree and gives you thanks for its use, though he does not know how many cubits high it is or how wide it spreads, is better than one who measures it and counts all its branches but neither possesses it nor knows or loves its creator; so it is foolish to doubt that the faithful man, “to whom the whole world of riches belongs,” and who, “as having nothing, possesses all things” by clinging to you, whom all things serve, even if he does not know the circuits of the Great Bear, is certainly better than one who measures the sky and numbers the stars and weighs the elements and neglects you, who have “ordered all things in measure and number and weight.”

But who asked some Manichee or other to write about these things too, without skill in which piety could be learned? For you said to man, “See, piety is wisdom.” He could have been ignorant of this even if he had known those things perfectly; but since he did not know those things and yet most shamelessly dared to teach them, he could not possibly know piety. For it is vanity to make a profession of these worldly things even when one knows them, but piety to confess to you. So this deviant spoke a great deal about these things, with the result that, when he was refuted by those who had truly learned them, it became obvious what his understanding was in other matters that are more hidden. For he did not want to be thought little of, but tried to persuade people that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter and enricher of your faithful, was personally in him with full authority. So when he was caught saying false things about the sky and the stars and the motions of the sun and moon, although these things do not belong to the teaching of religion, it was plain enough that his presumption was sacrilegious, since he stated things that were not only unknown to him but also false, with such mad vanity of pride that he tried to attribute them to himself as to a divine person.

For when I hear some Christian brother or other who does not know these things and thinks one thing is another, I look patiently on the man holding his opinion; and I do not see that it harms him, provided he does not believe things unworthy of you, Lord, creator of all, even if he happens not to know the position and state of bodily creation. It does harm him, however, if he thinks this belongs to the very form of the doctrine of piety and dares to affirm stubbornly what he does not know. But even such weakness in the cradle of faith is borne by mother Charity, until the new man grows up “to a perfect man” and cannot “be carried about by every wind of doctrine.” But in the case of one who dared to make himself a teacher, an authority, a guide and leader of those he persuaded of these things, so that those who followed him thought they were following not just any man but your Holy Spirit, who would not judge that such madness, wherever he was shown to have said false things, should be detested and cast far away? But I had not yet clearly established whether the alternations of longer and shorter days and nights, and of night and day itself, and the eclipses of the lights, and whatever else of this kind I had read in other books, could also be explained according to his words; so that, if perhaps they could, it would become uncertain to me whether things were this way or that, but I would set his authority before my belief because of his reputed holiness.

And for almost those nine years during which, with a wandering mind, I was their hearer, I awaited the coming of this Faustus with a desire strained to excess. For the others of them whom I happened to meet, who failed to answer the questions I raised about such matters, kept promising me him, at whose coming, once we had conferred, these questions, and any greater ones I might ask, would be explained most easily and clearly. So when he came, I found him a pleasant man, agreeable in speech, and chattering the very things they usually say, but much more sweetly. But what use to my thirst was the most elegant server of precious cups? My ears were already sated with such things; nor did they seem better to me because they were better said, nor true because eloquent, nor was the soul wise because the face was fitting and the speech graceful. Those who had promised him to me were not good judges of things, and so he seemed prudent and wise to them because his speaking delighted them. I have also known another kind of people who hold even truth suspect and refuse to accept it if it is offered in polished and rich language. But you, my God, had already taught me in wonderful and hidden ways; and I believe that it was you who taught me, because it is true, and there is no other teacher of truth but you, wherever and from wherever it shines forth. So I had already learned from you that nothing ought to seem true because it is said eloquently, nor false because the signs from the lips sound clumsy; nor, again, true because it is stated unpolished, nor false because the speech is splendid; but that wisdom and folly are like wholesome and unwholesome food, and that both kinds of food can be served in ornate and plain words, as in elegant and rustic dishes.

So my eagerness, with which I had awaited that man for so long, was indeed delighted by his lively manner and feeling in debate and by his apt words, which came readily to clothe his thoughts. I was delighted, and with many, or even more than many, I praised and extolled him. But it annoyed me that in the gathering of his hearers I was not allowed to put my questions to him and share the concerns that troubled me by conferring with him informally, giving and receiving arguments. When I was able to do this, and with my friends began to engage his attention at a time when it was not unfitting to discuss in turn, and I brought forward some things that were troubling me, I found first that he was a man without knowledge of the liberal disciplines except grammar, and that only in the ordinary way. And because he had read some of Cicero's speeches and a very few books of Seneca, and some of the poets, and such volumes of his own sect as were written in Latin and in good style, and because he had daily practice in speaking, he had a ready eloquence, which became more acceptable and more seductive through the control of his intelligence and a certain natural charm. Is it so, as I recall it, Lord my God, judge of my conscience? My heart and my memory are before you, who were then dealing with me in the hidden secret of your providence, and were already turning my shameful errors before my face, so that I might see them and hate them.

For after it had become quite clear to me that he was unskilled in those arts in which I had thought he excelled, I began to despair of his being able to open up and resolve the things that troubled me; one could indeed be ignorant of them and still hold the truth of piety, but only if one were not a Manichee. For their books are full of very long fables about the sky and the stars and the sun and moon; and I no longer thought he could explain to me with precision what I especially wanted, namely, by comparing the calculations I had read elsewhere, whether things were rather as they were contained in Mani's books, or at least whether an equally good account could be given from them. But when I brought these matters forward to be considered and discussed, he very modestly did not dare to take up the burden. For he knew that he did not know these things and was not ashamed to confess it. He was not one of those many talkers I had endured, who tried to teach me these things and said nothing. This man had a heart, if not right toward you, at least not too incautious toward himself. He was not altogether ignorant of his own ignorance, and he did not want to be trapped by rash argument in a position from which there would be no way out and no easy return. For this too he pleased me more. For the moderation of a mind that confesses is more beautiful than the things I wanted to know. And I found him like this in all the more difficult and subtle questions.

So when the zeal I had directed toward Mani's writings was broken, and I despaired still more of their other teachers, since in many of the questions that troubled me the famous man had shown himself to be as I have said, I began to spend time with him for the sake of his own zeal, with which he burned for the literature I was then teaching young men as rhetorician of Carthage, and to read with him either what he wanted to hear or what I thought suited to such a mind. But all my effort to advance in that sect, which I had resolved on, collapsed completely once I came to know that man; not that I separated from them altogether, but as if I could find nothing better, I had decided to be content for the time being with what I had somehow rushed into, unless by chance something more worth choosing should shine forth. So that Faustus, who was a snare of death to many, had already begun, without willing or knowing it, to loosen the snare in which I was caught. For your hands, my God, in the hidden depth of your providence, did not abandon my soul; and from the blood of my mother's heart, through her tears day and night, a sacrifice was offered to you for me; and you dealt with me in wonderful ways. You did it, my God. For “by the Lord a man's steps are directed, and he will choose his way.” Or what provision for salvation is there but your hand, remaking what it made?

So you dealt with me so that I was persuaded to go to Rome and to teach there, rather than at Carthage, what I was teaching. And how I was persuaded of this I will not pass over confessing to you, because in these things too your deepest counsels and your mercy, most present to us, are to be pondered and proclaimed. I did not want to go to Rome because greater earnings and greater standing were promised me by the friends who urged it, although these things too drew my mind at that time; but the greatest and almost the only reason was that I heard that young men studied more quietly there and were kept in check by a more orderly discipline, so that they did not rush wantonly and at random into the school of a teacher who was not their own, and were not admitted at all unless he permitted it. At Carthage, on the other hand, the license of students is foul and unrestrained: they burst in shamelessly and, with an almost frenzied look, disrupt the order that each teacher has set up for the progress of his pupils. They do many outrageous things with amazing stupidity, things that would be punishable by law if custom were not their patron; and this shows them to be all the more wretched, since they do as if it were permitted what will never be permitted by your eternal law, and they think they do it with impunity, when they are punished by the very blindness of doing it and suffer incomparably worse things than they do. So the manners I refused to make my own when I was a student I was forced to endure in others when I was a teacher; and so I was pleased to go where all who knew said such things did not happen. But it was you, “my hope and my portion in the land of the living,” who, to make me change my country for the salvation of my soul, applied goads at Carthage to pull me away, and set before me allurements at Rome to draw me there, through people who love a dead life, doing mad things here and promising vain things there; and to correct my steps you secretly used both their perversity and mine. For those who disturbed my peace were blind with a foul frenzy, and those who invited me elsewhere savored of the earth; while I, who detested real misery here, was seeking a false happiness there.

But why I was leaving here and going there, you knew, God, and you did not tell me or my mother, who grieved terribly at my departure and followed me as far as the sea. But I deceived her as she clung to me with all her strength, to call me back or to go with me; and I pretended that I did not want to leave a friend until the wind rose and he could sail. And I lied to my mother, and such a mother, and I got away. For this too you mercifully forgave me, preserving me, full of accursed filth, from the waters of the sea until the water of your grace, by which I would be washed and the rivers of my mother's eyes would be dried, with which she daily watered the ground beneath her face for me before you. Yet when she refused to go back without me, I barely persuaded her to stay that night in a place close to our ship, a memorial chapel of blessed Cyprian. But that night I secretly set out, and she did not; she stayed praying and weeping. And what did she ask of you, my God, with so many tears, but that you would not let me sail? But you, taking deep counsel and hearing the hinge of her desire, did not grant what she then asked, so that you might make me what she always asked. The wind blew and filled our sails and took the shore from our sight; and on that shore in the morning she was frantic with grief, and filled your ears with complaints and groans, which you disregarded, while you were snatching me away by my desires to put an end to those very desires, and her carnal longing was beaten with the just scourge of sorrow. For she loved to have me with her, as mothers do, but much more than many; and she did not know what joys you were going to make for her out of my absence. She did not know, and so she wept and wailed, and by those torments the remnant of Eve in her was shown, seeking with groaning what she had brought forth with groaning. And yet, after accusing me of deceit and cruelty, she turned again to praying to you for me, and went back to her usual life, and I went to Rome.

And see, there I was received with the scourge of bodily sickness, and I was already going to the underworld, carrying all the evils I had committed against you and myself and others, many and grievous, besides the bond of original sin by which “we all die in Adam.” For you had not yet forgiven me any of them in Christ, nor had he by his cross dissolved the enmities I had contracted with you by my sins. For how could he dissolve them on the cross of a phantasm, which is what I had believed about him? So the more false the death of his flesh seemed to me, the more real was the death of my soul; and the more real the death of his flesh was, the more false was the life of my soul, which did not believe it. And as the fever grew worse, I was already going and perishing. For where would I have gone, if I had departed from here then, but into the fire and the torments my deeds deserved in the truth of your order? And she did not know this, and yet she prayed for me in her absence. But you, present everywhere, heard her where she was, and where I was you had mercy on me, so that I recovered the health of my body, though still sick in my sacrilegious heart. For in that great danger I did not desire your baptism; and I was better as a boy, when I begged for it from my mother's devotion, as I have already recalled and confessed. But I had grown up to my own disgrace, and in my madness I laughed at the counsels of your medicine, you who did not allow me, being such, to die twice. If my mother's heart had been struck by that wound, it would never have healed. For I cannot say enough what feeling she had for me, and with how much greater anxiety she was in labor with me in the spirit than she had borne me in the flesh.

So I do not see how she would have been healed if such a death of mine had pierced the heart of her love. And where would so many prayers have been, so frequent and without ceasing? Nowhere but with you. Or would you, God of mercies, despise the “contrite and humbled heart” of a chaste and sober widow, frequent in almsgiving, attentive and serving to your saints, letting no day pass without an offering at your altar, coming to your church twice a day, morning and evening, without fail, not for empty tales and old women's chatter, but so that she might hear you in your words and you might hear her in her prayers? Would you, by whose gift she was such, despise and reject from your help the tears of such a woman, by which she asked of you not gold or silver or any fleeting or changeable good, but the salvation of her son's soul? By no means, Lord; rather you were present and heard her, and you acted in the order in which you had predestined it to be done. Far be it that you should deceive her in those visions and answers of yours, those I have mentioned and those I have not, which she held in her faithful heart and, always praying, pressed upon you like your own signed promissory notes. For you deign, because “your mercy is forever,” to become a debtor by your promises to those whose debts you forgive entirely.

So you restored me from that sickness and saved “the son of your handmaid,” for the time being in body, so that there might be someone to whom you could give a better and more certain salvation. And even then at Rome I associated with those false and deceiving “saints”: not only with their hearers, among whom was the man in whose house I had fallen ill and recovered, but also with those they call the elect. For it still seemed to me that it is not we who sin, but some other nature in us that sins; and it pleased my pride to be free of blame, and when I had done something evil, not to confess that I had done it, so that you might “heal my soul, because it had sinned against you,” but I loved to excuse myself and accuse some other thing that was with me and was not I. But in truth it was all I, and my impiety had divided me against myself; and that sin was the more incurable because I did not think myself a sinner; and it was an execrable iniquity that I preferred you, almighty God, to be overcome in me to my destruction, rather than myself to be overcome by you to my salvation. So you had not yet “set a guard on my mouth and a door of restraint about my lips, that my heart might not turn aside to evil words, to make excuses in sins with men who work iniquity”; and so I still associated with their elect, though I despaired of being able to make progress in that false doctrine; and even the things with which I had decided to be content if I found nothing better, I now held more loosely and carelessly.

For the thought also arose in me that the philosophers called Academics had been wiser than the rest, because they had held that everything should be doubted and had concluded that nothing true can be grasped by a human being. For so they seemed to me to have plainly thought, as they are commonly taken to have done, since I did not yet understand their intention. Nor did I hesitate to restrain my host from the excessive confidence I perceived he had in the fabulous things of which the Manichaean books are full. Yet I enjoyed their friendship more intimately than that of other people who had not been in that heresy. I no longer defended it with my former zeal; but still my familiarity with them (for Rome concealed many of them) made me slower to look for anything else, especially since I despaired of finding the truth in your church, Lord of heaven and earth, creator of all things visible and invisible, from which they had turned me away. And it seemed to me very shameful to believe that you had the shape of human flesh and were bounded by the bodily outlines of our limbs. And because, when I wanted to think of my God, I did not know how to think of anything but bodily masses (for it did not seem to me that anything existed that was not such), this was the greatest and almost the only cause of my inevitable error.

For from this I also believed that evil was some such substance and had its own mass, foul and misshapen, either dense, which they called earth, or thin and subtle, like the body of air, which they imagine as a malignant mind creeping through that earth. And because such piety as I had compelled me to believe that the good God had created no evil nature, I set up two masses opposed to each other, both infinite, but the evil one more narrowly, the good one more largely; and from this pestilent beginning the other sacrileges followed. For when my mind tried to run back to the catholic faith, it was driven back, because what I thought was the catholic faith was not the catholic faith. And it seemed to me more pious to believe you, my God, to whom your mercies toward me confess, to be infinite 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 that you were finite, than to think you bounded on all sides in the form of a human body. And it seemed to me better to believe that you had created no evil (which in my ignorance seemed to me not only some substance but even a bodily one, since I did not know how to think even of the mind except as a subtle body, spread out through the spaces of place) than to believe that the kind of nature of evil I imagined came from you. Our Savior himself too, your only-begotten, I thought of as if extended for our salvation from the mass of your most luminous bulk, so that I believed nothing about him except what I could imagine in my vanity. So I thought that such a nature as his could not be born of the Virgin Mary without being mingled with flesh; and I did not see how it could be mingled and not defiled, picturing it as I did. So I was afraid to believe him incarnate, lest I be forced to believe him defiled by the flesh. Now your spiritual ones will laugh at me gently and lovingly if they read of these confusions of mine; but such I was.

Next, I did not think that what they had criticized in your Scriptures could be defended; yet sometimes I did want to discuss the points one by one with someone very learned in those books and find out what he thought of them. For already at Carthage the speeches of a certain Elpidius, speaking and debating face to face against those same Manichees, had begun to move me, since he brought forward such things from the Scriptures as could not easily be resisted. And their reply seemed weak to me; indeed they did not readily bring it out in public, but only to us in private: they said that the Scriptures of the New Testament had been falsified by some people or other who wanted to insert the Jewish law into the Christian faith; yet they themselves produced no uncorrupted copies. But what most held me captive and, as it were, stifled and weighed me down, as I thought in bodily terms, were those masses, under which I panted and could not breathe the clear and simple air of your truth.

So I had begun diligently to do what I had come for, to teach the art of rhetoric at Rome, first gathering some students at my house, to whom and through whom I had begun to become known. And see, I learned that other things were done at Rome which I had not had to endure in Africa. For it was made clear to me that those “overturnings” by abandoned youths did not happen there; “but suddenly,” they said, “to avoid paying their teacher his fee, a number of young men conspire and transfer themselves to another, breakers of faith, to whom justice is cheap compared with love of money.” My heart hated these too, though not with a perfect hatred. For perhaps I hated what I was going to suffer from them more than the fact that they did what was unlawful to anyone. Certainly such people are base, and they commit fornication away from you by loving the fleeting mockeries of time and filthy gain, which soils the hand that grasps it, and by embracing a world that flees, while despising you who abide and call back and pardon the harlot human soul when it returns to you. And now I hate such crooked and twisted people, though I love them so that they may be corrected, that they may prefer to money the learning they study, and to that learning you, God, the Truth and abundance of certain good and most chaste peace. But then I was more unwilling to suffer them as bad people for my own sake than willing that they should become good for yours.

So when a request came from Milan to the prefect of the city of Rome to provide that city with a teacher of rhetoric, with travel at public expense granted as well, I myself canvassed, through those very people drunk with Manichaean vanities (to be rid of whom I was going, though neither they nor I knew it), that Symmachus, then prefect, should test me by setting a speech and send me. And I came to Milan, to Ambrose the bishop, known throughout the world as among the best, your devout worshiper, whose eloquence at that time was vigorously ministering to your people “the fat of your wheat,” “the gladness of oil,” and the sober intoxication of your wine. To him I was led by you without knowing it, so that through him I might be led to you knowing it. That man of God received me like a father and welcomed my coming as a bishop should. And I began to love him, at first not as a teacher of the truth, which I utterly despaired of finding in your church, but as a man who was kind to me. I listened eagerly when he preached to the people, not with the intention I should have had, but as if testing his eloquence, whether it matched his reputation or flowed more or less fully than was reported; and I hung intently on his words, but stood by uninterested in and scornful of the content; and I delighted in the sweetness of his speech, which was more learned, but less cheerful and soothing, than Faustus's in manner of speaking. But as to the content itself there was no comparison: for the one wandered astray in Manichaean deceptions, while the other taught salvation most soundly. But “salvation is far from sinners,” such as I then was present; and yet I was drawing nearer, gradually and without knowing it.

For while I did not trouble to learn what he said, but only to hear how he said it (for that empty concern was all that remained to me, now that I despaired that a way to you lay open for a human being), the content too, which I disregarded, came into my mind together with the words, which I loved. For I could not separate them. And while I opened my heart to take in how eloquently he spoke, there entered at the same time how truly he spoke, though by degrees. For first these things too began to seem to me defensible, and I began to think that the catholic faith, for which I had supposed nothing could be said against the attacks of the Manichees, could be asserted without shame, especially after I had heard one and another, and often, of the riddles of the Old Testament writings resolved, which had killed me when I took them literally. So when many passages of those books had been expounded spiritually, I began to blame that despair of mine, at least in so far as I had believed that no resistance at all could be made to those who hated and mocked the Law and the Prophets. Yet I did not therefore feel that I must hold to the catholic way, because it too could have its learned defenders who refuted objections fully and not absurdly; nor did I think that what I held must therefore be condemned, because the two sides were equal in their defense. For the catholic faith did not seem to me defeated, yet it did not yet appear victorious.

Then I bent my mind vigorously to see whether I could by some certain proofs convict the Manichees of falsehood. If I could have conceived of a spiritual substance, all those contrivances would at once have been dissolved and thrown out of my mind; but I could not. Nevertheless, regarding the very body of this world and all the nature that the sense of the flesh can reach, I judged, as I considered and compared more and more, that many of the philosophers had held views far more probable. So, in the manner of the Academics as they are commonly understood, doubting everything and wavering among all things, I decided that the Manichees at least must be abandoned, not thinking that during that very time of my doubt I should remain in a sect to which I already preferred some philosophers. Yet to those philosophers, because they were without the saving name of Christ, I altogether refused to entrust the healing of my soul's sickness. So I decided to remain a catechumen in the catholic church, commended to me by my parents, until something certain should shine forth by which to direct my course.

“My hope from my youth,” where were you to me, and where had you withdrawn? Had you not made me and distinguished me from the four-footed beasts and the birds of the sky? You had made me wiser, and yet I walked through darkness and on slippery ground, and I sought you outside myself and did not find the God of my heart; and I had come into the depth of the sea, and I lost confidence and despaired of finding the truth. My mother had already come to me, strong in her devotion, following me by land and sea and secure in you in all dangers. For even in the perils of the sea she comforted the sailors themselves, by whom inexperienced travelers on the deep are usually comforted when they are alarmed, promising them a safe arrival, because you had promised this to her in a vision. And she found me in grave danger through despair of finding the truth. Yet when I told her that I was no longer a Manichee, though not a catholic Christian either, she did not leap for joy as if she had heard something unexpected, since she had already become secure about that part of my misery in which she wept for me as one dead but to be raised by you, and carried me out on the bier of her thought, so that you might say to the widow's son, “Young man, I say to you, arise,” 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 turbulent exultation when she heard that so great a part of what she daily wept to you for had already been done: that I had not yet attained the truth, but had already been rescued from falsehood. Rather, because she was certain that you would give what remained, since you had promised the whole, she answered me very calmly and with a heart full of confidence that she believed in Christ that before she departed this life she would see me a faithful catholic. This, indeed, she said to me. But to you, fountain of mercies, she poured out more frequent prayers and tears, that you would hasten your help and lighten my darkness; and she ran more eagerly to church and hung on the lips of Ambrose, on “the fountain of water springing up to eternal life.” She loved that man as an angel of God, because she had learned that it was through him that I had meanwhile been brought to that doubtful wavering, through which she presumed with certainty that I would pass from sickness to health, after an intervening sharper danger, like the paroxysm that physicians call the crisis.

So when she had brought porridge and bread and unmixed wine to the shrines of the saints, as she used to do in Africa, and was stopped by the doorkeeper, as soon as she learned that the bishop had forbidden it, she accepted it so devoutly and obediently that I myself was amazed how readily she became an accuser of her own custom rather than a critic of his prohibition. For no love of wine besieged her spirit and goaded her to hatred of the truth, as it does many men and women who are sickened by a song of sobriety as drunkards are by a watered drink. But when she had brought her basket with the customary food to be tasted first and then shared, she never set out more than one small cup, mixed to suit her very sober palate, from which to take a sip out of respect; and if there were many shrines of the dead to be honored in that way, she carried around the same single cup to set down everywhere, and shared it with those present in tiny sips, by then not only very watery but quite lukewarm, because she sought devotion there, not pleasure. So when she discovered that the famous preacher and master of piety had commanded that these things not be done even by those who did them soberly, so that no occasion for gorging might be given to drunkards, and because these quasi-funeral feasts were very like the superstition of the pagans, she abstained most willingly; and in place of a basket full of the fruits of the earth she had learned to bring to the shrines of the martyrs a heart full of purer prayers, so that she might give what she could to the needy, and so that the communion of the Lord's body might be celebrated there, in imitation of whose passion the martyrs were sacrificed and crowned. Yet it seems to me, Lord my God (and so my heart is on this matter in your sight), that my mother would perhaps not easily have given way on cutting off this custom if it had been forbidden by someone else whom she did not love as she loved Ambrose. She loved him most of all for the sake of my salvation, and he loved her for her most devout way of life, in which, “fervent in spirit” in good works, she frequented the church; so that often, when he saw me, he would break out in her praise, congratulating me on having such a mother, not knowing what kind of son she had in me, who doubted all those things and thought that the way of life could not be found at all.

Nor did I yet groan in prayer for you to help me; but my mind was intent on seeking and restless for debate, and I thought Ambrose himself a happy man by the world's standards, since such great powers honored him; only his celibacy seemed to me burdensome. But what hope he carried, what struggle he had against the temptations of his very eminence, what comfort in adversity, and what savory joys the hidden mouth of his heart tasted as it chewed on your bread, I could not guess and had not experienced. Nor did he know my turmoil or the pit of my danger. For I could not ask him what I wanted as I wanted, since crowds of busy people, whose weaknesses he served, shut me out from his ear and his mouth; and when he was not with them, which was a very short time, he was refreshing either his body with necessary food or his mind with reading. But when he read, his eyes moved over the pages and his heart searched out the sense, while his voice and tongue were silent. Often when we were present (for no one was forbidden to enter, nor was it the custom for visitors to be announced to him), we saw him reading silently like this, and never otherwise; and after sitting in long silence (for who would dare to burden one so intent?), we would go away. We guessed that in the little time he found for refreshing his mind, free from the din of other people's cases, he did not want to be distracted by anything else; and perhaps he was careful lest, if a listener were intent and in suspense, he might have to explain something the author he was reading had put rather obscurely, or discuss some more difficult questions, and, spending his time on this work, get through fewer volumes than he wished; though preserving his voice, which easily grew hoarse, may have been a more valid reason for reading silently. But whatever his purpose in doing it, that man certainly did it for a good one.

But certainly I was given no opportunity to inquire what I wanted of that holy oracle of yours, his heart, except when something could be heard briefly. But my turmoil required him to have plenty of leisure for me to pour it out to him, and never found it. I did hear him every Sunday “rightly handling the word of truth” among the people, and I became more and more convinced that all the knots of cunning slander that those deceivers of ours had tied against the divine books could be untied. And when I also discovered that your spiritual children, whom you have regenerated by grace from the catholic mother, do not understand the words that man was made by you “in your image” in such a way as to believe and think that you are bounded by the form of a human body (although I did not have even the faintest or most riddling notion of what a spiritual substance might be like), I blushed with joy that for so many years I had barked not against the catholic faith but against the fictions of carnal thoughts. I had been so rash and impious in that I had spoken in accusation of what I ought to have learned by inquiry. But you, most high and most near, most hidden and most present, who have no limbs larger and smaller, but are everywhere whole and nowhere in place, are certainly not of that bodily form; yet you made man in your image, and see, he is in place from head to foot.

So, since I did not know how this image of yours subsisted, I should have knocked and asked how it was to be believed, not insultingly objected as if it were believed as I supposed. So the sharper was the anxiety that gnawed at my inmost self about what I should hold as certain, the more ashamed I was to have been so long mocked and deceived by the promise of certainties, and with childish error and animosity to have chattered about so many uncertain things as if they were certain. For that they were false became clear to me later. But it was already certain that they were uncertain and that I had once held them as certain, when I accused your catholic church with blind contentiousness; though I had not yet discovered that it taught truth, it at least did not teach the things I so vehemently accused it of. So I was confounded and converted, and I rejoiced, my God, that the one church, the body of your only Son, in which the name of Christ was put upon me as an infant, did not relish childish trifles, nor held in its sound doctrine that you, the creator of all, were crammed into a space of place, however high and wide, bounded on all sides by the shape of human limbs.

I also rejoiced that the ancient writings of the Law and the Prophets were now set before me to be read not with that eye with which they had previously seemed absurd, when I criticized your saints as if they thought such things; in truth they did not think so. And gladly I heard Ambrose often say in his sermons to the people, as if he were most carefully commending it as a rule, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life,” when he drew aside the mystical veil and opened up spiritually those things which, taken according to the letter, seemed to teach perversity. He said nothing that offended me, although he said things whose truth I still did not know. I kept my heart from all assent, fearing a fall, and I was being killed all the more by that suspension. For I wanted to be made as certain of things I did not see as I was certain that seven and three make ten. For I was not so mad as to think that not even this could be grasped; but as I was of this, so I wanted to be of other things, whether bodily things not present to my senses, or spiritual things, of which I did not know how to think except bodily. And I could have been healed by believing, so that the sight of my mind, being purified, might be directed somehow toward your truth, which always abides and fails in nothing. But, as usually happens, one who has had a bad doctor is afraid to entrust himself even to a good one; so it was with the health of my soul, which certainly could not be healed except by believing, and, for fear of believing falsehoods, refused to be cured, resisting your hands, you who have prepared the medicines of faith and sprinkled them upon the diseases of the whole world and given them such great authority.

From this time, however, I began to prefer catholic doctrine. I felt that it acted more modestly and without any deceit in commanding that what was not demonstrated be believed (whether it could be demonstrated but perhaps not to everyone, or could not be demonstrated at all), than the Manichees did, who mocked credulity with a rash promise of knowledge and then commanded that so many utterly fabulous and absurd things be believed because they could not be demonstrated. Then little by little, Lord, handling and composing my heart with a most gentle and merciful hand, you persuaded me, as I considered how countless were the things I believed that I had not seen, nor had been present when they happened, such as so many things in the history of the nations, so many about places and cities I had never seen, so many on the word of friends, so many of doctors, so many of other people, which unless we believed them we would do nothing at all in this life; and, finally, with how unshakably firm a faith I held from what parents I was born, which I could not know unless I had believed what I heard: you persuaded me that it is not those who believe your books, which you have established with such great authority among almost all nations, who are to be blamed, but those who do not believe them; and that no one should be listened to who might say to me, “How do you know that those books were given to the human race by the Spirit of the one true and most truthful God?” For that was the very thing most to be believed, since no contentiousness of slanderous questions, of the many I had read among the philosophers contradicting one another, could ever wring from me the refusal to believe that you exist, whatever you are (which I did not know), and that the government of human affairs belongs to you.

But I believed sometimes more strongly, sometimes more weakly; yet I always believed both that you exist and that you care for us, even though I did not know either what should be thought about your substance or what way led, or led back, to you. And so, since we were too weak to find the truth by clear reason, and for this reason needed the authority of the holy writings, I had now begun to believe that you would in no way have given such surpassing authority to that Scripture throughout all lands unless you had willed that through it you should be believed and through it sought. For the absurdity that used to offend me in those writings, now that I had heard many of them plausibly explained, I referred to the depth of their mysteries; and their authority seemed to me all the more worthy of reverence and of holy faith because it was ready to hand for all to read and yet kept the dignity of its secret in a deeper understanding; offering itself to all in the plainest words and the humblest style of speech, and exercising the attention of those who are not “light of heart”; so that it might receive all in its popular embrace and bring a few through narrow openings to you, yet many more than if it did not stand out with so lofty an authority and draw the crowds into the bosom of its holy humility. I thought about these things and you were present to me; I sighed and you heard me; I wavered and you steered me; I went along the broad way of the world and you did not abandon me.

I gaped after honors, wealth, marriage, and you laughed at me. In those desires I suffered very bitter difficulties, and you were the more gracious to me the less you allowed anything that was not you to grow sweet to me. See my heart, Lord, you who willed that I should recall this and confess it to you. Now let my soul cling to you, which you have freed from so tenacious a birdlime of death. How wretched it was! And you pricked the feeling of its wound, so that, leaving all things, it might turn to you, who are above all things and without whom all things would be nothing, might turn and be healed. How wretched, then, I was, and how you acted to make me feel my wretchedness on that day when I was preparing to recite a panegyric to the emperor, in which I would tell many lies and be applauded for lying by those who knew it, and my heart was panting with these cares and seething with the fevers of consuming thoughts. Passing through a street in Milan, I noticed a poor beggar, already well fed, I believe, joking and merry. And I groaned and spoke with the friends who were with me of the many sorrows of our follies, because in all such efforts as those I was then laboring at, dragging the burden of my unhappiness under the goads of desire and making it heavier by dragging it, we wanted nothing but to reach a carefree joy, where that beggar had already gone before us, and where perhaps we would never arrive. For what he had already gained with a few coins begged from others, I was striving for by such painful windings and detours, namely, the joy of a temporal happiness. For he did not have true joy; but I too, with those ambitions, was seeking one much more false. And certainly he was glad, I was anxious; he was carefree, I was fearful. And if anyone had asked me whether I preferred to rejoice or to fear, I would have answered, “To rejoice”; again, if he had asked whether I preferred to be like the beggar or as I then was, I would have chosen myself, worn out with cares and fears, but perversely: surely not truly? For I ought not to have preferred myself to him because I was more learned, since I took no joy from it, but sought by it to please people, not to teach them, but only to please them. For this reason you broke my bones with the rod of your discipline.

Let them depart from my soul, then, who say to it, “It matters what one rejoices in.” That beggar rejoiced in drunkenness, you in glory. What glory, Lord? One that is not in you. For just as his was not true joy, so neither was that true glory; and it turned my mind still more. And he would sleep off his drunkenness that very night, while I had slept with mine and risen with it, and would sleep and rise with it again: see how many days! It does matter what one rejoices in, I know, and the joy of faithful hope is incomparably distant from that vanity. But even then there was a distance between us: he was certainly the happier, not only because he was drenched with cheerfulness while I was eviscerated by cares, but also because he had gained his wine by wishing people well, while I was seeking conceit by lying. I said much to this effect then to my dear friends, and I often noticed in these things how it was with me, and I found that it was bad with me, and I grieved and doubled that very badness; and if any prosperity smiled on me, I was loath to grasp it, because almost before it could be held it flew away.

We groaned together over these things, those of us who lived together as friends, and I discussed them especially with Alypius and Nebridius. Alypius was born in the same town as I, of parents who were leading citizens there, and was younger than I. For he had studied with me when I began to teach in our town, and afterwards at Carthage, and he loved me very much because I seemed to him good and learned, and I loved him for his great natural bent toward virtue, which was quite conspicuous at no great age. Yet the whirlpool of Carthaginian morals, in which frivolous shows are hotly pursued, had sucked him into the madness of the circus games. But while he was miserably rolling in it, and I was teaching rhetoric there in a public school, he did not yet attend my lectures, because of some quarrel that had arisen between his father and me. And I had found out that he loved the circus ruinously, and I was deeply distressed, because he seemed to me about to lose, or to have already lost, such great promise. But I had no opportunity to warn him and call him back by some restraint, either by the goodwill of friendship or by the right of a teacher. For I thought he shared his father's opinion of me; but he did not. So, disregarding his father's wishes in this matter, he had begun to greet me, coming into my lecture room, listening for a while, and leaving.

But it had slipped my mind to deal with him, so that so good a mind might not be destroyed by a blind and headlong passion for empty games. But you, Lord, who preside at the helm of all that you have created, had not forgotten that he would be among your sons, a bishop of your sacrament; and so that his correction might be openly attributed to you, you worked it through me, indeed, but without my knowing it. For one day, when I was sitting in my usual place with my students before me, he came, greeted me, sat down, and gave his attention to what was being discussed. By chance I had a text in hand; and while I was explaining it, it seemed opportune to use a comparison with the circus games, to make what I was conveying more pleasant and clearer, with biting mockery of those captivated by that madness. You know, our God, that I was not then thinking of curing Alypius of that plague. But he took it to himself and believed I had said it only because of him; and what another would have taken as a reason to be angry with me, the honorable young man took as a reason to be angry with himself and to love me more ardently. For you had said long ago and woven into your writings, “Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you.” But I had not rebuked him; you, however, who use all, knowing and unknowing, in the order you know (and that order is just), made of my heart and tongue burning coals, by which to sear and heal a mind of good promise that was wasting away. Let him be silent in your praises who does not consider your mercies, which confess to you from my inmost being. For indeed after those words he tore himself out of the deep pit in which he was willingly plunged and blinded with amazing pleasure, and he shook his mind with strong self-control, and all the filth of the circus fell away from him, and he never went there again. Then he overcame his father's reluctance so that he might have me as his teacher; the father gave way and allowed it. And beginning to hear me again, he became entangled with me in that superstition, loving in the Manichees their display of continence, which he thought true and genuine. But it was senseless and seductive, capturing precious souls not yet able to reach the height of virtue and easily deceived by the surface, though of a virtue only shadowed and feigned.

Not abandoning the worldly path that his parents had sung to him as a charm, he had gone ahead of me to Rome to study law; and there he was carried away, incredibly, by an incredible craving for gladiatorial shows. For although he turned away from such things and detested them, some friends and fellow students of his, whom he happened to meet on their way back from lunch, took him with friendly violence, though he vehemently refused and resisted, into the amphitheater during the days of the cruel and deadly games, while he said: “If you drag my body into that place, can you also fix my mind and my eyes on those shows? I will be there as one absent, and so I will overcome both you and them.” Hearing this, they nonetheless took him with them, perhaps wanting to find out whether he could do it. When they had arrived and taken what seats they could, the whole place was seething with the most savage pleasures. He closed the doors of his eyes and forbade his mind to go out to such great evils. If only he had also stopped his ears! For at some turn of the fight, when a huge shout from the whole crowd struck him violently, overcome by curiosity and as if prepared to despise and overcome whatever it was even if he saw it, he opened his eyes; and he was struck with a heavier wound in his soul than the man he wanted to see had received in his body, and he fell more wretchedly than the one whose fall had raised the shout. The shout entered through his ears and unlocked his eyes, so that there was a way to strike down and overthrow a mind that was bold rather than strong, and the weaker because it had presumed on itself when it should have relied on you. For as soon as he saw that blood, he drank in the savagery at the same time, and did not turn away but fixed his gaze, and drank in the frenzy without knowing it, and delighted in the wickedness of the contest and was intoxicated with bloody pleasure. And he was no longer the man who had come, but one of the crowd he had come to, and a true companion of those who had brought him. What more? He watched, he shouted, he burned, he carried away from there a madness that would goad him to return, not only with those who had dragged him there, but even ahead of them, dragging others. And yet from this you rescued him with your most powerful and merciful hand, and taught him to place his confidence not in himself but in you; but that was long afterward.

Nevertheless, this was already being stored up in his memory as medicine for the future. There was also that incident when he was still a student, already attending my lectures at Carthage, and was thinking over in the forum at midday what he was going to recite, as students usually practice; you allowed him to be arrested by the forum guards as a thief. I think you permitted this, our God, for no other reason than that he who was to be so great a man might already begin to learn how, in examining cases, one person should not easily be condemned by another through rash credulity. For he was walking alone in front of the tribunal with his tablets and stylus, when see, a young man, one of the students, the real thief, secretly bringing an axe, without his noticing, went in to the leaden railings that overhang the silversmiths' street and began to cut off the lead. But when the sound of the axe was heard, the silversmiths below murmured and sent men to seize whomever they might find. Hearing their voices, he left his tool and went off, afraid of being caught with it. Alypius, who had not seen him go in, noticed him going out and saw him leaving quickly; and wanting to know the reason, he went into the place, found the axe, and was standing looking at it in surprise, when see, those who had been sent found him alone holding the iron tool whose sound had roused them. They seized him, dragged him off, and, gathering the tenants of the forum, boasted that they had caught a thief red-handed; and from there he was being led away to be handed over for trial.

But he was to be taught only so far. For at once, Lord, you came to the aid of his innocence, of which you alone were witness. For as he was being led either to prison or to punishment, they were met by an architect who had chief charge of the public buildings. They were glad that he above all had met them, since they were usually suspected by him of stealing things that had disappeared from the forum, so that now at last, as they thought, he would know who was doing these things. But the man had often seen Alypius at the house of a certain senator whom he used to visit to pay his respects; and recognizing him at once, he took him by the hand and led him apart from the crowd, and asking the cause of so great a trouble, he heard what had happened; and he ordered all those who were present, raging and threatening, to come with him. And they came to the house of the young man who had committed the deed. There was a slave boy in front of the door, so small that, fearing nothing for his master from it, he could easily tell everything; for he had been with him in the forum as his attendant. When Alypius remembered him, he told the architect. The architect showed the axe to the boy, asking him whose it was. He said at once, “Ours,” and then, when questioned, disclosed the rest. So the case was transferred to that house, and the crowds that had already begun to triumph over him were confounded; and the future dispenser of your word and examiner of many cases in your church went away more experienced and better instructed.

I had found him, then, at Rome, and he clung to me with the strongest bond, and set out with me to Milan, so as not to leave me and to practice something of the law he had studied, more in accordance with his parents' wishes than his own. He had already sat three times as an assessor, with an integrity that amazed others, while he was more amazed at those who preferred gold to innocence. His character was also tested not only by the lure of greed but by 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 were bound by his favors and many subject through fear. He wanted to be allowed something or other, as was the custom of his power, which was forbidden by law; Alypius resisted. A bribe was promised; he laughed at it in his heart. Threats were held out; he trampled on them, while all marveled at so unusual a soul, which neither desired as a friend nor feared as an enemy a man so great and so widely renowned for countless ways of helping and harming. The judge himself, whose counselor he was, though he too did not want it done, did not openly refuse, but shifted the matter onto Alypius, saying that Alypius would not permit him; and in truth, if the judge had done it, Alypius would have left. He was almost tempted in one thing only, by his love of literature: to have books copied for himself at praetorian rates. But he consulted justice and turned his deliberation to the better course, judging the equity by which he was forbidden more useful than the power by which he was permitted. This is a small thing; but “he who is faithful in a little is faithful also in much,” nor will anything be empty that has come from the mouth of your truth: “If you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will give you the true? And if you have not been faithful in what is another's, who will give you what is your own?” Such was the man who then clung to me and wavered with me in deciding what way of life we should hold to.

Nebridius too had left his native place near Carthage, and Carthage itself, where he was very often to be found, had left his father's excellent country estate, had left his home and a mother who would not follow him, and had come to Milan for no other reason than to live with me in the most ardent pursuit of truth and wisdom. He sighed with us and wavered with us, a burning seeker of the happy life and a most acute investigator of the most difficult questions. So there were the mouths of three needy people, sighing out their want to one another and waiting upon you, that you might “give them their food in due season.” And in all the bitterness that, by your mercy, followed our worldly activities, when we looked for the end for which we were suffering these things, darkness met us; and we turned away groaning and said, “How long will this go on?” And we said this often, and saying it we did not leave those things, because nothing certain shone forth that we could grasp once they were abandoned.

And I was most amazed, as I anxiously recalled how long a time it had been since the nineteenth year of my age, when I had begun to burn with the pursuit of wisdom, planning, once I found it, to abandon all the empty hopes and lying madnesses of vain desires. And see, I was now in my thirtieth year, still stuck in the same mud, greedy to enjoy present things that fled and scattered me, while I said: “Tomorrow I will find it; see, it will appear plainly, and I will hold it; see, Faustus will come and explain everything. O great men, the Academics! Nothing certain for the conduct of life can be grasped. No, let us seek more diligently and not despair. See, the things in the church's books that seemed absurd are no longer absurd, and can be understood differently and in an honorable sense. I will plant my feet on the step where my parents placed me as a boy, until the clear truth is found. But where is it to be sought? When is it to be sought? Ambrose has no time; there is no time to read. Where do we look for the books themselves? From where, or when, do we buy them? From whom do we borrow them? Let times be set aside, let hours be allotted for the salvation of the soul. A great hope has arisen: the catholic faith does not teach what we thought and vainly accused it of. Its learned men hold it wicked to believe that God is bounded by the shape of a human body. And do we hesitate to knock, so that the rest may be opened? Our students take up the morning hours; what do we do with the rest? Why do we not do this? But when do we pay our respects to our more powerful friends, whose support we need? When do we prepare what the students pay for? When do we restore ourselves by relaxing our minds from the strain of our cares?”

“Let everything perish, and let us dismiss these vain and empty things; let us devote ourselves to the search for truth alone. Life is wretched, death uncertain; it may creep up suddenly: in what state shall we depart from here? And where must we learn what we have neglected here? Or rather, shall we not have to pay the penalty for this negligence? What if death itself cuts off and ends all care along with sensation? Then this too must be investigated. But far be it that it should be so. It is not for nothing, it is not empty, that the lofty summit of the authority of the Christian faith is spread through the whole world. Never would such great things be done for us by God if the life of the soul were also consumed by the death of the body. Why then do we delay to abandon worldly hope and devote ourselves wholly to seeking God and the happy life? But wait: these things too are pleasant, they have no small sweetness of their own; one's attention should not lightly be cut off from them, because it is shameful to return to them again. See, it is already a great thing to obtain some position of honor. And what more is to be desired in these things? We have plenty of powerful friends: if we hurry for nothing else, at least a governorship can be given. And a wife must be married with some money, so that she does not increase our expenses; and that will be the limit of desire. Many great men, most worthy of imitation, have devoted themselves to the pursuit of wisdom with their wives.”

While I said these things, and these winds shifted and drove my heart this way and that, time passed, and I was slow to turn to the Lord, and I put off from day to day living in you, but did not put off dying daily in myself. Loving the happy life, I feared it in its own dwelling, and fleeing from it I sought it. For I thought I would be too miserable if I were deprived of the embraces of a woman; and I did not think of the medicine of your mercy for healing that same weakness, because I had not tried it; and I believed continence to be a matter of one's own strength, which I was not aware of having, being so foolish as not to know that, as it is written, no one can be continent unless you give it. Certainly you would have given it, if I had knocked at your ears with inner groaning and with firm faith had cast my care upon you.

Alypius indeed kept me from marrying a wife, insisting that if I did, we could in no way live together in carefree leisure in the love of wisdom, as we had long desired. For he was himself extremely chaste in this matter even then, so much so that it was remarkable; for although he had had experience of intercourse at the beginning of his youth, he had not become attached to it, but rather regretted and scorned it, and from then on lived most continently. But I resisted him with the examples of those who, as married men, had cultivated wisdom, pleased God, and been faithful to their friends and loved them. From their greatness of soul I was indeed far removed; bound by the disease of the flesh with its deadly sweetness, I dragged my chain, afraid to be set free, and, as if my wound were jarred, I pushed away the words of one who advised me well, like the hand of one who would untie me. Moreover, through me the serpent spoke to Alypius himself, and wove and scattered through my tongue sweet snares in his path, in which his honorable and free feet might be entangled.

For when he marveled that I, whom he esteemed not a little, was so stuck in the birdlime of that pleasure as to affirm, whenever we discussed it between us, that I could in no way lead a celibate life; and when I defended myself, seeing him amazed, by saying that there was a great difference between what he had experienced hastily and furtively, which he now scarcely remembered and so could easily despise without any trouble, and the delights of my habit, to which, if the honorable name of marriage were added, he ought not to wonder why I could not spurn that life; he too began to desire marriage, not at all overcome by lust for such pleasure, but by curiosity. For he said he wanted to know what that was without which my life, which pleased him so much, seemed to me not a life but a punishment. For his mind, free from that chain, was amazed at my slavery, and by being amazed was going on to a desire to try it, about to come to the experience itself and from there perhaps to fall into the slavery that amazed him, since he wanted “to make a covenant with death”; and “he who loves danger will fall into it.” For neither of us gave more than slight thought to whatever dignity there is in marriage, in the duty of ordering a married life and raising children. For the most part it was the habit of satisfying an insatiable lust that held me captive and tormented me violently, while he was being drawn to captivity by wonder. So we were, until you, Most High, not abandoning our clay, had mercy on us wretches and came to our aid in wonderful and hidden ways.

And I was pressed without letup to marry a wife. I was already making my suit, and a promise was already being made, chiefly through my mother's efforts, so that once married I might be washed by saving baptism; she rejoiced that I was daily being made ready for it, and she noticed that her prayers and your promises were being fulfilled in my faith. Indeed, both at my request and from her own desire, she begged you daily with a strong cry of her heart to show her something in a vision about my future marriage, and you never would. She saw some vain and fanciful things, such as the force of a human spirit preoccupied with this matter produced, and she told them to me, not with the confidence she usually had when you showed her something, but making light of them. For she said she could tell, by some kind of taste which she could not explain in words, the difference between your revealing and her own soul's dreaming. Still I was pressed, and a girl was sought in marriage who was almost two years under the age for marrying; and because she was pleasing, we were waiting.

And many of us friends, turning over in our minds and talking about and detesting the turbulent troubles of human life, had almost decided to live in leisure away from the crowds. We planned that leisure so that whatever we could possess we would put into a common fund and make one household out of all, so that through the sincerity of friendship nothing would belong to this one or that, but what was made one out of all would belong wholly to each, and everything to everyone. It seemed to us that there could be about ten people in that community, and there were some very rich men among us, especially Romanianus, our fellow townsman, a close friend of mine from my early youth, whom serious turmoil in his affairs had then brought to the court. He pressed this plan most of all and had great authority in urging it, because his ample wealth far exceeded the others'. And we had agreed that two officers each year, like magistrates, should see to all necessary things, while the others were left in peace. But after we began to consider whether the women would allow this, those whom some of us already had and whom we wished to have, that whole plan, which we were shaping so well, fell apart in our hands and was broken and thrown aside. Then back to sighs and groans, and to steps following the broad and beaten ways of the world; for “many thoughts were in our heart, but your counsel abides forever.” By that counsel you laughed at our plans and prepared your own for us, intending to “give us food in due season,” and to “open your hand and fill our souls with blessing.”

Meanwhile my sins were multiplied, and the woman with whom I had been accustomed to sleep was torn from my side as an obstacle to marriage; my heart, where it clung to her, was cut and wounded and bleeding. She had returned to Africa, vowing to you that she would never know another man, leaving with me my natural son by her. But I, unhappy, not even imitating a woman, impatient of delay, since I was to receive the girl I was seeking only after two years, because I was not a lover of marriage but a slave of lust, procured another woman, certainly not a wife, so that the disease of my soul might be sustained and carried on, either intact or even increased, under the escort of lasting habit, into the realm of marriage. Nor was that wound of mine healed which had been made by cutting off the first; but after the fever and the sharpest pain it festered, and ached more coldly, as it were, but more desperately.

Praise to you, glory to you, fountain of mercies! I was becoming more wretched, and you nearer. Your right hand was already there, ready at any moment to snatch me from the mire and wash me, and I did not know it. Nothing called me back from a deeper whirlpool of carnal pleasures but the fear of death and of your future judgment, which, through all my various opinions, never left my breast. And I argued with my friends Alypius and Nebridius about the ends of good and evil, that in my mind Epicurus would have won the palm, had I not believed that after death there remains life for the soul and the consequences of our deserts, which Epicurus refused to believe. And I asked, if we were immortal and lived in perpetual bodily pleasure without any fear of losing it, why we would not be happy, or what else we would seek; not knowing that this very thing belonged to great misery, that, so sunk and blind, I could not conceive the light of goodness and of a beauty to be embraced for its own sake, which the eye of the flesh does not see and which is seen from within. Nor did I, wretch, consider from what spring it flowed to me that I discussed even these foul things with friends with pleasure, and that I could not be happy without friends, even according to the sense I then had, however great the abundance of carnal pleasures. These friends I certainly loved for their own sake, and I felt that I was loved by them for my own sake in return. O crooked ways! Woe to my rash soul, which hoped that if it withdrew from you it would have something better! Turned and turned again, on its back, on its sides, on its belly, all is hard, and you alone are rest. And see, you are here, and you free us from our wretched errors and set us on your way, and console us and say: “Run; I will carry you, and I will bring you through, and there too I will carry you.”

My evil and abominable adolescence was already dead, and I was passing into young manhood; the older I was in years, the more shameful in vanity, since I could not conceive of any substance except such as is usually seen with these eyes. I did not think of you, God, in the shape of a human body; ever since I began to hear something of wisdom I always shunned this, and I rejoiced to find it so in the faith of our spiritual mother, your catholic church. But what else to think of you did not occur to me. And I, a man, and such a man, tried to think of you, the supreme and only and true God; and with all my inmost being I believed you to be incorruptible and inviolable and unchangeable. For, though I did not know from where or how, I saw plainly and was certain that what can be corrupted is worse than what cannot, and I unhesitatingly preferred what cannot be violated to what can, and that what suffers no change is better than what can be changed. My heart cried out violently against all my phantasms, and with this one blow I tried to drive away from the sight of my mind the unclean swarm flying around it; and, scattered in the twinkling of an eye, see, it gathered again and was back, and rushed upon my sight and clouded it. So, although not in the form of a human body, I was still forced to think of something bodily, extended through spaces of place, either infused into the world or even diffused outside the world through infinite space; even that incorruptible, inviolable, and unchangeable being, which I preferred to the corruptible, violable, and changeable. For whatever I deprived of such spaces seemed to me to be nothing, absolutely nothing, not even a void, as if a body were taken out of a place and the place remained empty of every body, earthly, watery, airy, and heavenly, but still a place, empty, like a spacious nothing.

So I, grown gross of heart and not even clear to myself, thought that whatever was not extended through some spaces, or diffused, or massed together, or swelling, or did not take or could not take some such form, was absolutely nothing. For through such forms as my eyes usually travel, through such images my heart traveled; nor did I see that this very attention by which I formed those images was not something of that kind; and yet it would not form them unless it were something great. So I thought of you too, Life of my life, as great, penetrating through infinite spaces on every side the whole mass of the world, and beyond it in every direction through immensities without limit, so that the earth would have you, the sky would have you, all things would have you, and they would be bounded in you, but you nowhere. And just as the body of the air, this air above the earth, would not hinder the light of the sun from passing through it, penetrating it not by bursting or cutting it but by filling it wholly, so I thought that the body not only of the sky and air and sea but also of the earth was open to you, and penetrable in all its greatest and smallest parts to receive your presence, as by a hidden inspiration you govern within and without all the things you have created. So I supposed, because I could think of nothing else; but it was false. For in that way a larger part of the earth would have a larger part of you, and a smaller a smaller; and all things would be full of you in such a way that the body of an elephant would contain more of you than that of a sparrow, by as much as it was larger and occupied a larger place; and so you would make your parts present piecemeal to the parts of the world, large parts to large ones and small to small. But it is not so. But you had not yet lightened my darkness.

It was enough for me, Lord, against those deceived deceivers and talkative mutes, since your Word did not sound from them; it was enough, then, that argument which Nebridius used to put forward long ago at Carthage, and all of us who heard it were shaken: what would that nation of darkness, which they usually set up as an opposing mass, have done to you if you had refused to fight with it? For if the answer were that it would have done you some harm, you would be violable and corruptible. But if it were said that it could have done you no harm, no reason would be given for fighting, and for fighting in such a way that some portion of you, some member of yours, or offspring of your very substance, should be mingled with hostile powers and natures not created by you, and be so far corrupted by them and changed for the worse as to be turned from happiness into misery and need help to be rescued and cleansed; and that this is the soul, to which your Word, free, pure, and whole, came to the aid of it in its slavery, contamination, and corruption; yet the Word too would be corruptible, since it would be of one and the same substance. So if they said that you, whatever you are, that is, your substance by which you are, were incorruptible, all those things of theirs were false and abominable; but if corruptible, that very statement was false and to be abhorred at the first word. So this argument was enough against them, that they should be utterly vomited out from an oppressed heart, since they had no way out without horrible sacrilege of heart and tongue in thinking and speaking such things about you.

But I too, although I said and firmly held that our Lord, the true God, who made not only our souls but also our bodies, and not only our souls and bodies but all beings and all things, was undefilable and unalterable and in no part changeable, still did not grasp the cause of evil clearly and unraveled. Yet whatever it was, I saw that it must be sought in such a way that I would not be forced by it to believe the unchangeable God changeable, lest I myself should become what I was seeking. So I sought it without anxiety, and certain that what those people said was not true, whom I was fleeing with all my heart; because I saw that in seeking where evil comes from, they were filled with malice, by which they would rather think that your substance suffers evil than that their own does evil.

And I strained to see what I had heard, that the free choice of the will is the cause of our doing evil, and your just judgment the cause of our suffering it; and I could not see it clearly. So, trying to draw the sight of my mind up out of the depths, I sank again; and trying often, I sank again and again. For what raised me toward your light was that I knew I had a will as surely as I knew I was alive. So when I willed or did not will something, I was most certain that it was no one other than I who willed or did not will; and I was just beginning to notice that the cause of my sin lay there. But what I did unwillingly I saw that I suffered rather than did, and I judged it not a fault but a punishment, by which I quickly admitted I was not unjustly punished, thinking of you as just. But again I would say: “Who made me? Was it not my God, who is not only good but goodness itself? Where then does my willing evil and not willing good come from? So that there might be a reason for my being justly punished? Who put this in me and sowed in me this seedbed of bitterness, when I was made wholly by my most sweet God? If the devil is the author, where does the devil himself come from? And if he too was made a devil from a good angel by a perverse will, where did the evil will in him come from, by which he became a devil, when the angel was made wholly by the best creator?” By these thoughts I was pressed down again and stifled; but I was not brought down to that hell of error where no one confesses to you, while it is thought that you suffer evil rather than that a human being does it.

For I was striving to find the rest in the same way as I had already found that the incorruptible is better than the corruptible; and so I confessed that you, whatever you are, are incorruptible. For no soul ever could or ever will be able to conceive of anything better than you, who are the highest and best good. And since the incorruptible is most truly and certainly preferred to the corruptible, as I already preferred it, I could already reach in thought something better than my God, if you were not incorruptible. So where I saw that the incorruptible was to be preferred to the corruptible, there I ought to have sought you, and from there to notice where evil is, that is, where corruption itself comes from, by which your substance can in no way be violated. For corruption in no way whatever violates our God: by no will, by no necessity, by no unforeseen chance; since he is God, and what he wills for himself is good, and he himself is that same good; but to be corrupted is not good. Nor are you forced to anything against your will, because your will is not greater than your power. It would be greater if you yourself were greater than yourself: for the will and power of God is God himself. What is unforeseen to you, who know all things? And no nature exists except because you know it. And why do we say so much about why the substance which is God is not corruptible, when, if it were, it would not be God?

And I asked where evil comes from, and I asked badly, and I did not see the evil in my very inquiry. And I set before the sight of my spirit the whole creation, whatever we can see in it, such as earth and sea and air and stars and trees and mortal animals, and whatever we do not see in it, such as the firmament of heaven above, and all the angels and all its spiritual beings; but even these, as if they were bodies, arranged in their various places, as my imagination had it. And I made your creation one great mass, distinguished by kinds of bodies, whether real bodies or those I had invented in place of spirits; and I made it great, not as great as it was, which I could not know, but as great as I pleased, though bounded on every side; and you, Lord, surrounding it and penetrating it on every side, but infinite in every direction: as if there were a sea everywhere, and on every side through immensity nothing but an infinite sea, and it had within it a sponge, as large as you like, but still finite; that sponge would of course be full in every part from the immense sea. So I thought your creation, finite, was full of you, the infinite; and I said: “See God, and see what God has created; and God is good, and most mightily and incomparably surpasses these things; but still, being good, he created good things; and see how he surrounds and fills them. Where then is evil, and from where, and by what way did it creep in here? What is its root, and what its seed? Or does it not exist at all? Why then do we fear and guard against what does not exist? Or if we fear in vain, the fear itself is an evil, by which the heart is goaded and tormented for nothing; and so much the worse an evil, since there is nothing to fear and yet we fear. Therefore either there is evil that we fear, or this is the evil, that we fear. Where then does it come from, since God, being good, made all these things good? He, the greater and highest good, made lesser goods; but still both creator and created are all good. Where does evil come from? Or was there some evil matter from which he made them, and he formed and ordered it, but left something in it that he did not turn into good? Why that too? Was he powerless to turn and change the whole of it, so that no evil remained, though he is almighty? Finally, why did he want to make anything from it, and not rather, by the same omnipotence, cause it not to exist at all? Or could it exist against his will? Or if it was eternal, why did he let it be so for so long, through infinite spaces of time past, and only so much later decide to make something from it? Or if he suddenly wanted to do something, would not the Almighty rather have done this, that it should not exist, and he alone should be, the whole, true, highest, and infinite good? Or if it was not good that he who was good should not also make and establish something good, why did he not remove and reduce to nothing the matter that was evil, and himself establish good matter from which to create all things? For he would not be almighty if he could not establish something good without being helped by matter he had not himself established.” Such things I turned over in my wretched breast, weighed down with the most gnawing cares about the fear of death and about not finding the truth. Yet the faith of your Christ, our Lord and Savior, as held in the catholic church, was firmly fixed in my heart; in many points still unformed and wavering from the norm of doctrine; yet my mind did not abandon it, but rather drank it in more and more day by day.

By now I had also rejected the deceptive divinations and impious ravings of the astrologers. Let your mercies confess to you for this too, my God, from the inmost depths of my soul! For it was you, you alone (for who else calls us back from the death of all error but the Life that does not know how to die, and the Wisdom that enlightens needy minds while needing no light itself, by which the world is governed down to the fluttering leaves of the trees?), you who provided for my obstinacy, with which I had struggled against Vindicianus, a shrewd old man, and Nebridius, a young man of admirable soul. The former vehemently affirmed, and the latter, though with some hesitation, often said, that there was no art of foreseeing the future, but that human guesses often have the force of chance, and that by saying many things many that would happen are said, without those who say them knowing it, but hitting upon them by not keeping silent. You provided, then, a friend, not indeed a lazy consulter of the astrologers, nor well versed in their writings, but, as I said, a curious consulter, and yet one who knew something he said he had heard from his father; how much it could do to overturn belief in that art he did not know. This man, named Firminus, liberally educated and cultivated in eloquence, consulted me as a very dear friend about certain affairs of his, in which his worldly hopes had swelled, asking what I thought according to his so-called constellations. I, who had already begun to be swayed toward Nebridius's opinion on this matter, did not refuse to conjecture and say what occurred to my wavering mind, but added that I was almost persuaded by now that those things were ridiculous and empty. Then he told me that his father had been very curious about such books, and had had a friend who pursued them equally and together with him. With equal zeal and sharing of notes they burned for those trifles with the fire of their hearts, so much so that they even observed the moments of birth of dumb animals, if any gave birth in their houses, and noted the position of the sky at those moments, to gather experimental evidence for that so-called art. So he said he had heard from his father that when his mother was pregnant with this same Firminus, a certain maidservant of that friend of his father's was also growing big with child. This could not escape her master, who took care to know even the births of his dogs with the most exact diligence. And so it happened that while the one counted the days and hours and the smaller divisions of the hours for his wife, and the other for his maidservant, with the most careful observation, both women gave birth at the same time, so that they were forced to cast the same constellations, down to the same minutes, for each newborn, the one for his son, the other for his little slave. For when the women began to be in labor, they informed each other what was happening in each one's house, and they prepared messengers to send to each other, so that the birth, as soon as it happened, would be announced to each; and they had easily arranged, as in their own domain, that it should be announced immediately. And so the messengers sent by each, he said, met each other at a point equidistant from the two houses, so that neither of them was able to note any other position of the stars or any other fraction of a moment. And yet Firminus, born to an ample position among his family, ran along the brighter paths of the world, grew in riches, was raised to honors; while that slave served his masters, the yoke of his condition not at all loosened, as the very man who knew him reported.

When I had heard and believed this (for such a man had told it), all my resistance collapsed and fell; and first I tried to call Firminus himself back from that curiosity, telling him that if, on inspecting his constellations, I were to declare the truth, I should certainly have seen there parents who were leading citizens among their own people, a noble family in their city, free birth, a respectable upbringing, and liberal education; but if that slave had consulted me on the basis of the same constellations (since they were his too), then in order to tell him too the truth I should have seen there a most lowly family, a servile condition, and everything else far removed and far different from the first. So if, looking at the same things, I were to say different things, I would be speaking truly; but if I said the same things, I would be speaking falsely. From this it could be concluded with the greatest certainty that the true things said on consideration of the constellations are said not by art but by chance, and the false ones not from lack of skill in the art but from the lies of chance.

With this opening, and ruminating on such things by myself, so that none of those madmen who pursued such gain, whom I now longed to attack and refute with ridicule, could resist me by saying that Firminus had told me falsehoods or his father had told him, I turned my attention to those who are born twins. Most of them come from the womb so soon one after the other that the small interval of time, however much force they claim it has in the nature of things, cannot be caught by human observation or recorded at all in the tables that the astrologer is to inspect in order to declare the truth. And they will not be true, because, inspecting the same tables, he would have had to say the same things of Esau and Jacob; but the same things did not happen to both. So he would speak falsely; or, if he spoke truly, he would not say the same things; yet he would be inspecting the same things. So he would speak truly not by art but by chance. For you, Lord, most just ruler of the universe, by a hidden instinct, while those who consult and those consulted do not know it, bring it about that each one who consults hears what he ought to hear, according to the hidden merits of souls, from the abyss of your just judgment. Let no one say to you, “What is this?” or “Why is this?” Let him not say it, let him not say it; for he is a human being.

So now, my Helper, you had freed me from those chains, and I was asking where evil comes from, and there was no way out. But you did not allow me to be carried away by any waves of thought from the faith by which I believed that you exist, and that your substance is unchangeable, and that you care for human beings and judge them, and that in Christ, your Son, our Lord, and in the Holy Scriptures, which the authority of your catholic church commended, you had set the way of human salvation to the life that will come after this death. With these things safe and unshakably strengthened in my mind, I sought feverishly where evil comes from. What torments of my heart in labor, what groans, my God! And your ears were there, though I did not know it. And when I sought vigorously in silence, the silent contritions of my mind were loud cries to your mercy. You knew what I was suffering, and no human being did. For how much of it was expressed through my tongue into the ears of my closest friends? Did the tumult of my soul, for which neither time nor my mouth sufficed, sound to them? Yet all of it went into your hearing, “what I roared from the groaning of my heart; and my desire was before you, and the light of my eyes was not with me.” For it was within, and I was outside; nor was it in a place. But I was attending to things contained in places, and there I found no place to rest; nor did those things receive me so that I could say, “It is enough, and it is well”; nor did they let me return to where it would be well enough for me. For I was superior to those things, but inferior to you; and you are my true joy when I am subject to you, and you had subjected to me the things you created below me. And this was the right balance and the middle region of my salvation: that I should remain in your image, and by serving you be master of the body. But when I rose up proudly against you and “ran against the Lord with the thick neck of my shield,” even these lowest things were placed above me and pressed me down, and there was nowhere any relief or breathing space. They met me on every side in heaps and masses as I looked; and as I thought, the images of bodies themselves blocked my return, as if to say, “Where are you going, unworthy and filthy one?” And these things had grown out of my wound, because “you humbled the proud like one wounded,” and by my swelling I was separated from you, and my face, too puffed up, closed my eyes.

But you, Lord, “abide forever,” and you are not “angry with us forever,” since you have had pity on dust and ashes, and it pleased you in your sight to reform my deformities. And you stirred me with inner goads, so that I would be restless until you were certain to me by inner sight. And my swelling subsided under the hidden hand of your healing, and the troubled and darkened sight of my mind was healed from day to day by the sharp salve of salutary sorrows.

And first, wishing to show me how you “resist the proud but give grace to the humble,” and with how great mercy the way of humility has been shown to people, in that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt” among men, you procured for me, through a certain man puffed up with most monstrous pride, some books of the Platonists translated from Greek into Latin. And there I read, not indeed in these words, but entirely the same thing urged by many and varied reasons: that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made; in him is life, and the life was the light of men; and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it”; and that the soul of man, though it “bears witness to the light,” is not itself the light, but the Word, God himself, is “the true light that enlightens every man coming into this world”; and that “he was in this world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him.” But that “he came to his own, and his own did not receive him; but as many as received him, to them he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name,” I did not read there.

I also read there that the Word, God, 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 dwelt among us,” I did not read there. For I found in those writings, said variously and in many ways, that the Son, being “in the form of the Father, did not think it robbery to be equal with God,” because by nature he is the very same. But that “he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men and found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; wherefore God exalted him” from the dead “and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father”: those books do not have. That before all times and above all times your only-begotten Son abides unchangeably, coeternal with you, and that souls receive “of his fullness” so as to be happy, and that they are renewed by participation in the wisdom that abides in itself so as to be wise: this is there. But that “in due time he died for the ungodly,” and that “you did not spare your only Son, but delivered him up for us all,” is not there. For “you have hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little ones,” so that “those who labor and are burdened” might come to him and he might refresh them, because he is “gentle and humble of heart,” and “guides the gentle in judgment and teaches the meek his ways, seeing our humility and our toil and forgiving all our sins.” But those who are lifted up on the tragic buskin, as it were, of a loftier teaching do not hear him saying, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls”; and “although they know God, they do not glorify him as God or give thanks, but become vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart is darkened; saying that they are wise, they become fools.”

And so I also read there that the glory of your incorruption had been changed into idols and various images, "into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, and of birds and four-footed beasts and serpents": that is, into the Egyptian food for which Esau lost his birthright, since your first-born people honored the head of a four-footed beast in place of you, turning back in heart to Egypt and bowing your image, their own soul, before the image "of a calf that eats hay." I found these things there, and I did not feed on them. For it pleased you, O Lord, to take away from Jacob the reproach of being the lesser, "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 which you willed your people to carry away from 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 some of their own had also said; and it was from there, surely, that those books came. And I paid no heed to the idols of the Egyptians, whom they served with your gold, they "who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator."

And being admonished by this to return to my own self, I entered into my inmost being with you as my guide, and I was able to, because "you had become my helper." I entered, 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 common light visible to all flesh, nor something of the same kind, only greater, as if this light were to shine far, far more brightly and fill all things with its greatness. It was not that, but something else, something very different from all these. Nor was it above my mind as oil is above water, or as heaven is above earth; it was higher, because it made me, and I was lower, because I was made by it. Whoever knows the truth knows it, and whoever knows it knows eternity. Love knows it. O eternal truth and true love and beloved eternity! You are my God; to you I sigh day and night. And when I first knew you, you lifted me up so that I might see that there was something to see, but that I was not yet one able to see it. And you beat back the weakness of my sight, shining upon me with great force, and I trembled with love and dread; and I found that I was far from you in the region of unlikeness, as if I heard your voice from on high: "I am the food of the full-grown; grow, and you will feed on me. Nor will you change me into you, like the food of your flesh; you will be changed into me." And I knew that "for iniquity you have chastened man, and made my soul waste away like a spider's web," and I said, "Is truth then nothing, since it is not spread through space, either finite or infinite?" And you cried from afar: "I am who I am." And I heard, as one hears in the heart, and there was no longer any ground at all for me to doubt; I would sooner have doubted that I was alive than that truth exists, "which is clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made."

And I looked at the other things below you, and I saw that they neither wholly are nor wholly are not: they are, because they are from you; yet they are not, because they are not what you are. For that truly is which remains unchangeably. "But it is good for me to cling to God," because if I do not remain in him, I shall not be able to remain in myself either. But he, "remaining in himself, renews all things"; and "you are my Lord, since you have no need of my goods."

And it was made plain to me that things which are corrupted are good. They could not be corrupted if they were the highest goods, nor could they be corrupted unless they were good: if they were the highest goods, they would be incorruptible; but if they were not good at all, there would be nothing in them to be corrupted. For corruption does harm, and unless it diminished some good, it would do no harm. So either corruption does no harm, which cannot be, or, what is most certain, all things that are corrupted are deprived of some good. But if they are deprived of all good, they will not exist at all. For if they exist and can no longer be corrupted, they will be better, because they will remain incorruptibly. And what could be more monstrous than to say that things become better by losing all good? So if they are deprived of all good, they will be nothing at all; therefore, as long as they exist, they are good. Therefore whatever exists is good, and that evil whose origin I was seeking is not a substance, because if it were a substance, it would be good. For it would be either an incorruptible substance, which is certainly a great good, or a corruptible substance, which could not be corruptible unless it were good. And so I saw, and it was made plain to me, that you made all things good, and that there are absolutely no substances which you did not make. And because you did not make all things equal, all things exist in this way: each one is good, and all together are very good, since "our God made all things very good."

And for you there is no evil at all, and not only for you but for your whole creation, because there is nothing outside it that could break in and corrupt the order you have imposed on it. But in its parts some things are thought evil because they do not suit certain others; yet these same things suit others and are good, and they are good in themselves. And all these things that do not suit one another suit the lower part of the universe, which we call the earth, with its cloudy and windy sky fitted to it. And far be it from me now to say, "These things should not exist," because even if I saw these alone, I would indeed long for better things, but even for these alone I ought to praise you; since from the earth "dragons and all the deeps, fire, hail, snow, ice, the stormy wind, which fulfill your word; mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle, creeping things and winged birds; kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth; young men and maidens, old men with the younger, praise your name" and show that you are to be praised. And since from the heavens also they praise you, "let all your angels praise you, our God, in the heights, all your powers, sun and moon, all the stars and light, the heaven of heavens and the waters that are above the heavens; let them praise your name." I no longer longed for better things, because I was considering them all, and with a sounder judgment I weighed that higher things are indeed better than lower, but that all things together are better than the higher alone.

There is no soundness in those who are displeased with any part of your creation, as there was none in me when many things you made displeased me. And because my soul did not dare to be displeased with my God, it would not have anything that displeased it be yours. And from there it had gone off into the opinion of two substances, and it found no rest, and it spoke strange things. And turning back from there, it had made for itself a god spread through the infinite spaces of all places, and it had thought him to be you, and had set him up in its heart, and had again become the temple of its own idol, abominable to you. But after you cherished my head while I did not know it, and "closed my eyes lest they should see vanity," I ceased from myself a little, and my madness was lulled to sleep; and I awoke in you and saw you infinite in another way, and this sight was not drawn from the flesh.

And I looked back at other things, and I saw that they owe to you the fact that they exist, and that all things are bounded in you, but in another way: not as in a place, but because you hold all things in your hand in truth; and all things are true insofar as they exist, and falsehood is nothing except when something is thought to be which is not. And I saw that each thing suits not only its own place but also its own time, and that you, who alone are eternal, did not begin to work after countless spaces of time, because all spaces of time, both those that have passed and those that will pass, would neither go nor come unless you were working and abiding.

And I learned by experience that it is no wonder that bread which is pleasant to a healthy palate is torment to an unhealthy one, and that light, which is lovely to clear eyes, is hateful to sick ones. And your justice displeases the wicked; how much more the viper and the little worm, which you created good, fitted to the lower parts of your creation, to which the wicked themselves are fitted insofar as they are unlike you, but fitted to the higher parts insofar as they become more like you. And I asked what wickedness is, and I found not a substance, but the perversity of a will turned aside from the highest substance, from you, O God, toward the lowest things, casting away its inward parts and swelling outward.

And I marveled that I now loved you, and not a phantom in your place; and yet I did not stand still to enjoy my God, but I was swept up to you by your beauty and soon torn away from you by my own weight, and I fell back into these things with a groan; and this weight was carnal habit. Yet the memory of you was with me, and I had no doubt at all that there was one to whom I should cling, but that I was not yet one who could cling, since "the body, which is corrupted, weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things." And I was most certain that "your invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, even your eternal power and divinity." For I was asking by what standard I approved the beauty of bodies, whether heavenly or earthly, and what was at hand to help me judge soundly about changeable things and say, "This ought to be so, that ought not." Asking, then, by what I judged when I judged in this way, I had found the unchangeable and true eternity of truth above my changeable mind. And so, step by step, I went from bodies to the soul that perceives through the body, and from there to its inner power, to which the bodily senses report external things, as far as the beasts can go; and from there again to the reasoning power, to which is referred for judgment what is taken in by the bodily senses. This power too, finding itself changeable in me, raised itself up to its own understanding and drew its thought away from habit, withdrawing from the contradictory crowds of images, so as to find what light it was flooded with when it cried out without any doubt that the unchangeable is to be preferred to the changeable, and how it knew the unchangeable itself (for unless it knew it in some way, it could never have set it with certainty above the changeable); and it arrived at That Which Is, in the flash of a trembling glance. Then indeed I saw "your invisible things, understood through the things that are made"; but I was not strong enough to fix my gaze, and my weakness was struck back and I returned to my usual things, carrying with me nothing but a loving memory, a longing, as it were, for things whose fragrance I had caught but which I could not yet eat.

And I sought a way to gain the strength that would make me fit to enjoy you, and I 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 and saying, "I am the way of truth and the life," and mingling with flesh the food which I was too weak to take, since "the Word was made flesh," so that your wisdom, through which you created all things, might become milk for our infancy. For I did not hold my God, the humble Jesus, with humility, nor did I know what his weakness was meant to teach. For your Word, the eternal Truth, towering above the higher parts of your creation, raises those who are subject to it up to itself; but in the lower parts it built for itself a humble house from our clay, through which to bring down from themselves those who were to be made subject and carry them over to itself, healing their pride and nourishing their love, so that they would go no further in self-confidence, but rather become weak, seeing at their feet the Godhead made weak by sharing our "garment of skin," and, weary, would cast themselves down upon it, and it, rising, would lift them up.

But I thought otherwise, and I thought of Christ my Lord only as of a man of surpassing wisdom whom no one could equal; especially because, born wonderfully of a virgin to give an example of despising temporal things for the sake of gaining immortality, he seemed by divine care for us to have earned so great an authority as a teacher. But what mystery was contained in "the Word was made flesh," I could not even guess. I had only learned from what was handed down in writing about him that he ate and drank, slept, walked, rejoiced, was sad, and conversed; that this flesh had not been joined to your Word except together with a human soul and mind. Everyone knows this who knows the unchangeableness of your Word, which I already knew as far as I could, and I had no doubt at all about it. For at one time to move the limbs of the body by the will and at another not to move them, at one time to be affected by some emotion and at another not, at one time to utter wise sayings by signs and at another to keep silence, belong to the changeableness of soul and mind. If these things written about him were false, all the rest would also be endangered by falsehood, and no saving faith for the human race would remain in those writings. Since, then, what is written is true, I acknowledged in Christ a whole man: not the body of a man only, nor a soul with the body but without a mind, but a man himself; yet I thought him to be preferred to others not as the person of the Truth, but because of some great excellence of his human nature and a more perfect share in wisdom. Alypius, on the other hand, thought that the catholics believed God to be clothed with flesh in such a way that there was no soul in Christ besides God and flesh, and he did not think that a human mind was proclaimed in him. And since he was firmly persuaded that the things recorded of him could not be done except by a living and rational creature, he moved rather slowly toward the Christian faith itself. But later, learning that this was the error of the Apollinarian heretics, he rejoiced in the catholic faith and conformed himself to it. I, for my part, confess that it was some while later that I learned how, in the matter of "the Word was made flesh," catholic truth is distinguished from the falsehood of Photinus. For the refutation of heretics makes what your church holds, and what sound doctrine contains, stand out. "For there had to be heresies, so that those who are approved might be made manifest" among the weak.

But at that time, after reading those books of the Platonists and being admonished by them to seek incorporeal truth, I saw "your invisible things, understood through the things that are made"; and, thrust back, I sensed what it was that the darkness of my soul would not let me contemplate. I was certain that you exist, and are infinite, yet not spread through finite or infinite spaces; that you truly are, you who are always the same, not other or otherwise in any part or by any motion; and that all other things are from you, by this one most solid proof, that they exist. Of these things I was certain, yet far too weak to enjoy you. I chattered away as if I were expert, and unless I had sought your way in Christ our Savior, I would have been not expert but expired. For I had now begun to want to seem wise, full of my own punishment, and I did not weep; worse, I was "puffed up with knowledge." For where was that love which builds up on the foundation of humility, which is Christ Jesus? Or when would those books teach me that? I believe it was your will that I should come upon them before I studied your Scriptures, so that it would be stamped on my memory how I had been affected by them, and so that later, when I had been tamed by your books and my wounds were tended by your healing fingers, I might discern and distinguish the difference between presumption and confession, between those who see where they must go but do not see the way, and the way that leads to the blessed homeland, not only to be seen but to be dwelt in. For if I had first been formed by your holy writings and you had grown sweet to me in familiarity with them, and I had afterward fallen upon those volumes, perhaps they would have torn me away from the solid ground of piety; or, if I had stood firm in the healthy disposition I had drunk in, I might have thought that it could be gained from those books too, if one had learned from them alone.

So I seized most eagerly on the venerable writing of your Spirit, and above all the apostle Paul; and those questions vanished in which he had at one time seemed to me to contradict himself, and the text of his discourse not to agree with the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets; and the one face of the pure words appeared to me, and I learned "to rejoice with trembling." And I began, and I found that whatever truth I had read there is said here together with the commendation of your grace: so that whoever sees should not boast as if he had not received, not only what he sees but also the ability to see ("for what does he have that he did not receive?"); and so that he may be not only admonished to see you, who are always the same, but also healed so as to hold you; and so that one who cannot see from afar may yet walk on the way by which he may come and see and hold. For even if a man "delights in the law of God according to the inner man," what will he do about "another law in his members, warring against the law of his mind and leading him captive in the law of sin, which is in his members"? For "you are just, O Lord," but "we have sinned, we have done iniquity, we have acted wickedly," and "your hand has been heavy upon us," and we have justly been handed over to the ancient sinner, the ruler of death, because he persuaded our will to be like his will, by which "he did not stand in your truth." What will a wretched man do? "Who will deliver him from the body of this death, but your grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord," whom you begot coeternal and "created in the beginning of your ways," in whom "the ruler of this world found nothing" worthy of death, and yet killed him; and "the bond that was against us was canceled"? Those writings do not have this. Those pages do not have the face of this piety, the tears of confession, your sacrifice, "a troubled spirit, a contrite and humbled heart," the salvation of the people, the bride that is a city, the pledge of the Holy Spirit, the cup of our redemption. No one there sings: "Shall not my soul be subject to God? For from him is my salvation; for he is my God and my salvation, my protector; I shall be moved no more." No one there hears him calling: "Come to me, you who labor." They disdain to learn from him, because he is "gentle and humble of heart." "For you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to little ones." And it is one thing to see the homeland of peace from a wooded summit and not find the road to it, and to strive in vain through trackless ways, beset and ambushed by fugitive deserters with their chief, the lion and the dragon; and another to keep to the way that leads there, guarded by the care of the heavenly emperor, where those who have deserted the heavenly army do not rob, for they shun it like a torment. These things sank into my very being in wonderful ways when I read "the least of your apostles," and I had "considered your works and trembled."

My God, let me remember with thanksgiving to you, and confess your mercies upon me. Let my bones be steeped in your love and say, "Lord, who is like you? You have broken my bonds; let me offer to you the sacrifice of praise." How you broke them I will tell, and all who worship you will say, when they hear it: "Blessed be the Lord in heaven and on earth; great and wonderful is his name." Your words had fastened in my heart, and I was hemmed in by you on every side. Of your eternal life I was certain, although I had seen it "in a riddle and as through a mirror"; yet all doubt about incorruptible substance, that every substance comes from it, had been taken away from me, and I desired not to be more certain of you but more steadfast in you. But in my temporal life everything was wavering, and my heart had to be cleansed of "the old leaven"; and the Way, the Savior himself, pleased me, but I was still reluctant to go through its narrow places. And you put it into my mind, and it seemed good in my sight, to go to Simplicianus, who appeared to me a good servant of yours, and your grace shone in him. I had heard also that from his youth he had lived most devoutly for you; and by then he had grown old, and in his long life of such good zeal in following your way he seemed to me to have experienced much and learned much: and so indeed it was. So I wanted him, as I talked over my turmoil with him, to tell me what would be the fitting way for someone in my condition to walk in your way.

For I saw the church full, and one went this way and another that. But I was displeased with what I was doing in the world, and it was a great burden to me, now that my desires no longer inflamed me as they used to with the hope of honor and money, to endure so heavy a servitude. For those things no longer delighted me compared with your sweetness and "the beauty of your house, which I have loved." But I was still tightly bound by a woman; and the apostle did not forbid me to marry, although he exhorted to something better, most earnestly wishing all men to be as he himself was. But I, being weaker, chose the softer place, and for this one reason I was tossed about in everything else, listless and wasting away with withering cares, because in other matters too, which I did not want to suffer, I was forced to fit in with married life, to which I was given over and bound. I had heard from the mouth of Truth that there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake; "but," he says, "let him who can receive it, receive it." Surely "all men are vain in whom there is no knowledge of God, and who could not, from the good things that are seen, find him who is." But I was no longer in that vanity; I had passed beyond it, and with the whole creation bearing witness I had found you, our Creator, and your Word, God with you and one God with you, through whom you created all things. And there is another kind of ungodly people, who, "knowing God, did not glorify him as God or give thanks." Into this too I had fallen, and "your right hand upheld me," and you took me out of it and placed me where I might recover, because you have said to man, "Behold, piety is wisdom," and "Do not wish to seem wise," because "those who call themselves wise have become fools." And I had now found the good pearl, and I ought to have sold all that I had and bought it; and I hesitated.

So I went to Simplicianus, the father of Ambrose, then bishop, in the receiving of grace, and whom Ambrose truly loved as a father. I told him the windings of my wandering. But when I mentioned that I had read certain books of the Platonists, which Victorinus, once rhetor of the city of Rome, who I had heard had died a Christian, had translated into Latin, he congratulated me that I had not fallen upon the writings of other philosophers, full of falsehoods and deceptions "according to the elements of this world," whereas in these God and his Word are suggested in every way. Then, to exhort me to the humility of Christ, "hidden from the wise and revealed to little ones," he called to mind Victorinus himself, whom he had known very intimately when he was in Rome, and he told me about him something I will not pass over in silence. For it contains great praise of your grace, which must be confessed to you: how that most learned old man, highly skilled in all the liberal disciplines, who had read and weighed so many works of the philosophers, the teacher of so many noble senators, who, as a mark of his distinguished teaching (something the citizens of this world think outstanding), had deserved and received a statue in the Roman Forum; who until that age had been a worshiper of idols and a partaker in sacrilegious rites, with which almost the whole Roman nobility was then puffed up, breathing out portents, "monsters of every kind of god, and barking Anubis, who once held weapons against Neptune and Venus and against Minerva," gods whom Rome had conquered and now supplicated, gods whom this old man Victorinus had defended for so many years with his thundering eloquence: he did not blush to become a child of your Christ and an infant at your font, bowing his neck to the yoke of humility and subduing his brow to the reproach of the cross.

O Lord, Lord, "who bowed the heavens and came down, touched the mountains and they smoked," by what means did you find your way into that breast? He read, as Simplicianus said, the holy Scripture, and he most studiously searched out and examined all the Christian writings, and he said to Simplicianus, not openly but privately and as a friend, "You should know that I am already a Christian." And Simplicianus answered, "I will not believe it or count you among the Christians until I see you in the church of Christ." But he laughed and said, "Do walls, then, make Christians?" And he often said this, that he was already a Christian, and Simplicianus often gave that answer, and the joke about the walls was often repeated. For he was afraid of offending his friends, proud worshipers of demons, and he thought that from the summit of their Babylonian dignity, as from the cedars of Lebanon which the Lord had not yet broken, heavy enmity would come crashing down on him. But after he had drawn strength by reading and longing, and feared to be denied by Christ before the holy angels if he were afraid to confess him before men, and appeared to himself guilty of a great crime in being ashamed of the sacraments of the humility of your Word while not being ashamed of the sacrilegious rites of proud demons, which he had accepted as their proud imitator, he lost his shame before vanity and grew ashamed before truth, and suddenly and unexpectedly he said to Simplicianus, as Simplicianus himself told it, "Let us go to the church: I want to become a Christian." And Simplicianus, beside himself with joy, went with him. And when he had been instructed in the first sacraments of instruction, not long afterward he gave in his name to be reborn through baptism, while Rome marveled and the church rejoiced. The proud saw and were angry, they gnashed with their teeth and wasted away; but for your servant "the Lord God was his hope, and he did not look to vanities and lying follies."

Finally, when the hour came to profess the faith (which at Rome is usually recited, in fixed words learned and held in memory, from a raised place in the sight of the faithful people, by those who are about to approach your grace), he said that the presbyters offered Victorinus the chance to recite it more privately, as it was customary to offer to some who seemed likely to tremble from shyness; but he preferred to profess his salvation in the sight of the holy multitude. For there was no salvation in the rhetoric he taught, and yet he had professed that publicly. How much less, then, should he have feared your gentle flock when pronouncing your word, when he had not feared crowds of madmen when pronouncing his own words? So when he went up to recite, all of them, each as he knew him, murmured his name to one another with a stir of rejoicing. And who was there who did not know him? And a hushed sound ran through the mouths of all who rejoiced together: "Victorinus, Victorinus." Quickly they broke out in exultation, because they saw him, and quickly they fell silent in attention, so as to hear him. He pronounced the true faith with splendid confidence, and all of them wanted to snatch him into their hearts. And they did snatch him, by loving and rejoicing: these were the hands that snatched him.

Good God, what happens in a man that he rejoices more over the salvation of a soul that was despaired of and set free 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 who repents than over ninety-nine righteous who need no repentance." And we hear with great delight when we hear how the sheep that had strayed is carried back on the shepherd's exultant shoulders, and the coin is restored to your treasuries while the neighbors rejoice with the woman who found it; and the joy of the solemn feast of your house brings tears to our eyes when it is read in your house of your younger son, that "he was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found." For you rejoice in us and in your angels, who are holy with holy love. For you are always the same, because you always know in the same way all things that neither always exist nor exist in the same way.

What happens, then, in the soul, that it delights more in things it loves when they are found or restored than if it had always had them? Everything else bears witness to this too, and all things are full of testimonies crying, "It is so." The victorious general celebrates a triumph, and he would not have conquered had he not fought; and the greater the danger in battle, the greater the joy in the triumph. The storm tosses the sailors and threatens shipwreck; all grow pale at coming death; sky and sea grow calm, and they exult beyond measure because they feared beyond measure. A dear friend is sick, and his pulse reports that he is doing badly; all who long for his recovery are sick in mind with him; he gets better, and though he does not yet walk with his former strength, there is already such joy as there was not before when he walked healthy and strong. And men obtain these very pleasures of human life through discomforts, not only those that come upon them unexpectedly and against their will, but also ones they arrange and choose. There is no pleasure in eating and drinking unless the discomfort of hunger and thirst comes first. Drunkards eat salty things to create a painful thirst, and when drinking quenches it, there is delight. And it is an established custom that betrothed brides are not handed over at once, lest the husband hold cheap a bride given to him for whom, as a bridegroom, he did not sigh while she was withheld.

This is so in shameful and accursed joy, so in joy that is permitted and lawful, so in the most sincere and honorable friendship, so in him who "was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found": everywhere greater joy is preceded by greater distress. What is this, O Lord my God, when you are your own eternal joy, you yourself, and some things around you rejoice in you forever? What is it that this part of creation alternates between loss and gain, between offense and reconciliation? Is this their measure, and is this as much as you have given them, since from the heights of the heavens to the depths of the earth, from the beginning to the end of the ages, from the angel to the little worm, from the first motion to the last, you set each kind of good thing and each of your just works in its proper place, and brought each about in its proper time? Alas for me, how high you are in the heights and how deep in the depths! And you never go away, and we scarcely return to you.

Come, Lord, act: stir us up and call us back, kindle and seize us, be fragrant, grow sweet: let us love, let us run. Do not many return to you from a deeper hell of blindness than Victorinus, and approach, and are enlightened, receiving the light, and whoever receive it "receive from you power to become your children"? But if they are less known to the people, even those who know them rejoice less over them. For when joy is shared with many, the joy in each one is richer, because they warm one another and are set on fire by each other. Then, because they are known to many, they are an authority for salvation to many, and they lead the way for many who will follow; and so even those who have gone before them rejoice greatly over them, because they rejoice not over them alone. Far be it that in your tabernacle the persons of the rich should be accepted before the poor, or the noble before the lowborn, since rather "you have chosen the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and the base things of this world and the despised you have chosen, and the things that are not, as though they were, to bring to nothing the things that are." And yet that same "least of your apostles," through whose tongue you sounded these words, when the proconsul Paulus had had his pride overthrown by his campaign and had been sent under the gentle yoke of your Christ and made a subject of the great King, he too, formerly Saul, loved to be called Paul in token of so great a victory. For the enemy is more defeated in one whom he holds more strongly and through whom he holds more people. And he holds the proud more strongly through the name of nobility, and through them he holds more people through the name of authority. So the more gratefully the heart of Victorinus was thought of, which the devil had held as an impregnable stronghold, and the tongue of Victorinus, a great sharp weapon with which he had slain many, the more abundantly your children had to rejoice, because our King "had bound the strong man," and they saw his vessels taken from him, cleansed, and made fit for your honor, and "useful to the Lord for every good work."

But when your servant Simplicianus told me these things about Victorinus, I burned to imitate him; indeed it was for this that he had told them. And when he added that in the time of the emperor Julian a law was issued forbidding Christians to teach literature and rhetoric, and that Victorinus embraced that law and chose to abandon his talkative school rather than your word, "by which you make eloquent the tongues of infants," he seemed to me not so much brave as fortunate, because he found an occasion to be free for you. I sighed for this, bound not by another's iron but by my own iron will. The enemy held my will, and from it he had made a chain for me and bound me fast. For from a perverse will came lust; and while lust is served, habit is formed; and while habit is not resisted, it becomes necessity. By these links, as it were, joined to one another (which is why I called it a chain), a hard servitude held me bound. But the new will which had begun in me, to worship you freely and to want to enjoy you, O God, the only sure delight, was not yet able to overcome the earlier one, strengthened by long standing. So my two wills, one old, the other new, the one carnal, the other spiritual, fought with each other, and by their discord they tore my soul apart.

So I understood by my own experience what I had read, how "the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh": I was in both, but I was more in what I approved in myself than in what I disapproved in myself. For in the latter it was now "no longer I," because for the most part I suffered it unwillingly rather than did it willingly. And yet habit had become more warlike against me through me, since willingly I had come to where I did not want to be. And who could justly object, when just punishment follows the sinner? And I no longer had that excuse by which I used to think that I was not yet despising the world and serving you because my perception of the truth was uncertain; for now that too was certain. But I, still bound to the earth, refused to be your soldier, and I was as afraid of being freed from all my entanglements as one ought to be afraid of being entangled.

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.

You had pierced our heart with your love, and we carried your words fixed in our inmost parts; and the examples of your servants, whom you had made bright from dark and living from dead, gathered into the bosom of our thought, burned up and consumed our heavy torpor, so that we would not sink into the depths, and they set us so strongly on fire that every blast of contradiction from a deceitful tongue could only inflame us more fiercely, not extinguish us. Yet, because our vow and purpose would certainly also have its praisers on account of your name, which you have sanctified throughout the earth, it seemed like boasting not to wait for the holiday season, now so near, but to leave beforehand a public profession placed before the eyes of all; so that all who looked at what I had done, and at how I had not been willing to wait for the vintage day so close at hand, would say a great deal about my having wanted, as it were, to seem great. And what good would it do me for people to judge and dispute about my intentions, and for "our good to be spoken evil of"?

Moreover, that very summer my lungs had begun to give way under too much literary labor; I breathed with difficulty, and pains in my chest showed that they were injured, and they refused a clear or prolonged voice. At first this had troubled me, because it was forcing me almost of necessity to lay down the burden of that teaching, or at least to interrupt it, if I could be cured and recover. But when the full will to be free and "to see that you are the Lord" had arisen in me and been confirmed (you know it, my God), I even began to rejoice that I also had this excuse, and not a false one, to soften the offense of the people who, for the sake of their children, never wanted me to be free. Full of such joy, then, I endured that interval of time until it ran out (I do not know whether it was as much as twenty days); yet they were endured bravely, because the ambition that used to help me bear the heavy business had gone, and I would have been left crushed if patience had not taken its place. Someone among your servants, my brothers, may say that I sinned in this, that with my heart now fully in your service I allowed myself to sit even one hour in the chair of lies. I do not dispute it. But you, most merciful Lord, did you not pardon and forgive me this sin too, with the other dreadful and deadly ones, in the holy water?

Verecundus was wasting away with anxiety over this good of ours, because he saw that, on account of the bonds by which he was held most tightly, he would be left out of our company. Not yet a Christian himself, though his wife was one of the faithful, he was held back from the journey we had begun by her, a fetter tighter than all the rest; and he said he did not want to be a Christian in any other way than the one that was impossible for him. Yet he kindly offered that we might stay at his property as long as we were there. You will repay him, Lord, "at the resurrection of the just," since you have already repaid him with that very lot. For while we were away, when we were already in Rome, he was seized with a bodily illness, and in it he became a Christian and one of the faithful, and departed this life. So you had mercy not only on him but also on us, so that we would not be tormented with unbearable grief, thinking of our friend's outstanding kindness toward us and not counting him in your flock. Thanks be to you, our God; we are yours. Your exhortations and consolations show it: faithful in your promises, you repay Verecundus for that country estate of his at Cassiciacum, where we rested in you from the heat of the world, with the loveliness of your ever-green paradise, since you forgave him his sins on earth "on the curdled mountain, your mountain, the fertile mountain."

He, then, was distressed, but Nebridius rejoiced with us. For although he too, not yet a Christian, had fallen into that pit of most pernicious error of believing the flesh of your Son, the Truth, to be a phantom, yet he was emerging from it and was in this state: not yet initiated into any sacraments of your church, but a most ardent seeker of the truth. Not long after our conversion and our regeneration through your baptism, he too became one of the catholic faithful, serving you in perfect chastity and continence among his own people in Africa, and after his whole household had become Christian through him, you released him from the flesh. And now he lives in Abraham's bosom. Whatever is signified by that bosom, there my Nebridius lives, my sweet friend, and your son, adopted from a freedman: there he lives. For what other place is there for such a soul? He lives there, in the place about which he used to ask me, an inexperienced little man, so many questions. Now he no longer puts his ear to my mouth, but his spiritual mouth to your fountain, and he drinks as much wisdom as he can, as much as he thirsts, happy without end. And I do not think he is so intoxicated by it that he forgets me, since you, Lord, whom he drinks, are mindful of us. That, then, was how we were: consoling Verecundus in his sadness, our friendship unharmed by such a conversion of ours, and exhorting him to faith according to his own station, that is, married life; and waiting for Nebridius to follow, which he could do very soon and was on the point of doing, when at last those days rolled by. For they seemed long and many for the love of free leisure to sing from the depths of my being: "My heart has said to you, I have sought your face; your face, Lord, will I seek."

And the day came when I was actually released from the profession of rhetoric, from which I had already been released in thought. And it was done: you delivered my tongue as you had already delivered my heart, and I blessed you and rejoiced as I set out for the country house with all my people. What I did there in literary work, now indeed in your service, but still breathing the school of pride as if in a pause for breath, is attested by the books of discussions with those present and with myself alone before you; and what I did with Nebridius, who was absent, is attested by my letters. And when will I have enough time to recall all your great benefits to us at that time, especially as I am hurrying on to other, greater things? For my memory calls me back, and it becomes sweet to me, Lord, to confess to you by what inward goads you tamed me, and how you leveled me, bringing low the mountains and hills of my thoughts, and made my crooked ways straight and my rough ways smooth; and how you subdued Alypius himself, the brother of my heart, to the name of your only-begotten, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, which at first he disdained to have put into our writings. For he wanted them to smell rather of the cedars of the schools, which the Lord has now broken, than of the wholesome herbs of the church that are good against serpents.

What cries I uttered to you, my God, when I read the Psalms of David, songs of faith, sounds of piety that shut out a swollen spirit, while I was still a novice in true love of you, a catechumen on holiday at the country house with Alypius, also a catechumen, and my mother staying with us, a woman in dress, a man in faith, with the calm of an old woman, a mother's love, and Christian piety! What cries I uttered to you in those psalms, and how I was set on fire toward you by them, and burned to recite them, if I could, to the whole world against the pride of the human race! And yet they are sung throughout the whole world, and "there is no one who hides himself from your heat." With what vehement and bitter grief I was indignant with the Manichees, and again I pitied them, because they did not know those sacraments, those medicines, and raged against the antidote by which they could have been made sane! I wished that they had been somewhere nearby then, without my knowing they were there, and could watch my face and hear my cries, when I read the fourth psalm in that time of leisure, and see what that psalm did to me: "When I called upon you, you heard me, O God of my righteousness; in tribulation you enlarged me. Have mercy on me, Lord, and hear my prayer." I wish they could have heard, without my knowing whether they heard, so that they would not think I was saying on their account what I said between these words; for in truth I would not have said those things, or said them in that way, if I had felt that I was being heard and seen by them; nor, if I had said them, would they have received them as I spoke them with myself and to myself before you, from the intimate feeling of my soul.

I trembled with fear, and at the same time I grew warm with hope and exultation in your mercy, Father. And all this 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 heavy of heart? Why do you love vanity and seek after a lie?" For I had loved vanity and sought after a lie. And you, Lord, had already glorified your Holy One, raising him from the dead and setting him at your right hand, whence he would send from on high his promise, the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth. And he had already sent him, but I did not know it. He had sent him, because he had already been glorified, rising from the dead and ascending into heaven. But before that, "the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified." And the prophecy cries out: "How long will you be heavy of heart? Why do you love vanity and seek after a lie? Know that the Lord has glorified his Holy One." It cries "How long," it cries "Know"; and I, not knowing for so long, loved vanity and sought after a lie. And so I heard it and trembled, because it is said to such people as I remembered I had been. For in the phantoms which I had held for truth there was vanity and a lie. And I cried out many things, gravely and strongly, in the pain of my remembering. If only those who still love vanity and seek after a lie had heard them! Perhaps they would have been troubled and vomited it up, and you would have heard them when they cried to you, because he who intercedes with you for us died for us by a true death of the flesh.

I read: "Be angry, and do not sin," and how I was moved, my God, I who had already learned to be angry with myself for past things, so as not to sin in future; and to be rightly angry, because it was not another nature, from the race of darkness, that sinned in me, as those say who are not angry with themselves and "store up for themselves wrath on the day of wrath and of the revelation of your just judgment." My good things were no longer outside, nor were they sought with eyes of flesh in this sun. For those who want to find joy outside themselves easily become empty and pour themselves out on "the things that are seen and are temporal," and lick their images with starving thought. Oh, if only they would grow weary with hunger and say, "Who will show us good things?" and we would say, and they would hear: "The light of your face, Lord, is sealed upon us." For we are not the light that enlightens every man, but we are enlightened by you, so that we who "were once darkness may be light" in you. Oh, if only they could see the inward eternal thing, which, because I had tasted it, I gnashed my teeth that I could not show them, if they were to bring me their heart in their eyes, turned outward away from you, and say, "Who will show us good things?" For there, where I was angry with myself, within, in the chamber where I was pierced with sorrow, where I had sacrificed, slaying my old self and, beginning to meditate on my renewal, hoping 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 these things outwardly and recognized them inwardly, and I did not want to be multiplied with earthly goods, devouring time and devoured by time, when I had in eternal simplicity another "grain and wine and oil."

And I cried out at the next verse with a loud cry of my heart: "O in peace! O in the Selfsame!" O what did it say: "I will lie down and sleep"? For who will withstand us when the saying that is written comes to pass: "Death is swallowed up in victory"? And you are exceedingly the Selfsame, you who do not change, and in you is rest, forgetting all toil, because there is no other with you, nor are we to gain other things that are not what you are; but you, Lord, "have made me dwell alone in hope." I read and I burned, and I did not find what to do for those deaf and dead, among whom I had been, a plague, a bitter and blind barker against writings sweet with the honey of heaven and luminous with your light; and I wasted away with grief over the enemies of this Scripture.

When shall I recall everything from those days of rest? But I have not forgotten, nor will I pass over in silence, the sharpness of your scourge and the wonderful swiftness of your mercy. You tormented me then with toothache, and when it grew so bad that I could not speak, it came into my heart to urge all my friends who were present to pray to you for me, the God of every kind of health. And I wrote this on a wax tablet and gave it to them to be read. As soon as we knelt in simple devotion, that pain fled. But what pain? Or how did it flee? I was terrified, I confess, my Lord and my God; for I had never experienced anything like it from my earliest years. And your will was impressed on me in the depths, and rejoicing in faith I praised your name; and that faith did not let me be at ease about my past sins, which had not yet been forgiven me through your baptism.

When the vintage holidays were over, I gave notice that the people of Milan should provide their students with another seller of words, both because I had chosen to serve you and because I was not equal to that profession on account of my difficulty in breathing and the pain in my chest. And I made known by letter to your bishop, the holy man Ambrose, my former errors and my present intention, so that he might advise me which of your books I should read above all, to become better prepared and more fit to receive so great a grace. He told me to read the prophet Isaiah, I believe because he foretells the gospel and the calling of the Gentiles more plainly than the others. But I, not understanding the first part of it and thinking the whole was like that, put it aside to be taken up again when I was more practiced in the Lord's language.

Then, when the time came for me to give in my name, we left the country and returned to Milan. Alypius too decided to be reborn in you with me; he had already put on the humility that befits your sacraments, and was a most strong master of his body, so that with unusual daring he wore down the frozen soil of Italy with bare feet. We also took with us the boy Adeodatus, born of me in the flesh from my sin. You had made him well. He was about fifteen years old, and in intelligence he surpassed many grave and learned men. I confess your gifts to you, Lord my God, Creator of all, and very powerful to form our deformities; for I had nothing in that boy but the sin. That he was brought up by us in your discipline, you had inspired us to do, and no one else: I confess your gifts to you. There is a book of ours entitled On the Teacher: he speaks with me there. You know that all the thoughts placed there in the mouth of the one who speaks with me were his, when he was sixteen years old. I experienced many other things in him more wonderful still. His intelligence filled me with awe; and who but you is the maker of such wonders? Soon you took his life from the earth, and I remember him with less anxiety, fearing nothing for his boyhood or youth, or for him at all. We took him with us, the same age as ourselves in your grace, to be brought up in your discipline; and we were baptized, and anxiety about our past life fled from us. Nor could I have enough in those days of the wonderful sweetness of considering the depth of your counsel for the salvation of the human race. How much I wept at your hymns and songs, deeply moved by the voices of your sweetly singing church! Those voices flowed into my ears, and truth was distilled into my heart, and from it the feeling of devotion welled up, and the tears ran, and it was good for me to be with them.

It was not long before this that the church of Milan had begun to practice this kind of consolation and exhortation, the brothers singing together with great zeal of voice and heart. It was, in fact, a year or not much more since Justina, the mother of the boy emperor Valentinian, had been persecuting your servant Ambrose on account of her heresy, into which she had been led by the Arians. 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 the anxiety and the vigils, lived on prayers. We, still cold, untouched by the heat of your Spirit, were nevertheless stirred by the astonished and troubled city. It was then that the custom was established of singing hymns and psalms after the manner of the eastern regions, so that the people would not waste away with the weariness of grief; and from then until today it has been kept, and many, indeed almost all, of your flocks throughout the rest of the world have imitated it.

At that time you revealed in a vision to your bishop whom I have named where the bodies of the martyrs Protasius and Gervasius lay hidden, which you had kept uncorrupted for so many years in the treasury of your secret, so that you might bring them out at the right time to check the fury of a woman, but a royal one. For when they had been brought out and dug up and were being carried with due honor to the Ambrosian basilica, not only were those who were troubled by unclean spirits healed, the demons themselves confessing it, but also a certain citizen who had been blind for many years and was very well known to the city, having asked and learned the reason for the people's tumultuous joy, leapt up and asked his guide to lead him there. When he was brought there, he obtained permission to touch with a cloth the bier of your saints, "whose death is precious in your sight." When he had done this and put it to his eyes, they were immediately opened. From this the news spread, from this came your praises, fervent and shining; from this the mind of that enemy, though not brought to the health of believing, was nevertheless restrained from the fury of persecuting. Thanks be to you, my God! From where and to where have you led my memory, that I should confess to you even these things, great as they are, which I had forgotten and passed over? And yet at that time, when "the fragrance of your ointments" was so sweet, "we did not run after you"; and so I wept all the more at the singing of your hymns, once sighing for you, and at last breathing you, as far as the air is free in a house of grass.

You who make those of one mind to dwell in a house also joined to us Evodius, a young man from our own town. While he was serving as an agent in affairs, he was converted to you before us and baptized, and, leaving worldly service, he girded himself for yours. We were together, intending to live together in our holy resolve. We were looking for the place where we could be most useful in serving you, and we were going back to Africa together. And when we were at Ostia on the Tiber, my mother died. I pass over many things, because I am in great haste. Accept my confessions and thanksgivings, my God, for innumerable things, even in silence. But I will not pass over whatever my soul brings forth concerning that servant of yours who brought me forth both in the flesh, that I might be born into this temporal light, and in her heart, that I might be born into the eternal light. I will speak not of her gifts but of your gifts in her. For she had not made herself or brought herself up: you created her, and neither her father nor her mother knew what kind of person would come from them. And the rod of your Christ, the rule of your only Son, trained her in your fear in a faithful household, a good member of your church. Yet she used to praise not so much her mother's care for her upbringing as that of a certain aged servant, who had carried her father as a baby, as little children are carried on the backs of bigger girls. For this reason, and because of her age and excellent character, she was greatly respected by her masters in that Christian house. So she was also entrusted with the care of her masters' daughters, and she carried it out diligently, and was vehement with a holy severity in restraining them when necessary, and sober and prudent in teaching them. For apart from the hours when they ate very moderately at their parents' table, she would not let them drink even water, however much they burned with thirst, guarding against a bad habit and adding this sound word: "Now you drink water, because you do not have wine in your power; but when you come to husbands and have become mistresses of storerooms and cellars, water will seem poor to you, but the habit of drinking will prevail." By this manner of teaching and the authority of her command she curbed the greed of their tender age and shaped the girls' very thirst to an honorable measure, so that they no longer wanted what was not fitting.

And yet, as your handmaid used to tell me, her son, a liking for wine had crept up on her. For when, as the custom was, she as a sober girl was told by her parents to draw wine from the cask, she would dip the cup in through the opening at the top, and before pouring the wine into the flask she would sip a little with the tip of her lips, since she could not take more because her taste refused it. For she did not do this from any craving for drink, but from a certain overflowing of youthful high spirits, which bubble up in playful impulses and are usually kept down in childhood by the authority of elders. And so, adding daily little bits to that daily little bit (for "he who despises small things falls little by little"), she had slipped into such a habit that she was greedily gulping down little cups almost full of wine. Where then was the shrewd old woman and her strict prohibition? Could anything prevail against a hidden disease unless your medicine, Lord, watched over us? Father, mother, and nurses were absent, but you were present, who created, who call, who work some good for the salvation of souls even through those 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 from another soul a hard and sharp taunt, like a surgeon's knife from your hidden stores, and with one stroke cut away that rottenness? For the maidservant with whom she used to go to the cask, quarreling with her young mistress, as happens, when they were alone together, threw this fault in her face with a most bitter insult, calling her a wine-bibber. Stung by this goad, she looked at her own foulness, and at once condemned it and gave it up. As flattering friends corrupt, so quarreling enemies often correct. And you repay them not for what you do through them, but for what they themselves intended. For she in her anger wanted to provoke her young mistress, not to heal her, and she did it secretly, either because the time and place of the quarrel found them so, or perhaps so that she would not herself be in danger for having told it so late. But you, Lord, ruler of things in heaven and on earth, who turn to your own purposes the depths of the torrent and the turbulent but ordered flow of the ages, healed one soul even through the unsoundness of another, so that no one, when he notices this, should attribute it to his own power if another whom he wishes to be corrected is corrected by his word.

So she was brought up modestly and soberly, made subject by you to her parents rather than by her parents to you; and when she reached a full marriageable age, she was given to a husband and served him as her lord, and she took pains to win him for you, speaking of you to him by her conduct, by which you made her beautiful and reverently lovable and admirable to her husband. She bore the wrongs done to her marriage bed in such a way that she never had any quarrel with her husband about it. For she waited for your mercy upon him, that believing in you he might become chaste. He was, besides, as remarkable for kindness as he was hot in anger. But she knew not to resist an angry husband, not only in deed but not even in word. When she saw that he had calmed down and was quiet, and the moment was right, she would give an account of what she had done, if perhaps he had been roused without good reason. Indeed, when many wives, whose husbands were milder, bore the marks of blows even on their disfigured faces, they would blame their husbands' conduct in friendly conversation, and she would blame their tongues, advising them seriously as if in jest that from the time they had heard the documents called marriage contracts read to them, they ought to have regarded them as instruments by which they had been made servants; and so, remembering their condition, they ought not to be proud toward their lords. And when they marveled, knowing what a violent husband she had to put up with, that it had never been heard, nor had there been any sign, that Patricius had beaten his wife, or that they had disagreed with each other in a domestic quarrel even for a single day, and asked her the reason in confidence, she taught them her rule, which I have mentioned above. Those who followed it found it good and thanked her; those who did not follow it were kept down and ill-treated.

Her mother-in-law too, who at first was set against her by the whisperings of bad servants, she won over by her attentiveness, persevering patience, and gentleness, so that the old woman of her own accord reported to her son the meddling tongues of the maids by which domestic peace between herself and her daughter-in-law was being disturbed, and asked that they be punished. So when he, obeying his mother, caring for the discipline of the household, and looking to the harmony of his family, had punished with beatings those who had been reported, at the discretion of the one who reported them, she promised that anyone who spoke ill of her daughter-in-law to her in order to please her must expect a similar reward; and since no one dared any longer, they lived together in a sweetness of goodwill worth remembering.

To that good servant of yours, in whose womb you created me, my God, my mercy, you had also given this great gift, that between any souls at odds and in discord, wherever she could, she showed herself such a peacemaker that, although she heard from both sides many very bitter things about each other, such as swollen and undigested discord usually belches out when the crudity of hatred is breathed out in sour talk to a present friend about an absent enemy, she would report nothing of the one to the other except what would help to reconcile them. This would seem a small good to me, did I not know to my sorrow that countless crowds, through some horrible and far-spreading plague of sins, not only report the words of angry enemies to angry enemies, but even add things that were not said; whereas, on the contrary, for a humane man it ought to be too little not to stir up or increase men's enmities by speaking ill, unless he also tries to extinguish them by speaking well. Such was she, taught by you, her inmost teacher, in the school of her heart.

Finally, near the very end of his temporal life she won her husband too for you; and once he was one of the faithful, she no longer lamented in him what she had borne while he was not yet one of the faithful. She was also a servant of your servants. Whoever of them knew her praised and honored and loved you greatly in her, because he sensed your presence in her heart, witnessed by the fruits of her holy way of life. For she had been "the wife of one husband," had "repaid her parents," had governed her house devoutly, was "well reported for good works." She had brought up her children, being in labor with them as often as she saw them straying from you. Finally, Lord, for all of us (since by your gift you allow your servants to speak), who before she fell asleep were already living together in you, having received the grace of your baptism, she cared as if she had given birth to us all, and served us as if she had been born of us all.

When the day was approaching on which she was to depart this life (a day you knew, though we did not), it happened, I believe by your arrangement in your hidden ways, that she and I stood alone, leaning at a window from which the garden inside the house where we were staying could be seen, there at Ostia on the Tiber, where, far from the crowds, after the toil of a long journey, we were resting ourselves for the voyage. So we talked alone together very sweetly, and "forgetting what lies behind and reaching out to what lies ahead," we asked each other, in the presence of the Truth, which you are, what the eternal life of the saints would be like, which "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man." But we opened wide the mouth of our heart to the heavenly streams of your fountain, "the fountain of life, which is with you," so that, sprinkled from it according to our capacity, we might in some way think about so great a thing.

And when our talk had reached this point, that the delight of the bodily senses, however great, in however great a bodily light, seemed in comparison with the joy of that life not only unworthy of comparison but not even worth mentioning, we rose up with more ardent love toward the Selfsame, and step by step we passed through all bodily things and the heaven itself, from which sun and moon and stars shine upon the earth. And we went higher still, inwardly thinking and speaking and marveling at your works, and we came to our own minds and passed beyond them, so as to reach the region of unfailing abundance where you feed Israel for ever with the food of truth; and there life is Wisdom, through whom all these things come to be, both those that have been and those that will be; and she herself does not come to be, but is as she was, and so will be always. Rather, to have been and to be going to be are not in her, but only to be, since she is eternal; for to have been and to be going to be are not eternal. And while we spoke and longed for her, we touched her slightly with the whole force of our heart; and we sighed, and left there, bound fast, "the first fruits of the Spirit," and returned to the noise of our mouths, where a word both begins and ends. And what is like your Word, our Lord, who remains in himself without growing old and "renews all things"?

So we said: "If for anyone the tumult of the flesh were silent; if the images of earth, water, and air were silent; if the heavens were silent, and the soul itself were silent to itself and passed beyond itself by not thinking of itself; if dreams and imaginary revelations were silent, and every tongue and every sign and whatever comes into being by passing away were wholly silent for anyone (since if anyone hears them, all these say, 'We did not make ourselves, but he made us who abides for ever'); if, having said this, they now fell silent, having turned their ear to him who made them, and he alone spoke, not through them but through himself, so that we might hear his Word, not through a tongue of flesh, nor through the voice of an angel, nor through the sound of thunder, nor through the riddle of a likeness, but might hear him himself, whom we love in these things, without these things, as we just now reached out and in a flash of thought touched the eternal Wisdom that abides above all things; if this were to continue, and other visions of a far lower kind were taken away, and this one alone were to seize and absorb and enfold its beholder in inward joys, so that eternal life might be like that moment of understanding for which we sighed: would not this be 'Enter into the joy of your Lord'? And when will that be? When we all rise again, but are not all changed?"

I said such things, if not in this way and in these words; yet, Lord, you know that on that day, when we were talking of such things and this world with all its delights grew worthless to us as we spoke, she said: "Son, for my part, I no longer take delight in anything in this life. What I am still doing here, and why I am here, I do not know, since my hope in this world is now spent. There was one thing for which I wanted to stay a little longer in this life: to see you a catholic Christian before I died. My God has granted this to me more abundantly, so that I see you even despising earthly happiness and his servant. What am I doing here?"

What I answered her I do not well remember, when meanwhile, within five days or not much more, she took to her bed with a fever. And while she was ill, one day she fainted and was for a little while withdrawn from those present. We ran to her, but she quickly came to her senses, and looked at us standing there, my brother and me, and said to us like one asking a question, "Where was I?" Then, looking at us stricken with grief, she said, "You will bury your mother here." I was silent and held back my tears. But my brother said something to the effect that he wished she might die not abroad but in her own country, as a happier lot. When she heard this, she looked at him with an anxious face, rebuking him with her eyes for thinking such things, and then, looking at me, said, "See what he says." And soon she said to us both: "Lay this body anywhere; let no care for it trouble you. This only I ask of you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord, wherever you may be." And when she had expressed this wish in such words as she could, she fell silent, and her illness grew worse and afflicted her.

But I, thinking of your gifts, invisible God, which you put into the hearts of your faithful, and from which wonderful fruits spring up, rejoiced and gave you thanks, remembering what I knew: how anxiously she had always been concerned about the tomb which she had provided and prepared for herself beside the body of her husband. For because they had lived in great harmony, she also wanted (so little is the human mind able to grasp divine things) this to be added to that happiness and to be remembered among men: that it had been granted to her, after her journey across the sea, that the joined earth of both spouses should be covered by earth. But when this vanity had begun, by the fullness of your goodness, to be no longer in her heart, I did not know; and I rejoiced and marveled that she had shown herself so to me, although even in our conversation at the window, when she said, "What am I doing here now?" she did not seem to want to die in her own country. I heard also afterward that, when we were at Ostia, she spoke one day with a mother's confidence to some of my friends, when I was not present, about contempt for this life and the good of death; and when they were amazed at the courage of the woman (since you had given it to her) and asked whether she was not afraid to leave her body so far from her own city, she said: "Nothing is far from God, and there is no need to fear that at the end of the world he will not recognize where to raise me up from." So on the ninth day of her illness, in the fifty-sixth year of her age and the thirty-third of mine, that devout and holy soul was released from the body.

I closed her eyes, and a great sadness flowed into my heart and was passing over into tears; and at the same moment my eyes, under the violent command of my mind, drank back their fountain until they were dry, and in such a struggle it went very badly with me. Then, when she had breathed her last, the boy Adeodatus burst out in lamentation, and, checked by all of us, he fell silent. In the same way something childish in me too, which was slipping into tears, was checked by a young man's voice, the voice of the heart, and fell silent. For we did not think it fitting to celebrate that funeral with tearful laments and groans, because by these people usually lament some misery of the dying, or a kind of complete extinction. But she was neither dying miserably nor dying altogether. This we held for certain from the evidence of her character and from her "faith unfeigned" and from sure reasons.

What, then, was it that grieved me so heavily within, if not the fresh wound from the sudden breaking of that most sweet and dear habit of living together? I was indeed glad of her testimony, that in that very last illness, caressing me in return for my attentions, she called me dutiful and recalled with great love that she had never heard from my mouth any harsh or insulting word hurled at her. But yet, my God, who made us, what was there alike, what was there comparable, between the honor I paid her and the service she gave me? And so, because I was deprived of so great a comfort in her, my soul was wounded, and my life was, as it were, torn apart, since it had been made one from hers and mine.

When the boy had been restrained from weeping, Evodius took up the psalter and began to sing a psalm, to which the whole household responded: "Of mercy and judgment I will sing to you, O Lord." When they heard what was happening, many brothers and devout women gathered; and while those whose duty it was were attending to the burial according to custom, I, in a part of the house where I could fittingly do so, with those who thought I should not be left alone, discussed what was suitable to the occasion; and with this balm of truth I soothed a torment known to you, while they did not know it, listened attentively, and thought me to be without any feeling of grief. But in your ears, where none of them heard, I rebuked the softness of my feeling and held back the flood of sorrow, and it gave way to me a little; and again it was carried along by its own force, not as far as bursting into tears or changing my expression, but I knew what I was holding down in my heart. And because it greatly displeased me that these human things, which must happen in the due order and lot of our condition, had so much power over me, I grieved over my grief with another grief and was worn down by a double sadness. And then the body was carried out; we went, and we came back without tears.

For not even in those prayers which we poured out to you when the sacrifice of our redemption was offered for her, with the body already placed beside the grave before it was laid in it, as is the custom there, not even in those prayers did I weep; but all day long I was heavily sad in secret, and with troubled mind I asked you, as well as I could, to heal my grief, and you did not; I believe you were impressing on my memory by this one proof how strong is the bond of all habit, even against a mind that no longer feeds on a deceitful word. It seemed good to me also to go and bathe, because I had heard that baths got their name from the fact that the Greeks called them balaneion, because it drives anxiety from the mind. See, this too I confess to your mercy, "father of the fatherless": I bathed, and I was the same as before I bathed. For the bitterness of grief did not sweat out of my heart. Then I slept, and woke, and found my grief not a little softened; and as I lay alone in my bed, I remembered the true verses of your Ambrose: for you are "God, Creator of all things, and ruler of the heavens, clothing the day with the beauty of light, the night with the grace of sleep, so that rest may restore loosened limbs to the use of labor, and lift up weary minds, and free the anxious from their grief."

And then, little by little, I brought back to mind my former thoughts of your handmaid, her devout life toward you and her holy tenderness and compliance toward us, of which I had suddenly been deprived; and I wanted to weep in your sight about her and for her, about myself and for myself. And I let go the tears I had been holding back, to flow as much as they would, making them a bed for my heart; and it rested on them, because your ears were there, not those of some man who would put a proud interpretation on my weeping. And now, Lord, I confess to you in writing. Let whoever wishes read it and interpret it as he wishes; and if he finds it a sin that I wept for my mother for a small part of an hour, the mother now dead to my eyes who had wept for me many years that I might live in your eyes, let him not laugh at me, but rather, if he is a man of great love, let him himself weep for my sins before you, the Father of all the brothers of your Christ.

But now, with my heart healed of that wound, in which I might be blamed for a carnal feeling, I pour out to you, our God, for that handmaid of yours a very different kind of tears, which flows from a spirit shaken by considering the dangers of every soul that dies in Adam. Although she, made alive in Christ even before she was released from the flesh, lived in such a way that your name is praised in her faith and conduct, yet I do not dare to say that from the time you regenerated her through baptism no word came out of her mouth against your commandment. And it has been said by the Truth, your Son: "Whoever says to his brother, 'You fool,' will be liable to the fire of hell." And woe even to the praiseworthy life of men, if you examine it with mercy set aside! But because you do not search out our faults severely, we hope with confidence for some place with you. But whoever enumerates his true merits to you, what does he enumerate to you but your own gifts? Oh, if only men would know themselves to be men, and "let him who boasts boast in the Lord"!

So I, my praise and my life, God of my heart, setting aside for a little while her good deeds, for which I give you thanks with joy, now pray to you for the sins of my mother. Hear me through the healing of our wounds, who hung on the tree and, sitting at your right hand, intercedes with you for us. I know that she acted mercifully and from her heart forgave her debtors their debts: forgive her too her debts, if she contracted any in so many years after the water of salvation. Forgive, Lord, forgive, I beg you; "do not enter into judgment with her." Let "mercy triumph over judgment," because your words are true and you have promised mercy to the merciful. That they should be merciful, you gave them, you "who will have mercy on whom you have mercy, and will show compassion on whom you have compassion."

And I believe you have already done what I ask; but "accept the freewill offerings of my mouth," Lord. For when the day of her release was at hand, she did not think of having her body sumptuously wrapped or embalmed with spices, nor did she desire a choice monument or care about a tomb in her homeland. She did not charge us with these things; she only desired that she be remembered at your altar, which she had served without missing a single day, and from which she knew the holy victim was dispensed, by which "the bond that was against us was canceled," by which the enemy was triumphed over, who reckons up our sins and looks for something to charge us with, and found nothing in him, in whom we conquer. Who will pour back into him his innocent blood? Who will give back to him the price with which he bought us, so as to take us away from him? To the sacrament of this price of ours your handmaid bound her soul with the bond of faith. Let no one tear her away from your protection. Let not the lion and the dragon thrust himself in, either by force or by snares. For she will not answer that she owes nothing, lest she be convicted and seized by the cunning accuser; but she will answer that her debts have been forgiven by him to whom no one can repay what he, owing nothing, repaid for us.

So let her rest in peace with her husband, before whom and after whom she was married to no one; whom she served, bringing forth fruit for you with patience, so that she might win him too for you. And inspire, my Lord, my God, inspire your servants, my brothers, your sons, my masters, whom I serve with heart and voice and pen, that as many as read this may remember at your altar Monica, your handmaid, with Patricius, once her husband, through whose flesh you brought me into this life, how I do not know. May they remember with devout feeling my parents in this passing light, and my brothers under you, our Father, in our catholic mother, and my fellow citizens in the eternal Jerusalem, for which the pilgrimage of your people sighs from its going out until its return; so that what she asked of me at the last may be granted her more richly by the prayers of many, through these confessions, than by my prayers alone.

Let me know you, you who know me; let me know you as I also am known. Power of my soul, enter into it and fit it to yourself, so that you may have and hold it "without spot or wrinkle." This is my hope; therefore I speak, and in this hope I rejoice, when I rejoice soundly. As for the other things of this life, the more they are wept for, the less they deserve weeping; and the less they are wept for, the more they deserve it. For see, "you have loved truth," because "he who does it comes to the light." I want to do it in my heart, before you in confession, and in my writing before many witnesses.

And indeed from you, Lord, to whose eyes the abyss of human conscience lies bare, what could be hidden in me, even if I did not want to confess it to you? I would be hiding you from myself, not myself from you. But now, since my groaning is witness that I am displeasing to myself, you shine out and are pleasing and loved and longed for, so that I blush for myself and cast myself away and choose you, and please neither you nor myself except by you. To you, then, Lord, I am laid open, whatever I am. And I have said with what fruit I confess to you. I do not do it with the words and sounds of the flesh, but with the words of the soul and the cry of thought, which your ear knows. For when I am evil, to confess to you is nothing other than to be displeased with myself; but when I am devout, to confess to you is nothing other than not to attribute this to myself, since you, Lord, bless the righteous, but first you justify him when he is ungodly. So my confession, my God, is made to you in your sight silently and not silently: silent in sound, it cries out in feeling. For I say nothing right to men that you have not first heard from me, nor do you hear anything of that kind from me that you have not first said to me.

What have I to do with men, then, that they should hear my confessions, as if they were going to heal all my diseases? A race curious to know another's life, lazy to correct their own! Why do they seek to hear from me what I am, when they do not want to hear from you what they are? And how do they know, when they hear from me about myself, whether I am telling the truth, since "no one among men knows what goes on in a man except the spirit of the man that is in him"? But if they hear from you about themselves, they will not be able to say, "The Lord is lying." For what is it to hear from you about oneself but to know oneself? And who knows himself and says, "It is false," unless he himself is lying? But because "love believes all things," at least among those whom it makes one by binding them to itself, I too, Lord, confess to you in such a way that men may hear, though I cannot prove to them whether my confession is true; but those whose ears love opens to me believe me.

But you, my inmost physician, make clear to me with what fruit I do this. For the confessions of my past evils, which you have forgiven and covered, to make me happy in you, changing my soul by faith and your sacrament, 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 every weak person is strong who through it becomes aware of his own weakness. And good people are delighted to hear of the past evils of those who are now free of them; they are delighted not because they are evils, but because they were and are no longer. With what fruit, then, my Lord, to whom my conscience confesses daily, more secure in the hope of your mercy than in its own innocence, with what fruit, I ask, do I also confess to men before you through this writing, not what I was, but what I am now? For that other fruit I have seen and mentioned. But what I still am, at this very time of my confessions, many who know me want to know, and many who do not know me but have heard something from me or about me; yet their ear is not at my heart, where I am whatever I am. So they want to hear me confess what I am within, where they cannot direct eye or ear or mind; they want to, as people who will believe; will they know? For the love by which they are good tells them that I am not lying in confessing about myself, and that love in them believes me.

But with what fruit do they want this? Do they want to rejoice with me when they hear how close I come to you by your gift, and to pray for me when they hear how much I am held back by my own weight? To such people I will reveal myself. For it is no small fruit, Lord my God, that many should give you thanks for us and many should pray to you for us. Let a brotherly mind love in me what you teach is to be loved, and grieve in me over what you teach is to be grieved over. Let a brotherly mind do this, not a stranger's, not that of "alien children, whose mouth speaks vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity"; but that brotherly mind which, when it approves me, rejoices over me, and when it disapproves me, is sad for me, because whether it approves or disapproves me, it loves me. To such people I will reveal myself: let them breathe freely at my good things and sigh at my evil things. My good things are your works and your gifts; my evil things are my faults and your judgments. Let them breathe freely at the one and sigh at the other, and let hymn and weeping rise into your sight from brotherly hearts, your censers. And you, Lord, delighted with the fragrance of your holy temple, "have mercy on me according to your great mercy," for your name's sake; and, never abandoning what you have begun, bring to completion what is incomplete in me.

This is the fruit of my confessions, not of what I was but of what I am: that I should confess this not only before you, with secret exultation and trembling and with secret sorrow and hope, but also in the ears of the believing sons of men, companions of my joy and sharers of my mortality, my fellow citizens and fellow pilgrims, those who go before, those who follow, and the companions of my way. These are your servants, my brothers, whom you willed to be your sons and my masters, whom you commanded me to serve if I wish to live with you from you. And this word of yours would have been too little for me if it had commanded only by speaking, and had not gone before by doing. I do this in deeds and in words; I do it under your wings, with very great danger, were it not that under your wings my soul is subject to you and my weakness is known to you. I am a little child, but my Father lives for ever, and my guardian is sufficient for me; for he who begot me and he who guards me is the same, and you yourself are all my good things, you, the Almighty, who are with me even before I am with you. To such, then, as you command me to serve, I will reveal not what I was, but what I now am and still am; "but I do not judge myself." So let me be heard in this way.

For it is you, Lord, who judge me; because although "no one among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man that is in him," yet there is something of a man which not even the spirit of the man that is in him knows; but you, Lord, know all of him, for you made him. And I, though in your sight I despise myself and count myself "dust and ashes," yet know something of you that I do not know of myself. And certainly "we see now through a mirror in a riddle, not yet face to face"; and so, as long as "I am a pilgrim away from you," I am more present to myself than to you; and yet I know that you cannot be violated in any way, while I do not know which temptations I am able to resist and which I am not. And there is hope, because "you are faithful, and do not let us be tempted beyond what we can bear, but with the temptation also make a way out, so that we may be able to endure it." Let me confess, then, what I know of myself; let me confess also what I do not know of myself, since what I know of myself I know by your light, and what I do not know of myself I do not know until "my darkness becomes like noonday" in your sight.

Not with a doubtful but with a certain conscience, Lord, I love you. You struck my heart with your word, and I loved you. But heaven and earth and all that is in them, see, on every side they tell me to love you, and they do not cease to tell it to everyone, "so that they are without excuse." But more deeply you "will have mercy on whom you have mercy, and show compassion on whom you have compassion"; otherwise heaven and earth speak your praises to the deaf. But what do I love when I love you? Not the beauty of a body, nor the grace of time, nor the brightness of light, so friendly to these eyes; not the sweet melodies of every kind of song, not the fragrance of flowers and ointments and spices, not manna and honey, not limbs welcome to the embraces of the flesh: I do not love these when I love my God. And yet I love a kind of light and a kind of voice and a kind of fragrance and a kind of food and a kind of embrace when I love my God: the light, voice, fragrance, food, and embrace of my inner man, where there shines for my soul what no place contains, where there sounds what time does not snatch away, where there is fragrance which no wind scatters, where there is taste which eating does not lessen, and where there is a clinging which satiety does not tear apart. This is what I love when I love my God.

And what is this? I asked the earth, and it said, "I am not he"; and all things in it confessed the same. I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping things with living souls, and they answered, "We are not your God; look above us." I asked the breezes that blow, and the whole air with its inhabitants said, "Anaximenes is mistaken; I am not God." I asked the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars: "Nor are we the God whom you seek," they say. And I said to all the things that stand around the doors of my flesh: "Tell me about my God, since you are not he; tell me something about him." And they cried out with a loud voice: "He made us." My question was my attention, and their answer was their beauty. And I turned to myself and said to myself, "Who are you?" And I answered, "A man." And see, body and soul are present in me, the one outer and the other inner. Which of these should I have asked about my God, whom I had already sought through the body from earth to heaven, as far as I could send messengers, the rays of my eyes? But the inner is better. For to it, as ruler and judge, all the bodily messengers reported the answers of heaven and earth and all that is in them, saying, "We are not God," and "He made us." The inner man knew these things through the service of the outer; I, the inner, knew these things, I, I the mind, through the senses of my body. I asked the mass of the world about my God, and it answered me, "I am not he, but he made me."

Is not this beauty apparent to all whose senses are sound? Why does it not speak the same to all? Animals small and great see it, but they cannot ask about it, for reason is not set over them as a judge of what the senses report. But men can ask, so that "the invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made"; but by love they become subject to them, and being subject they cannot judge. Nor do these things answer those who ask unless they judge; nor do they change their voice, that is, their beauty, if one man only sees and another sees and asks, so as to appear one way to the one and another way to the other; but appearing in the same way to both, it is mute to the one and speaks to the other. Or rather, it speaks to all, but they understand who compare its voice, received from outside, with the truth within. For the truth says to me: "Your God is not heaven and earth, nor any body." Their nature says this. They see: it is a mass, less in the part than in the whole. Now you are better, I tell you, my soul, since you quicken the mass of your body, giving it life, which no body gives to a body. But your God is for you also the life of your life.

What, then, do I love when I love my God? Who is he who is above the head of my soul? Through my soul itself I will ascend to him. I will pass beyond the power by which I cling to the body and fill its frame with life. It is not by this power that I find my God; for then "the horse and mule, which have no understanding," would find him, since theirs is the same power by which their bodies also live. There is another power, not only by which I give life but also by which I give sensation to my flesh, which the Lord made for me, commanding the eye not to hear and the ear not to see, but the one to be that through which I see, the other that through which I hear, and assigning to each of the other senses its own seat and office: the various things I do through them, I, one mind. I will pass beyond this power of mine too, for the horse and mule have this also; they too sense through the body.

So I will pass beyond this power of my nature too, ascending by steps to him who made me, and I come to the fields and spacious palaces of memory, where the treasures of countless images are, brought in from things of every kind perceived by the senses. There is stored away whatever we think as well, when we enlarge or diminish or in any way vary what the senses have touched, and anything else that has been entrusted and laid up there, which forgetfulness has not yet swallowed and buried. When I am there, I ask for whatever I want to be brought out, and some things come forth at once; some are sought for longer and are dug out, as it were, from more hidden storerooms; some rush out in crowds, and while something else is being asked for and sought, they leap out into the middle as if saying, "Is it perhaps us?" And I drive them away with the hand of my heart from the face of my remembering, until what I want is cleared of clouds and comes into sight from its hiding places. Other things are supplied easily and in unbroken order as they are called for, and those in front give way to those that follow, and in giving way are stored away, to come forth again when I wish. All this happens when I tell something from memory.

There all things are kept distinct and according to their kinds, each brought in by its own entrance: light and all colors and shapes of bodies through the eyes; through the ears all kinds of sounds; all smells through the entrance of the nostrils; all tastes through the entrance of the mouth; and from the sense of the whole body, what is hard, what is soft, what is hot or cold, smooth or rough, heavy or light, whether outside or inside the body. All these the great recess of memory receives, to be recalled when needed and reconsidered, together with its secret and indescribable folds, I know not which; all these enter it, each by its own door, and are stored in it. Yet the things themselves do not enter, but the images of the things perceived are there, ready for the thought that recalls them. Who can say how these images were formed, although it is plain by which senses they were seized and stored within? For even while I dwell in darkness and silence, I bring out colors in my memory, if I wish, and I distinguish between white and black and between any others I wish; and sounds do not rush in and disturb what I am considering, drawn in through the eyes, although they too are there, lying hidden as if stored apart. For I call for them too, if I like, and they are there at once; and with tongue at rest and throat silent I sing as much as I want, and those images of colors, which are there nonetheless, do not interpose themselves or interrupt when the other treasure, which flowed in from the ears, is being handled. So too the other things brought in and heaped up by the other senses I recall as I please; I distinguish the scent of lilies from violets while smelling nothing, and I prefer honey to boiled wine, smooth to rough, not tasting or touching anything then, but remembering.

I do these things within, in the vast hall of my memory. For there heaven and earth and sea are present to me, with everything I have been able to perceive in them, except what I have forgotten. There I also meet myself and recall myself, what I did, when and where, and how I was affected when I did it. There is everything I remember, whether experienced by me or believed. From the same store I also weave together, one after another, likenesses of things either experienced or believed on the basis of what I have experienced, and join them to past things; and from them I also ponder future actions and events and hopes, and all these again as if present. "I will do this and that," I say to myself in that huge bosom of my mind, full of images of so many and such great things, and this or that follows. "Oh, if only this or that would happen!" "May God prevent this or that!" I say these things to myself, and when I say them, the images of all that I say are present from the same treasury of memory, and I would not say any of them at all if they were absent.

Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, my God, a vast and boundless inner chamber. Who has reached its bottom? And this is a power of my mind and belongs to my nature, and yet I myself do not grasp all that I am. So the mind is too narrow to contain itself; where, then, is that part of itself which it does not contain? Is it outside itself and not in itself? How, then, does it not contain it? Great wonder rises in me at this; amazement seizes me. And men go out to wonder at the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad courses of rivers, the circuit of the Ocean, and the revolutions of the stars, and they pass themselves by, and do not wonder that when I spoke of all these things I was not seeing them with my eyes; and yet I could not speak of them unless I saw within, in my memory, the mountains and waves and rivers and stars which I have seen, and the Ocean which I have believed in, in spaces as vast as if I saw them outside. Yet I did not swallow them up by seeing them when I saw them with my eyes; nor are the things themselves with me, but their images, and I know by which bodily sense each was impressed on me.

But this immense capacity of my memory does not hold these things alone. Here are also all the things learned from the liberal disciplines which have not yet slipped away, set apart, as it were, in an inner place that is not a place; and of these I carry not the images but the things themselves. For what literature is, what skill in argument is, how many kinds of questions there are, whatever of these I know is in my memory in such a way that I have not kept an image and left the thing outside. It is not as if it had sounded and passed away, like a voice impressed through the ears, leaving a trace by which it can be recalled as if it were sounding when it no longer sounds; or like a smell, which while it passes and vanishes into the winds affects the sense of smell, from which it sends an image of itself into the memory for us to recall by remembering; or like food, which certainly has no taste once in the stomach and yet in memory still has a kind of taste; or like something perceived by the body's touch, which memory imagines even when it is separated from us. For these things are not let into memory; only their images are caught with wonderful speed, stored away in wonderful cells, as it were, and wonderfully brought out by remembering.

But when I hear that there are three kinds of questions, whether a thing is, what it is, and of what sort it is, I hold images of the sounds of which these words are made, and I know that they passed through the air with a noise and are no longer. But the things themselves which are signified by those sounds I never reached with any bodily sense, nor did I see them anywhere except in my mind; and I stored in my memory not their images but the things themselves. Let them say, if they can, from where they came into me. For I go through all the doors of my flesh and do not find by which of them they entered. The eyes say, "If they are colored, we reported them"; the ears say, "If they made a sound, they were announced by us"; the nostrils say, "If they had a smell, they passed through us"; the sense of taste also says, "If there is no flavor, do not ask me"; touch says, "If it has no body, I did not handle it; if I did not handle it, I did not report it." From where and by what way did these things enter my memory? I do not know how. For when I learned them, I did not take them on trust from another's heart, but I recognized them in my own, and approved them as true, and entrusted them to it as if storing them away, to be brought out when I wished. So they were there even before I learned them, but they were not in the memory. Where, then, or why, when they were spoken, did I recognize them and say, "It is so, it is true," unless they were already in the memory, but so far off and pushed back, as if in the more hidden caves, that unless someone reminded me and they were dug out, I might perhaps not have been able to think of them?

So we find that to learn these things, whose images we do not draw in through the senses, but which we perceive within, as they are in themselves, without images, is nothing other than this: by thinking, as it were, to gather together things which the memory held scattered and unordered, and by attending to them to see that, as if placed at hand in the memory itself, where before they lay hidden, scattered and neglected, they now readily come to meet our familiar attention. And how many things of this kind my memory carries, which have already been found and, as I said, placed as it were at hand, which we are said to have learned and to know! If I stop recalling them for even short intervals of time, they sink again and slip away into more remote recesses, so that they must be thought out afresh as if new, from the same place (for they have no other dwelling), and must be gathered together again so that they can be known; that is, they must be collected, as it were, from a kind of scattering; hence the word cogitare, "to think." For cogo and cogito are related as ago and agito, facio and factito. Yet the mind has claimed this word as properly its own, so that what is gathered together, that is, "collected" (cogitur), not anywhere else but in the mind, is now properly said to be "thought" (cogitari).

Memory also contains the principles and countless laws of numbers and measures, none of which any bodily sense impressed, since they have no color, sound, smell, taste, or touch. I have heard the sounds of the words by which they are signified when they are discussed, but the sounds are one thing and the principles another. For the sounds are different in Greek and in Latin, but the principles are neither Greek nor Latin nor any other kind of language. I have seen lines drawn by craftsmen, even very fine ones, like a spider's thread; but those lines are something else; they are not images of the lines my eye of flesh reported to me. Whoever recognizes them within, without any thought of a body of any kind, knows them. I have also perceived with all the bodily senses the numbers we count; but the numbers by which we count are different; they are not images of the others, and therefore they truly are. Let whoever does not see them laugh at me for saying this; and I will grieve for him who laughs at me.

All these things I hold in memory, and how I learned them I hold in memory. I have also heard and hold in memory many things argued most falsely against them; and though these are false, yet it is not false that I remember them. And I remember that I distinguished between those true things and these false things that are brought against them; and I see that it is one thing to distinguish them now, and another to remember that I often distinguished them when I often thought about them. So I remember that I have often understood these things, and what I now distinguish and understand I store away in memory, so that afterward I may remember that I understood it now. And I remember that I have remembered; just as afterward, if I recall that I was able to remember these things now, I shall certainly recall it by the power of memory.

The same memory also contains the feelings of my mind, not in the way the mind itself has them when it experiences them, but in another way, very different, as the power of memory has itself. For I remember that I was glad without being glad, I recall my past sadness without being sad, I recollect that I was once afraid without fear, and I remember former desire without desire. Sometimes, on the contrary, I remember my past sadness with gladness, and gladness with sadness. This is not surprising in the case of the body, for the mind is one thing and the body another. So if I remember past bodily pain with joy, it is not so strange. But here, since the memory is itself the mind (for when we tell someone to keep something in memory, we say, "See that you keep it in mind," and when we forget, we say, "It was not in my mind" and "It slipped my mind," calling memory itself the mind), since this is so, what is it that when I remember my past sadness with gladness, the mind has gladness and the memory sadness, and the mind is glad because gladness is in it, while the memory is not sad, although sadness is in it? Does memory perhaps not belong to the mind? Who would say that? Surely, then, memory is like the stomach of the mind, and gladness and sadness are like sweet and bitter food: when they are committed to memory, they can be stored there, as if passed into the stomach, but they cannot be tasted. It is ridiculous to think these things are like those, and yet they are not wholly unlike.

But see, I bring it out of memory when I say that there are four disturbances of the mind: desire, gladness, fear, and sadness; and whatever I can argue about them, by dividing each into the species of its own kind and by defining, I find there what to say, and bring it out from there; and yet I am not disturbed by any of these disturbances when I call them to mind by remembering. And before I recalled and reconsidered them, they were there; that is why they could be brought out from there by remembering. Perhaps, then, as food is brought up from the stomach by chewing the cud, so these things are brought up from the memory by recalling. Why, then, does the one who discusses them, that is, the one who remembers, not feel in the mouth of thought the sweetness of gladness or the bitterness of grief? Or is the comparison unlike in this, that it is not alike in every respect? For who would willingly speak of such things if every time we named sadness or fear we were forced to grieve or be afraid? And yet we would not speak of them unless we found in our memory not only the sounds of the names, according to images impressed by the bodily senses, but also notions of the things themselves, which we did not receive through any door of the flesh; but the mind itself, perceiving them through the experience of its own passions, entrusted them to memory, or the memory itself retained them even when they were not entrusted to it. But whether this is through images or not, who could easily say?

For I name a stone, I name the sun, when the things themselves are not present to my senses; but in my memory their images are certainly present. I name bodily pain, and it is not present to me when nothing hurts; yet unless its image were present in my memory, I would not know what I was saying, nor would I distinguish it from pleasure in discussion. I name bodily health when I am healthy in body; the thing itself is present to me; yet unless its image also were in my memory, I would in no way recall what the sound of this name signified; nor would sick people recognize what was meant when health was named, unless the same image were held by the power of memory, although the thing itself was absent from the body. I name the numbers by which we count: see, they are present in my memory, not their images, but themselves. I name the image of the sun, and it is present in my memory; for I recall not the image of its image, but the image itself: it is present to me when I remember. I name memory, and I recognize what I name. And where do I recognize it but in memory itself? Is memory too present to itself through its image and not through itself?

What, when I name forgetfulness and likewise recognize what I name? From where do I recognize the thing, unless I remembered it? I do not mean the sound of the name, but the thing it signifies; if I had forgotten that, I would certainly not be able to recognize what the sound meant. 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, forgetfulness which I remember. But what is forgetfulness but the absence of memory? How, then, is it present so that I remember it, when, if it is present, I cannot remember? But if what we remember we hold by memory, and unless we remembered forgetfulness we could in no way recognize the thing signified by that name when we heard it, then forgetfulness is held by memory. So that is present, so that we may not forget, which, when it is present, makes us forget. Is it to be understood from this that forgetfulness is not in memory through itself when we remember it, but through its image? Because, if forgetfulness were present through itself, it would make us not remember but forget. And who will ever search this out? Who will grasp how it is?

I certainly, Lord, labor over this, and labor in myself: I have become to myself a land of hardship and of too much sweat. For we are not now searching the regions of the sky or measuring the distances of the stars or seeking how the earth is balanced: it is I who remember, I, the mind. It is not so strange if whatever I am not is far from me; but what is nearer to me than myself? And see, the power of my own memory is not grasped by me, though without it I could not even say "I myself." For what am I to say, when I am certain 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 so that I may not forget? Both are utterly absurd. What of the third possibility? How can I say that the image of forgetfulness is held by my memory, not forgetfulness itself, when I remember it? How can I say this either, since when the image of anything is impressed on the memory, the thing itself must first be present, from which the image can be impressed? For so I remember Carthage, so all the places where I have been, so the faces of the people I have seen and the reports of the other senses, so the health or pain of the body itself: when these were present, memory took images from them, which I could look at as present and reconsider in my mind when I remembered them in their absence. If, then, forgetfulness is held in memory through its image and not through itself, then it was itself present, so that its image might be taken. But when it was present, how did it write its image in the memory, when forgetfulness by its presence deletes even what it finds already noted there? And yet, in whatever way, though that way is incomprehensible and inexplicable, I am certain that I remember forgetfulness itself, by which what we remember is buried.

Great is the power of memory, something awe-inspiring, my God, a deep and boundless manifoldness; and this is the mind, and this I am myself. What, then, am I, my God? What is my nature? A life varied, manifold, and exceedingly immense. See, in the fields and caves and caverns of my memory, countless and countlessly full of countless kinds of things, present either through images, as with all bodies, or in themselves, as with the arts, or through some notions or marks, as with the feelings of the mind (which memory holds even when the mind is not experiencing them, since whatever is in memory is in the mind), through all these I run and fly this way and that; I penetrate as far as I can, and there is no end anywhere: so great is the power of memory, so great the power of life in a man living mortally! What, then, shall I do, you my true life, my God? I will pass beyond this power of mine too, which is called memory; I will pass beyond it, so as to reach you, sweet light. What do you say to me? Ascending through my mind to you, who abide above me, I will pass beyond this power of mine too, which is called memory, wanting to reach you where you can be reached, and to cling to you where one can cling to you. For cattle and birds also have memory; otherwise they would not find their dens and nests again, nor many other things they grow used to; for they could not grow used to anything except through memory. So I will pass beyond memory too, so as to reach him who "separated me from the four-footed beasts and made me wiser than the birds of the air." I will pass beyond memory too, so as to find you (where?), you truly good and secure sweetness, so as to find you where? If I find you beyond my memory, I am forgetful of you. And how shall I find you if I do not remember you?

For the woman had lost her coin and searched for it with a lamp, and unless she had remembered it, she would not have found it. For when it was found, how would she know whether it was the same one, if she did not remember it? I remember that I have looked for and found many lost things. That is how I know this: when I was looking for one of them and someone said to me, "Is it this, perhaps?" "Is it that?" I kept saying, "It is not," until the thing I was looking for was offered. Unless I had remembered it, whatever it was, I would not have found it even if it were offered to me, because I would not have recognized it. And it always happens so when we look for and find something lost. Yet if something is lost from the eyes but not from the memory, some visible body for instance, its image is held within and it is sought until it is restored to sight. When it has been found, it is recognized from the image that is within. Nor do we say that we have found what was lost if we do not recognize it, nor can we recognize it if we do not remember it; this was lost to the eyes, but held by the memory.

What, then, when memory itself loses something, as happens when we forget and search in order to remember? Where do we search in the end, but in memory itself? And there, if one thing is perhaps offered in place of another, we reject it until the thing we are looking for turns up. And when it turns up, we say, "This is it"; which we would not say unless we recognized it, and we would not recognize it unless we remembered it. Certainly we had forgotten it. Or had it not slipped away entirely, but from the part that was still held, the other part was being sought, because memory felt that it was not turning over together what it used to turn over together, and, limping as if its habit had been cut short, demanded that what was missing be given back? It is as when a known man is seen with our eyes or thought of and we try to recall his name, having forgotten it: whatever else occurs to us is not connected, because it has not been usual to think of it together with him, and so it is rejected until that name is present on which our accustomed knowledge rests evenly, as on its match. And from where is it present, if not from memory itself? For even when we recognize it on being reminded by someone else, it is from there that it comes. For we do not believe it as something new, but, remembering, we approve that what has been said is right. But if it were wholly erased from the mind, we would not remember it even when reminded. For we have not yet wholly forgotten what we at least remember that we have forgotten. So what we have entirely forgotten we shall not even be able to seek as lost.

How, then, do I seek you, Lord? For when I seek you, my God, I seek a happy life. Let me seek you, so that my soul may live. For my body lives from my soul, and my soul lives from you. How, then, do I seek a happy life? For it is not mine until I say, "Enough; it is there." Here I must say how I seek it: whether by remembering, as though I had forgotten it and still held that I had forgotten it; or by a desire to learn it as something unknown, either never known or so forgotten that I do not even remember having forgotten it. Is not the happy life the very thing that all want, and there is absolutely no one who does not want it? Where did they come to know it, that they want it so? Where did they see it, that they love it? Surely we have it, I do not know how. And there is one way in which a person, when he has it, is then happy; and there are those who are happy in hope. These have it in a lower way than those who are already happy in reality, but yet better than those who are happy neither in reality nor in hope. Yet even these, unless they had it in some way, would not so want to be happy; and it is most certain that they want it. I do not know how they have come to know it, and so they have it by some knowledge or other; and I am concerned whether this is in the memory, because if it is there, we were already happy once, whether each of us individually, or in that man who first sinned, in whom we all died and from whom we have all been born with misery. That I do not ask now; but I ask whether the happy life is in the memory. For we would not love it unless we knew it. We have heard this name, and all of us confess that we desire the thing; for we are not delighted merely by the sound. For when a Greek hears it in Latin, he is not delighted, because he does not know what has been said; but we are delighted, as he too would be if he heard it in Greek, since the thing itself is neither Greek nor Latin, and Greeks and Latins and men of other languages long to gain it. So it is known to all, and if they could be asked with one voice whether they wanted to be happy, they would answer without any hesitation that they did. That would not happen unless the thing itself, whose name this is, were held in their memory.

Is it the way I remember Carthage, which I have seen? No; for the happy life is not seen with the eyes, because it is not a body. Is it as we remember numbers? No; for whoever has these in his knowledge no longer seeks to gain them, but we have the happy life in our knowledge and so love it, and yet we still want to gain it so as to be happy. Is it as we remember eloquence? No; although when they hear this name, even those who are not yet eloquent recall the thing itself, and many want to be eloquent (from which it is clear that it is in their knowledge), yet they have noticed others being eloquent through the bodily senses and have been delighted and want to be so themselves (though they would not be delighted except from an inner knowledge, nor would they want to be so unless they were delighted); but the happy life we do not experience in others by any bodily sense. Is it as we remember joy? Perhaps so. For I remember my joy even when I am sad, as I remember the happy life when I am miserable; and I have never seen or heard or smelled or tasted or touched my joy with a bodily sense, but I experienced it in my mind when I rejoiced, and the knowledge of it stuck to my memory, so that I can recall it, sometimes with disgust, sometimes with longing, according to the different things in which I remember having rejoiced. For I have been flooded with a kind of joy even over shameful things, which I now recall with loathing and detestation; sometimes over good and honorable things, which I recall with longing, even though perhaps they are not present, and so I recall my former joy with sadness.

Where, then, and when did I experience my happy life, so as to remember it and love it and long for it? And not I alone, or with a few, but absolutely all of us want to be happy. Unless we knew it with certain knowledge, we would not want it with so certain a will. But what is this? If two people are asked whether they want to be soldiers, it may happen that one answers that he does, the other that he does not; but if they are asked whether they want to be happy, each will at once say without hesitation that he wishes it; and the one wants to serve and the other does not want to for no other reason than to be happy. Is it perhaps because one finds joy in one thing and another in another? So all agree that they want to be happy, just as they would agree, if they were asked, that they want to rejoice; and they call joy itself the happy life. Although one reaches it by this way and another by that, yet there is one thing that all strive to reach, that they may rejoice. And since this is something no one can say he has not experienced, it is found in the memory and recognized when the name "happy life" is heard.

Far be it, Lord, far be it from the heart of your servant who confesses to you, far be it that I should think myself happy with any joy whatever. For there is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who worship you freely, whose joy you yourself are. And this is the happy life: to rejoice in you, toward you, because of you; this is it, and there is no other. But those who think there is another pursue another joy, and it is not the true one. Yet their will is not turned away from some image of joy.

So it is not certain that all want to be happy, since those who do not want to rejoice in you, which alone is the happy life, do not really want the happy life. Or do all want this, but because "the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that they do not do what they want," they fall back on what they are able to do and are content with that, because what they are not able to do they do not want as much as would be enough to make them able? For I ask all of them whether they would rather rejoice in truth or in falsehood; and they do not hesitate to say that they prefer truth any more than they hesitate to say that they want to be happy. For the happy life is joy in the truth. For this is joy in you, who are the Truth, God, "my light, the salvation of my face, my God." This happy life all want; this life, which alone is happy, all want; joy in the truth all want. I have known many who wanted to deceive, but none who wanted to be deceived. Where, then, did they come to know this happy life, if not where they came to know the truth as well? For they love truth too, since they do not want to be deceived; and when they love the happy life, which is nothing other than joy in the truth, they certainly love truth as well; and they would not love it unless there were some knowledge of it in their memory. Why, then, do they not rejoice in it? Why are they not happy? Because they are more strongly occupied with other things, which make them miserable rather than that which they faintly remember makes them happy. For "there is yet a little light" in men; "let them walk, let them walk, lest darkness overtake them."

But why does truth breed hatred, and why did your servant who preached the truth become an enemy to them, when the happy life is loved, which is nothing but joy in the truth? Is it not because truth is loved in such a way that whoever loves something else wants what he loves to be the truth; and because they would not want to be deceived, they do not want to be shown that they are deceived? So they hate the truth for the sake of the very thing they love instead of the truth. They love it when it shines, they hate it when it rebukes. For because they do not want to be deceived and want to deceive, they love it when it reveals itself and hate it when it reveals them. Therefore it will repay them: those who do not want to be exposed by it, it will expose against their will, and it will not be manifest to them. So, so, even so the human mind, even so blind and sick, foul and unseemly, wants to be hidden, but does not want anything to be hidden from it. It is repaid the opposite: it is not hidden from the truth, but the truth is hidden from it. Yet even so, while it is miserable, it would rather rejoice in true things than false. It will therefore be happy if, with no trouble intervening, it rejoices in the Truth alone, through which all things are true.

See how far I have ranged in my memory seeking you, Lord, and I have not found you outside it. For I find nothing about you that I have not remembered since I learned you. For since I learned you, I have not forgotten you. For where I found truth, there I found my God, Truth itself, which I have not forgotten since I learned it. And so, since I learned you, you remain in my memory, and there I find you when I remember you and delight in you. These are my holy delights, which you have given me in your mercy, looking upon my poverty.

But where in my memory do you remain, Lord, where do you remain there? What resting place have you made for yourself? What sanctuary have you built for yourself? You have granted my memory this honor, that you remain in it; but in what part of it you remain, that I am considering. For in remembering you I passed beyond the parts of it which the beasts also have, because I did not find you there among the images of bodily things; and I came to the parts of it where I had entrusted the feelings of my mind, and I did not find you there. And I entered the seat of my mind itself, which it has in my memory, since the mind remembers itself too, and you were not there; because just as you are not a bodily image, nor the feeling of a living being such as we have when we rejoice, grieve, desire, fear, remember, forget, and anything of that kind, so you are not the mind itself either, because you are the Lord God of the mind; and all these things change, but you remain unchangeable above all things, and you have deigned to dwell in my memory since I learned you. And why do I ask in what place of it you dwell, as if there were really places there? You certainly dwell in it, since I have remembered you since I learned you, and I find you in it when I recall you.

Where, then, did I find you, so as to learn you? For you were not in my memory before I learned you. Where, then, did I find you, so as to learn you, if not in you, above me? And there is no place anywhere; we go back and we come near, and there is no place anywhere. O Truth, everywhere you preside over all who consult you, and at the same time you answer all, though they consult you about different things. You answer clearly, but not all hear clearly. All consult you about what they want, but they do not always hear what they want. Your best servant is the one who does not look 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 ancient and so new, late have I loved you! And see, you were within and I was outside, and there I sought you, and, deformed as I was, I rushed headlong into those beautiful things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. Those things kept me far from you which, if they were not in you, would not exist. You called and cried out and broke through my deafness; you flashed, you shone, and you put my blindness to flight; you were fragrant, and I drew breath and now I pant for you; I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I burned for your peace.

When I cling to you with all of myself, I shall have no pain or toil anywhere, and my life will be alive, wholly full of you. But now, since you lift up the one whom you fill, and I am not yet full of you, I am a burden to myself. My joys that deserve weeping contend with my sorrows that deserve rejoicing, and I do not know on which side the victory stands. Alas, Lord, have mercy on me! My evil sorrows contend with my good joys, and I do not know on which side the victory stands. Alas! Lord, have mercy on me! Alas! See, I do not hide my wounds: you are the physician, I am sick; you are merciful, I am miserable. "Is not human life on earth a trial?" Who would want troubles and difficulties? You command us to endure them, not to love them. No one loves what he endures, even if he loves to endure. For although he rejoices that he endures, he would rather there were nothing to endure. In adversity I long for prosperity; in prosperity I fear adversity. What middle place is there between them, where human life is not a trial? Woe to the prosperities of the world, once and again, from the fear of adversity and the corruption of joy! Woe to the adversities of the world, once and again and a third time, from the longing for prosperity, and because adversity itself is hard, and lest it break our endurance! Is not human life on earth a trial, without any respite?

And all my hope is nowhere except in your great mercy. Give what you command, and command what you will. You command us to be continent. "And when I knew," someone said, "that no one can be continent unless God gives it, this too was a mark of wisdom, to know whose gift this was." For by continence we are gathered together and brought back into the One, from whom we had flowed away into the many. For he loves you too little who loves something together with you which he does not love for your sake. O Love, who always burn and are never quenched, Charity, my God, set me on fire! You command continence: give what you command, and command what you will.

You certainly command me to abstain from "the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the ambition of the world." You commanded me to abstain from sexual intercourse, and with regard to marriage itself you advised something better than what you permitted. And because you gave it, it was done, even before I became a dispenser of your sacrament. But there still live in my memory, of which I have said so much, the images of such things, which my habit fixed there; and they come to meet me, powerless indeed when I am awake, but in sleep not only to the point of pleasure but even to the point of consent and something very like the act. And the illusion of that image has such power in my soul, in my flesh, that false visions persuade me when asleep to what true ones cannot when I am awake. Am I not myself then, Lord my God? And yet there is so great a difference between myself and myself in the moment when I pass from here into sleep, or come back from there to here! Where then is the reason by which, when awake, the mind resists such suggestions and remains unshaken even if the things themselves are pressed upon it? Is it closed with the eyes? Is it lulled to sleep with the bodily senses? And how is it that often even in sleep we resist, and, mindful of our resolve and remaining most chastely in it, give no assent to such allurements? And yet the difference is so great that when it happens otherwise, on waking we return to peace of conscience, and by that very distance we find that we did not do what we nevertheless grieve was in some way done in us.

Is not your hand powerful, almighty God, to heal all the diseases of my soul, and by your more abundant grace to quench even the lustful motions of my sleep? You will increase your gifts in me more and more, Lord, so that my soul may follow me to you, freed from the birdlime of lust; so that it may not rebel against itself, and even in sleep may not only not commit these shameful corruptions through sensual images to the point of bodily discharge, but may not even consent to them. For to bring it about that nothing of the kind should please, not even so slightly that it could be checked by a nod, even in the chaste feeling of one asleep, not only in this life but at this age of mine, is no great thing for the Almighty, "who is able to do more than we ask or understand." But now I have told my good Lord what I still am in this kind of evil of mine, "rejoicing with trembling" in what you have given me, and mourning in what is still unfinished in me, hoping that you will bring your mercies to completion in me until the full peace which my inner and outer self will have with you, when "death is swallowed up in victory."

There is another evil of the day, and I wish it were sufficient for it. For we repair the daily wear of the body by eating and drinking, until you "destroy both food and stomach," when you will kill need with a wonderful fullness and clothe "this corruptible" with eternal "incorruption." But now this necessity is sweet to me, and I fight against that sweetness so as not to be taken captive by it; and I wage a daily war by fasting, often "bringing my body into subjection," and my pains are driven out by pleasure. For hunger and thirst are pains of a sort; they burn and, like a fever, kill, unless the medicine of food comes to the rescue. And since this is at hand from the comfort of your gifts, in which earth and water and sky serve our weakness, the calamity is called a delight.

You have taught me this: that I should come to take food as I take medicine. But while I pass from the discomfort of need to the rest of fullness, in that very passage the snare of desire lies in wait for me. For the passage itself is pleasure, and there is no other way to pass to where necessity compels us to pass. And although health is the reason for eating and drinking, a dangerous pleasure joins itself to it like a servant following behind, and often tries to go in front, so that what I say or want to do for the sake of health is done for its sake. Nor is the measure of the two the same: for what is enough for health is too little for pleasure, and it often becomes uncertain whether the necessary care of the body is still asking for help, or whether the deceitful pleasure of desire is offering its service. The unhappy soul brightens at this uncertainty and prepares in it the defense of an excuse, glad that it is not clear what is enough for the moderate care of health, so that under the pretext of health it may cloak the business of pleasure. These temptations I try to resist every day, and I call upon your right hand and refer my turmoil to you, because my mind is not yet settled on this matter.

I hear the voice of my God commanding: "Let not your hearts be weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness." Drunkenness is far from me; you will have mercy, so that it does not come near me. But gluttony has sometimes crept up on your servant; you will have mercy, so that it may be far from me. For no one can be continent unless you give it. You grant us many things when we pray; and whatever good we received before we prayed, we received from you; and that we should afterward know this, we received from you. I was never a drunkard, but I have known drunkards made sober by you. So it was your doing that those who never were drunkards are not, your doing that those who were are not so always, and your doing too that both know by whom it was done. I heard another voice of yours: "Do not go after your lusts, and turn away from your pleasure." I heard also, by your gift, one I have loved very much: "Neither if we eat shall we abound, nor if we do not eat shall we lack"; that is to say, neither will the one thing make me rich, nor the other wretched. I heard also another: "For I have learned to be content in whatever state I am; I know how to abound, and I know how to suffer need. I can do all things in him who strengthens me." See, a soldier of the heavenly camp, not the dust that we are. But "remember, Lord, that we are dust," and out of dust you made man, and "he was lost and is found." Nor could he do it in himself, because he was the same dust, he whom I have loved for saying such things by the breath of your inspiration: "I can do all things," he says, "in him who strengthens me." Strengthen me, so that I may be able; give what you command, and command what you will. He confesses that he has received, and "when he boasts, he boasts in the Lord." I have heard another asking to receive: "Take from me," he says, "the lusts of the belly." From which it is clear, holy God, that it is you who 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 evil for the man who eats with offense"; and that "every creature of yours is good, and nothing is to be rejected which is received with thanksgiving"; and that "food does not commend us to God"; and that "no one should judge us in food or drink"; and that "he who eats should not despise him who does not eat, and he who does not eat should not judge him who eats." I have learned these things; thanks be to you, praise be to you, my God, my teacher, who knock at my ears and enlighten my heart: rescue me from every temptation. It is not the uncleanness of food that I fear, but the uncleanness of desire. I know that Noah was allowed to eat every kind of meat that was fit for food; that Elijah was refreshed with meat; that John, endowed with wonderful abstinence, was not defiled by the living creatures, that is, the locusts, that served him for food. And I know that Esau was deceived by his desire for lentils, and that David blamed himself for his longing for water, and that our King was tempted not by meat but by bread. And so too the people in the wilderness deserved to be rebuked, not because they desired meat, but because in their desire for food they murmured against the Lord.

Placed among these temptations, then, I struggle daily against the desire for eating and drinking. For this is not something I can decide to cut off once and never touch again, as I could with sexual intercourse. So the reins of the throat must be held with a moderate slackening and tightening. And who is there, Lord, who is not carried a little beyond the bounds of necessity? Whoever he is, he is great; let him magnify your name. But I am not he, "for I am a sinful man." Yet I too magnify your name; and he who "has overcome the world" intercedes with you for my sins, counting me among the weak members of his body, because "your eyes have seen" his "imperfect part, and in your book all shall be written."

With the allurement of scents I am not much concerned: when they are absent, I do not seek them; when they are present, I do not reject them, and I am ready to do without them always. So it seems to me; perhaps I am deceived. For this too is a darkness to be lamented, in which my own capacity is hidden from me, so that my mind, questioning itself about its strength, does not think it should easily trust itself; because even what is in it is mostly hidden unless experience makes it plain; and no one ought to be secure in this life, which is called wholly a trial, as to whether one who could be made better from worse may not also become worse from better. One hope, one confidence, one firm promise: your mercy.

The pleasures of the ears had entangled and subdued me more tightly, but you loosed and freed me. Now, in the sounds to which your words give life, when they are sung with a sweet and trained voice, I confess that I find some rest, not indeed so as to cling to them, but so that I can rise when I will. Yet together with the thoughts by which they live, so that they may be admitted to me, they seek in my heart a place of some honor, and I can hardly give them a fitting one. For sometimes I seem to myself to give them more honor than is proper, when I feel that our minds are moved more devoutly and ardently to a flame of piety by the holy words themselves when they are sung so than if they were not so sung, and that all the feelings of our spirit, in their variety, have their own measures in voice and song, by which they are stirred through some hidden kinship. But the pleasure of my flesh, to which the mind ought not to be given over to be weakened, often deceives me, when the sense does not accompany reason so as to follow patiently behind, but, having been admitted only for reason's sake, tries even to run ahead and lead. So in these things I sin without noticing, and afterward I notice.

But sometimes, guarding too immoderately against this very deception, I err by too great severity, so much so at times that I would want every melody of the sweet songs to which David's psalter is regularly sung to be removed from my ears and from those of the church itself; and it seems safer to me to follow what I remember having often been told of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who made the reader of the psalm sound it with so little inflection of the voice that it was nearer to speaking than singing. Yet when I remember the tears I shed at the songs of the church in the early days of my recovered faith, and that even now I am moved not by the singing but by the things that are sung, when they are sung with a clear voice and the most fitting melody, I acknowledge again the great usefulness of this practice. So I waver between the danger of pleasure and the experience of its benefit, and I am more inclined, though not putting forward an irrevocable opinion, to approve the custom of singing in church, so that through the delights of the ears the weaker mind may rise to a feeling of devotion. Yet when it happens to me that the singing moves me more than what is sung, I confess that I sin in a way that deserves punishment, and then I would rather not hear the singer. See where I am! Weep with me and weep for me, you who have some good within you, from which good deeds come. For you who do not, these things do not move you. But you, Lord my God, hear, look, see, and have mercy and heal me, in whose eyes I have become a question to myself; and that is my sickness.

There remains the pleasure of these eyes of my flesh, about which I make my confessions, to be heard by the ears of your temple, brotherly and devout ears; so that we may conclude the temptations of the lust of the flesh which still assail me as I groan and long "to be clothed over with my dwelling which is from heaven." The eyes love beautiful and varied forms, bright and pleasant colors. Let these not hold my soul; let God hold it, who made these things, "very good" indeed, but he is my good, not these. They touch me while I am awake all day long, and no rest from them is given me, as there is from musical voices, and sometimes from all sounds, in silence. For this queen of colors, the light, bathing all that we see, wherever I am during the day, caresses me with manifold approach while I am doing something else and not paying attention to it. And it insinuates itself so strongly that if it is suddenly taken away, it is sought with longing; and if it is absent for long, it saddens the mind.

O the light which Tobit saw, when with these eyes closed he taught his son the way of life and went before him on the foot of love, never going astray; or which Isaac saw, when his fleshly eyes were heavy and covered with old age, and it was granted him to bless his sons not by recognizing them, but to recognize them by blessing them; or which Jacob saw, when he too, deprived of sight by great age, with an enlightened heart shone light upon the tribes of the future people foreshadowed in his sons, and laid on his grandsons by Joseph his hands, mystically crossed, not as their father outwardly tried to correct them, but as he himself inwardly discerned. That is the light; it is one, and all who see and love it are one. But this bodily light I was speaking of seasons the life of the world for its blind lovers with an alluring and dangerous sweetness. But those who know how to praise you for it too, "God, creator of all things," take it up into your hymn and are not taken up by it into their sleep: so I desire to be. I resist the seductions of the eyes, lest my feet, with which I walk on your way, be entangled; and I lift up to you invisible eyes, so that you may "pluck my feet out of the snare." You pluck them out again and again, for they are caught. You do not cease to pluck them out, while I often get stuck in the snares spread everywhere; for "you will neither slumber nor sleep, you who keep Israel."

How countless are the things that men, by various arts and crafts, have added to the allurements of the eyes, in clothes, shoes, vessels, and manufactures of every kind, in pictures too and various images, going far beyond necessary and moderate use and devout meaning; following outwardly what they make, abandoning inwardly him by whom they were made, and destroying what they were made to be. But I, my God and my glory, even from this sing a hymn to you and offer a sacrifice of praise to him who sacrificed himself for me, because the beautiful things passed through souls into skillful hands come from that Beauty which is above souls, for which my soul sighs day and night. But the makers and followers of outward beauties draw from it their standard of approval, but not their standard of use. And it is there, and they do not see it, so that they would go no further and would "keep their strength for you," and not scatter it on pleasurable wearinesses. But I, while saying and discerning this, entangle my steps even in these beautiful things; but you pluck me out, Lord, you pluck me out, "for your mercy is before my eyes." For I am caught miserably, and you pluck me out mercifully, sometimes without my noticing, because I had only lightly fallen upon it, sometimes with pain, because I had already stuck fast.

To this is added another form of temptation, dangerous in many more ways. For besides the lust of the flesh, which lies in the delight of all the senses and pleasures, and whose slaves perish as they put themselves far from you, there is in the soul, through the same bodily senses, a certain vain and curious desire, cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning, not to take pleasure in the flesh but to gain experience through the flesh. Since this lies in the appetite for knowing, and the eyes are the chief of the senses for knowing, it is called in the divine word "the lust of the eyes." For seeing belongs properly to the eyes; but we use this word of the other senses too, when we apply them to knowing. For we do not say, "Hear how it glows," or "Smell how it shines," or "Taste how it gleams," or "Feel how bright it is"; for all these things are said to be seen. But 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 has been said, the lust of the eyes, because the office of seeing, in which the eyes hold the first place, is taken over by the other senses too by analogy when they explore any knowledge.

From this it is more clearly seen what is done through the senses by pleasure and what by curiosity: pleasure pursues what is beautiful, melodious, fragrant, tasty, and smooth, but curiosity pursues even their opposites, for the sake of trying them, not to undergo discomfort but from a lust for experience and knowledge. For what pleasure is there in seeing a mangled corpse, which makes you shudder? And yet, if one is lying somewhere, people flock to be saddened, to turn pale. They are even afraid of seeing it in their sleep, as if anyone had forced them to look at it while awake, or any report of its beauty had persuaded them. So too with the other senses, which it would take long to go through. From this disease of desire all kinds of marvels are exhibited in the shows. From this people go on to search out the workings of nature, which is outside us, which it does no good to know, and which men desire only to know. From this also comes whatever is sought through the magic arts with the same aim of perverse knowledge. From this too, even in religion itself, God is tempted, when signs and wonders are demanded, desired not for any salvation but only for the experience.

In this immense forest, so full of snares and dangers, see, I have cut away many things and driven them from my heart, as you have granted me to do, God of my salvation. Yet when do I dare to say, since so many things of this kind make their noise around our daily life on every side, when do I dare to say that nothing of this sort makes me intent on watching it and captures me with vain interest? Certainly the theaters no longer carry me away, nor do I care to know the courses of the stars, nor has my soul ever sought answers from the shades; I detest all sacrilegious rites. From you, Lord my God, to whom I owe humble and single-hearted service, with what schemes of suggestion the enemy works on me to make me ask for some sign! But I beseech you by our King and by our homeland, Jerusalem, simple and chaste, that as consent to such things is far from me, so it may always be farther and farther. But when I pray to you for anyone's salvation, the aim of my intention is very different; and as you do what you will, you give and will give me to follow willingly.

Yet in how many very small and contemptible things our curiosity is tempted every day, and how often we slip, who can count? How often, when people tell idle tales, we at first put up with them, as it were, so as not to offend the weak, and then little by little we listen willingly! I no longer watch a dog running after a hare when it happens in the circus; but in the country, if I happen to pass by, that hunt may perhaps distract me even from some great thought and turn me toward it, not forcing me to turn aside the body of my horse, but the inclination of my heart; and unless you, having already shown me my weakness, quickly warn me either to rise to you through some reflection drawn from the sight itself, or to despise the whole thing and pass on, I grow dull and vain. What of when, sitting at home, a lizard catching flies, or a spider entangling them as they rush into its webs, often holds my attention? Is it not the same thing just because they are small animals? I go on from there to praise you, the wonderful Creator and orderer of all things, but that is not why I begin to pay attention. It is one thing to get up quickly, another not to fall. And my life is full of such things, and my one hope is your very great mercy. For when our heart becomes a receptacle of things of this kind and carries crowds of abundant vanity, our prayers too are often interrupted and disturbed by them; and in your sight, while we direct the voice of our heart to your ears, so great a matter is cut short by trifling thoughts rushing in from I know not where.

Shall we count this too among things to be despised, or will anything bring us back to hope except your known mercy, since you have begun to change us? And you know how far you have changed me, you who first heal me of the lust to vindicate myself, so that you may be gracious to all my other iniquities too, and heal all my diseases, and redeem my life from corruption, and crown me with pity and mercy, and satisfy my desire with good things; you who have checked my pride with your fear and tamed my neck to your yoke. And now I bear it, and it is light to me, because so you promised and so you did; and truly it was so, and I did not know it when I was afraid to take it up.

But, Lord, you who alone rule without pride, because you alone are the true Lord, who have no lord: has this third kind of temptation also ceased from me, or can it cease in this whole life, the wish to be feared and loved by men, for no other reason than that there may be a joy from it which is no joy? It is a miserable life and a foul boasting. From this especially comes not loving you and not fearing you chastely; and therefore "you resist the proud but give grace to the humble," and you thunder upon the ambitions of the world, "and the foundations of the mountains tremble." So, because certain duties of human society make it necessary for us to be loved and feared by men, the adversary of our true happiness presses upon us, scattering everywhere in his snares "Well done, well done," so that while we eagerly gather them up we may be caught unawares, and may take our joy away from the truth and place it in men's deceit, and be pleased to be loved and feared not for your sake but in your place; and so, having made us like himself, he may have us with him, not for the concord of love but for fellowship in punishment, he who resolved to set his throne in the north, so that dark and cold men might serve him as he imitates you in a perverse and twisted way. But we, Lord, see, we are your "little flock"; possess us. Stretch out your wings, and let us flee under them. Be our glory; let us be loved and feared in ourselves for your sake. Whoever wants to be praised by men when you blame will not be defended by men when you judge, nor rescued when you condemn. But when it is not "the sinner who is praised in the desires of his soul, nor he who does wickedly who is blessed," but a man is praised for some gift you have given him, and he rejoices more in being praised than in having the gift for which he is praised, he too is praised while you blame him; and the one who praised is better than the one who was praised. For the one was pleased by the gift of God in a man, the other was more pleased by the gift of man than by that of God.

We are tempted by these temptations every day, Lord; we are tempted without ceasing. Our daily furnace is the human tongue. In this kind too you command us to be continent: give what you command, and command what you will. You know the groaning of my heart to you about this, and the rivers of my eyes. For I cannot easily gather how far I am cleansed of this plague, and I greatly fear my hidden faults, which your eyes know, but mine do not. For in other kinds of temptation I have some means of examining myself; in this one, almost none. For with regard to the pleasures of the flesh and to superfluous curiosity for knowing, I see how far I have succeeded in being able to rein in my mind when I do without those things, either by choice or when they are absent. For then I ask myself how much more or less it troubles me not to have them. Riches, too, which are sought in order to serve one or two or all three of these desires, can be given up, if the mind cannot perceive whether it despises them while having them, so that it may test itself. But in order to do without praise and test in this what we can do, must we live badly, so wickedly and monstrously that no one knows us without detesting us? What greater madness can be said or thought? But if praise usually and properly accompanies a good life and good works, we ought not to abandon its company any more than the good life itself. Yet I do not perceive whether I can do without something calmly or with difficulty unless it is absent.

What, then, do I confess to you, Lord, in this kind of temptation? What, but that I am delighted by praise? But more by the truth itself than by praise. For if I were offered the choice whether I would rather be praised by all men while mad or in error in everything, or be blamed by all men while steadfast and most certain in the truth, I see which I would choose. Yet I would not want the approval of another's mouth even to increase my joy in any good of mine. But it does increase it, I confess; and not only that, but blame diminishes it. And when I am troubled by this misery of mine, an excuse slips in, and what kind it is you know, God, for it makes me uncertain. For since you have commanded us not only continence, that is, from what things to hold back our love, but also justice, that is, on what to bestow it, and have willed not only yourself to be loved by us but also our neighbor, I often seem to myself to be delighted at the progress or promise of my neighbor when I am delighted by the praise of one who understands well; and again to be saddened at his fault when I hear him blame what he does not understand or what is good. For I am sometimes saddened by my own praises, either when things are praised in me that displease me in myself, or even when lesser and slight goods are valued more than they should be. But again, how do I know whether I am affected in this way because I do not want the one who praises me to disagree with me about myself, not because I am moved by his benefit, but because the same good things that please me in myself are more pleasant to me when they please another too? For in a way it is not I who am praised when my judgment of myself is not praised, since either things are praised that displease me, or things are praised more that please me less. Am I, then, uncertain of myself in this?

See, in you, O Truth, I see that I ought to be moved by my praises not for my own sake but for my neighbor's benefit. And whether I am so, I do not know. I know less of myself in this matter than you do. I beseech you, my God, show me myself too, so that I may confess to my brothers who will pray for me what I find wounded in me. Let me question myself again more carefully. If I am moved by my neighbor's benefit in my praises, why am I less moved if someone else is unjustly blamed than if I am? Why am I more stung by an insult cast at me than by one cast at another with the same injustice in my presence? Do I not know this too? Or does it remain that I deceive myself and do not do the truth before you in my heart and tongue? Put this madness far from me, Lord, lest my own mouth be "the oil of the sinner to anoint my head."

"I am needy and poor," and better when in secret groaning I am displeased with myself and seek your mercy, until my lack is repaired and made whole, even to the peace which the eye of the arrogant does not know. But speech coming from the mouth, and deeds that become known to men, carry a most dangerous temptation from the love of praise, which gathers votes begged from others for a kind of private distinction. It tempts me even when I rebuke it in myself, by the very fact that I rebuke it; and often a man boasts more vainly of his very contempt for vainglory, and so no longer boasts of his contempt for glory; for he does not despise it when he boasts.

Within too, within, there is another evil in the same kind of temptation, by which those become empty who are pleased with themselves, even though they do not please others, or displease them, and do not try to please the rest. But those who please themselves greatly displease you, not only by taking pleasure in things not good as if they were good, but also in your good things as if they were their own; or even as yours, but as if by their own merits; or even as from your grace, yet not rejoicing in fellowship with others, but envying it to others. In all these and similar dangers and labors you see the trembling of my heart; and I feel that my wounds are healed by you again and again rather than not inflicted on me.

Where have you not walked with me, O Truth, teaching me what to beware of and what to seek, when I referred to you what I could see down here, and consulted you? I surveyed the world outside with my senses as I could, and I observed the life my body has from me, and my senses themselves. From there I entered the recesses of my memory, manifold spaces wonderfully full of countless riches; and I considered them and was awed, and I could discern none of them without you, and I found that none of them was you. Nor was I myself the discoverer, I who went through all these things and tried to distinguish them and value each according to its worth, receiving some through the reporting senses and questioning them, perceiving others mixed with myself, distinguishing and numbering the messengers themselves, and in the broad wealth of memory handling some things, storing others, digging out others: neither I myself, when I did this, that is, my power by which I did it, nor was that power you; for you are the abiding light which I consulted about all these things, whether they were, what they were, and how much they were to be valued; and I heard you teaching and commanding. And I often do this; it delights me, and whenever I can be released from necessary business, I take refuge in this pleasure. Yet in all these things that I run through consulting you, I find no safe place for my soul except in you, where my scattered parts may be gathered and nothing of me may depart from you. And sometimes you let me into a feeling very unusual, within, into a sweetness I know not what, which, if it were brought to completion in me, would be something I know not what, which this life will not be. But I fall back into these things with miserable weights, and I am swallowed up again by the usual things, and held, and I weep much, but I am held much. So great is the burden of habit! Here I am able to be, but do not want to; there I want to be, but am not able; wretched in both.

And so I have considered the diseases of my sins in the threefold lust, and I have called upon your right hand for my salvation. For I saw your splendor with a wounded heart, and beaten back I said: "Who can reach there? I am cast out from the sight of your eyes." You are the Truth presiding over all. But I, in my greed, did not want to lose you, but wanted to possess a lie together with you, just as no one wants to say what is false in such a way that he himself does not know what is true. And so I lost you, because you do not deign to be possessed together with a lie.

Whom could I find to reconcile me to you? Should I have sought the help of angels? By what prayer? By what rites? Many, trying to return to you and not able by themselves, have tried these things, as I hear, and have fallen into a desire for curious visions and have been found worthy of delusions. For they sought you in their pride, puffing out their chests in the arrogance of learning rather than beating them, and by likeness of heart they drew to themselves "the powers of this air" as accomplices and allies of their pride, by whom they were deceived through magical powers; they sought a mediator through whom they might be purified, and there was none. For it was the devil, "transforming himself into an angel of light." And it greatly enticed proud flesh that he himself was not in a fleshly body. For they were mortal and sinners, but you, Lord, to whom they wanted to be reconciled, are immortal and without sin. But a mediator between God and men had to have something like God and something like men, lest, being like men in both, he be far from God, or, being like God in both, he be far from men, and so not be a mediator. So that deceitful mediator, by whom, through your secret judgments, pride deserves to be deceived, has one thing in common with men, namely sin, and wants to seem to have another in common with God, so that, because he is not clothed with the mortality of flesh, he may show himself off as immortal. But because "the wages of sin is death," he has this in common with men, for which he is condemned to death together with them.

But the true Mediator, whom in your secret mercy you have shown to men and sent, so that by his example they might learn humility itself, that "mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus," appeared between mortal sinners and the immortal Just One, mortal with men, just with God; so that, since the wages of justice is life and peace, by the justice joined to God he might make void the death of the ungodly who are justified, the death which he willed to have in common with them. He was shown to the saints of old, so that they might be saved through faith in his future passion, as we are through faith in his passion that is past. For insofar as he is man, he is Mediator; but insofar as he is the Word, he is not in the middle, because he is equal to God, God with God, and together one God.

How you have loved us, good Father, who "did not spare your only Son, but delivered him up" for us ungodly! How you have loved us, for whom he, "who thought it not robbery to be equal" with you, "became subject even to the death of the cross"; he alone "free among the dead," "having power to lay down his life and power to take it up again"; for us both victor and victim before you, and victor because victim; for us both priest and sacrifice before you, and priest because sacrifice; making us, from slaves, sons to you, by being born of you and serving you. Rightly is my hope strong in him, that you will heal all my diseases through him who "sits at your right hand and intercedes for us"; otherwise I would despair. For many and great are those diseases, many and great; but your medicine is greater. We might have thought that your Word was far from union with man, and despaired of ourselves, if he had not "become flesh and dwelt among us."

Terrified by my sins and the weight of my misery, I had turned over in my heart and pondered a flight into solitude; but you forbade me and strengthened me, saying: "Therefore Christ died for all, that those who live may no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for all." See, Lord, "I cast my care upon you," that I may live, and "I will consider the wonders of your law." You know my ignorance and my weakness: teach me and heal me. Your only Son, "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," has redeemed me with his blood. "Let not the proud slander me," because I think of my ransom, and I eat and drink it and distribute it, and, poor, I desire to be filled from it among those who "eat and are filled: and they shall praise the Lord who seek him."

Lord, since eternity is yours, are you ignorant of what I say to you, or do you see in time what happens in time? Why, then, do I set before you such an account of so many things? Certainly not so that you may learn them through me, but I stir up my own love toward you, and that of those who read these things, so that we may all say, "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised." I have said it already and I will say it again: I do this for love of your love. For we pray too, and yet the Truth says, "Your Father knows what you need before you ask him." So we lay open our love to you by confessing to you our miseries and your mercies upon us, so that you may free us completely, since you have begun, that we may cease to be miserable in ourselves and be made happy in you; since you have called us to be poor in spirit, and meek, and mourners, and hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and merciful, and pure in heart, and peacemakers. See, I have told you many things, as I could and as I wished, because you first willed that I should confess to you, the Lord my God, "for you are good, for your mercy endures for ever."

But when am I able, with the tongue of my pen, to tell all your exhortations and all your terrors, consolations, and guidance, by which you led me to preach your word and dispense your sacrament to your people? And even if I were able to tell these things in order, the drops of time are costly to me. And for a long time now I have been burning to meditate on your law, and to confess to you in it my knowledge and my ignorance, the beginnings of your enlightenment and the remains of my darkness, until weakness is swallowed up by strength. And I do not want the hours to flow away into anything else which I find free from the needs of refreshing the body and of mental effort and of the service we owe to men, and that which we do not owe and yet render.

Lord my God, "attend to my prayer," and let your mercy hear my desire, since it burns not for myself alone but wants to be of use to brotherly love; and you see in my heart that it is so. Let me sacrifice to you the service of my thought and my tongue, and give me what I may offer you. For "I am needy and poor," "you are rich toward all who call upon you," and, free from care, you take care of us. Circumcise from all rashness and all lying my inner and outer self, my lips. Let your Scriptures be my chaste delights; let me not be deceived in them nor deceive others from them. Lord, attend and have mercy, Lord my God, light of the blind and strength of the weak, and also light of those who see and strength of the strong; attend to my soul and hear it crying "out of the depths." For unless your ears are present in the depths too, where shall we go? To whom shall we cry? "Yours is the day and yours the night"; at your nod the moments fly by. Grant from them room for our meditations on the hidden things of your law, and do not close it against those who knock. For not in vain have you willed that the dark secrets of so many pages be written; nor do those forests lack their deer, which take refuge in them and recover there, walk and feed, lie down and chew the cud. O Lord, perfect me and reveal them to me. See, your voice is my joy; your voice is above an abundance of pleasures. Give what I love: for I do love; and this too you have given. Do not forsake your gifts, nor despise your grass that thirsts. Let me confess to you whatever I find in your books, and "hear the voice of praise," and drink you, and "consider the wonders of your law" from the very beginning, in which you made heaven and earth, to the everlasting kingdom of your holy city with you.

Lord, have mercy on me and hear my desire. For I think it is not of the earth, not for gold and silver and precious stones, or fine clothes, or honors and powers, or pleasures of the flesh, nor for things necessary for the body and for this life of our pilgrimage; all of which "are added to us who seek your kingdom and your righteousness." See, my God, where my desire comes from. "The wicked have told me of delights, but not as your law, Lord." See, that is where my desire comes from. See, Father, look and see and approve, and let it be pleasing in the sight of your mercy that I find grace before you, so that the inner meaning of your words may be opened to me when I knock. I beseech you by our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, "the man of your right hand, the son of man, whom you have made strong for yourself" as your mediator and ours, 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, among them me too; your only Son, through whom you called to adoption the people of believers, among them me too: I beseech you through him who "sits at your right hand and intercedes for us," "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." These are what I seek in your books. "Moses wrote of him": he himself says this; the Truth says this.

Let me hear and understand how "in the beginning you made heaven and earth." Moses wrote this; he wrote it and went away; he passed from here, from you to you, and he is not now before me. For if he were, I would take hold of him and ask him and beg him by you to explain these things to me, and I would lend the ears of my body to the sounds bursting from his mouth; and if he spoke in Hebrew, it would strike my senses in vain and nothing of it would touch my mind; but if in Latin, I would know what he said. But how would I know whether he spoke the truth? And if I knew this too, would I know it from him? Surely within me, within in the dwelling of thought, truth, neither Hebrew nor Greek nor Latin nor barbarian, without organs of mouth and tongue, without the noise of syllables, would say, "He speaks the truth," and I, at once certain, would say confidently to that man of yours, "You speak the truth." Since, then, I cannot question him, I ask you, O Truth, by whom he was filled when he spoke true things; I ask you, my God: spare my sins, and you who gave that servant of yours to say these things, grant me also to understand them.

See, heaven and earth exist; they cry out that they were made; for they change and vary. But whatever was not made and yet exists has nothing in it that was not there before; and that is what it is to change and vary. They cry out too that they did not make themselves: "We exist because we were made; so we did not exist before we existed, so as to be able to be made by ourselves." And the voice of those who speak is their very evidence. You, then, Lord, made them, you who are beautiful, for they are beautiful; you who are good, for they are good; you who are, for they are. Yet they are not so beautiful, nor so good, nor do they so exist, as you their maker, compared with whom they are neither beautiful nor good nor exist. We know this, thanks be to you; and our knowledge compared with your knowledge is ignorance.

But how did you make heaven and earth, and what was the instrument of so great a work of yours? For you did not do it as a human craftsman, who forms a body from a body at the will of a soul able to impose in some way a form which it sees within itself with the inner eye (and how would it be able to do this unless you had made it?), and he imposes the form on something that already exists and has being, such as earth or stone or wood or gold or anything of that kind. And how would these exist unless you had established them? You made the craftsman's body, you made the soul that commands his limbs, you made the material from which he makes something, you made the talent by which he grasps his art and sees within what he makes outside, you made the bodily sense, by which as an interpreter he conveys from his mind to his material what he makes, and reports back to his mind what has been made, so that the mind may consult within the truth that presides over it whether it has been made well. All these praise you, the Creator of all. But how do you make them? How, God, did you make heaven and earth? Certainly you did not make heaven and earth in heaven or on earth, nor in the air or in the waters, since these too belong to heaven and earth; nor did you make the whole world in the whole world, because there was nowhere for it to be made before it was made to exist. Nor did you hold anything in your hand from which to make heaven and earth. For where would you get something you had not made, from which to make something? 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? Was it in the way that the voice came from the cloud saying, "This is my beloved Son"? For that voice was uttered and passed away; it began and ended. The syllables sounded and passed away, the second after the first, the third after the second, and so on in order, until the last after the others, and silence after the last. From this it is clear and evident that the movement of a creature expressed it, itself temporal, serving your eternal will. And these words of yours, made for a time, the outer ear reported to the understanding mind, whose inner ear is set toward your eternal Word. But the mind compared these words sounding in time with your Word, eternal in its silence, and said: "It is different, far different. These are far below me, and they do not even exist, because they flee and pass away; but the Word of my God abides above me for ever." If, then, you spoke with words that sounded and passed away, saying that heaven and earth should be made, and so made heaven and earth, there was already a bodily creature before heaven and earth, by whose temporal movements that voice ran its course in time. But there was no body before heaven and earth; or if there was, you had certainly made it without a passing voice, so as to make from it a passing voice by which to say that heaven and earth should be made. For whatever that was from which such a voice was made, unless it had been made by you, it would not exist at all. So, that a body might be made from which these words could be made, by what word was it spoken by you?

So you call us to understand the Word, God with you, God, which is spoken eternally, and by which all things are spoken eternally. For what was being spoken does not come to an end, and another thing is then spoken, so that all things may be spoken; but all things are spoken at once and eternally; otherwise there would already be time and change, and not true eternity or true immortality. This I know, my God, and I give thanks. I know it, I confess to you, Lord God, and whoever is not ungrateful to sure truth knows it with me and blesses you. For we know, Lord, we know that insofar as anything is not what it was and is what it was not, to that extent it dies and arises. So nothing of your Word gives way or follows on, since it is truly immortal and eternal. And so by the Word coeternal with you, you say at once and eternally all that you say, and whatever you say should be made is made; and you make it in no other way than by saying it. And yet not all the things you make by saying are made at once and eternally.

Why so, I ask, Lord my God? In some way I see it, but how to express it I do not know, except that everything that begins to be and ceases to be begins and ceases when it is known in the eternal Reason that it ought to have begun or ceased, where nothing either begins or ceases. That 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 he might be believed and sought within and found in the eternal Truth, where the good and only Teacher teaches all his disciples. There I hear your voice, Lord, saying to me that he speaks to us who teaches us; but he who does not teach us, even if he speaks, does not speak to us. Who, then, teaches us but the unchanging Truth? For even when we are admonished through a changeable creature, we are led to the unchanging Truth, where we truly learn when we stand and hear him, and "rejoice greatly because of the bridegroom's voice," giving ourselves back to him from whom we are. And therefore he is the Beginning, because if he did not remain when we went astray, there would be nowhere for us to return. But when we return from error, we certainly return 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 made heaven and earth, in your Word, in your Son, in your Power, in your Wisdom, in your Truth, speaking in a wonderful way and making in a wonderful way. Who will grasp it? Who will tell it? What is that which shines through to me and strikes my heart without wounding it? I shudder and I burn: I shudder insofar as I am unlike it, I burn insofar as I am like it. It is Wisdom, Wisdom itself, that shines through to me, parting my cloud, which covers me again as I fall away from it under the fog and heap of my punishments; for my strength is so weakened in need that I cannot bear my own good, until you, Lord, who have been gracious to all my iniquities, also "heal all my diseases"; for you will also "redeem my life from corruption, and crown me with pity and mercy, and satisfy my desire with good things," since "my youth will be renewed like the eagle's." "For in hope we have been saved," and "we wait with patience" for your promises. Let him who can hear you speaking within; I will cry out confidently from your oracle: "How magnified are your works, Lord! In wisdom you have made them all." And Wisdom is the Beginning, and in that Beginning you made heaven and earth.

See, are they not full of their old nature who say to us: "What was God doing before he made heaven and earth? For if he was at leisure," they say, "and doing nothing, why did he not always remain so, and from then on, just as for ever before he had rested from work? For if any new motion arose in God, and a new will, to establish a creation which he had never established before, how is there then true eternity, where a will arises that was not there before? For the will of God is not a creature, but is before the creature, because nothing would be created unless the will of the Creator came first. So his will belongs to the very substance of God. And if something arose in God's substance which was not there before, that substance is not truly called eternal; but if God's will that there should be a creation was eternal, why is the creation not eternal too?"

Those who say this do not yet understand you, O Wisdom of God, light of minds; they do not yet understand how the things are made that are made through you and in you; and they try to taste eternal things, but their heart still flutters about in the past and future motions of things, and is still vain. Who will hold it and fix it, so that it may stand still a little and a little catch the splendor of ever-standing eternity, and compare it with times that never stand still, and see that it is incomparable; and see that a long time does not become long except from many passing motions, which cannot be extended all at once; but that in the eternal nothing passes, but the whole is present; whereas no time is wholly present; and see that all past time is driven on by the future, and all future follows from the past, and all past and future is created by, and runs out from, that which is always present? Who will hold the heart of man, so that it may stand still and see how eternity, standing still, neither future nor past, dictates future and past times? Is my hand able to do this, or does the hand of my mouth accomplish so great a thing by speaking?

See, I answer the one who asks, "What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?" I do not give the answer which someone is said to have given, jokingly evading the force of the question: "He was preparing hell," he said, "for those who pry into deep matters." It is one thing to see, another to scoff. I do not give that answer. For I would more willingly answer, "I do not know what I do not know," than give an answer by which the one who asked deep things is mocked and the one who answered falsely is praised. But I say that you, our God, are the Creator of every creature, and if every creature is understood by the name of heaven and earth, I boldly say: before God made heaven and earth, he made nothing. For if he was making anything, what was he making but a creature? And I wish I knew whatever I desire to know for my good as surely as I know that no creature was being made before any creature was made.

But if someone's fickle mind wanders among images of past times, and marvels that you, God almighty, all-creating and all-sustaining, maker of heaven and earth, refrained from so great a work for countless ages before you made it, let him wake up and take note that he marvels at something false. For how could countless ages pass which you yourself had not made, since you are the author and founder of all ages? Or what times could there have been which were not founded by you? Or how could they pass if they had never been? Since, then, you are the maker of all times, if there was any time before you made heaven and earth, why is it said that you refrained from work? For you had made that very time, and times could not pass before you made 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" where there was no time.

Nor do you precede times in time; otherwise you would not precede all times. But you precede all past times in the height of an ever-present eternity, and you surpass all future times, because they are future, and when they have come they will be past; "but you are the same, and your years do not fail." Your years neither go nor come; but these years of ours go and come, so that all may come. Your years all stand at once, because they stand still, and those that go are not excluded by those that come, because they do not pass; but these years of ours will all be only when they all are no more. "Your years are one day," and your day is not daily but today, because your today does not give way to tomorrow, nor does it follow yesterday. Your today is eternity; therefore you begot the Coeternal, to whom you said, "Today I have begotten you." You made all times, and you are before all times, and there was no time when there was no time.

So at no time had you not made something, because you had made time itself. And no times are coeternal with you, because you remain; but if they remained, they would not be times. For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who can grasp it even in thought, so as to put it into words? Yet what do we mention more familiarly and knowingly in our speech than time? And we certainly understand when we speak of it; we understand also when we hear another speak of it. What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who asks, I do not know. Yet I say with confidence that I know 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 were, there would be no present time. How, then, do those two times, the past and the future, exist, when the past is no longer and the future is not yet? But if the present were always present and did not pass into the past, it would no longer be time but eternity. If, then, the present, in order to be time, comes to be only because it passes into the past, how can we say that it exists, when the cause of its being is that it will not be? So we cannot truly say that time exists, except in the sense that it tends toward not being.

And yet we speak of a long time and a short time, and we say this only of the past or the future. We call a past time long, for example, a hundred years ago, and a future time likewise long, a hundred years hence; and a short past time, say ten days ago, and a short future time, ten days hence. But how can something be long or short which does not exist? For the past is no longer and the future is not yet. So let us not say "it is long," but let us say of the past "it was long," and of the future "it will be long." My Lord, my light, will not your truth mock man here too? For was the past time that was long long when it was already past, or before, when it was still present? For it could be long then, when there was something to be long; but the past no longer existed, so it could not be long, since it did not exist at all. So let us not say, "The past time was long"; for we will not find what was long, since from the moment it became past it does not exist. Let us say, "That present time was long," because when it was present it was long. For it had not yet passed away so as not to exist, and so there was something that could be long; but after it passed away, it ceased to be long at the same moment that it ceased to be.

Let us see, then, human soul, whether present time can be long; for it has been given to you to perceive intervals and to measure them. What will you answer me? Are a hundred present years a long time? First see whether a hundred years can be present. For if the first of them is going on, it is present, but ninety-nine are future and so do not yet exist; if the second year is going on, one is already past, another present, the rest future. And so whichever year of this hundred we take as present, those before it will be past and those after it future. So a hundred years cannot be present. See at least whether the one year that is going on is itself present. For if its first month is going on, the rest are future; if the second, the first has already passed and the rest do not yet exist. So not even the year that is going on is wholly present; and if it is not wholly present, it is not a year that is present. For a year is twelve months, of which whichever month is going on is present, the rest past or future. And yet not even the month that is going on is present, but one day: if the first, the rest are future; if the last, the rest are past; if any in between, it is between past and future.

See, the present time, which alone we found might be called long, has shrunk to the space of scarcely one day. But let us examine even that, because not even one day is wholly present. For it is made up of twenty-four hours of night and day, of which the first has the rest in the future, the last has them in the past, and any in between has those before it past and those after it future. And that one hour itself passes in fleeting particles: whatever of it has flown away is past, whatever remains is future. If any time can be conceived which cannot be divided into even the tiniest parts of moments, that alone can be called present; yet it flies so swiftly from the future into the past that it is not extended by the least delay. For if it is extended, it is divided into past and future; but the present has no extent. Where, then, is the time we may call long? Is it the future? We do not say, "It is long," because there is not yet anything to be long, but we say, "It will be long." When, then, will it be? For if even then it is still future, it will not be long, because what may be long does not yet exist; but if it will be long at the time when, from being future and not yet existing, it has begun to exist and has become present, so that there can be something long, the present time cries out in the words above that it cannot be long.

And yet, Lord, we perceive intervals of time and compare them with each other, and we say that some are longer and others shorter. We even measure how much longer or shorter one time is than another, and we answer that this is double or triple that, and that one single, or that this is as long as that. But it is times passing by that we measure, when we measure them by perceiving them; but who can measure past times, which no longer exist, or future times, which do not yet exist, unless perhaps someone will dare to say that what does not exist can be measured? So while time is passing, it can be perceived and measured; but when it has passed, it cannot, because it does not exist.

I am inquiring, Father, not asserting. My God, preside over me and rule me. Who is there to tell me that there are not three times, as we learned as boys and have taught boys, past, present, and future, but only the present, since those two do not exist? Or do they exist too, but come forth from some hidden place when from future it becomes present, and withdraw into some hidden place when from present it becomes past? For where did those who sang of the future see these things, if they do not yet exist? For what does not exist cannot be seen. And those who tell of the past would certainly not tell true things if they did not discern them in their minds; and if these things did not exist at all, they could not be discerned at all. So both future and past things exist.

Allow me, Lord, my hope, to inquire further; let my attention not be confused. For if future and past things exist, I want to know where they are. And if I am not yet able to know that, I do know that wherever they are, they are not there as future or past, but as present. For if they are future there too, they are not yet there; and if they are past there too, they are no longer there. So wherever they are, whatever they are, they are only present. Although when past things are truly told, what is brought out of memory is not the things themselves, which have passed away, but words conceived from their images, which they fixed in the mind like footprints as they passed through the senses. My boyhood, for instance, which no longer exists, is in past time, which no longer exists; but when I recall and tell of it, I see its image in present time, because it is still in my memory. Whether there is a similar cause for foretelling future things, so that already existing images of things that do not yet exist are perceived beforehand, I confess, my God, I do not know. This I do know: that we often plan our future actions beforehand, and that this planning is present, whereas the action we are planning does not yet exist, because it is future; when we have set about it and begun to do what we were planning, then that action will exist, because then it will not be future but present.

So, however it is with the mysterious foreknowledge of future things, nothing can be seen except what exists. And what already exists is not future but present. So when future things are said to be seen, it is not the things themselves which do not yet exist, that is, which are future, that are seen, but perhaps their causes or signs, which already exist; so they are not future but present to those who see them, and from them future things are foretold, conceived in the mind. These conceptions in turn already exist, and those who foretell those things see them present in themselves. Let some example out of the vast number of things speak to me. I look at the dawn; I announce that the sun is about to rise. What I look at is present; what I announce is future: not the sun, which already exists, but its rising, which does not yet exist. Yet unless I imagined the rising itself in my mind, as now when I speak of it, I could not foretell it. But neither that dawn which I see in the sky is the sunrise, although it precedes it, nor is that image in my mind: these two are seen as present, so that the future rising may be spoken of beforehand. 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 at all; but they can be foretold from present things, which already exist and are seen.

You, then, ruler of your creation, what is the way in which you teach souls things that are future? For you taught your prophets. What is the way in which you teach the future, you to whom nothing is future? Or rather, do you teach present things about the future? For what does not exist certainly cannot be taught. That way is far beyond my sight; "it has grown too strong for me, and I shall not be able to reach it"; but I shall be able by you, when you grant it, sweet light of my hidden eyes.

But what is now clear and plain is that neither future nor past things exist, nor is it properly said, "There are three times, past, present, and future." But perhaps it would be properly said, "There are three times: a present of past things, a present of present things, a present of future things." For these three are in the soul in some way, and I do not see them anywhere else: the present of past things is memory, the present of present things is direct attention, the present of future things is expectation. If we are allowed to say this, I see three times, and I confess there are three. Let it still be said, "There are three times, past, present, and future," as custom misuses the words; let it be said. See, I do not mind, nor resist, nor find fault, as long as what is said is understood: that neither what is future nor what is past exists now. For there are few things we speak of properly, and many improperly; but what we mean is recognized.

I said a little earlier, then, that we measure times as they pass, so that we can say that this time is double that single one, or this as long as that, and whatever else we can report about the parts of time by measuring. So, as I was saying, we measure times as they pass; and if anyone says to me, "How do you know?" I would answer: I know because we measure them, and we cannot measure what does not exist, and past and future things do not exist. But how do we measure present time, when it has no extent? It is measured, then, while it passes; but when it has passed, it is not measured, for there will be nothing to measure. But from where, by which way, and to where does it pass while it is measured? From where but from the future? By which way but through the present? To where but into the past? From that, then, which does not yet exist, through that which has no extent, into that which no longer exists. But what do we measure, if not time in some extent? For we do not speak of single and double and triple and equal, and anything else of this kind in time, except of extents of time. In what extent, then, do we measure time as it passes? In the future, from which it passes? But we do not measure what does not yet exist. In the present, by which it passes? But we do not measure what has no extent. In the past, into which it passes? But we do not measure what no longer exists.

My mind is on fire to know this most intricate riddle. Do not shut them, Lord my God, good Father; I beseech you through Christ, do not shut these things, both familiar and hidden, against my desire, so that it may not enter into them and they may not grow clear as your mercy shines on them, Lord. Whom shall I ask about these things? And to whom shall I confess my ignorance more fruitfully than to you, who are not wearied by my studies burning so vehemently toward your Scriptures? Give what I love; for I do love, and this you have given. Give, Father, who truly know how to give good gifts to your children; give, because I have undertaken to know, and "it is toil before me" until you open it. I beseech you through Christ, in his name, the Holy of holies, let no one disturb me. "I too have believed, and therefore I speak." This is my hope; for this I live, "to contemplate the delight of the Lord." "See, you have made my days old," and they pass, and how, I do not know. And we speak of time and time, times and times: "How long did he say this?" "How long did he do this?" and "How long a time it is since I saw that!" and "This syllable has double the time of that single short one." We say these things and hear them, and we are understood and we understand. They are most plain and most familiar, and at the same time they are deeply hidden, and their discovery is new.

I have heard from a certain learned man that the motions of the sun and moon and stars are themselves times, and I did not agree. For why should not the motions of all bodies rather be times? Or indeed, if the lights of heaven ceased and a potter's wheel were moving, would there be no time by which we could measure its turns and say either that they went at equal intervals, or, if it moved sometimes more slowly and sometimes faster, that some turns were longer and others shorter? Or when we said this, would we not also be speaking in time, and would there be some long syllables in our words and others short, except because the former sounded for a longer time and the latter for a shorter? God, grant men to see in something small the notions common to small and great things. The stars and lights of heaven are "for signs and for times and for days and for years." They are indeed; but neither would I say that the turning of that little wooden wheel is a day, nor would that learned man say that it is therefore not time.

I want to know the power and nature of time, by which we measure the motions of bodies and say, for example, that this motion lasts twice as long as that. For I ask this: since a day is called not only the stay of the sun above the earth, by which day is one thing and night another, but also its whole circuit from east to east, by which we say, "So many days have passed" (for so many days are counted with their nights, and the spaces of the nights are not reckoned separately); since, then, a day is completed by the motion and circuit of the sun from east to east, I ask whether the motion itself is the day, or the duration in which it is completed, or both. For if the first were the day, it would be a day even if the sun completed that course in a space of time as short as one hour. If the second, it would not be a day if from one sunrise to the next there were a duration as short as one hour, but the sun would have to go round twenty-four times to complete a day. If both, neither would that be called a day if the sun went its whole round in the space of an hour, nor would this, if the sun stopped and as much time passed as the sun usually takes to complete its whole circuit from morning to morning. So I will not now ask what it is that is called a day, but what time is, by which, measuring the sun's circuit, we would say that it was completed in half the usual space of time if it were completed in as much time as twelve hours take; and comparing both times, we would call the one single and the other double, even if the sun sometimes went round from east to east in the single and sometimes in the double time. Let no one tell me, then, that the motions of the heavenly bodies are times; for when the sun stood still at a certain man's prayer, so that he might finish a battle victoriously, the sun stood still, but time went on. For that battle was fought and finished in its own space of time, which sufficed for it. So I see that time is a kind of distension. But do I see it? Or do I seem to myself to see it? You will show me, Light, Truth.

Do you command me to agree if someone says that time is the motion of a body? You do not. For I hear that no body moves except in time: you say so. But I do not hear that the motion of a body is itself time: you do not say so. For when a body moves, I measure by time how long it moves, from when it begins to move until it stops. And if I did not see when it began, and it goes on moving so that I do not see when it stops, I cannot measure it, except perhaps from when I begin to see it until I stop. And if I see it for a long time, I can only report that the time is long, not how long it is; because when we say "how long," we say it by comparison, as "this is as long as that" or "this is double that," and so on. But if we can mark the distances of the places from which and to which the moving body goes, or its parts, if it moves as on a lathe, we can say how much time it took for the motion of the body or its part from this place to that. Since, then, the motion of a body is one thing and that by which we measure how long it lasts is another, who does not see which of these should rather be called time? For if a body sometimes moves and sometimes stands still, we measure by time not only its motion but also its rest, and we say, "It stood still as long as it moved," or "It stood still twice or three times as long as it moved," and whatever else our measurement either grasps exactly or estimates, as we usually say, more or less. 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 that I say these things in time, and that I have now been speaking of time for a long time, and that this very "long" is not long except by a duration of time. How, then, do I know this, when I do not know what time is? Or perhaps I do not know how to say what I know? Alas for me, who do not even know what I do not know! See, my God, before you I do not lie: as I speak, so is my heart. "You will light my lamp, Lord my God; you will enlighten my darkness."

Does not my soul confess to you with truthful confession that I measure times? So, Lord my God, I measure, and I do not know what I measure. I measure the motion of a body by time. And do I not measure time itself? Could I measure the motion of a body, how long it lasts and how long it takes to get from here to there, unless I measured the time in which it moves? With what, then, do I measure time itself? Do we measure a longer time by a shorter one, as we measure the length of a beam by the length of a cubit? For so we see the length of a long syllable measured by the length of a short one, and called double. So we measure the lengths of poems by the lengths of lines, and the lengths of lines by the lengths of feet, and the lengths of feet by the lengths of syllables, and the lengths of long syllables by those of short ones; not on pages (for in that way we measure spaces, not times), but when the words pass by as we pronounce them, and we say: "It is a long poem, for it is made up of so many lines; the lines are long, for they consist of so many feet; the feet are long, for they stretch over so many syllables; the syllable is long, for it is double a short one." But not even in this way is a sure measure of time grasped, since it can happen that a shorter line, if it is pronounced more slowly, sounds for a longer space of time than a longer one pronounced more quickly. So with a poem, so with a foot, so with a syllable. From this it seemed to me that time is nothing other than distension; but of what, I do not know, and it would be strange if it were not of the mind itself. For what do I measure, I beseech you, my God, when I say either indefinitely, "This time is longer than that," or definitely, "This is double that"? I measure time, I know; but I do not measure the future, because it does not yet exist; I do not measure the present, because it is not extended over any space; I do not measure the past, because it no longer exists. What, then, do I measure? Times passing, not past? For so I had said.

Persevere, my mind, and attend strongly: "God is our helper"; "he made us, and not we ourselves." Attend to where truth is dawning. See, suppose a bodily voice begins to sound, and sounds, and still sounds, and then stops, and now there is silence, and that voice is past and is no longer a voice. It was future before it sounded, and it could not be measured, because it did not yet exist; and now it cannot, because it no longer exists. So it could be measured then, while it was sounding, because then there was something that could be measured. But even then it was not standing still; for it was going and passing away. Or was it for this reason more measurable? For in passing it was stretched out into some space of time by which it could be measured, since the present has no space. If, then, it could be measured then, see, suppose another voice has begun to sound and still sounds in one continuous tone without any break: let us measure it while it sounds; for when it has stopped sounding, it will already be past and there will be nothing that can be measured. Let us measure it, then, and say how long it is. But it is still sounding, and it cannot be measured except from its beginning, when it began to sound, to its end, when it stops. For it is the interval itself that we measure, from some beginning to some end. So a voice which has never ended cannot be measured, so as to say how long or short it is, nor can it be called equal to another, or single or double in relation to another, or anything else. But when it has ended, it will no longer exist. How, then, can it be measured? And yet we measure times: not those that do not yet exist, nor those that no longer exist, nor those that are extended by no duration, nor those that have no limits. So we measure neither future nor past nor present nor passing times, and yet we measure times.

"Deus creator omnium": this line of eight syllables alternates short and long syllables. So 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 double the time of each of those. I pronounce it and report on it, and it is so, as far as is perceived by plain perception. As far as perception is plain, I measure the long syllable by the short one and perceive that it has twice as much. But when one sounds after the other, if the first is short and the second long, how shall I hold the short one, and how shall I apply it to the long one to measure it, so as to find that the long has twice as much, since the long does not begin to sound until the short has stopped? And do I measure the long one itself while present, when I do not measure it until it has ended? For its ending is its passing away. What, then, is it that I measure? Where is the short syllable by which I measure? Where is the long one that I measure? Both have sounded, flown away, passed, and are no more; and yet I measure, and I answer confidently, as far as a trained sense can be trusted, that the one is single and the other double, in extent of time, of course. And I cannot do this except because they have passed and ended. So it is not the syllables themselves, which no longer exist, that I measure, but something in my memory which remains fixed there.

It is in you, my mind, that I measure my times. Do not interrupt me; that is, do not interrupt yourself with the crowds of your impressions. In you, I say, I measure times. The impression which passing things make in you, and which remains when they have passed, that is what I measure as present, not the things that passed to make it; that is what I measure when I measure times. So either this is time, or I do not measure times. What of when we measure silences, and say that this silence lasted as long as that voice lasted? Do we not stretch our thought to the measure of the voice, as if it were sounding, so that we can report something about the intervals of silences in extent of time? For even when voice and mouth are still, we go through poems and lines and any speech in thought, and any measures of motions, and we report on the extents of times, how long this is in relation to that, just as if we were saying them aloud. If someone wants to utter a rather long sound and has settled beforehand how long it is to be, he has certainly gone through that extent of time in silence, and entrusting it to memory he begins to utter that sound, which sounds until it is brought to the end set for it. Or rather, it has sounded and will sound; for what of it is already completed has certainly sounded, and what remains will sound; and so it is carried through, while the present attention transfers the future into the past, the past growing as the future diminishes, until by the using up of the future the whole is past.

But how is the future, which does not yet exist, diminished or used up, or how does the past, which no longer exists, grow, unless it is because in the mind which does this there are three things? For it expects, and attends, and remembers, so that what it expects passes through what it attends to into what it remembers. Who, then, denies that future things do not yet exist? But yet there is already in the mind an expectation of future things. And who denies that past things no longer exist? But yet there is still in the mind a memory of past things. And who denies that present time lacks extent, since it passes in a point? But yet attention endures, through which what will be present passes on into being absent. So it is not future time that is long, for it does not exist; but a long future is a long expectation of the future. Nor is past time long, for it does not exist; but a long past is a long memory of the past.

I am about to recite a psalm that I know. Before I begin, my expectation is stretched out over the whole; but when I have begun, whatever of it I have plucked off into the past, my memory too is stretched out over it, and the life of this action of mine is distended into memory, because of what I have said, and into expectation, because of what I am about to say; yet my attention is present, through which what was future is carried over so as to become past. And the more this goes on and on, the more memory is lengthened as expectation is shortened, until the whole expectation is used up, when that whole action is finished and has passed into memory. And what happens in the whole psalm happens also in each of its parts and in each of its syllables; the same in a longer action, of which that psalm is perhaps a part; the same in the whole life of a man, of which all a man's actions are parts; the same in the whole age of the sons of men, of which all men's lives are parts.

But because "your mercy is better than lives," see, my life is a distension, and "your right hand has upheld me" in my Lord, the Son of man, the mediator between you, the One, and us, the many, in many things and through many things, so that through him I may lay hold of him in whom I have also been laid hold of, and may be gathered from my old days to follow the One, "forgetting what lies behind," not distended toward things that will come and pass away, but extended toward "the things that are before," not by distension but by intention, I press on "toward the prize of the upward calling," where I may "hear the voice of praise" and "contemplate your delight," which neither comes nor passes away. But now "my years are spent in groaning," and you, my comfort, Lord, my Father, are eternal; but I have been scattered into times whose order I do not know, and my thoughts, the inmost bowels of my soul, are torn apart by tumultuous variety, until I flow together into you, purified and melted by the fire of your love.

And I will stand and be made firm in you, in my mold, your truth; and I will not endure the questions of men who, by a penal disease, 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 something, when he had never made anything before?" Grant them, Lord, to think well what they are saying, and to find that "never" is not said where there is no time. When, then, he is said never to have made anything, what else is said but that he made nothing at no time? Let them see, then, that there can be no time without creation, and stop talking this vanity. Let them also reach out to "the things that are before," and understand that you, before all times, are the eternal Creator of all times, and that no times are coeternal with you, nor any creation, even if there is some creation above times.

Lord my God, what is that depth of your deep secret, and how far from it have the consequences of my sins cast me? Heal my eyes, and let me rejoice together in your light. Certainly, if there is a mind endowed with such great knowledge and foreknowledge that all past and future things are known to it as one very familiar psalm is known to me, that mind is exceedingly wonderful and astonishing to the point of awe, since whatever of the ages has been completed and whatever remains is no more hidden from it than it is hidden from me, when I sing that psalm, what and how much of it has gone by since the beginning, and what and how much remains until the end. But far be it that you, founder of the universe, founder of souls and bodies, far be it that you should know all future and past things in that way. You know them far, far more wonderfully and far more secretly. For it is not as with one singing a known psalm, or hearing a known psalm, whose feeling varies and whose perception is distended by the expectation of words to come and the memory of those past; nothing like this happens to you, who are unchangeably eternal, that is, the truly eternal Creator of minds. As, then, in the beginning you 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. Let him who understands confess to you, and let him who does not understand confess to you. O how high you are, and the humble of heart are your house! For you raise up those who are bowed down, and they do not fall whose height you are.

My heart is much troubled, Lord, in the poverty of this life of mine, when it is struck by the words of your holy Scripture; and so, for the most part, the poverty of human understanding is abundant in speech, because seeking says more than finding, and asking is longer than obtaining, and the hand that knocks works harder than the hand that receives. We hold the promise: who will make it void? "If God is for us, who can be against us?" "Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks will find, and to him who knocks it will be opened." These are your promises; and who would fear to be deceived when the Truth promises?

The lowliness of my tongue confesses to your loftiness that you made heaven and earth: this heaven which I see, and this earth on which I walk, from which comes this earth that I carry. You made it. But where is the heaven of heaven, Lord, of which we have heard in the words of the psalm, "The heaven of heaven is the Lord's, but the earth he has given to the sons of men"? Where are you, heaven which we do not see, to which all this that we see is earth? For this whole bodily world, whose base is our earth, has not received a beautiful form everywhere in its entirety, down to its lowest parts; but compared with that heaven of heaven, even the heaven of our earth is earth. And it is not absurd to call both these great bodies earth in comparison with that heaven, whatever it is, which is the Lord's and not the sons' of men.

And certainly this earth was invisible and unformed, and a kind of depth of the abyss over which there was no light, because it had no form; therefore you had it written that "darkness was over the abyss." What else is that than the absence of light? For where would light be, if it existed, except above, standing out and shining? So where there was not yet light, what was the presence of darkness but the absence of light? So darkness was above, because light was absent from above, just as where there is no sound, there is silence. And what is it for there to be silence but for there to be no sound? Did you not, Lord, teach this soul which confesses to you? Did you not, Lord, teach me that before you formed and distinguished this formless matter, there was nothing, no color, no shape, no body, no spirit? Yet it was not absolutely nothing: there was a certain formlessness without any form.

What, then, should it be called, so that it might be conveyed in some way even to slower minds, except by some familiar word? And what can be found in all the parts of the world closer to total formlessness than earth and the abyss? For in their lowest rank they are less beautiful than the other, higher things, which are all bright and shining.

Why, then, should I not take the formlessness of matter, which you had made without form so as to make from it a beautiful world, to have been so suitably conveyed to men that it was called "invisible and unformed earth"? So that when thought seeks in it something for the senses to reach, and says to itself, "It is not an intelligible form, like life or justice, because it is the matter of bodies; nor is it perceptible, because there is nothing in the invisible and unformed to be seen or perceived": while human thought says this to itself, it may try either to know it by not knowing it, or not to know it by knowing it.

But I, Lord, if I were to confess to you with my mouth and my pen all that you have taught me about this matter (whose name I used to hear before without understanding, when those who did not understand it spoke of it to me), I used to think of it as having countless different forms, and therefore did not think of it at all. My mind turned over foul and horrible forms in disordered array, but forms nonetheless; and I called it formless not because it lacked form, but because it had such a form that, if it appeared, my senses would turn away from it as strange and unfitting, and human weakness would be disturbed. But what I was thinking of was formless not by the lack of all form, but by comparison with more beautiful forms; and true reason was persuading me that I should strip away altogether every remnant of any form whatever, if I wanted to think of the wholly formless; and I could not. For I would sooner judge that what was deprived of all form did not exist than think of something between form and nothing, neither formed nor nothing, a formless almost-nothing. And my mind stopped questioning my spirit about this, filled as it was with images of formed bodies, changing and varying them at will; and I turned my attention to bodies themselves and looked more deeply into their changeableness, by which they cease to be what they had been and begin to be what they were not; and I suspected that this passage from form to form takes place through something formless, not through absolutely nothing. But I wanted to know, not to suspect. And if my voice and pen were to confess to you all that you have unraveled for me on this question, which of my readers would have the patience to grasp it? Yet my heart will not therefore cease to give you honor and a song of praise for the things it cannot put into words. For the changeableness of changeable things is itself capable of all the forms into which changeable things are changed. And what is this? Is it mind? Is it body? Is it some form of mind or body? If one could say "a nothing-something" and "an is-is-not," I would call it this; and yet it already existed in some way, so as to receive these visible and composite forms.

And from where did it exist in some way, so as to receive these visible and composite forms, and from where did it exist in any way at all, unless it were from you, from whom all things are, insofar as they are? But the more unlike you a thing is, the further it is from you; not in place. And so you, Lord, who are not one thing here and another there, nor otherwise here and otherwise there, but the Selfsame and the Selfsame and the Selfsame, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty," in the Beginning, which is from you, in your Wisdom, which is born of your substance, made something, and made it from nothing. For you made heaven and earth not from yourself; for then it would be equal to your only-begotten, and so to you as well; and it would in no way be right that anything should be equal to you which was not from you. And there was nothing else besides you from which you could make them, God, one Trinity and threefold Unity; and so you made heaven and earth from nothing, something great and something small, because you are almighty and good to make all things good: a great heaven and a small earth. You were, and nothing else, from which you made heaven and earth, two things: one close to you, the other close to nothing; one to which you alone would be superior, the other to which nothing would be inferior.

But that heaven of heaven is yours, Lord; while the earth, which you gave to the sons of men to see and touch, was not such as we now see and touch. For it was invisible and unformed, and there was an abyss over which there was no light; or "darkness was over the abyss," that is, more than in the abyss. For this abyss of waters, which are now visible, has even in its depths a light of its own form, perceptible in some way to the fish and creatures that crawl on its bottom; but that whole was almost nothing, since it was still wholly formless; yet it already existed, something that could be formed. For you, Lord, "made the world from formless matter," which you made from nothing, an almost-nothing, from which to make the great things that we, the sons of men, marvel at. Very wonderful is this bodily heaven, the firmament between water and water, of which you said on the second day, after the creation of light, "Let it be made," and so it was made. This firmament you called heaven, but the heaven of this earth and sea, which you made on the third day by giving visible form to the formless matter which you made before any day. For you had already made a heaven before any day, but the heaven of this heaven, because "in the beginning you made heaven and earth." But the earth itself which you had made was formless matter, because it was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss. From this invisible and unformed earth, from this formlessness, from this almost-nothing, you would make all these things of which this changeable world consists and does not consist; in which changeableness itself appears, in which times can be perceived and counted, because times are made by the changes of things, while the forms vary and turn, whose matter is the invisible earth spoken of above.

And so the Spirit, the teacher of your servant, when he records that you made heaven and earth in the beginning, is silent about times, says nothing of days. For surely the heaven of heaven, which you made in the beginning, is some intellectual creation, which, although in no way coeternal with you, the Trinity, yet shares in your eternity; it greatly restrains its changeableness through the sweetness of its most blessed contemplation of you, and, clinging to you without any lapse from the moment it was made, it surpasses all the turning vicissitude of times. But that formlessness, the invisible and unformed earth, was not itself numbered among the days either. For where there is no form, no order, nothing comes and passes away; and where this does not happen, there are certainly no days, nor any vicissitude of temporal intervals.

O Truth, light of my heart, let not my darkness speak to me! I slid down to these things and was darkened; but from there, even from there, I loved you. I went astray, and I remembered you. I heard your voice behind me, calling me to return, and I scarcely heard it for the tumult of the restless. And now, see, I return, burning and panting, to your fountain. Let no one stop me: may I drink of it and live by it. Let me not be my own life: I lived badly from myself; I was death to myself; in you I revive. Speak to me, talk with me. I have believed your books, and their words are very deep. Already you have said to me, Lord, with a strong voice in my inner ear,

that you are eternal, "who alone have immortality," since you are not changed by any form or motion, nor is your will varied by times; for a will which is now one thing and now another is not immortal. This is clear to me in your sight; let it become clearer and clearer, I pray you, and in that manifestation let me abide soberly under your wings. Likewise you have said to me, Lord, with a strong voice in my inner ear, that you made all natures and substances which are not what you are and yet exist; that only what does not exist is not from you; and that the motion of the will away from you, who are, toward what is less is not from you, because such a motion is a fault and a sin; and that no one's sin either harms you or disturbs the order of your rule, either in the highest or in the lowest. This is clear to me in your sight; let it become clearer and clearer, I pray you, and in that manifestation let me abide soberly under your wings.

Likewise you have said to me with a strong voice in my inner ear that not even that creation is coeternal with you whose delight you alone are, and which, drinking you in with most persevering chastity, never and nowhere shows its changeableness; and with you always present to it, to whom it holds with all its love, having no future to expect and transferring nothing into the past to remember, it is not varied by any change nor distended into any times. O blessed creation, if there is such, blessed in clinging to your blessedness, blessed in you, its eternal indweller and enlightener! Nor do I find anything I would more gladly call "the heaven of heaven, which is the Lord's" than your house, which contemplates your delight without any failing that would lead it out to anything else: a pure mind, most harmoniously one in the stable peace of holy spirits, the citizens of your city in the heavens above these heavens.

From this let the soul understand, whose pilgrimage has taken it into a far country, if it now thirsts for you, if its tears have now become its bread while it is asked day by day, "Where is your God?", if it now asks of you "one thing" and seeks it, "that it may dwell in your house all the days of its life" (and what is its life but you? and what are your days but your eternity, like your years, which do not fail, because you are the same?): from this, then, let the soul understand, as far as it can, how far above all times you are eternal, when your house, which has never gone on pilgrimage, although it is not coeternal with you, yet, by clinging to you unceasingly and unfailingly, suffers no vicissitude of times. This is clear to me in your sight; let it become clearer and clearer, I pray you, and in this manifestation let me abide soberly under your wings.

See, there is something formless in these changes of the lowest and weakest things; and who will tell me (unless it be someone who wanders and tosses about through the empty places of his heart with his own phantoms), who but such a one will tell me that, if all form were diminished and used up, and there remained only the formlessness through which a thing was changed and turned from form to form, it could display the succession of times? It cannot at all, because without variety of motions there are no times, and there is no variety where there is no form.

Having considered these things, my God, as far as you grant it, as far as you rouse me to knock and open to me when I knock, I find two things which you made without times, although neither is coeternal with you: one, so formed that, without any failing of contemplation, without any interval of change, though changeable yet unchanged, it enjoys eternity and unchangeableness; the other, so formless that it had nothing from which to be changed into any form, whether of motion or of rest, so as to be subject to time. But you did not leave this to be formless, since before any day "in the beginning you made heaven and earth," these two things I was speaking of. "But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss." By these words formlessness is suggested, so that those may be led on step by step who could not think of a total lack of form which yet does not amount to nothing; from which would be made the second heaven and the visible and ordered earth, and the beautiful water, and whatever else is recorded as made thereafter in the establishing of this world, not without days, since they are such that in them the successions of times take place because of the ordered changes of motions and forms.

Meanwhile, my God, this is what I understand when I hear your Scripture saying, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth; but the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss," and not mentioning on which day you made these things. This, meanwhile, is what I understand: that it is because of that heaven of heaven, the intellectual heaven, where understanding is knowing all at once, not in part, not in a riddle, not through a mirror, but wholly, openly, face to face; not now this, now that, but, as has been said, knowing all at once without any succession of times; and because of the invisible and unformed earth, without any succession of times, which usually has now this and now that, because where there is no form, there is nowhere this and that: because of these two, the one formed from the first and the other wholly formless, the one heaven, but the heaven of heaven, the other earth, but invisible and unformed earth: because of these two, meanwhile, I understand that your Scripture says, without mentioning days, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth." For it immediately added what earth it meant. And by recording that on the second day the firmament was made and called heaven, it suggests which heaven had been spoken of earlier, without days.

Wonderful is the depth of your words! See, their surface is before us, caressing little ones; but wonderful is the depth, my God, wonderful the depth! It is awe-inspiring to look into it: the awe of reverence and the trembling of love. I hate its enemies vehemently: oh, that you would slay them with the two-edged sword, so that they might be its enemies no more! For so I love them to be slain to themselves, that they may live to you. But see, others, not critics but praisers of the book of Genesis, say: "The Spirit of God, who wrote these things through Moses his servant, did not intend this to be understood by these words; he did not intend what you say, but something else, which we say." To them, with you as judge, God of us all, I answer thus.

Will you say that what the Truth tells me with a strong voice in my inner ear about the true eternity of the Creator is false: that his substance is in no way varied by times, nor is his will outside his substance? So he does not will now this and now that, but once, and at once, and always he wills all that he wills; not again and again, nor now these things and now those; nor does he will afterward what he did not will, or not will what he willed before; because such a will is changeable, and nothing changeable is eternal; but our God is eternal. Likewise what it tells me in my inner ear: the expectation of things to come becomes direct attention when they come, and the same direct attention becomes memory when they have passed; and every attention which varies in this way is changeable, and nothing changeable is eternal; but our God is eternal. These things I gather and join together, and I find that my God, the eternal God, did not establish creation by some new will, nor does his knowledge undergo anything transitory.

What, then, will you say, you who object? Are these things false? "No," they say. What of this? Is it false that every formed nature, or matter capable of form, exists only from him who is supremely good, because he supremely is? "We do not deny this either," they say. What, then? Do you deny that there is a certain sublime creation, cleaving with such chaste love to the true and truly eternal God that, although it is not coeternal with him, it does not loosen itself or flow away from him into any variety or succession of times, but rests in the most true contemplation of him alone; because you, God, show yourself to one who loves you as much as you command, and are sufficient for it; and therefore it does not turn aside from you or toward itself? This is the house of God, not earthly, nor of any heavenly bodily mass, but spiritual and sharing in your eternity, because it is without stain for ever. For "you have established it for ever and for ever and ever; you have set a decree, and it will not pass away." Yet it is not coeternal with you, since it is not without a beginning; for it was made.

For even though we find no time before it (for "wisdom was created before all things"), certainly not that Wisdom which is fully coeternal and coequal with you, our God, its Father, through which all things were created and in which Beginning you made heaven and earth; but the wisdom which was created, that is, the intellectual nature, which is light by contemplating the Light (for it too, although created, is called wisdom; but as great as the difference between the Light that enlightens and that which is enlightened, so great is the difference between the Wisdom that creates and this which was created, as between the justice that justifies and the justice that has been produced by justification; for we too are called your justice, since a servant of yours says, "that we might become the justice of God in him"): so, since a certain wisdom was created before all things, the created, rational, and intellectual mind of your chaste city, our mother, which is above and is free and eternal in the heavens (in which heavens, if not those that praise you, the heavens of heavens, since this is also "the heaven of heaven, which is the Lord's"?), even though we find no time before it, because what was created before all things precedes also the creation of time, yet before it is the eternity of the Creator himself, from whom, having been made, it took its beginning: not a beginning in time, because there was not yet time, but the beginning of its own existence.

So it is from you, our God, in such a way that it is clearly other than you and not the Selfsame; and we find time not only not before it, but not even in it, because it is fit always to see your face and never turns away from it anywhere; so it is not varied by any change. Yet changeableness itself is in it, by which it would grow dark and cold, unless, clinging to you with great love, it shone and burned from you as in an everlasting noon. O house full of light and beauty, "I have loved your beauty and the place of the dwelling of the glory" of my Lord, your builder and owner! Let my pilgrimage sigh for you, and I say to him who made you that he may possess me too in you, since he made me too. "I have gone astray like a lost sheep"; but on the shoulders of my Shepherd, your builder, I hope to be carried back to you.

What do you say to me, you objectors whom I was addressing, who nevertheless believe that Moses was a devout servant of God and that his books are the oracles of the Holy Spirit? Is not this the house of God, not indeed coeternal with God, yet in its own way "eternal in the heavens," where you seek changes of times in vain, because you do not find them? For it surpasses all distension and every revolving span of time, since "it is good for it always to cling to God." "It is," they say. What, then, of the things my heart cried out to my God when it heard inwardly the voice of his praise, what do you finally maintain is false? Is it that there was formless matter, where, 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, insofar as it was not wholly nothing, was certainly from him from whom is whatever is, that is anything at all. "This too," they say, "we do not deny."

For with these, my God, I want to speak for a little in your presence, those who grant that all these things are true which your Truth does not keep silent within my mind. As for those who deny them, let them bark as much as they like and deafen themselves; I will try to persuade them to be quiet and let your word find a way to them. But if they will not, and reject me, I beseech you, my God, "do not be silent to me." Speak truly in my heart, for you alone speak so; and I will leave them outside, blowing into the dust and raising earth into their own eyes; and I will enter my chamber and sing love songs to you, groaning with inexpressible groanings in my pilgrimage, and remembering Jerusalem, with my heart stretched up toward it: Jerusalem my homeland, Jerusalem my mother, and you who reign over it, its enlightener, father, guardian, husband, its chaste and strong delights and solid joy and all good things beyond telling, all at once, because you are the one supreme and true good. And I will not turn away until you gather all that I am from this dispersion and deformity into the peace of that dearest mother, where the first fruits of my spirit are, from which these things are certain to me; and you conform and confirm me for ever, my God, my mercy. But to those who do not say that all these true things are false, who honor your holy Scripture, published through holy Moses, and set it with us at the summit of authority to be followed, and yet contradict us in something, I speak thus. Be judge, our God, between my confessions and their contradictions.

For they say: "Although these things are true, yet Moses was not looking at those two things when, by the revelation of the Spirit, he said, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth.' By the name of heaven he did not mean that spiritual or intellectual creation always contemplating the face of God, nor by the name of earth formless matter." What, then? "What we say," they say, "is what that man meant; this is what he expressed in those words." What is that? "By the name of heaven and earth," they say, "he wanted first to signify, universally and briefly, this whole visible world, so as afterward to set out, by the enumeration of the days, piece by piece as it were, all the things the Holy Spirit was pleased to express in this way. For the people to whom he spoke were such rough and carnal men that he judged that only the visible works of God should be commended to them." But they agree that the invisible and unformed earth and the dark abyss, from which, as is then shown, all these visible things known to everyone were made and set in order during those days, may not unfittingly be understood as this formless matter.

What if another says that this same formlessness and confusion of matter was first suggested by the name of heaven and earth, because from it this visible world, with all the natures that appear most plainly in it, which is often called by the name of heaven and earth, was established and completed? What if yet another says that invisible and visible nature is not unfittingly called heaven and earth, and so the whole creation, which God made in Wisdom, that is, in the Beginning, is comprised in these two words; but since all things were made not from God's own substance but from nothing, because they are not the Selfsame that God is, and there is a certain changeableness in all of them, whether they remain, like the eternal house of God, or change, like the soul and body of man, then the common matter of all things invisible and visible, still formless but certainly capable of form, from which heaven and earth would be made, that is, both creations, invisible and visible, once formed, is expressed by the words by which it is called "invisible and unformed earth" and "darkness over the abyss"; with this distinction, that the invisible and unformed earth is understood as bodily matter before the quality of form, and darkness over the abyss as spiritual matter before the restraining of its flowing, as it were, unboundedness, and before the enlightening of Wisdom?

There is yet another thing someone else may say, if he wishes: that when we read, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," what is signified by the name of heaven and earth is not invisible and visible natures already completed and formed, but the still formless beginning of things, matter capable of being formed and created, is called by these names, because in it those things were already present in confusion, not yet distinguished by qualities and forms, which now, arranged in their orders, are called heaven and earth, the one spiritual, the other bodily creation.

Having heard and considered all these views, I do not want to "contend about words; for that is useful for nothing but the ruin of the hearers." But "the law is good" for edification "if one uses it lawfully," because "its end is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned"; and our Teacher knows on which two commandments he hung the whole Law and the Prophets. As I confess these things ardently, my God, light of my eyes in secret, what harm is it to me if different things, which are nevertheless true, can be understood in these words? What harm is it to me, I say, if I think something other than another thinks the writer meant? All of us who read are striving to trace and grasp what the one we read intended; and since we believe him truthful, we do not dare to think that he said anything we know or think to be false. While, then, each one tries to understand in the holy Scriptures what the writer understood in them, what harm is there if he understands what you, the light of all truthful minds, show to be true, even if the one he reads did not understand it, since that writer too understood something true, though not this?

For it is true, Lord, that you made heaven and earth. It is true that the Beginning is your Wisdom, in which you made all things. Likewise it is true that this visible world has as its great parts heaven and earth, a brief summary of all the natures made and established. And it is true that everything changeable suggests to our knowledge a certain formlessness, by which it receives form, or by which it is changed and turned. It is true that what so clings to the unchangeable form that, though changeable, it does not change, undergoes no times. It is true that formlessness, which is almost nothing, cannot have successions of times. It is true that that from which something is made can, by a certain manner of speaking, already have the name of the thing that is made from it; so any formlessness from which heaven and earth were made could be called heaven and earth. It is true that of all formed things nothing is closer to the formless than earth and the abyss. It is true that you made not only what is created and formed, but also whatever can be created and formed, you from whom are all things. It is true that everything that is formed from the formless is first formless and then formed.

From all these truths, which are not doubted by those to whose inner eye you have granted to see such things, and who firmly believe that Moses your servant spoke in the Spirit of truth, from all these, then, one takes one sense who says: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," that is, in his Word, coeternal with himself, God made the intelligible and the sensible, or spiritual and bodily, creation. Another who says: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," that is, in his Word, coeternal with himself, God made this whole mass of the bodily world with all the evident and known natures that it contains. Another who says: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," that is, in his Word, coeternal with himself, God made the formless matter of spiritual and bodily creation. Another who says: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," that is, in his Word, coeternal with himself, God made the formless matter of bodily creation, in which heaven and earth were still confused, which we now perceive distinguished and formed in the mass of this world. Another who says: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," that is, in the very first beginning of making and working, God made formless matter containing heaven and earth confusedly, from which, now formed, they stand out and appear with all that is in them.

Likewise, as regards the understanding of the words that follow, from all those truths one takes one sense who says: "But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss," that is, that bodily thing which God made was still the formless matter of bodily things, without order, without light. Another who says: "But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss," that is, this whole which has been called heaven and earth was still formless and dark matter, from which would be made the bodily heaven and the bodily earth with all that is in them, known to the bodily senses. Another who says: "But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss," that is, this whole which has been called heaven and earth was still formless and dark matter, from which would be made the intelligible heaven (which elsewhere is called the heaven of heaven) and the earth, namely all bodily nature, under which name this bodily heaven too is to be understood; that is, from which all invisible and visible creation would be made. Another who says: "But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss": Scripture did not call that formlessness by the name of heaven and earth, but, he says, that formlessness already existed which it named the invisible and unformed earth and the dark abyss, from which it had said before that God made heaven and earth, namely the spiritual and bodily creation. Another who says: "But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss," that is, there was already a certain formless matter, from which Scripture said before that God made heaven and earth, namely the whole bodily mass of the world, divided into two very great parts, upper and lower, with all the familiar and known creatures that are in them.

For suppose someone tries to oppose the last two opinions in this way: "If you do not want this formlessness of matter to be seen as called by the name of heaven and earth, then there was something which God had not made, from which he made heaven and earth; for Scripture has not told that God made this matter, unless we understand it to be signified by the word heaven and earth, or earth alone, when it was said, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth'; so that what follows, 'But the earth was invisible and unformed,' although it pleased Scripture to call formless matter so, we should understand only of that which God made in what is written, 'He made heaven and earth.'" The defenders of those two opinions which we put last, one or the other, when they hear this, will answer and say: "We do not deny that this formless matter was made by God, the God from whom all things are very good; for as we say that what is created and formed is a greater good, so we confess that what is made capable of being created and formed is a lesser good, but still good. But Scripture has not recorded that God made this formlessness, just as it has not recorded many other things, such as the cherubim and seraphim, and those that the apostle names distinctly, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, all of which it is nevertheless plain that God made. Or if everything is included in what was said, 'He made heaven and earth,' what do we say of the waters over which the Spirit of God was moving? For if they are understood as included when earth is named, how is formless matter to be taken by the name of earth, when we see the waters so beautiful? Or if it is taken so, why is it written that the firmament was made from the same formlessness and called heaven, and it is not written that the waters were made? For they are no longer formless and invisible, since we see them flowing in such a lovely form. Or if they received this form when God said, 'Let the water under the firmament be gathered together,' so that the gathering is itself the forming, what will be answered about the waters above the firmament? For neither would they have deserved so honorable a place if they were formless, nor is it written by what word they were formed. So if Genesis is silent about something that God made, which yet neither sound faith nor sure understanding doubts that God made, and no sober teaching will therefore dare to say that these waters are coeternal with God because we hear them mentioned in the book of Genesis but do not find where they were made, why should we not also understand, as truth teaches, that that formless matter, which this Scripture calls the invisible and unformed earth and the dark abyss, was made by God from nothing and is therefore not coeternal with him, even though this account has omitted to say where it was made?"

Having heard and considered these things, then, as far as my weakness allows, which I confess to you, my God, who know it, I see that two kinds of disagreement can arise when something is reported in signs by truthful messengers: one, if the disagreement concerns the truth of the things; the other, if it concerns the intention of the one who reports. For it is one thing to ask what is true about the establishing of creation, another to ask what Moses, that outstanding servant of your household of faith, intended the reader and hearer to understand by these words. In the first kind, let all depart from me who think they know things that are false. In the second, likewise, let all depart from me who think that Moses said things that are false. But let me be joined with those, Lord, in you, and delight with them in you, who feed on your truth in the breadth of love; and let us approach together the words of your book and seek in them your intention through the intention of your servant, by whose pen you dispensed them.

But which of us has so found it among so many true things, which occur to those who seek in those words understood now one way and now another, that he can say as confidently that Moses meant this and wanted this to be understood in that account as he confidently says that this is true, whether Moses meant it or something else? For see, my God, I your servant, who have vowed to you a sacrifice of confession in this writing, and pray that by your mercy I may pay you my vows: see, I say confidently that in your unchangeable Word you made all things, invisible and visible; but do I say as confidently that Moses had nothing else in mind than this when he wrote, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth"? For I do not see in his mind that he thought this when he wrote these words, as I see it to be certain in your truth. For he could have been thinking of the very start of making when he said "in the beginning"; he could also have wanted "heaven and earth" in this place to be understood not of any nature already formed and completed, whether spiritual or bodily, but of both only begun and still formless. For I see that whichever of these were said could truly be said; but which of these he had in mind in these words I do not see in the same way; although, whether that great man saw in his mind one of these or something else that I have not mentioned when he uttered these words, I do not doubt that he saw what was true and expressed it fittingly.

Let no one now trouble me by saying to me, "Moses did not mean what you say, but what I say." For if he said to me, "How do you know that Moses meant what you say about these words of his?" I ought to bear it calmly, and answer perhaps what I answered above, or somewhat more fully if he were more stubborn. But when he says, "He did not mean what you say, but what I say," and yet does not deny that what each of us says is true, then, O life of the poor, my God, in whose bosom there is no contradiction, rain softening into my heart, so that I may bear such people patiently. They say this to me not because they are godly and have seen in the heart of your servant what they say, but because they are proud; they do not know Moses' meaning, but they love their own, not because it is true but because it is theirs. Otherwise they would equally love another true meaning, as I love what they say when they say what is true, not because it is theirs but because it is true; and for that very reason it is no longer theirs, because it is true. But if they love it because it is true, it is both theirs and mine, since it is the common property of all lovers of truth. But their contention that Moses did not mean what I say but what they say, I do not want and do not love; because even if it is so, that rashness is born not of knowledge but of audacity, not of vision but of pride. And therefore, Lord, your judgments are to be feared, because your truth is neither mine nor his nor another's, but belongs to all of us whom you publicly call to share in it, warning us terribly not to want to hold it privately, lest we be deprived of it. For whoever claims as his own what you set before all to enjoy, and wants to be his own what belongs to all, is driven from the common to his own, that is, from truth to a lie. For "he who speaks a lie speaks from his own."

Listen, best Judge, God, Truth itself, listen to what I say to this objector; listen, for I speak before you and before my brothers who use the law lawfully, to the end of love; listen and see what I say to him, if it pleases you. For this is the brotherly and peaceful word I give him: if we both see that what you say is true, and we both see that what I say is true, where, I ask, do we see it? Certainly I do not see it in you nor you in me, but both of us in the unchangeable Truth itself, which is above our minds. Since, then, we do not quarrel about the very light of the Lord our God, why do we quarrel about the thought of our neighbor, which we cannot see as the unchangeable Truth is seen? For even if Moses himself appeared to us and said, "This is what I meant," we would not see it even then, but 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, with all our soul, with all our mind, and our neighbor as ourselves." Unless we believe that Moses meant whatever he meant in those books for the sake of these two commandments of love, we shall make the Lord a liar, when we think of our fellow servant's mind otherwise than he taught. See, then, how foolish it is, amid so great an abundance of very true meanings that can be drawn from those words, to assert rashly which of them Moses chiefly meant, and by harmful quarrels to offend love itself, for whose sake he said all the things we are trying to explain.

And yet, my God, height of my lowliness and rest of my labor, who hear my confessions and forgive my sins: since you command me to love my neighbor as myself, I cannot believe that you gave Moses, your most faithful servant, a lesser gift than I would wish and desire to be given to me by you, if I had been born at the time he was and you had placed me in that position, so that by the service of my heart and tongue those writings might be dispensed which were to benefit all nations so long afterward, and to surpass throughout the whole world, from so lofty a summit of authority, the words of all false and proud teachings. For I would have wished, 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?"), I would have wished, then, if I had been what he was and the book of Genesis had been assigned to me by you to write, that such a power of expression and such a manner of weaving words would be given me that those who cannot yet understand how God creates would not reject the words as beyond their powers, and those who can already do so would find, in the few words of your servant, whatever true meaning they had arrived at by thinking, not omitted; and if another saw another meaning in the light of truth, that too would not be missing from the same words for him to understand.

For as a spring in a small place is more abundant, and supplies its flow to more streams over wider spaces than any one of those streams that is led from the same spring through many places, so the account of your dispenser, which was to benefit many who would speak of it, pours out from a small measure of speech floods of clear truth, from which each may draw for himself, by the longer windings of discussion, what truth he can about these things, one this and another that. For some, when they read or hear these words, think of God as a man, or as some power endowed with an immense mass, which by some new and sudden decision made heaven and earth outside itself, as if in distant places, two great bodies above and below, in which all things would be contained; and when they hear, "God said, 'Let it be made,' and it was made," they think of words begun and ended, sounding in time and passing away, after whose passing what had been commanded to exist at once came into existence; and whatever else of this kind they perhaps imagine from their familiarity with the flesh. In these, who are still little animals, while their weakness is carried by this very humble kind of speech as in a mother's bosom, faith is healthily built up, by which they hold for certain that God made all the natures which their senses see around them in wonderful variety. If any of them, despising the words as if lowly, stretches himself out of his nursery cradle in proud weakness, alas, he will fall, poor thing; and, Lord God, have mercy, lest those who pass by on the road trample the unfledged chick, and send your angel to put it back in the nest, so that it may live until it can fly.

But others, for whom these words are no longer a nest but shady thickets, see hidden fruits in them, and fly about rejoicing, and chirp as they search them out and pluck them. For when they read or hear these words, they see that all past and future times are surpassed by your eternal, stable permanence, O God; and yet that there is nothing in temporal creation which you did not make; and that you, whose will is what you are, made all things by no changed will, nor by a will arising which had not been before; not from yourself, a likeness of yourself, the form of all things, but from nothing, a formless unlikeness, to be formed through your likeness, returning to you, the One, according to its ordered capacity, as much as has been given to each thing in its kind; and that all things were made very good, whether they remain close to you, or, at a distance increasing by degrees, through times and places, make or undergo beautiful variations. They see these things and rejoice in the light of your truth, as far as they are able here.

And one of them attends to what was said, "In the beginning God made," and looks to Wisdom as the Beginning, "because it also speaks to us." Another likewise attends to the same words and understands "the beginning" as the start of created things, and takes "In the beginning he made" as if it were said, "First he made." And among those who understand "in the beginning" to mean that he made heaven and earth in Wisdom, one believes that heaven and earth themselves, the matter capable of creating heaven and earth, were so named; another, natures already formed and distinguished; another, one formed and spiritual nature by the name of heaven, the other the formless nature of bodily matter by the name of earth. And those who understand by the names of heaven and earth the still formless matter from which heaven and earth would be formed do not understand it in one way either; but one understands the matter from which the intelligible and sensible creation would be completed, another only that from which this sensible bodily mass would be made, holding in its great bosom the visible and evident natures. Nor do those agree who believe that heaven and earth in this place are the creatures already arranged and set in order; but one understands the invisible and visible, another only the visible, in which we look up to the shining heaven and the dark earth and the things that are in them.

But he who takes "In the beginning he made" in no other way than as if it were said, "First he made," has no way to understand "heaven and earth" truly unless he understands the matter of heaven and earth, that is, of the whole creation, intelligible and bodily. For if he wants it to be the whole creation already formed, he could rightly be asked: if God made this first, what did he make next? And he will find nothing after the whole, and so will hear, against his will, "How is that first, if there is nothing after?" But when he says that God made it first formless and then formed, he is not absurd, provided he is able to discern what precedes by eternity, what by time, what by choice, and what by origin: by eternity, as God precedes all things; by time, as the flower precedes the fruit; by choice, as the fruit is preferred to the flower; by origin, as sound precedes song. Of these four, the first and last I have mentioned are very hard to understand, the two in the middle very easy. For it is a rare and very arduous vision, Lord, to behold your eternity unchangeably making changeable things, and therefore prior to them. Then who has so sharp a mind as to be able to discern without great labor how sound is prior to song, because song is formed sound, and something unformed can certainly exist, but what does not exist cannot be formed? So matter is prior to what is made from it, not because it makes it, since rather it is made, nor prior by an interval of time. For we do not first utter formless sounds without song and afterward fit or shape them into the form of a song, as with wood from which a chest is made, or silver from which a vessel is fashioned; for such materials do precede in time the forms of the things made from them. But with song it is not so. For when it is sung, its sound is heard; it does not first sound formlessly and then is formed into song. For whatever has sounded in any way passes away, and you will find nothing of it that you could take up again and compose by art; and so song is turned in its own sound, and that sound is its matter. For the sound itself is formed so as to be song. And so, as I said, the matter of sounding is prior to the form of singing: not prior by the power of making, for sound is not the maker of the song, but is supplied from the body to the singing soul, from which to make the song; nor prior in time, for it is uttered together with the song; nor prior by choice, for sound is not better than song, since song is not only sound but beautiful sound. But it is prior by origin, because song is not formed so as to be sound, but sound is formed so as to be song. By this example let whoever can understand that the matter of things was made first and called heaven and earth, because heaven and earth were made from it; and not made first in time, because the forms of things give rise to times, while it was formless, and is only perceived together with them in times; and yet nothing can be told of it except as if it were prior in time, although it is ranked last, because formed things are certainly better than formless ones; and it is preceded by the eternity of the Creator, so that it might exist from nothing, from which something could be made.

In this diversity of true opinions, let Truth itself bring forth concord, and "may our God have mercy on us," that we may use the law lawfully, for the end of the commandment, pure love. And so, if anyone asks me which of these Moses, your servant, meant, these are not the words of my confessions if I do not confess to you: I do not know. And yet I know that those opinions are true, except the carnal ones, about which I have said what I thought. Yet these words of your book, lofty in their lowliness and rich in their few words, do not frighten those little ones of good hope. But let all of us whom I acknowledge to see and speak what is true in these words love one another, and equally love you, our God, the fountain of truth, if we thirst not for vain things but for truth itself; and let us so honor your servant himself, the dispenser of this Scripture, full of your Spirit, as to believe that, when he wrote these things by your revelation, he attended to what is most excellent in them both in the light of truth and in the fruit of usefulness.

So when one says, "He meant what I mean," and another, "No, what I mean," I think it more religious to say: Why not both, if both are true; and if anyone sees a third, and a fourth, and anything else at all that is true in these words, why should he not be believed to have seen all of them, he through whom the one God tempered the sacred writings to the understandings of many who would see things true and different? I at least, and I declare it fearlessly from my heart, if I were writing something to have the highest authority, would rather write so that my words would echo whatever truth each person could grasp about these things, than set down one true meaning so plainly as to exclude the others, which, not being false, could not offend me. So, my God, I do not want to be so rash as not to believe that that man deserved this from you. He certainly meant and thought in these words, when he wrote them, whatever truth we have been able to find here, and whatever we have not been able or not yet been able to find, and yet can be found in them.

Finally, Lord, you who are God and not flesh and blood, if a man saw less, could anything be hidden from "your good Spirit, who will lead me into the right land," that you yourself were going to reveal in these words to later readers, even if he through whom they were spoken perhaps thought of only one of the many true meanings? If that is so, then let the one he thought of be higher than the rest; but to us, Lord, show either that one or any other true one you please, so that whether you reveal to us what you revealed to that man of yours or something else on the occasion of the same words, it may be you who feed us, and not error that deceives us. See, Lord my God, how much we have written about a few words, how much, I pray you! What strength of ours, what time, would suffice for all your books in this way? Let me, then, confess to you more briefly about them, and choose some one meaning which you inspire, true, certain, and good, even if many occur, where many can occur; in this faith of my confession, that if I say what your minister meant, I say it rightly and best (for that is what I must attempt); but if I do not attain it, I may still say what your Truth willed to say to me through his words, which also said to him what it willed.

I call upon you, my God, my mercy, who made me and did not forget me when I had forgotten you. I call you into my soul, which you are preparing to receive you by the desire you have breathed into it. Do not forsake me now when I call upon you, you who went before me before I called, and pressed upon me with voices growing more frequent and of many kinds, so that I might hear from afar and be converted and call upon you who were calling me. For, Lord, you blotted out all my evil deserts, so as not to repay my hands, by which I fell away from you; and you went before all my good deserts, so as to repay your own hands, by which you made me; because before I was, you were, and I did not exist for you to grant me existence; and yet see, I exist out of your goodness, which went before all this that you made me and that from which you made me. For you had no need of me, nor am I such a good that you might be helped by it, my Lord and my God: not that I should serve you as if to keep you from tiring in your work, or lest your power be less without my service; nor that I should worship you as one cultivates land, so that you would be uncultivated if I did not worship you; but that I should serve you and worship you so that it may be well with me from you, from whom I have my being, as one to whom it can be well.

For it was out of the fullness of your goodness that your creation came to be, so that a good which would be of no benefit to you, and which, not being from your substance, would not be equal to you, should nevertheless not be lacking, since it could be made by you. For what had heaven and earth, which you made in the beginning, deserved of you? Let them say what they deserved of you, the spiritual and bodily natures which you made in your Wisdom, so that there should depend on it even things only begun and formless, each in its own kind, spiritual or bodily, tending toward unboundedness and far unlikeness to you (the formless spiritual being superior to a formed body, and the formless bodily superior to nothing at all); and so the formless things would hang upon your Word unless through the same Word they were called back to your unity and formed, and all were very good from you, the one supreme good. What had they deserved of you, that they should exist even as formless, since they would not even be this except from you?

What had bodily matter deserved of you, that it should exist even as invisible and unformed, since it would not even be this unless you had made it? And so, because it did not exist, it could not deserve of you to exist. Or what had the beginning of spiritual creation deserved of you, that it should even float in darkness like the abyss, unlike you, unless through the same Word it were turned to the same by whom it was made, and, enlightened by him, became light, although not equal to, yet conformed to, the Form that is equal to you? For just as for a body to be is not the same as to be beautiful (otherwise it could not be ugly), so too for a created spirit to live is not the same as to live wisely; otherwise it would be unchangeably wise. But it is good for it always to cling to you, lest the light it gained by turning toward you it lose by turning away, and slip back into a life like the dark abyss. For we too, who in our soul are a spiritual creation, having turned away from you, our light, were once darkness in that life, and we labor in the remains of our obscurity until we become your justice in your only Son, like the mountains of God; for we have been your judgments, like a great abyss.

But what you said in the first acts of creation, "Let there be light, and there was light," I understand not unfittingly of the spiritual creation, because there was already some kind of life for you to enlighten. But as it had not deserved of you to be such a life as could be enlightened, so neither, once it existed, did it deserve of you to be enlightened. For its formlessness would not have pleased you unless it became light, not by existing, but by looking upon the Light that enlightens it and cleaving to it; so that both its living in any way at all and its living happily it owes to nothing but your grace, having been turned by a change for the better toward that which can be changed neither for better nor for worse. That is you alone, because you alone simply are, for whom it is not one thing to live and another to live happily, since you are your own happiness.

What, then, would be lacking to you for the good which you are to yourself, even if these things either did not exist at all or remained formless? You made them not out of need but out of the fullness of your goodness, restraining them and turning them toward form, not so that your joy might be completed by them. For you, being perfect, are displeased by their imperfection, so that they may be perfected by you and please you; but not as if you were imperfect and were to be perfected by their perfection. For your good Spirit "was borne over the waters," not borne up by them, as if resting on them. For those in whom your Spirit is said to rest, he makes to rest in himself. But your incorruptible and unchangeable will, sufficient in itself for itself, was borne over that life which you had made; for which to live is not the same as to live happily, since it lives even while floating in its own obscurity; for which it remains 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 to be perfected and enlightened and made happy.

See, the Trinity appears to me in a riddle, which you are, my God; for you, Father, in the Beginning of our wisdom, which is your Wisdom born of you, equal to you and coeternal, that is, in your Son, made heaven and earth. And we have said much about the heaven of heaven, and about the invisible and unformed earth, and about the dark abyss, in view of the wandering failings of spiritual formlessness, unless it were turned to him from whom it had life of whatever kind, and by enlightenment became a beautiful life and the heaven of that heaven which was made afterward between water and water. And I already held the Father in the name of God, who made these things, and the Son in the name of the Beginning, in whom he made them; and believing my God to be a Trinity, as I did believe, I searched in his holy words, and see, "your Spirit was borne over the waters." See the Trinity, my God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, Creator of all creation.

But what was the reason, O truthful Light (to you I bring my heart, lest it teach me vain things; scatter its darkness and tell me, I beseech you by our mother, Love, I beseech you, tell me), what was the reason why, after heaven and the invisible and unformed earth and darkness over the abyss had been named, only then did your Scripture name your Spirit? Was it because he had to be introduced in such a way as to be said to be borne over? This could not be said unless that were first mentioned over which your Spirit could be understood to be borne. For he was not borne over the Father or the Son, nor would he rightly be said to be borne over if he were borne over nothing. So first it had to be said over what he was borne, and then he, who was not to be mentioned otherwise than as being said to be borne over. Why, then, was it not fitting for him to be introduced otherwise than as being said to be borne over?

From here let whoever can follow with understanding your apostle, who says that "your love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us," and who teaches concerning spiritual gifts and shows "a way of love" that is "supereminent," and "bends the knee" for us to you, that we may know "the supereminent knowledge of the love of Christ." And so from the beginning he, supereminent, "was borne over the waters." To whom shall I speak, and how shall I speak, of the weight of desire drawing us down into the steep abyss, and of the lifting up by love through your Spirit, who "was borne over the waters"? To whom shall I speak? How shall I speak? For these are not places in which we sink and rise. What is more like, and what more unlike? They are affections, they are loves: the uncleanness of our spirit flowing down through love of cares, and your holiness raising us up through love of security, so that we may have our heart lifted up to you, where your Spirit "was borne over the waters," and may come to the supereminent rest when our soul has passed through "the waters that are without substance."

The angel flowed down, the soul of man flowed down, and they showed the abyss of the whole spiritual creation in dark depths, unless you had said from the beginning, "Let there be light," and there had been light, and every obedient intelligence of your heavenly city had clung to you and rested in your Spirit, who is borne unchangeably over everything changeable. Otherwise even the heaven of heaven would be a dark abyss in itself; but now it is "light in the Lord." For even in the wretched restlessness of spirits flowing down and showing their darkness, stripped of the garment of your light, you show clearly how great a rational creation you made, for which nothing less than you suffices for happy rest, and therefore not even itself. For you, our God, "will enlighten our darkness"; from you comes our clothing, and "our darkness will be as the noonday." Give me yourself, my God, give yourself back to me: see, I love, and if it is too little, let me love more strongly. I cannot measure so as to know how much love I lack to be enough, so that my life may run into your embraces and not turn away until it is hidden "in the hiding place of your face." This only I know: that it is bad for me without you, not only outside me but also within me, and all abundance which is not my God is poverty to me.

Was it not the Father or the Son who was borne over the waters? If it is taken as in a place, like a body, then neither was the Holy Spirit; but if it means the pre-eminence of unchangeable divinity over everything changeable, then Father and Son and Holy Spirit were borne over the waters. Why, then, was this said only of your Spirit? Why was a kind of place, where he was, spoken of only in his case, who is not a place, he of whom alone it is said that he is your gift? In your gift we rest; there we enjoy you. Our rest is our place. Love lifts us up there, and "your good Spirit" raises our lowliness "from the gates of death." In your good will is our peace. A body tends by its weight toward its own place. Weight does not tend only downward, but to its own place. Fire tends upward, a stone downward. They are moved by their weights; they seek their own places. Oil poured under water rises above the water; water poured on oil sinks below the oil: they are moved by their weights; they seek their own places. Things not in order are restless; they are set in order and are at rest. My weight is my love; by it I am carried wherever I am carried. By your gift we are set on fire and carried upward; we burn and we go. We "climb the ascents in our heart" and sing "the song of ascents." With your fire, your good fire, we burn and go, because we go upward to the peace of Jerusalem, for "I rejoiced at those who said to me: We will go to the house of the Lord." There good will will place us, so that we will want nothing else but to remain there for ever.

Blessed is the creation which has known nothing else, though it was itself something else, except to be lifted up by your gift, which is borne over everything changeable, as soon as it was made, without any interval of time, in that calling by which you said, "Let there be light," and there was light. For in us it is distinguished by time, that we were darkness and are made light; but of that creation it is said what it would have been unless it had been enlightened; and it is said as if it had first been fluid and dark, so that the cause might appear by which it came to be otherwise, that is, so that, turned to the unfailing light, it became light. Let whoever can, understand; let him ask of you. Why should he trouble me, as if I "enlighten every man coming into this world"?

Who will understand the almighty Trinity? And who does not speak of it, if indeed it is of it that he speaks? Rare is the soul which, whenever it speaks of it, knows what it is saying. And they argue and fight, and no one sees this vision without peace. I would like men to think about these three things in themselves. These three are far other than that Trinity; but I say them as something in which they may exercise themselves and test themselves and perceive how far away they are. I mean these three: to be, to know, to will. For I am, and I know, and I will: I am knowing and willing, and I know that I am and that I will, and I will to be and to know. In these three, then, how inseparable a life there is, and one life, one mind, one essence; how inseparable a distinction, and yet a distinction: let him who can see it. Certainly it is before him; let him look into himself and see, and tell me. But when he has found something in these and spoken of it, let him not think that he has found that which is above them, the Unchangeable, which unchangeably is and unchangeably knows and unchangeably wills. And whether there is a Trinity there because of these three, or whether these three are in each Person so that each is threefold, or whether both are true in wonderful ways, simply and manifoldly, with an infinite end in itself and to itself, by which it is and is known to itself and is sufficient to itself unchangeably, the Selfsame, in the abundant greatness of unity, who can easily conceive? Who can say it in any way? Who would rashly pronounce on it in any way?

Go forward in confession, my faith; say to your Lord: Holy, holy, holy, Lord my God, in your name we have been baptized, Father and Son and Holy Spirit; in your name we baptize, Father and Son and Holy Spirit; because among us too, in his Christ, God made heaven and earth, the spiritual and carnal members of his church; and our earth, before it received the form of teaching, was invisible and unformed, and we were covered with the darkness of ignorance, because "for iniquity you have chastened man," and "your judgments are a great abyss." But because your Spirit "was borne over the water," 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 the Jordan" and from the mountain equal to you, but made small for our sake; and our darkness displeased us, and we turned to you, and there was light. And see, "we were once darkness, but now we are light in the Lord."

And yet still by faith, not yet by sight. "For in hope we have been saved; but hope that is seen is not hope." Still "deep calls to deep," but now "in the voice of your cataracts." Still even he who says, "I could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal," does not yet consider himself to have laid hold, and, "forgetting what lies behind, reaches out to what lies ahead," and groans under his burden, and "his soul thirsts for the living God, as the deer for the springs of water," and he says, "When shall I come?", "longing to be clothed over with his dwelling which is from heaven"; and he calls to the lower deep, saying, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your mind," and "Do not be children in understanding, but in malice be infants, that you may be perfect in understanding," and "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?" But now not in his own voice, but in yours, who sent your Spirit from on high through him who "ascended on high" and opened the cataracts of his gifts, so that "the rush of the river might make glad your city." For him "the friend of the bridegroom" sighs, having now "the first fruits of the Spirit" with him, but still "groaning within himself, waiting for adoption, the redemption of his body." For him he sighs, for he is a member of the bride; and for him he is jealous, for he is a friend of the bridegroom; he is jealous for him, not for himself, because it is in the voice of your cataracts, not in his own voice, that he calls to the other deep, for which in his jealousy he fears lest, "as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so their minds should be corrupted from the chastity" that is in our Bridegroom, your only Son. What is that light of sight, when "we shall see him as he is," and the tears shall have passed away which "have been my bread day and night, while it is said to me daily, Where is your God?"

And I too say: My God, where are you? See, there you are. I breathe a little in you, when I pour out my soul above myself "with the voice of exultation and confession, the sound of those keeping festival." And still it is sad, because it slips back and becomes an abyss, or rather feels that it is still an abyss. My faith, which you kindled in the night before my feet, says to it: "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 persevere, until the night passes, the mother of the wicked, until the wrath of the Lord passes, whose children we too once were, who were darkness, whose remnants we drag along in the body, "dead because of sin," "until the day breathes and the shadows are removed." "Hope in the Lord": "in the morning I will stand before you and contemplate"; I will always confess to him. In the morning I will stand and see "the salvation of my countenance, my God," who "will give life even to our mortal bodies through the Spirit who dwells in us," because he was mercifully borne over our dark and fluid interior. From him we have received in this pilgrimage a pledge that we are already light, while we are still "saved in hope," and "children of light and children of the day, not children of the night or of darkness," which yet we were. Between them and us, in this still uncertain state of human knowledge, you alone divide, you who "test our hearts" and "call the light day and the darkness night." For who distinguishes us but you? "And what do we have that we have not received" from you, vessels made for honor from the same lump from which others too were made for dishonor?

Or who but you, our God, made for us a firmament of authority over us in your divine Scripture? For "the heaven will be folded up like a book," and now it is "stretched out over us like a skin." For your divine Scripture has a more sublime authority now that those mortals through whom you dispensed it to us have undergone this death. And you know, Lord, you know how you clothed men with skins when they became mortal through sin. Therefore you have stretched out like a skin the firmament of your book, your words in harmony, which you set over us through the ministry of mortals. For by their very death the solid firmament of authority in your words, published through them, is stretched out sublimely over all things that are beneath it, which, while they lived here, was not so sublimely stretched out. You had not yet stretched out the heaven like a skin; you had not yet spread abroad everywhere the fame of their death.

Let us look, Lord, at "the heavens, the works of your fingers"; clear from our eyes the cloud with which you have covered them. There is your "testimony, giving wisdom to little ones." Perfect, my God, your praise "out of the mouth of infants and sucklings." For we know no other books that so destroy pride, so destroy "the enemy and the defender" who resists your reconciliation by defending his own sins. I do not know, Lord, I do not know any other such pure words, which so persuaded me to confession and softened my neck to your yoke and invited me to worship you freely. Let me understand them, good Father; grant this to me, who am placed beneath them, because for those placed beneath them you have made them firm.

There are other waters above this firmament, I believe, immortal and set apart from earthly corruption. Let them praise your name, let the peoples of your angels above the heavens praise you, who have no need to look up at this firmament and know your word by reading. For they "always see your face," and there they read, without syllables of time, what your eternal will wills. They read, they choose, and they love; they always read, and what they read never passes away. For by choosing and loving they read the very unchangeableness of your counsel. Their book is not closed nor their scroll folded up, because you yourself are this to them, and are so for ever; because you set them above this firmament, which you made firm over the weakness of the lower peoples, where they might look up and know your mercy proclaiming in time you who made times. For "your mercy, Lord, is in heaven, and your truth reaches to the clouds." The clouds pass, but the heaven remains. The preachers of your word pass from this life to another life, but your Scripture is stretched out over the peoples until the end of the world. But "heaven and earth will pass away, but your words will not pass away"; since the skin will be folded up, and the grass over which it was stretched will pass away with its glory, "but your word remains for ever." Now it appears to us in the riddle of the clouds and through the mirror of the heaven, not as it is; because we too, although we are loved by your Son, "it has not yet appeared what we shall be." He looked through the lattice of the flesh, and caressed us and set us on fire, and "we run after his fragrance." But "when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is": as he is, Lord, our seeing, which is not yet ours.

For as you absolutely are, you alone know; since you are unchangeably, and know unchangeably, and will unchangeably; and your essence knows and wills unchangeably, and your knowledge is and wills unchangeably, and your will is and knows unchangeably. Nor does it seem right in your sight that, as the unchangeable Light knows itself, so it should be known by the changeable thing it enlightens. And so "my soul is like earth without water before you," because as it cannot enlighten itself from itself, so it cannot satisfy itself from itself. For so with you is "the fountain of life," as "in your light we shall see light."

Who gathered the embittered into one society? For they all have the same end of temporal and earthly happiness, for the sake of which they do everything, although they toss about in countless varieties of cares. Who, Lord, but you, who said that "the waters should be gathered into one gathering and the dry land appear," thirsting for you? For "the sea is yours, and you made it, and your hands formed the dry land." For it is not the bitterness of wills but the gathering of the waters that is called the sea. For you restrain even the evil desires of souls and fix the limits of how far the waters may go, so that their waves may break upon themselves; and so you make the sea by the order of your rule over all things.

But souls that thirst for you and appear before you, set apart by another end from the society of the sea, you water from a hidden and sweet spring, so that the earth too may yield its fruit. And it yields its fruit, and at your command, the Lord its God, our soul sprouts works of mercy according to its kind, loving the neighbor in relieving bodily needs, having in itself "seed according to its likeness," since from our own weakness we have compassion to help the needy, aiding them in the same way as we would want help to be brought to us if we were in the same need; not only in easy things, as in the seed-bearing plant, but also in the protection of help with strong force, like the fruit-bearing tree, that is, a kindness that rescues one who suffers injury from the hand of the powerful, and offers the shelter of protection by the strong force of just judgment.

So, Lord, so, I pray you, let it spring up, as you do, as you give cheerfulness and ability: "let truth spring up from the earth, and justice look down from heaven," and let there be "lights in the firmament." Let us "break our bread to the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into our house, clothe the naked, and not despise those of our own flesh." When these fruits have been born on earth, see that it is good; and let "our light break forth in its season"; and from this lower fruit of action, gaining the delights of contemplation, holding on to the word of life above, let us "appear as lights in the world," clinging to the firmament of your Scripture. For there you discuss with us, so that we may divide between intelligible and sensible things as between day and night, or between souls given, some to intelligible things, others to sensible things; so that now not you alone, in the secret of your judgment, as before the firmament was made, divide between light and darkness, but your spiritual ones too, placed and distinguished in the same firmament, now that your grace has been made manifest throughout the world, may shine upon the earth and divide between day and night and signify the times; because "the old things have passed away; see, new things have come," and because "our salvation is nearer than when we believed," and because "the night is far gone, and the day is at hand," and because "you bless the crown of your year," sending "laborers into your harvest," in the sowing of which "others have labored," sending them also into another sowing, whose harvest is at the end. So you grant the prayer of him who asks, and bless the years of the just; but you are the same, and in "your years, which do not fail," you prepare a granary for the passing years. For by your eternal counsel, at their proper

times you give heavenly good things upon the earth; since "to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom," like the greater light, for those who delight in the light of clear truth, as at the beginning of the day; "to another the word of knowledge according to 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 discernment of spirits, to another kinds of tongues"; and all these are like the stars. "For all these are worked by one and the same Spirit, dividing to each his own as he wills," and making the stars appear in manifestation for the common good. But the word of knowledge, in which are contained all the sacraments, which vary with the times like the moon, and the other known gifts, which are named next like the stars, differ from that brightness of wisdom in which the day just mentioned rejoices, just so far as they are at the beginning of the night. For they are necessary to those to whom that most prudent servant of yours "could not speak as to spiritual people, but as to carnal," he who "speaks wisdom among the perfect." But "the natural man," like a little one in Christ and a drinker of milk, until he is strengthened for solid food and makes his eye firm to look at the sun, should not have his night deserted, but should be content with the light of the moon and stars. These things you discuss with us most wisely, our God, in your book, your firmament, so that we may discern all things in wonderful contemplation, although still "in signs and in times and in days and in years."

But first, "wash yourselves, be clean, take away the wickedness from your souls and from the sight of my eyes," so that the dry land may appear. "Learn to do good, judge for the orphan and do justice to the widow," so that the earth may bring forth the grass of pasture and the fruit-bearing tree; "and come, let us reason together, says the Lord," so that there may be "lights in the firmament of heaven, to shine upon the earth." That rich man asked the good Teacher what he should do to obtain eternal life. Let the good Teacher, whom he thought a man and nothing more (but he is good because he is God), tell him that, if he wants to enter into life, he should keep the commandments, separate 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 sprout honor of mother and father and love of neighbor. "I have done all these," he says. Where, then, do so many thorns come from, if the earth is fruitful? Go, root out the wooded thickets of avarice, "sell what you possess," and be filled with fruit by "giving to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven"; and "follow" the Lord "if you wish to be perfect," joined to 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, so that for you too there may be lights in the firmament of heaven; which will not happen unless your heart is there; which again will not happen unless your treasure is there, as you have heard from the good Teacher. But the barren earth was saddened, and the thorns choked the word.

But you, a chosen race, in the firmament of the world, who have left everything to follow the Lord, go after him and confound the strong; go after him, beautiful feet, and shine in the firmament, so that "the heavens may declare his glory," dividing between the light of the perfect, though not yet like that of the angels, and the darkness of the little ones, though not of those without hope. Shine over all the earth; and let the day, bright with the sun, "pour forth to the day" the word of wisdom, and the night, shining with the moon, "proclaim to the night" the word of knowledge. The moon and stars shine for the night, but the night does not darken them, since they enlighten it according to its measure. For see, as if God were saying, "Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven," "suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and there appeared divided tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each one of them," and there were made lights 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 are not "under a bushel." He to whom you clung has been exalted, and he has exalted you. Run everywhere, and make yourselves known to all nations.

Let the sea too conceive and bring forth your works, and let "the waters bring forth creeping things with living souls." For, separating the precious from the worthless, you have become the mouth of God, through which he might say: Let the waters bring forth, not the living soul which the earth will bring forth, but "creeping things with living souls and birds flying over the earth." For your sacraments, God, have crept through the works of your saints amid the waves of the world's temptations, to initiate the nations in your name in your baptism. And among these were done great and wonderful works, like the great whales, and the voices of your messengers flying over the earth near the firmament of your book, which was set over them as the authority under which they should fly wherever they went. For "there is no speech or language in which their voices are not heard," since "their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world"; because you, Lord, have multiplied these things by blessing them.

Am I lying, or mixing things up in confusion and not distinguishing the clear knowledge of these things in the firmament of heaven from the bodily works in the surging sea and under the firmament of heaven? For of the things whose knowledge is solid and bounded, without increase by generation, like the lights of wisdom and knowledge, of the same things the bodily operations are many and various, and one grows from another and they are multiplied in your blessing, God, who have consoled the weariness of mortal senses, so that in the knowledge of the mind one thing may be represented and expressed in many ways by the motions of the body. The waters brought these forth, but in your word; the needs of peoples estranged from the eternity of your truth brought them forth, but in your gospel; for the waters themselves cast them up, whose bitter sickness was the cause of their coming forth in your word.

And all things are beautiful since you make them, and see, you who made all things are indescribably more beautiful. If Adam had not fallen away from you, there would not have poured forth from his loins that brine of the sea, the human race, deeply curious, stormily swelling, and restlessly fluid; and so there would have been no need for your dispensers to work mystical deeds and words bodily and perceptibly in many waters. For so the creeping things and flying creatures now appear to me: men instructed and initiated by them, being subject to bodily sacraments, would not go further unless the soul came alive spiritually on another level, and, after the word of initiation, looked toward perfection.

And so, in your word, it is not the depth of the sea but the earth, separated from the bitterness of the waters, that brings forth, not "creeping things with living souls and flying creatures," but "the living soul." For it no longer needs baptism, as the nations need it, as it did need it when it was covered by the waters; for there is no other way of entering the kingdom of heaven since you established that it should be entered so. Nor does it seek great wonders to produce faith; for it is not one that "believes only if it sees signs and wonders," since the faithful earth is now separated from the waters of the sea, bitter with unbelief, and "tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers." So neither does the earth which you "founded upon the waters" need that kind of flying creature which the waters brought forth at your word. Send your word into it through your messengers. For we tell of their works, but it is you who work in them, so that they may work a living soul. The earth brings it forth, because the earth is the reason for their doing these things in it, as the sea was the reason for their working the creeping things with living souls and the flying creatures under the firmament of heaven, which the earth no longer needs, although it eats the fish lifted up from the deep at that table which you "have prepared in the sight of" believers; for it was lifted from the deep for this reason, to feed the dry land. And the birds are the offspring of the sea, yet they multiply upon the earth. For the unbelief of men was the cause of the first voices of those who preached the gospel; but the faithful too are exhorted and blessed by them in many ways from day to day. But the living soul takes its beginning from the earth, because it profits only those already faithful to restrain themselves from the love of this world, so that their soul may live to you, which was dead while living in pleasures, deadly pleasures, Lord; for you are the life-giving delight of the pure heart.

So let your ministers now work on the earth, not as in the waters of unbelief, by proclaiming and speaking through miracles and sacraments and mystical words, where ignorance, the mother of wonder, becomes attentive in fear of hidden signs (for such is the entrance to faith for the children of Adam who have forgotten you, while they hide themselves from your face and become an abyss); but let them work also as on the dry land, separated from the whirlpools of the abyss, and let them be a pattern to the faithful by living before them and rousing them to imitation. For so they hear not only in order to listen but also in order to do: "Seek God, and your soul shall live," so that the earth may bring forth the living soul. "Do not be conformed to this world"; restrain yourselves from it. The soul lives by avoiding what by desiring it dies. Restrain yourselves from the savage wildness of pride, from the sluggish pleasure of lust, and from the false name of knowledge, so that there may be tame beasts, domesticated cattle, and harmless serpents. For these are motions of the soul in allegory; but the haughtiness of pride, the delight of lust, and the poison of curiosity are motions of a dead soul; for it does not die so as to lack all motion, since it dies by departing from the fountain of life, and so it is taken up by the passing world and conformed to it.

But the Word, God, is the fountain of eternal life and does not pass away; and so in your Word that departure is restrained, when it is said to us, "Do not be conformed to this world," so that the earth may bring forth, in the fountain of life, a living soul, in your word, through your evangelists, a soul that is continent by imitating the imitators of your Christ. For this is "according to its kind," since a man's emulation comes from his friend: "Be as I am," he says, "because I too am as you are." So in the living soul there will be good beasts, in gentleness of action. For you have commanded, saying, "Do your works in gentleness, and you will be loved by every man." And there will be good cattle, neither having too much if they eat, nor lacking if they do not eat; and good serpents, not destructive to harm, but wise to be on guard, and exploring temporal nature only as much as is enough for eternity "to be clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made." For these animals serve reason when, restrained from their deadly advance, they live and are good.

For see, Lord our God, our Creator, when our affections have been restrained from the love of the world, by which we were dying by living badly, and the soul has begun to be a living soul by living well, and your word has been fulfilled which you spoke through your apostle, "Do not be conformed to this world," there will follow what you added at once: "but be reformed in the newness of your mind," no longer "according to kind," as imitating a neighbor who goes before, nor living by the authority of a better man. For you did not say, "Let man be made according to his kind," but "Let us make man in our image and likeness," so that we may prove what your will is. For this is why that dispenser of yours, begetting children through the gospel, so as not always to have little ones whom he must nourish with milk and cherish like a nurse, says: "Be reformed in the newness of your mind, so that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." And so you do not say, "Let man be made," but "Let us make"; nor do you say, "according to his kind," but "in our image and likeness." For renewed in mind and beholding your truth, understood, he does not need a human instructor to imitate his own kind, but with you as instructor he himself proves what your will is, what is good and acceptable and perfect; and you teach him, now capable, to see the Trinity of the Unity and the Unity of the Trinity. And so, after the plural "Let us make man," the singular follows: "and God made man"; and after the plural "in our image," the singular follows: "in the image of God." So man "is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him," and, having become spiritual, "judges all things," those, that is, which are to be judged, "but he himself is judged by no one."

But that he "judges all things" means that he "has dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and all cattle and wild beasts and all the earth and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." For he does this by the understanding of his mind, by which he perceives "the things of the Spirit of God." Otherwise, "man, being set in honor, did not understand; he has been compared to senseless cattle and has become like them." So in your church, our God, according to your grace which you have given it, since "we are your workmanship, created in good works," not only those who are spiritually in authority but also those who are spiritually subject to those in authority (for in this way you made man "male and female" in your spiritual grace, where according to bodily sex there is neither male nor female, because there is "neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free"), the spiritual, then, whether they are in authority or obey, judge spiritually. They do not judge the spiritual knowledge that shines in the firmament, for it is not right to judge so sublime an authority; nor your book itself, even if something there does not shine clearly, since we submit our understanding to it and hold it certain that even what is closed to our sight has been rightly and truly said. For so man, although already spiritual and "renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him," must be "a doer of the law, not a judge." Nor does he judge the distinction between spiritual and carnal men, who are known to your eyes, our God, and have not yet appeared to us by any works, so that "we may know them by their fruits"; but you, Lord, already know them and have divided and called them in secret, before the firmament was made. Nor does the spiritual man judge the turbulent peoples of this world. For "what is it to him to judge those outside," not knowing who from there will come into the sweetness of your grace and who will remain in the perpetual bitterness of ungodliness?

And so man, whom you made in your image, did not receive dominion over the lights of heaven, nor over the hidden heaven itself, nor over the day and night which you called before the establishment of heaven, nor over the gathering of the waters, which is the sea; but he received dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and all cattle and all the earth and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. For he judges and approves what he finds right, and disapproves what he finds wrong, whether in that solemnity of the sacraments by which those are initiated whom your mercy searches out in many waters; or in that in which is presented the Fish which, lifted up from the deep, the devout earth eats; or in the signs of words and utterances subject to the authority of your book, flying as it were under the firmament, by interpreting, expounding, discussing, disputing, blessing and calling upon you, signs bursting forth and sounding from the mouth, so that the people may answer "Amen." The reason for all these utterances having to be spoken bodily is the abyss of the world and the blindness of the flesh, by which thoughts cannot be seen, so that they must be sounded in the ears. So, although the birds multiply upon the earth, they still take their origin from the waters. The spiritual man judges also, approving what he finds right and disapproving what he finds wrong, in the works and conduct of the faithful: in almsgiving, as in the fruitful earth; and in the affections of the living soul made gentle, in chastity, in fasting, in devout thoughts about things perceived by the bodily senses. For he is now said to judge those things over which he also has the power to correct.

But what is this, and what kind of mystery is it? See, you bless men, Lord, that they may "increase and multiply and fill the earth." Do you give us no hint by this, so that we may understand why you did not so bless the light, which you called day, nor the firmament of heaven, nor the lights, nor the stars, nor the earth, nor the sea? I would say, our God, who created us in your image, I would say that you wished to bestow this gift of blessing on man as his own, if you had not blessed the fish and whales in this way too, that they should increase and multiply and fill the waters of the sea, and the birds should multiply upon the earth. Likewise I would say that this blessing belongs to those kinds of things which are propagated by generating from themselves, if I found it given to trees and shrubs and the cattle of the earth. But as it is, neither to plants and trees nor to beasts and serpents was it said, "Increase and multiply," although all these too, like fish and birds and men, increase by generating and preserve their kind.

What, then, shall I say, my light, Truth? That this is empty, that it was said in vain? Not at all, Father of piety; far be it that a servant of your word should say this. And if I do not understand what you mean by this saying, let better men, that is, more intelligent than I am, make better use of it, each according as you have given him to understand. But let my confession too be pleasing in your eyes, in which I confess to you that I believe, Lord, that you did not speak so in vain; nor will I keep silent about what the occasion of this reading suggests to me. For it is true, and I do not see what prevents me from understanding the figurative sayings of your books in this way. For I know that something understood in one way by the mind may be signified in many ways by bodily means, and that something signified in one way by bodily means may be understood in many ways by the mind. See, the single love of God and neighbor: by how many sacraments, in how many countless languages, and in each language by how many countless manners of speaking it is expressed bodily! So the offspring of the waters increase and multiply. Attend again, whoever reads this: see, what Scripture offers and the voice sounds in one way, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," is it not understood in many ways, not by deceptive errors, but by kinds of true understanding? So the offspring of men increase and multiply.

So if we think of the natures of things themselves, not allegorically but literally, the word "Increase and multiply" applies to all things generated from seed. But if we treat these things as set down figuratively (which I rather think Scripture intended, since it certainly did not attribute this blessing to the offspring of water creatures and men alone without reason), we find multitudes indeed in spiritual and bodily creatures, as in heaven and earth; and in just and unjust souls, as in light and darkness; and in the holy authors through whom the law was ministered, as in the firmament made firm between water and water; and in the society of embittered peoples, as in the sea; and in the zeal of devout souls, as in the dry land; and in works of mercy in this present life, as in seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees; and in spiritual gifts made manifest for the common good, as in the lights of heaven; and in affections formed to self-control, as in the living soul. In all these we find multitudes and abundance and increase; but that something should increase and multiply in such a way that one thing is expressed in many ways, and one expression understood in many ways, we find only in signs uttered bodily and in things thought out intelligibly. We have understood signs uttered bodily as the generations of the waters, because of the necessary causes of carnal depth; and things thought out intelligibly as human generations, because of the fruitfulness of reason. And so we have believed that to both these kinds it was said by you, Lord, "Increase and multiply." For in this blessing I take it that we have been granted by you the ability and power both to express in many ways what we have understood in one way, and to understand in many ways what we have read expressed obscurely in one way. So the waters of the sea are filled, which are moved only by various significations; so too the earth is filled with human offspring, whose dryness appears in zeal, and reason rules over it.

I want also to say, Lord my God, what the next part of your Scripture reminds me of, and I will say it and not be afraid. For I will say true things by your inspiration, since you willed that I should say them from these words. For I do not believe that I speak the truth by any other inspiration than yours, since you are the Truth, but "every man is a liar"; and so "he who speaks a lie speaks from his own." So that I may speak the truth, then, I speak from what is yours. See, you have given us for food "every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has in itself the fruit of seed"; and not to us alone, but also to all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth and the serpents; but to the fish and the great whales you did not give these. For we said that by these fruits of the earth are signified and figured in allegory the works of mercy which are shown for the needs of this life from the fruitful earth. Such earth was the devout Onesiphorus, to whose house you gave mercy, because he often refreshed your Paul and was not ashamed of his chain. So too did the brothers, and they bore such fruit, who supplied what he lacked from Macedonia. But how he grieves over certain trees which did not give him the fruit they owed, when he says: "At my first defense no one stood by me, but all deserted me; may it not be counted against them." For these things are owed to those who minister rational teaching through the understanding of divine mysteries, and so they are owed to them as to men. They are owed to them also as to the living soul, since they offer themselves for imitation in all continence. Likewise they are owed to them as to flying creatures, because of their blessings, which multiply upon the earth, since "their sound has gone out into all the earth."

They are fed by these foods who rejoice in them; and those do not rejoice in them "whose god is their belly." For in those who give these things, too, the fruit is not what they give, but the spirit in which they give. And so I see plainly why he rejoices who "served God and not his own belly"; I see it, and I rejoice with him greatly. For he had received from the Philippians what they had sent by Epaphroditus; yet I see why he rejoices. And what he rejoices in, on that he feeds; for, speaking in truth, he says: "I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you have flourished again in caring for me, as you did care; but you had grown weary." So these had withered with long weariness, and as it were dried up from this fruit of good work; and he rejoices for them, because they flourished again, not for himself, because they relieved his need. So he goes on to say: "Not that I speak of want; for I have learned to be content in whatever state I am. I know how to have little, and I know how to abound; in everything and in all things I have been instructed, both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things in him who strengthens me."

In what, then, do you rejoice, great Paul? In what do you rejoice, on what do you feed, man "renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created you," living soul of such great continence, and winged tongue speaking mysteries? For to such living creatures this food is owed. What is it that feeds you? Joy. Let me hear what follows: "Nevertheless," he says, "you did well in sharing in my affliction." In this he rejoices, on this he feeds, that they did well, not that his distress was relieved, he who says to you, "In tribulation you have enlarged me," because he knows both how to abound and how to suffer need in you, who strengthen him. "For you yourselves also know, Philippians," he says, "that in the beginning of the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving except you alone; for even in Thessalonica you sent once and again for my needs." He now rejoices that they have returned to these good works, and is glad that they have flourished again, as at the reviving fertility of a field.

Is it for his own needs, because he said, "You sent for my needs," is it for that reason that he rejoices? Not for that reason. And how do we know this? Because he himself goes on to say: "Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit." I have learned from you, my God, to distinguish between gift and fruit. The gift is the thing itself which is given by one who shares these necessities, such as money, food, drink, clothing, shelter, help. But the fruit is the good and right will of the giver. For the good Teacher did not say only, "He who receives a prophet," but added, "in the name of a prophet"; nor did he say only, "He who receives a righteous man," but added, "in the name of a righteous man"; for so the one will receive a prophet's reward, the other a righteous man's reward. Nor did he say only, "He who gives a cup of cold water to drink to one of my least ones," but added, "only in the name of a disciple," and so continued, "Truly I say to you, he will not lose his reward." The gift is to receive a prophet, to receive a righteous man, to offer a cup of cold water to a disciple; but the fruit is to do this 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 that she was feeding a man of God and fed him for that reason; but by the raven he was fed with a gift. Nor was it the inner Elijah that was fed, but the outer, who could also have perished for lack of such food.

And so I will say what is true before you, Lord: when ignorant and unbelieving men, for whose initiation and winning the sacraments of initiation and the great works of miracles are necessary (which we believe are signified by the name of fish and whales), receive your servants to refresh them bodily or to help them in some need of this present life, while not knowing why this should be done or what it leads to, neither do they feed your servants nor are your servants fed by them; because neither do they do these things with a holy and right will, nor do your servants rejoice in their gifts, in which they do not yet see fruit. For the mind is fed by that in which it rejoices. And so the fish and whales do not feed on the foods which only the earth brings forth when it has been separated and divided from the bitterness of the sea's waves.

"And you saw, God, all that you had made, and behold, it was very good"; because we too see them, and behold, all things are very good. In each kind of your works, when you had said that they should be made and they had been made, you saw this and that, that it was good. I have counted seven times that it is written that you saw that what you made was good; and this is the eighth, that you saw all that you had made, and behold, it was not only good but also very good, as all together. For individually they were only good, but all together they were both good and very good. All beautiful bodies say this too; for a body made up of beautiful members is far more beautiful than the individual members themselves, by whose most ordered union the whole is completed, although they too are beautiful individually.

And I looked closely to find whether you saw seven or eight times that your works were good, when they pleased you; and I did not find in your seeing any times by which I might understand that you saw so many times what you had made. And I said: "O Lord, is not this Scripture of yours true, since you, being truthful and the Truth, have published it? Why, then, do you tell me that there are no times in your seeing, while this Scripture of yours tells me that on each day you saw that what you made was good, and when I counted them I found how many times?" To this you say to me, since you are my God and speak with a strong voice in the inner ear to your servant, breaking through my deafness and crying out: "O man, what my Scripture says, I say. And yet it says it in time, but time does not touch my Word, because it stands in eternity equal with me. So the things which you see through my Spirit, I see, just as the things which you say through my Spirit, I say. And so, while you see them in time, I do not see them in time; just as, while you say them in time, I do not say them in time."

And I heard, Lord my God, and I licked a drop of sweetness from your truth, and I understood that there are some who are displeased with your works, and say that you made many of them under compulsion of necessity, such as the fabric of the heavens and the arrangement of the stars; and that you did not make these from what was yours, but that they had already been created elsewhere and from another source, and you drew them together and fastened and wove them together when, out of your conquered enemies, you built the walls of the world, so that, bound by that structure, they could not rebel against you again; and that other things you neither made nor put together at all, such as all flesh and all the tiniest living creatures and whatever holds the earth by roots; but that a hostile mind and another nature, not created by you and opposed to you, generates and forms these things in the lower regions of the world. Madmen say this, because they do not see your works through your Spirit, nor recognize you in them.

But in those who see them through your Spirit, you see. So when they see that they are good, you see that they are good; and whatever pleases for your sake, in it you please; and the things that please us through your Spirit please you in us. "For who among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man that is in him? So too no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. But 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 that have been given to us by God." And I am prompted to say: certainly no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God; how, then, do we too know the things that have been given to us by God? The answer is given me: what we know through his Spirit, even so no one knows but the Spirit of God. For as it was rightly said, "For it is not you who speak," to those who would speak in the Spirit of God, so it is rightly said, "It is not you who know," to those who know in the Spirit of God. No less rightly, then, is it said, "It is not you who see," to those who see in the Spirit of God; so whatever they see in the Spirit of God to be good, it is not they but God who sees that it is good. It is one thing, then, for someone to think evil what is good, like those mentioned above; another for a man to see that what is good is good, as your creation pleases many because it is good, though you do not please them in it, so that they want to enjoy it rather than you; and another, when a man sees that something is good, for God to see in him that it is good, that is, so that God may be loved in what he made, who would not be loved except through the Spirit he has given; "because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us," through whom we see that whatever exists in any way is good; for it is from him who does not exist in any way, but is, is.

Thanks be to you, Lord! We see heaven and earth, whether the upper and lower bodily parts, or the spiritual and bodily creation; and in the adornment of these parts, of which either the whole mass of the world or the whole creation altogether consists, we see light made and divided from darkness. We see the firmament of heaven, whether between the upper spiritual waters and the lower bodily ones, the primary body of the world, or this space of air, for this too is called heaven, through which the birds of heaven wander between the waters that are borne above them as vapor and fall as dew even on clear nights, and those that flow heavily on the earth. We see the beauty of the gathered waters over the plains of the sea, and the dry land, whether bare or formed so as to be visible and ordered, the mother of plants and trees. We see the lights shining from above, the sun sufficing for the day, the moon and stars consoling the night, and by all these the times marked and signified. We see the moist element everywhere made fruitful with fish and sea monsters and birds, because the density of the air, which bears the flight of birds, is thickened by the evaporation of the waters. We see the face of the earth adorned with land animals, and man, in your image and likeness, set above all irrational living creatures by that very image and likeness of yours, that is, by the power of reason and understanding; and as in his soul there is one part which rules by deliberation and another which is subject so as to obey, so for man woman was made, bodily too, who in her mind would have an equal nature of rational understanding, but by the sex of her body would be subject to the male sex, as the appetite for action is subject to the reason of the mind in order to conceive from it the skill of acting rightly. We see these things, and each is good, and all are very good.

Your works praise you, so that we may love you, and we love you, so that your works may praise you. They have beginning and end in time, rising and setting, growth and decline, form and privation. So they have, in succession, morning and evening, partly hidden, partly evident. For they were made by you from nothing, not from you; not from some matter not yours or which existed before, but from matter concreated, that is, created by you at the same time, because you formed its formlessness without any interval of time. For although the matter of heaven and earth is one thing and the form of heaven and earth another, you made the matter from absolutely nothing and the form of the world from formless matter; yet you made both at once, so that form followed matter without any interval of delay.

We have also considered what you wished to be figured by these things being made in such an order, or written in such an order; and we have seen that each is good and all are very good, in your Word, in your only Son, heaven and earth, the head and body of the church, in predestination before all times, without morning and evening. But when you began to carry out in time what had been predestined, so as to reveal hidden things and to order our disorder (since our sins were over us, and we had gone away from you into the dark depth, and your good Spirit was borne over us to help us in due time), you justified the ungodly and separated them from the wicked, and you made firm the authority of your book between the higher ones, who would be teachable by you, and the lower ones, who would be subject to them; and you gathered the society of unbelievers into one conspiracy, so that the zeal of the faithful might appear, that they might bear works of mercy to you, even distributing their earthly goods to the poor to gain heavenly ones. And then you kindled certain lights in the firmament, your saints, holding the word of life and shining with sublime authority, raised high by spiritual gifts; and then, to initiate the unbelieving nations, you brought forth from bodily matter sacraments and visible miracles and the sounds of words according to the firmament of your book, by which the faithful too would be blessed; and next you formed the living soul of the faithful through affections ordered by the strength of continence; and then you renewed the mind, subject to you alone and needing no human authority to imitate, in your image and likeness, and you subjected rational action to the pre-eminent understanding, as woman to man; and you willed that for all your ministers, who are necessary for perfecting the faithful in this life, works useful for their temporal needs and fruitful for the future should be provided by those same faithful. All these things we see, and they are very good, because you see them in us, you who have given us the Spirit by which we might see them and love you in them.

Lord God, give us peace (for you have given us all things), the peace of rest, the peace of the sabbath, the peace without evening. For all this most beautiful order of very good things, when its measures have been fulfilled, will pass away: for in them there was morning and evening.

But the seventh day is without evening and has no setting, because you sanctified it to remain for ever; so that the fact that after your very good works, although you made them while at rest, you rested on the seventh day, the voice of your book may foretell to us that we too, after our works, which are very good because you have given them to us, may rest in you in the sabbath of eternal life.

For then too you will rest in us, as now you work in us; and so that rest of yours will be through us, as these works of yours are through us. But you, Lord, are always working and always at rest; you do not see in time, nor are you moved in time, nor do you rest in time; and yet you make both temporal seeings and times themselves and the rest that follows time.

So we see these things which you have made, because they are; but they are because you see them. And we see outwardly that they are, and inwardly that they are good; but you saw them made there where you saw that they were to be made. And we at a later time were moved to do good, after our heart conceived from your Spirit; but at an earlier time we were moved to do evil, forsaking you; but you, God, one and good, have never ceased to do good. And there are some good works of ours, from your gift indeed, but not eternal; after them we hope to rest in your great sanctification. But you, the Good that needs no good, are always at rest, since your rest is you yourself. And what man will give another man to understand this? What angel to an angel? What angel to a man? Let it be asked of you, sought in you, knocked for at your door: so, so will it be received, so will it be found, so will it be opened.