whither the thing were demonstrable though all not capable thereof or whither it were not before the Manichean proceedings where first with a temerarious promising of certain science such credulity was derided and next so many fables and absurdities which could never be demonstrated were imposed to be believed But afterward by little and little thou O Lord with a gentle and mercifull hand touching my sores and composing my soul didst throughly perswade me in this matter after that I had well considered how many things I not seeing and farr absent when they were acted yet firmly believed As so many things in secular histories so many things of Countries and Cities never viewed by me so many things heard from my friends from my Physitian from many others which if not credited an end must be put to all humane soci ty and commerce Lastly whâ—n I â—sâ—â—erâ—d how firmly I believed that I was born of such parents a thing not known to me but by crediting anothers relation Thou at last perswad dst me I say That not so much those who believed thy books which with so grâ—â—t authority thou hadst established almâ—st thrâ—â—ll Nations as those who believed them not were blameworthy Nor were any such to be hearkened to who should say How knowest thou that these books were by the Holy Spirit of the true and truth-communicating God delivered to mankind For this point of all the 〈◊〉 is most rationally credible For first no sophistry nor â—â—villing questions that I had read in the contradicting Philosophers could ever stagger this faith in me That thou art though I were ignorant what thou art and that the Government of humane affairs belongs unto thee Though I confess this faith in me was sometimes stronger sometimes weaker yet alwayes I believed that thou were and that we also were a care unto thee though I knew not what to think of thy substance nor of the way of thy guiding and reducing man unto thee Again since our too great weakness to find out clear and evident truth had need also of the revelation of some divine writings I began now to believe that thy care over us would never suffer such a swaying authority throughout all the World to be given to these writings unless it had also been thy good pleasure that acccording to them we should believe in thee according to them seek thee For now the seeming absurdities which offended me in thy Scripture after a many of them so probably expounded were imputed by me to the altitude of its mysteries and the authority thereof seemed to me so much the more venerable and worthy of a religious credit in that it yielded it self to be read by all in an humble stile and yet preserved the honour of its secrets in a more profound meaning stooping to every one in the plainness of its words and lowness of its phrase and yet exercising the best observance of those who are not light of heart that it might with a displayed bosom receive all though through its narrow passages it transmits but few unto thee yet many more transmitted thus than if it either had not reached so high in the top of its mysterious authority or not invited such multitudes into the lap of its venerable humility CHAP. VI. His ambition and the cares attending it His great solicitude being to speak a Panegyrick before the Emperour much envying the secure mirth of a poor beggar seen in the street THese things I mused and thou wast with me I sighed unto thee and thou heardest me I wav'd to and fro and yet thou didst steer me I walked in the broad and trodden way of this World yet thou didst not desert me I pursued after Honours Wealth Marriage and thou smiledst at me And I underwent in these my lusts most bitter crosses and thou wast the more kind to me the more unsweet thou mad'st all that to me which was not thee See my heart O Lord thou whose pleasure it is I should now recollect theâ—e things and confess them before thee and let my soul now adhere unto thee after it hath been from that tenacious birdlime of death so rescued by thee In what a miserable condition was it at that time and thou continuedst to prick and chafe the sensibleness of its wound that leaving all things it might return unto thee who art above all things and without whom all things would be nothing at all that it might return and so be healed How miserable was I then and how didst thou advance the sense of that my misery upon a time when preparing in praise of the Emperour a Panegyrick full of lies and yet applauded by those who knew them to be so my heart trembling with restless care and burning in a fever of consuming thoughts as I passed through a certain street of Millain I happened to cast my eye upon a poor beggar with his belly well filled as I suppose who was very jocund and full of mirth Whom seeing I fetched a great sigh and began to discourse with my friends then with me the many sorrowes and sufferings of our vain follies For we sought no more with all our labours such as that I then travail'd with whilst pricked forward by the goad of my ambibitions I drew after me a heavy load of my own infelicity and in drawing it on still augmented it we sought I say no more than to arrive at a secure mirth void of care * in which that poor beggar had already prevented us and * to which perhaps we should never attain For what he had already gained with a few pence and those got by begging that was I still toiling for through so many winding and difficult paths namely the pleasure of a temporal felicity It is granted that this was no true pleasure which he had but yet I in my ambitions pursued a much falser And surely merry he was whilst I perplexed he in security whilst I in fear and the question being asked which were the better mirth or fear I should have answered mirth doubtless Yet being demanded again which I would rather chuse his or my own condition I should have elected my own laden with cares and fears as it was but this only out of a perverseness for was there any true reason for it For neither was I at all in this my choice to be preferred because the more learned since I joyed not in it but in pleasing men with it and not in teaching them also with it but only in pleasing them and therefore meanwhile thou didst most justly thus break my bones with the sâ—affe of thy severe discipline Away with those therefore from my soul who say unto it That there is great difference what thing it is that one secularly joyes in Drink was the cause of the beggars mirth Glory was the obiect of mine And what a glory is it O Lord that is not in thee For as his was no true joy so neither was mine true glory and much
seemed to me as it vvere condemned to a capital punishment if given unto him CHAP XI His weeping Mother comforted * by a vision concerning his Conversion ANd thou sentest thine hand from above and drewest my soul out of this profound darkness whilst my Mother being one of thy †All and only the Baptized were called Fideles Faithful wept for me unto thee far more bitterly than other mothers bewail any corporeal funerals For well discerned she that my far worser death by the Faith and the Spirit which she had from thee And Thou hearkenedst unto her thou hearkenedst unto her nor despisedst thou her tears when streaming from her they watered the ground in every place of her devotions and thou hearkenedst unto her For whence else-came-that Dream wherewith thou comfortedst her so far as to perswade her that I should live with her again and sit at the same table in the house again with her a thing she had begun to be averse from avoiding and detesting the horrid blasphemies of those my errours For she saw in her sleep her self standing upon a certain straight wooden Rule and coming toward her a beautiful yong man cheerful and smiling upon her as she was weeping and spent with grief who asking the cause of that her sorrow and daily tears with intention to instruct not to learn of her and she answering that it was my perdition she so bewailed he bade her be secure and wished her to look about and she should see that where she was I was also who when she looked aside saw me close by her standing upon the same Rule And from whence all this but from thy attentive ears formerly bowed to her praying heart O Thou Good Omnipotent so caring for every one of us as if thou caredst for him only yet so caring for all as for any one Whence again was that also that she relating to me her Vision and I interpreting it thus that she rather should not despair of being one day what I was suddenly without any hesitation No said she for it was not said to me where he there also you But where you there also he I confesse unto thee O Lord as much as I remember and I have often spoke of it that this answer of thine given me by my mother when she was now awake that she not at all perplext with that false but indeed very colourable interpretation of mine so quickly saw that which also my self before she spake it had not observed struck me even at that time far more than her dream in which this pious woman had her joy to come so long after foretold her for the solace of her present grief so long before For there succeeded yet almost nine years in which I endeavouring often to arise and by this still plunged so much the deeper lay wallowing in the mire of that pit and darknesse of errour the while that chast devout sober Widow such as thou lovest already much chearfuller in her hopes but no whit slacker in her weeping and laments never ceased at all the hours of her devotions to bewail my condition unto thee And her prayers found admittance into thy presence and notwithstanding thou let'st me go on to be involved and reinvolved more and more in that cloud of darknesse CHAP. XII And * by the answer of a Bishop who notwithstanding refused to reason with him as yet too-self-conceited ANd in this interim Thou gavest her yet another answer which now I call to mind For many things I omit hasting to those which more urge my confession unto thee and many things I have forgot Thou gavest therefore yet another answer by thy Priest a certain Bishop one nursed within the bosom of thy Church and well-experienced in thy Books Whom that woman soliciting that he would vouchsafe a Conference with me to refute my errours and to unteach me ill and to instruct me good things for this he did where haply he found persons capable he refused and that very prudently as I perceived since answering her that I was as yet indocile being swollen and puft up with the novelty of that heresy For already I had netled divers unexpert men with some trifling questions as she also had declared unto him But Let him alone said he where he is only pray to our Lord for him In reading he will at length discover what that errour is and how great its impiety He told also that he when a little one was by his seduced Mother committed to the Manichees institution and had not only read but also copied out almost all their books and that himself discerned unopposed or convinced by any how much to be abhorred that impious sect was and that so he forsook it This said and she neverthelesse not satisfyed but persisting with much intreating and weeping much that he would see me would discourse with me now a little disgusted with this her importunity Go your way said he and may you live happy for it cannot be that the childe of those tears should miscarry Which speech she received in such manner as she hath since many times told me as if an oracle from heaven had sounded it unto her LIB IV. CHAP. I. From the Nineteenth to his twenty eighth year continuing addicted to the Manichees FOr this space of Nine years from the Nineteenth of my age to the Twenty-eighth we lived in various lusts seduced and seducing deceived and deceiving openly by the Sciences which they call Liberal secretly with a false-named Religion here arrogant there superstitious every where vain and zealous of the emptiness of popular praise in Theatrical applause and playing publick prizes of wit and in contentions for crowns of Hay and the fooleries of shews and the excesse of Lusts From which uncleannesses otherwhiles desiring expiation in the company of those who are called the Elect and the Saints we †The Manichees Sacrament carried provision which in the forge of their stomachs was to be moulded into Angels and Gods by whom we were to be cleansed Such things I followed and such things I practised I and my friends seduced both with and by me Let the arrogant deride me and those not yet savingly cast down and broken by thee O my God but let me continue to confess unto thee my disgrace to thy praise Permit I pray thee and grant unto me with a present memory to repass through all those past circles of my errour and from thence to offer unto thee the sacrifice of joy For what am I to my self at any time without thee but an infant sucking thy milk and feeding on thee the meat not perishing Nay what is any man that man is Let them laugh at us then the strong and mighty whilst we the infirm and poor confesse unto thee CHAP. II. Of his teaching Rhetorick in Thagaste the City where he was borne his having a Concubine yet true to her bed his playing a prize of poetry on the Theater yet refusing
because the more I loved him the more I abhorred and dreaded that my cruellest Enemy Death that bereaved me of him fancying it a monster that would soon devour the rest of men because it could destroy him Even thus I well remember stood I then affected Behold my heart O my God Behold and see into me how I remember this very well O thou my hope that now cleansest me from the impurity of such passions guiding my eyes unto thy beauties and plucking my feet out of these snares For I wondred much that the rest of mortals could any longer live when he whom I loved as a thing immortall was now dead And yet more wondred that my self being only another He could live when he was gone Well said one of his friends Animae dimidium mea Half of my soul for I deemed his and mine to be but one soul as it were in different bodies And therefore my life was an horror to me who would not live thus an Half and death yet a greater affright to me lest he should perish all whom I so passionately loved ‖ S. Austin reviewing this work in his Retractations 2. l. 6. c. censures this expression quasi declamatio levis potius quam gravis confessio CHAP. VII He forsakes the place of their acquaintance and goes to Carthage O Fond madness that knows not how to love men men-like O sottish man so impatiently taking to heart accidents only humane such as poor I then was Therefore I stormed and sighed and wept and was distracted bereft both of content and counsel For I carried about a soul all lacerated and gored in blood and impatient longer to be carried by me and where to repose it I found not Not in delightsome groves nor in playes and musick not in fragant odors nor in exquisit banquets not in the pleasures of the chamber or of the bed not in books or poesie took it any rest All things looked gastly even the day And whatever it was that was not He importune it was and loathsome except mourning and tears and in these only it found some small content And when at any time I retired my soul from these I was re-surcharged with the grievous burden of my misery which was only to be lightened by thee O Lord only by thee to be removed And I knew this but yet was so much the less either willing or able to find remedy because thou then to me wast no solid or stable thing when my despairing thoughts fled for support unto thee For it was not thou but an empty Phantasm and my own errour that was my God whereon assaying â—o place my soul that it might find some stay through this inanity it still relapsed and again came rouling back upon me And my self remained the alone unhappy place to my self where I could neither be nor be from thence For whether could my heart from my heart fly away where could I avoid my self and where would not my self follow me And yet farr from my Country I fled for my eyes less missed him where they were not used to see him And thus forsaking Tagaste I went to Carthage CHAP. VIII His wound eured by time and new Friendships TImes do not lose time nor idly rowle away by these our senses but in the mind produce strange operations Behold they came and went day by day and in coming and passing they insinuated into me other images and other remembrances and by degrees repaired me with my formerly known delights to which that my grief at length gave place But there succeeded though no new sorrowes yet the causes only of more sorrowes For whence did that my last grief so easily and so deeply wound me but because I had spilt my soul upon a bed of sand and loved a mortal as if he could not die And that which recovered and repaired me of this were but like solaces of other mortal friends with whom I loved something which was not loved for thee even those fabulous delusions †Manicheisme and long-spun lies by the adulterous touches whereof our lascivient minds through our itching ears became still more defiled Nor did these delusions perish to me when my friends did Besides which there were also many other things cementing together our affections To chat and laugh together civil obsequiousnesse and mutuall compliance together to read merry books to jest together and together be solemn to dissent from one another sometimes without offence and as a Man would do from himself and by this disagreeing in some very few things to season and rellish the more our consentments in the rest to teach one another somewhat or somewhat to learn to expect those absent with impatience embrace their returns with joy It being usual by these and the like expresses and emanations from hearts continually reflecting interchanged loves through the countenance through the tongue through the eyes and through a thousand other charming motions as it were by so much fuell heaped on these fires to melt down souls and to cast many of them into one CHAP. IX Yet these too failing him ANd this is it that is loved in a friend and so loved that the conscience is self-accused in any who continues not to love him who loves him again or who loves not that man again who loves him first requiring nothing from his body but only demonstrations of his affection And for this are those mournings if one dies and nights of sorrowes and a languishing heart having all its sweets converted into bitterness and from the dear loss of the life of those who are dead even the death of those alive But alway-blessed he who loves * thee and in thee * his friend and for thee * his Eenmy For he alone loseth nothing dear to whom all are dear only in him whom he never loseth And who is this neverlost but our God the God that made and filleth Heaven and Earth Jer. 23.24 Ps 119.142 Jo. 17.71 and that even by filling them made them Thee none loseth but who leaveth and who so leaveth thee whither goeth he or whither doth he flie but from thee gracious back again to thee offended For in what place finds he not the presence of thy law in his punishment And thy law is truth and Truth is thy self CHAP. X. All things loved besides God pass away and leave the lover to embrace sorrowes Ps 80.19 TVrn us unto thee O God of power shew us the beauty of thy countenance and we shall be whole For which way soever the soul of man turns it self it is consigned unto sorrowes unless only toward thee yea though it seize upon all those other beauties that are out of it self and out of thee which yet could be none at all unless they were from thee All which have their rise and their setting their spring and their fall and in their springing they begin as it were to be and then grow on to attain perfection perfected
heart and alwayes in her prayers presented and pressed as thy own hand-writing before thee For thou art pleased because everlasting are thy mercies not only to remit unto us all our debts but often with thy promises to become our debtor CHAP. X. Recovered he still consorts with the Manichees retaining many of their errors the chief of which was his imagining God a corporeall substance but with much more remisseness then formerly THus thou recoveredst me from that sickness and healedst the Son of thy handmaid first in body that afterward thou mightest conferr upon him a more excellent and permanent Sanity of his soul too And here also at Rome I usually conversed with the same sect of those deceived and deceiving saints not only with their Auditors as they are called in the house of one of whom I had this sickness and recovery but also with those whom for their holiness they call the Elect. With whom I also entertained the same conceit that it was not I that sinned but I know not what other forreign nature that was in me and my pride was much pleased thus to be faultless And when I committed any sin I was ready not to make confession thereof that thou mightest heal my soul because I had sinned against thee but to excuse my soul and lay the fault upon something else besides me which I granted indeed was joyned with me but was not Me. Yet alas the whole was nothing but me and my impiety only it was that had thus divided me against my self and this any sin was the more incurable because I conceited my self no sinner and much more execrable this my iniquity in that I blasphemously had rather that thou O omnipotent God shouldst be overcome by I know not what contrary principle in me to my destruction than that I should humble my self a sinner to be conquered by thee and thy grace to my salvation Ps 39.1.2 3 and Ps 141.3.4 see the Vulgar For thou hadst not as yet set a watch before my mouth and a door of caution about my lips that my heart might not decline to wicked speeches to excuse the excuses made for sins with the men that work iniquity and therefore I retained still a close combination with these Elect yet so as that I despaired of any further progress in that false doctrine and was very remiss in my present opinions resolving to keep them only if no better could be found and often reflecting on the prudence of those Philosophers who in all things recommended doubting and contended that nothing could be known certainly But from the great acquaintance contracted with this sect of whom Rome privately shelters not a few I was rendred somewhat lasier to seek truth elsewhere and lâ—st of all imagined that within thy Church O Lord of Heaven and Earth and Creator of all visibles and invisibles could be found that truth from the which they had long averted me For it seemed to me a thing too gross and unseemly to imagine thee to have as they had informed me that thy Church did teach the shape of our humane flesh and to be confin'd and girt up with the narrow lineaments of our members And indeed this very thing that when I went to form to my self an Idea of my Lord God I could fancy nothing but a certain corporeall substance and bulke for I supposed besides this nothing in nature and that what had no body had no being this I say was the greatest and almost the only cause of that my hence inevitable errour For from this I imagined a certain substance of evil to be the like and to have a corporeal bulke malignant and hideous and this either more gross which they call Earth or more tenuous and subtile as the body of the air is which they imagin to be a maligne mind or soul gliding every where through the other more Earthly matter And because the less piety I then had forced me to believe that the good God created no nature evill therefore I made two corporeal masses opposit to one another both infinit but the evil much straiter the good much 〈◊〉 And from this pestilentiall source issued all the rest of my sacrilegious opinions And when at any time I would have made a retreat to the Catholick faith I was repulsed by this fancy because indeed that was not the Faith Catholick which I thought to be so for I supposed it a much more reverend piety to imagine thee my God to whom thy mercies wrought in me do now confess it infinit on many sides though on one bounded with a contrary mass of evill than to be on every side confin'd and compassed-in by the form and lineaments of an humane body such as was supposed by me to be the faith of thy Church Again I thought it more honourable to believe that thou createdst not evill supposing it a substance corporeall for I acknowledged no entity but such and even mentals to be more tenuous bodies than to think it such a nature to flow from thee Aga n for thy only begotten Son our Saviour whom I fancied to be streamed forth from the lucid part of thy mass for our salvation I supposed that such a nature could not be born of the Virgin Mary without being coagulated with flesh and that in such a mixture flesh being a part of the substance of evill as I imagined such soveraign purity could not but be contaminated and stained and therefore I feared to believe him born in the flesh lest I should make him defiled by the flesh Thy spirituall ones will gently smile at this my folly when they shall read these my confessions Yet true it is that such a one then I was CHAP. XI Especially finding the Manichees not clearly to answer to the objections of Catholicks made out of the Scriptures YEt for all this though that which these objected against thy scriptures I thought could no way be defended I had a desire to conferr every particular with some person more excellently skilled in those holy books and to know the uttermost of the churches opinions And this the rather because one Helpidius disputing in publick with the Manichees at Carthage had not a little moved me in pressing many things out of the scriptures against which me seemed little could be said And that answer of theirs seemed very weak which they did not so frequently give in publick as privately to us namely that the Scriptures of the new Testament were much falsified by some I know not who that intended to insert the Jewish law into the Christian faith Yet themselves produced no other copies thereof which were unsophisticated But all this while that which chiefly oppressed and suffocated me was the conceit I had only of corporeall bulkes and magnitudes of all things under which mass I lay gasping after the free air of thy truth but could not as yet breath in the purity and simplicity thereof CHAP. XII Having set up a Rhetorick-School at
prepared whatever it might be though seeing to despise it opened his eyes and hence was presently struck with a greater wound in his soul than the Gladiator beheld by him was in his body and fell himself farre more miserably than he at whose fall this clamour was made which entred through his eares and unlocked his eyes through which a mortal blow was given to his soul yet more confident than confirm'd and for this also the weaker that it presumed to have from it self what it could owe to thee alone For no sooner had he seen that stream of blood but he also drunk down the cruelty and savageness thereof with eyes no more averted but fixed upon it and he sucked in those furies and knew not and became delighted with the crime of the combat and inebriated with those bloody pleasures And no more was he the man he came but now one of the multitude amongst whom he sate and their true Associate with whom he came What shall I more say He beheld he shouted he grew hot upon the sport he carried away a longing madness to return not only with his former seducers but before them and without them and seducing others And yet from hence also with a most strong and merciful hand thou savedst him and by this also learnedst him that he could have nothing from himself but all from thee But this was long afterward CHAP. IX Of his being apprehended when S. Austin's Schollar at Carthage for a Thief His going to S. Austin to Millain where he practiseth in the Law ANd this his fall was laid up in his memory for a caution for the future As also was that which happened to him at Carthage when my Schollar where walkâ—ng at mid-day in the Forum meditating an exercise that he was afterward to recite he was apprehended by the Officers of the Forum for a Thief which I suppose O our God thou permittedst for no other reason than that he so great a man that was to be might learn by this how wary one should be in hearing causes of hastily condemning any upon a slight credulity For as he was then walking alone with his table-book and stile in his hand before the Tribunal another of the Schollars a true Thief carrying secretly a hatchet undiscovered by him had got into the leads that covered the Silver-smiths shops and there fell on cutting them The Silver-smiths underneath hearing the sound of the hatchet send some to apprehend any they should find there and the youth over-hearing their murmurings as quickly left his instrument for fear he should be taken with it and got away And Alipius who saw him though not at his going in yet coming forth and making such hast away desirous to know the cause went into the place and taking up the hatchet stood wondring what he had been doing with it when they that were sent come in and find him with the hatchet in his hand they lay hold on him draw him along and calling the Shop-keepers of the Forum together rejoice as if they had taken the true Thief in the very act and so he was to be carried before the Judge And thus far thy Servant was to be instructed But thou O Lord presently relievedst that his innocency of which thou wast a sole witness For as he was led either to prison or to punishment there met him the Architect that had the chief oversight of those publick buildings And glad the Officers were that they met him especially who was apt to suspect some of them for the thefts done there that he might now at length see who had done all those robberies But so it happened that this man had often seen Alipius in a Senatours house which he frequented and knowing him took him by the hand aside and was informed by him how all things had passed and so intreating the people who made a great tumult and used many threats to go along with him he came to the house of the young man who had done the fact where stood at the door the Gentlemans boy who had attended on him in the Forum so little a one as that he might tell all the matter without having suspicion therefrom of any hurt to his Master Alipius knowing him again streight intimated so much to the Artificer and he presently shewing the hatchet to the boy asked if he knew whose it might be who quickly answered t is our hatchet then further examined told all the rest So the crime was devolved on another and the insulting multitude ashamed and He that was to be a Dispenser of thy Word and an Examiner of many Causes in thy Church became more experienced and instructed for his Office CHAP. X. A memorable example of Alipius his Integrity Concerning his other Friend Nebridius deserting his countrey for St. Austin's society and the study of wisdome HIm therefore I found at Rome and he there adhered to me with a most strong bond of friendship and went also with me to Millain both for the enjoyment of my society and for following the practise of the Laws there which he had studied more from his Parents than his own affection thereto In which employment he had been already an Assessor †See their Office in Pandect 1. T. 12. l. of Justice much admired by the rest of his profession for his integrity and incorruptness and he as much wondring at them for their valuing gold above vertue And his inclinations also had been strongly but in vain assaulted not only with the bait of covetousness but the spurr of fear For at Rome he being an Assessor in Court to the Lord Treasurer of the Italian contribution there was a Roman Senator of great authority to whose favours many were obliged and to whose terror many obnoxious who would needs have I know not what usurpation allowed to his power which was prohibited by the Laws Alipius withstood him in it he was promised a reward he rejected it with scorn was assaulted with threats slighted them also whilst all admired such an extraordinary spirit that neither wished a man so great and renowned for the many wayes he had of doing courtesies and displeasures his friend nor feared him his enemy And the Judge himself whose Assessor and Counseller he was though he had rather the Senators suit should not have been granted yet did not openly declare himself against it but casting the blame upon Alipius said that he would not consent thereto For indeed had he passed it the other would have gone off the Bench. With one desire and that was in the way of his studies was Alipius almost overswayed and that was to get himself a Library of Books taken up at the Praetors price But consulting justice in this he rectified his purpose esteeming equity more gainful to him by which he was prohibited this priviledge than his power could be by which he might have used it Luke 16.10 What I have said of him is in no great matter But
away she departed into Africk vowing unto thee never to know any other man and leaving with me the Son I had by her But unhappy I not able to imitate a woman impatient of the two yeares delay in which time I might not enjoy her I made suit to and being not so much a lover of marriage as a slave of lust got me another though no Wife that so by the continuance of the same custome with her I might sustain and preserve in its vigour or also augment that disease of my soul till it might arrive to the kingdom of marriage And thus was the wound that was made in me by the cutting off of my former Concubine not now cured at all but after most acute and burning torments grown more putrified and corrupt and under a colder and less violent pain a more desperate sore CHAP. XVI Yet his lusts somewhat restrain'd from the fear he had * of death and * of the soules immortality and * of future judgements TO thee be praise To thee be glory Fountain of mercies thou camest still more near as I became more wretched And even very now was thy right hand ready when I was quite sunk to pull me out of this mire and to wash me clean and I knew nothing thereof Nor was there any thing that stayed me from yet-a-deeper stream of carnal voluptuousness save the fear of death and thy judgement to come which terrour by all my various opinions could never be quite defaced in my soul And often I reasoned with my friends Alipius and Nebridius * of the ends of good and wicked persons and * that Epicurus above all men with me should carry away the prize but that I believed the soul after death still lived and was treated according to its meritâ— a thing which Epicurus credited not And I asked whether if so be we might be immortal and might live in the perpetuated pleasures of the body without any fear at all of losing them any more whether I say this were not enough to be happy or whether some thing else were desirable to it not knowing that this also was a great part of my misery that so deeply plunged and blinded I could not cast my thoughts upon the fair light of vertue and honesty and that soveraign beauty interiorly by the soul discerned though not by the eye of flesh which is imbraced gratis and without any bodily pleasure issuing from it Neither considered I so wretched from what Principle it came that this was to me a great pleasure sweetly to confer with my friends even concerning these filthy pleasures and that without friends also I could not be happy according to my then opinion though in never so much affluence of those carnal delights Yet which friends I loved gratis without any interest of my corporal pleasure and so perceived my self gratis also of them beloved O crooked paths Wo to the audacious soul that departing from thee foolishly hopes elsewhere to find something better and when she hath turned and returned her self on back and sides and belly she finds all things hard and uneasie and thee only Rest And yet behold thou patiently stayest by us and freest us from these our miserable wandrings and puttest us into thy way and encouragest us and sayest Run and I will sustain you and I will conduct you through whither you desire to go and at your journeys end also I will sustain you LIB VII CHAP. I. His entrance now being thirty years old into mans estate His apprehension of God as inviolable incorruptible immutable every way infinite but yet corporeal * DEceased now was my youth so evil and so profane and I * entred into the state of manhood advancing in vanity as in age and imagining no substance but only such as with these our eyes we usually behold I indeed never thought thee O God to bear an humane shape since the time I had heard any thing of wisdom I alwayes avoided so grosse a conceit and was much joyed when I found the same also to be the faith of our spiritual Mother thy Catholick Church but what other thing I should think thee to be was not easily resolved And I a man and such a man yet endeavoured to know and apprehend thee the supreme and the only and the true God and from the bottom of my soul I believed thee to be incorruptible and inviolable and immutable because how and whence I know not but I plainly saw and was assured Ex l. 7. c. 4. â–³ that that which cannot be corrupted nor injured and hurt nor changed was doubtless more perfect and more excellent than what is capable of corruption or violation or mutation And then again â–³ that no soul ever was or shall be able to imagin any thing which should be something better than thee who art the very best and chiefest Good But since the incorruptible is most truly and certainly preferrable before the corruptible I could with my thought have ascended unto something that would have been better than my God unless thou wert incorruptible But still I was forced to imagin thee though not figured like a man yet as something corporeal having a certain space of being either infused into and through all the world or also diffused infinitely beyond it because what I abstracted from being in such space seem'd to me not to be at all I therefore conceived thy greatness O Life of my life to be such as to penetrate by an extension through an infinite space on every side the whole masse of the world and to flow to all immensity beyond it without any limit so that thee the earth had the heavens had thee all things had thee and they were bounded in thee but thou no where And as this body of air which floats above the earth hinders not the darting of a sun-beam through it which beam penetrates it not by cutting or breaking the parts but by filling the whole in such manner I conceived the bodies not only of the heavens or of the air or water but of the thicker earth also transpassable by thee and in all her least as well as greatest parts pierceable to receive every where thy presence thus with thy secret inspiration both intrinsecally and extrinsecally actuating and managing all those things which thou hast created So I conceited not able to think of any other way Though this was false For thus a greater part of earth would receive a greater part of thy essence and a lesser a lesse And in such a sense would all things be full of thee that the body of an Elephant would contain a greater quantity of thee than that of a Sparrow by how much it is bigger and possessing a greater space and so thou shouldest apply thy presence to the parts of the world by parcels a greater part of thee to the large and a lesser to the small But thou art nothing so Notwithstanding as yet thou hadst not so farre
enlightened my darkness CHAP. II. CHAP. III. Still unsatisfied concerning the cause of evill and why Angels and Men being created by the most good God there should by him be placed in them a power to will evilly BUt although I thus granted thee uncontaminable and unalterable or liable to misery in any part or member of thee from the Manichean-feigned opposition of I know not what Gens tenebrarum or adverse malignant powers arising out of another lump of matter contrary to that which thou hadst made which could it any way have hurt thee thou must then the very name of which all abhorre have been supposed both violable and corruptible as was well pressed by Nebridius long since at Carthage and had then much startled us that heard it And although I also firmly acknowledged thee our Lord the true God that madest not only our souls †Whereas the Manichees supposed the body produced by another evil principle but bodies but all * of us and * of all things notwithstanding as yet I apprehended not clearly and free from scruples the cause of Evil. Yet whatever it were such I saw it must necessarily be as might no way oblige me to believe * thee the immutable God to be subject to change nor * thy substance to suffer evil rather than ours to do any evil lest so my self should become that I sought for And I strained hard to see and discern what I had heard that our own free-will was the cause that we did evil and thy righteous judgements that we suffered it But I was not yet able to behold this clearly But as I endeavoured to raise up the eye of my soul above these deep waters I presently sunk again and often endeavouring it I sunk down again and again On the one side this elevated and buoy'd me up toward thy light that already I knew as well my self to have a will as to live Therefore in willing or nilling any thing I was most certain no other thing but me to will and nill it and I quickly observed also that the cause of my sin was there Again whatever I did unwillingly and with regret I saw my self to suffer rather such evil than to do it and judged it to be not my fault but punishment which also I apprehending thee as just soon confessed not to be unjustly inflicted But then I argued And who made me Did not my God not only good but goodness it self from whom have I then to will evilly and to nill well that so there might be that for what I might be justly punished Who put this thing into me who planted in me this root of bitterness All of me being made by the most sweet Creator If the Devil the author of it whence then the Devil But if he also by a perverse will of a good Angel became a Devil whence came in him this evil will by which he became such since he totally was made by the best God a good Angel And by these thoughts was I plunged again and suffocated yet not so low as that infernal error to believe That thou rather didst forcedly suffer than man do evil CHAP. IV. CHAP. V. Pursuing the same query still Unde malum Yet * his faith of Christ to be our Lord and Saviour remaining in Him firm and unshaken ANd I sought from whence Evil might come and I sought evilly yet saw not this evil in my inquisition And my spirit placed before it the whole Universe both of visibles as the Earth Sea Air Starrs Plants Animals c. and of invisibles as the Firmament of Heaven and all the Angels and spiritual Inhabitants thereof After this I considered thee my God as every way infinite and boundless environing and entirely penetrating this masse as a shoarless sea would fill a sponge of a great but finite magnitude placed within it so conceived I the finite Creature filled with thee the infinite God and I said within my self Behold God and behold all the things God hath created O how good is he and most perfectly and incomparably more excellent and better than they yet being good he created these good and behold how he outwardly encircleth and within replenisheth all his Creation Where then is Evil or whence or what way hath it stoln in hither what is the root and what the seed of it Or indeed is it at all Why fear we then and why avoid we that which is not Or if we vainly fear surely this fear it self is an evil by which our soul is needlesly pricked and tortured Therefore either there is an evil which we fear or this that we should so fear is an evil Whence is it then because God made all these things the good God all things good He the greater and the supreme good made these the lesser but yet both the creating and the created all are good From whence then is Evil or out of what did God make these things Was there some preexistent matter which was bad and he formed and rectified this but so that he left something in it not converted into good But why this then Was he impotent to change it all that so no more evil should remain in it who yet is omnipotent Lastly why would he make any thing at all of it and not rather by the same omnipotence annihilate it and prepare another matter totally good out of which he might produce all things for he were not omnipotent if he could not make any good unless he were first furnished with some matter which himself had not made Such things I agitated in my perplexed breast loaded with corroding cares from fear of death And not finding out the truth yet the faith concerning Christ both our Lord and our Saviour retained in the Church Catholick was irremovably fixed in my heart in many things indeed yet unformed and floating besides the rule of sound doctrine But my mind did never forsake it yea daily more and more sought to imbrace it CHAP. VI. And * the lying divinations of Astrologers foretelling from the starrs future events no way credited by him ALready also I had cast off the lying divinations and impious dotages of the Astrologers Psal 106.8 vulg And for this also let me confess unto thee from the bottome of my soul thy compassions O my God For it was thou thou alone for who else recals us from the death of any errour but the life never dying and the wisdom illuminating our needy minds needing no illumination it self by which the whole world is orderly administred even to the wind-scattered leaves of trees It was thou that procuredst for the remedying of my obstinacy †See l. 4. c. 3. which opposed both Vendicianus an acute old man and Nebridius a youth of an excellent spirit the one vehemently affirming the other somewhat doubtfully yet often repeating That there was no Art at all of foreseeing or divining things future but that mens conjectures had many times a