Confessions

Chapter 1

Book X, therefore, is an exploration of man’s way to God, a way which begins in

sense experience but swiftly passes beyond it, through and beyond the awesome mystery of memory, to the ineffable encounter between God and the soul in man’s inmost subject-self. But such a journey is not complete until

Chapter 2

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

speak either of my evil or good, and they are meant to excite men’s minds and affections toward him. At least as far as I am concerned, this is what they did for me when they were being written and they still do this whe

Chapter 3

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

said that our soul had somehow been made one out of two souls, “But it may have been that I was afraid to die, lest he should then die wholly whom I had so greatly loved” (Ch. VI, 11) – this now seems to be more a trivia

Chapter 4

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

Which of my shorter works has been more widely known or given greater pleasure than the [thirteen] books of my Confessions? And, although I published them long before the Pelagian heresy had even begun to be, it is plain

Chapter 5

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

Thus, my son, take the books of my Confessions and use them as a good man should – not superficially, but as a Christian in Christian charity. Here see me as I am and do not praise me for more than I am. Here believe not

Chapter 6

CHAPTER I

1. “Great are you, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is your power, and infinite is your wisdom.”6 And man desires to praise you, for he is a part of your creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carrie

Chapter 7

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

on him I ask him to come into me. And what place is there in me into which my God can come? How could God, the God who made both heaven and earth, come into me? Is there anything in me, O Lord my God, that can contain yo

Chapter 8

3. Since, then, you do fill the heaven and earth, do they contain you? Or, do you

fill and overflow them, because they cannot contain you? And where do you pour out what remains of you after heaven and earth are full? Or, indeed, is there no need that you, who do contain all things, should be containe

Chapter 9

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

but the Lord himself, or who is God besides our God?”13 Most high, most excellent, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful and most just; most secret and most truly present; most beautiful and most strong; stable, ye

Chapter 10

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

overwhelm it that my sins shall be blotted out and I may embrace you, my only good? What are you to me? Have mercy that I may speak. What am I to you that you should command me to love you, and if I do it not, are angry

Chapter 11

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

enlarged by you. It is in ruins; do you restore it. There is much about it which must offend your eyes; I confess and know it. But who will cleanse it? Or, to whom shall I cry but to you? “Cleanse you me from my secret f

Chapter 12

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

to speak, for, behold, it is to your mercy that I speak and not to a man who -- 19 of 934 -- scorns me. Yet perhaps even you might scorn me; but when you do turn and attend to me, you will have mercy upon me. For what

Chapter 13

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

have been told about myself and I believe it – though I cannot remember it – for I see the same things in other infants. Then, little by little, I realized where I was and wished to tell my wishes to those who might sati

Chapter 14

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

whose life is forever and in whom nothing dies – since before the world was, indeed, before all that can be called “before,” you were, and you are the God and Lord of all your creatures; and with you abide all the stable

Chapter 15

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

that first being and my infancy of which I have no memory. For you have granted to man that he should come to self-knowledge through the knowledge of others, and that he should believe many things about himself on the au

Chapter 16

CHAPTER VII

-- 21 of 934 -- 11. “Hear me, O God! Woe to the sins of men!” When a man cries thus, you show him mercy, for you did create the man but not the sin in him. Who brings to remembrance the sins of my infancy? For in your s

Chapter 17

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

which, as we see, you have furnished with senses, shaped with limbs, beautified with form, and endowed with all vital energies for its well-being and health – you do command me to praise you for these things, to give tha

Chapter 18

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

it not come to me and succeed my infancy? My infancy did not go away (for where would it go?). It was simply no longer present; and I was no longer an infant who could not speak, but now a chattering boy. I remember this

Chapter 19

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

impressed on me that obedience to my teachers was proper to my boyhood estate if I was to flourish in this world and distinguish myself in those tricks of speech -- 23 of 934 -- which would gain honor for me among men,

Chapter 20

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

steadfast affection (or is there even a kind of obtuseness that has the same effect) – is there any man who, by cleaving devoutly to you, is endowed with so great a courage that he can regard indifferently those racks an

Chapter 21

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

– but of sins only the ruler – I sinned, O Lord my God, in acting against the precepts of my parents and of those teachers. For this learning which they wished me to acquire – no matter what their motives were – I might

Chapter 22

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

of the Lord our God, who came down to visit us in our pride, and I was signed with the sign of his cross, and was seasoned with his salt even from the womb of my mother, who greatly trusted in you. You did see, O Lord, h

Chapter 23

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

good end my baptism was deferred at that time? Was it indeed for my good that the reins were slackened, as it were, to encourage me in sin? Or, were they not slackened? If not, then why is it still dinned into our ears o

Chapter 24

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

adolescence – I had no love of learning, and hated to be driven to it. Yet I was driven to it just the same, and good was done for me, even though I did not do it well, for I would not have learned if I had not been forc

Chapter 25

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

studied from my boyhood? Even to this day I have not fully understood them. -- 26 of 934 -- For Latin I loved exceedingly – not just the rudiments, but what the grammarians teach. For those beginner’s lessons in readin

Chapter 26

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

himself, who sheds tears over Dido, dead for the love of Aeneas, but who sheds no tears for his own death in not loving you, O God, light of my heart, and bread of the inner mouth of my soul, O power that links together

Chapter 27

22. But now, O my God, cry unto my soul, and let your truth say to me: “Not so,

not so! That first learning was far better.” For, obviously, I would rather forget the wanderings of Aeneas, and all such things, than forget how to write and read. Still, over the entrance of the grammar school there ha

Chapter 28

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

Homer was skillful in inventing such poetic fictions and is most sweetly wanton; yet when I was a boy, he was most disagreeable to me. I believe that Virgil would have the same effect on Greek boys as Homer did on me if

Chapter 29

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

me faint in confessing unto you your mercies, whereby you have saved me from all my most wicked ways till you should become sweet to me beyond all the allurements that I used to follow. Let me come to love you wholly, an

Chapter 30

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

When will you ever run dry? How long will you carry down the sons of Eve into that vast and hideous ocean, which even those who have the Tree (for an ark)29 can scarcely pass over? Do I not read in you the stories of Jov

Chapter 31

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

pay fees for learning all these things. And much is made of it when this goes on in the forum under the auspices of laws which give a salary over and above the fees. And you beat against your rocky shore and roar: “Here

Chapter 32

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

and of the follies on which I wasted them. For a lesson was given me that sufficiently disturbed my soul, for in it there was both hope of praise and fear of shame or stripes. The assignment was that I should declaim the

Chapter 33

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

from you, O my God, when men were held up as models to me who, when relating a deed of theirs – not in itself evil – were covered with confusion if found guilty of a barbarism or a solecism; but who could tell of their o

Chapter 34

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

diligently the sons of men observe the conventional rules of letters and syllables, taught them by those who learned their letters beforehand, while they neglect the eternal rules of everlasting salvation taught by you.

Chapter 35

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

This was the wrestling arena in which I was more fearful of perpetrating a barbarism than, having done so, of envying those who had not. These things I declare and confess to you, my God. I was applauded by those whom I

Chapter 36

31. However, O Lord, to you most excellent and most good, you Architect and

Governor of the universe, thanks would be due you, O our God, even if you had not willed that I should survive my boyhood. For I existed even then; I lived and felt and was solicitous about my own well-being – a trace of

Chapter 37

1. I wish now to review in memory my past wickedness and the carnal

corruptions of my soul – not because I still love them, but that I may love you, O my God. For love of your love I do this, recalling in the bitterness of self- examination my wicked ways, that you may grow sweet to me,

Chapter 38

2. But what was it that delighted me save to love and to be loved? Still I did not

keep the moderate way of the love of mind to mind – the bright path of friendship. Instead, the mists of passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence of the flesh, and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so ob

Chapter 39

3. If only there had been someone to regulate my disorder and turn to my profit

the fleeting beauties of the things around me, and to fix a bound to their -- 34 of 934 -- sweetness, so that the tides of my youth might have spent themselves upon the shore of marriage! Then they might have been tran

Chapter 40

4. But, fool that I was, I foamed in my wickedness as the sea and, forsaking you,

followed the rushing of my own tide, and burst out of all your bounds. But I did not escape your scourges. For what mortal can do so? You were always by me, mercifully angry and flavoring all my unlawful pleasures with b

Chapter 41

5. Now, in that year my studies were interrupted. I had come back from

Madaura, a neighboring city46 where I had gone to study grammar and rhetoric; and the money for a further term at Carthage was being got together for me. This project was more a matter of my father’s ambition than of his

Chapter 42

6. During that sixteenth year of my age, I lived with my parents, having a

holiday from school for a time – this idleness imposed upon me by my parents’ straitened finances. The thornbushes of lust grew rank about my head, and there was no hand to root them out. Indeed, when my father saw me on

Chapter 43

7. Woe is me! Do I dare affirm that you did hold your peace, O my God, while I

wandered farther away from you? Didst you really then hold your peace? Then whose words were they but yours which by my mother, your faithful handmaid, you did pour into my ears? None of them, however, sank into my heart

Chapter 44

8. Behold with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon! I rolled in its

mire and lolled about on it, as if on a bed of spices and precious ointments. And, drawing me more closely to the very center of that city, my invisible enemy trod me down and seduced me, for I was easy to seduce. My mot

Chapter 45

9. Theft is punished by your law, O Lord, and by the law written in men’s hearts,

which not even ingrained wickedness can erase. For what thief will tolerate another thief stealing from him? Even a rich thief will not tolerate a poor thief -- 37 of 934 -- who is driven to theft by want. Yet I had a

Chapter 46

10. Now there is a comeliness in all beautiful bodies, and in gold and silver and

all things. The sense of touch has its own power to please and the other senses find their proper objects in physical sensation. Worldly honor also has its own glory, and so do the powers to command and to overcome: and

Chapter 47

11. When, therefore, we inquire why a crime was committed, we do not accept

the explanation unless it appears that there was the desire to obtain some of those -- 38 of 934 -- values which we designate inferior, or else a fear of losing them. For truly they are beautiful and comely, though in

Chapter 48

12. What was it in you, O theft of mine, that I, poor wretch, doted on – you deed

of darkness – in that sixteenth year of my age? Beautiful you were not, for you were a theft. But are you anything at all, so that I could analyze the case with you? Those pears that we stole were fair to the sight becau

Chapter 49

13. For thus we see pride wearing the mask of high-spiritedness, although only

you, O God, are high above all. Ambition seeks honor and glory, whereas only you should be honored above all, and glorified forever. The powerful man seeks to be feared, because of his cruelty; but who ought really to be

Chapter 50

14. Thus the soul commits fornication when she is turned from you,54 and seeks

apart from you what she cannot find pure and untainted until she returns to you. All things thus imitate you – but pervertedly – when they separate themselves far from you and raise themselves up against you. But, even i

Chapter 51

CHAPTER VII

15. “What shall I render unto the Lord”55 for the fact that while my memory recalls these things my soul no longer fears them? I will love you, O Lord, and thank you, and confess to your name, because you have put away f

Chapter 52

16. What profit did I, a wretched one, receive from those things which, when I

remember them now, cause me shame – above all, from that theft, which I loved only for the theft’s sake? And, as the theft itself was nothing, I was all the more wretched in that I loved it so. Yet by myself alone I woul

Chapter 53

17. By what passion, then, was I animated? It was undoubtedly depraved and a

great misfortune for me to feel it. But still, what was it? “Who can understand his errors?”56 We laughed because our hearts were tickled at the thought of deceiving the owners, who had no idea of what we were doing and

Chapter 54

18. Who can unravel such a twisted and tangled knottiness? It is unclean. I hate

to reflect upon it. I hate to look on it. But I do long for you, O Righteousness and Innocence, so beautiful and comely to all virtuous eyes – I long for you with an insatiable satiety. With you is perfect rest, and life

Chapter 55

1. I came to Carthage, where a caldron of unholy loves was seething and

bubbling all around me. I was not in love as yet, but I was in love with love; and, from a hidden hunger, I hated myself for not feeling more intensely a sense of hunger. I was looking for something to love, for I was in

Chapter 56

2. Stage plays also captivated me, with their sights full of the images of my own

miseries: fuel for my own fire. Now, why does a man like to be made sad by viewing doleful and tragic scenes, which he himself could not by any means endure? Yet, as a spectator, he wishes to experience from them a sense

Chapter 57

3. Tears and sorrow, then, are loved. Surely every man desires to be joyful. And,

though no one is willingly miserable, one may, nevertheless, be pleased to be merciful so that we love their sorrows because without them we should have nothing to pity. This also springs from that same vein of friendshi

Chapter 58

4. But at that time, in my wretchedness, I loved to grieve; and I sought for things

-- 44 of 934 -- to grieve about. In another man’s misery, even though it was feigned and impersonated on the stage, that performance of the actor pleased me best and attracted me most powerfully which moved me to tears.

Chapter 59

5. And still your faithful mercy hovered over me from afar. In what unseemly

iniquities did I wear myself out, following a sacrilegious curiosity, which, having deserted you, then began to drag me down into the treacherous abyss, into the beguiling obedience of devils, to whom I made offerings of

Chapter 60

6. Those studies I was then pursuing, generally accounted as respectable, were

aimed at distinction in the courts of law – to excel in which, the more crafty I was, the more I should be praised. Such is the blindness of men that they even glory in their blindness. And by this time I had become a ma

Chapter 61

7. Among such as these, in that unstable period of my life, I studied the books of

eloquence, for it was in eloquence that I was eager to be eminent, though from a reprehensible and vainglorious motive, and a delight in human vanity. In the ordinary course of study I came upon a certain book of Cicero’

Chapter 62

8. How ardent was I then, my God, how ardent to fly from earthly things to thee!

Nor did I know how you were even then dealing with me. For with you is wisdom. In Greek the love of wisdom is called “philosophy,” and it was with this love that that book inflamed me. There are some who seduce through p

Chapter 63

9. I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind to the Holy Scriptures, that I might see

what they were. And behold, I saw something not comprehended by the proud, not disclosed to children, something lowly in the hearing, but sublime in the doing, and veiled in mysteries. Yet I was not of the number of thos

Chapter 64

10. Thus I fell among men, delirious in their pride, carnal and voluble, whose

mouths were the snares of the devil – a trap made out of a mixture of the syllables of your name and the names of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Paraclete.65 These names were never out of their mouths, but only as soun

Chapter 65

11. Where, then, were you and how far from me? Far, indeed, was I wandering

away from you, being barred even from the husks of those swine whom I fed with husks.68 For how much better were the fables of the grammarians and poets than these snares [of the Manicheans]! For verses and poems and “th

Chapter 66

12. For I was ignorant of that other reality, true Being. And so it was that I was

subtly persuaded to agree with these foolish deceivers when they put their questions to me: “Whence comes evil?” and, “Is God limited by a bodily shape, and has he hairs and nails?” and, “Are those patriarchs to be estee

Chapter 67

13. Nor did I know that true inner righteousness – which does not judge

according to custom but by the measure of the most perfect law of God Almighty – by which the mores of various places and times were adapted to those places and times (though the law itself is the same always and everywh

Chapter 68

14. These things I did not know then, nor had I observed their import. They met

my eyes on every side, and I did not see. I composed poems, in which I was not free to place each foot just anywhere, but in one meter one way, and in another meter another way, nor even in any one verse was the same foo

Chapter 69

15. Can it ever, at any time or place, be unrighteous for a man to love God with

all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind; and his neighbor as himself? 74 Similarly, offenses against nature are everywhere and at all times to be held in detestation and should be punished. Such offenses,

Chapter 70

16. This applies as well to deeds of violence where there is a real desire to harm

another, either by humiliating treatment or by injury. Either of these may be done for reasons of revenge, as one enemy against another, or in order to obtain some advantage over another, as in the case of the highwayman

Chapter 71

17. But among all these vices and crimes and manifold iniquities, there are also

the sins that are committed by men who are, on the whole, making progress toward the good. When these are judged rightly and after the rule of perfection, the sins are censored but the men are to be commended because the

Chapter 72

18. But I was ignorant of all this, and so I mocked those holy servants and

prophets of yours. Yet what did I gain by mocking them save to be mocked in turn by you? Insensibly and little by little, I was led on to such follies as to believe that a fig tree wept when it was plucked and that the s

Chapter 73

19. And now you did “stretch forth your hand from above”80 and did draw up my

soul out of that profound darkness [of Manicheism] because my mother, your faithful one, wept to you on my behalf more than mothers are accustomed to weep for the bodily deaths of their children. For by the light of the

Chapter 74

20. And what was the reason for this also, that, when she told me of this vision,

and I tried to put this construction on it: “that she should not despair of being someday what I was,” she replied immediately, without hesitation, “No; for it was not told me that ‘where he is, there you shall be’ but ‘

Chapter 75

21. Meanwhile, you gave her yet another answer, as I remember – for I pass over

many things, hastening on to those things which more strongly impel me to confess to you – and many things I have simply forgotten. But you gave her then another answer, by a priest of yours, a certain bishop reared in y

Chapter 76

1. During this period of nine years, from my nineteenth year to my twenty-

eighth, I went astray and led others astray. I was deceived and deceived others, in varied lustful projects – sometimes publicly, by the teaching of what men style “the liberal arts”; sometimes secretly, under the false

Chapter 77

2. During those years I taught the art of rhetoric. Conquered by the desire for

gain, I offered for sale speaking skills with which to conquer others. And yet, O -- 56 of 934 -- Lord, you know that I really preferred to have honest scholars (or what were esteemed as such) and, without tricks of sp

Chapter 78

3. I remember too that, when I decided to compete for a theatrical prize, some

magician – I do not remember him now – asked me what I would give him to be certain to win. But I detested and abominated such filthy mysteries,86 and answered “that, even if the garland was of imperishable gold, I would

Chapter 79

4. And yet, without scruple, I consulted those other impostors, whom they call

“astrologers” [mathematicos], because they used no sacrifices and invoked the aid of no spirit for their divinations. Still, true Christian piety must necessarily reject and condemn their art. It is good to confess to yo

Chapter 80

5. There was at that time a wise man, very skillful and quite famous in

medicine.91 He was proconsul then, and with his own hand he placed on my distempered head the crown I had won in a rhetorical contest. He did not do this as a physician, however; and for this distemper “only you can heal

Chapter 81

6. And thus truly, either by him or through him, you were looking after me. And

you did fix all this in my memory so that afterward I might search it out for myself. But at that time, neither the proconsul nor my most dear Nebridius – a splendid youth and most circumspect, who scoffed at the whole b

Chapter 82

7. In those years, when I first began to teach rhetoric in my native town, I had

gained a very dear friend, about my own age, who was associated with me in the same studies. Like myself, he was just rising up into the flower of youth. He had grown up with me from childhood and we had been both school

Chapter 83

8. Who can show forth all your praise94 for that which he has experienced in

himself alone? What was it that you did do at that time, O my God; how unsearchable are the depths of your judgments! For when, sore sick of a fever, he long lay unconscious in a death sweat and everyone despaired of his

Chapter 84

9. My heart was utterly darkened by this sorrow and everywhere I looked I saw

death. My native place was a torture room to me and my father’s house a strange unhappiness. And all the things I had done with him – now that he was gone – became a frightful torment. My eyes sought him everywhere, but

Chapter 85

10. But now, O Lord, these things are past and time has healed my wound. Let

me learn from you, who are Truth, and put the ear of my heart to your mouth, that you may tell me why weeping should be so sweet to the unhappy. have you – though omnipresent – dismissed our miseries from your concern? Y

Chapter 86

11. But why do I speak of these things? Now is not the time to ask such

questions, but rather to confess to you. I was wretched; and every soul is wretched that is fettered in the friendship of mortal things – it is torn to pieces when it loses them, and then realizes the misery which it had

Chapter 87

12. O madness that knows not how to love men as they should be loved! O

-- 61 of 934 -- foolish man that I was then, enduring with so much rebellion the lot of every man! Thus I fretted, sighed, wept, tormented myself, and took neither rest nor counsel, for I was dragging around my torn and

Chapter 88

13. Time never lapses, nor does it glide at leisure through our sense perceptions.

It does strange things in the mind. Lo, time came and went from day to day, and by coming and going it brought to my mind other ideas and remembrances, and little by little they patched me up again with earlier kinds of

Chapter 89

14. This is what we love in our friends, and we love it so much that a man’s

conscience accuses itself if he does not love one who loves him, or respond in love to love, seeking nothing from the other but the evidences of his love. This is the source of our moaning when one dies – the gloom of so

Chapter 90

CHAPTER X

15. “Turn us again, O Lord God of Hosts, cause your face to shine; and we shall be saved.”101 For wherever the soul of man turns itself, unless toward you, it is enmeshed in sorrows, even though it is surrounded by beaut

Chapter 91

16. Be not foolish, O my soul, and do not let the tumult of your vanity deafen the

ear of your heart. Be attentive. The Word itself calls you to return, and with him is a place of unperturbed rest, where love is not forsaken unless it first forsakes. Behold, these things pass away that others may come

Chapter 92

17. Why then, my perverse soul, do you go on following your flesh? Instead, let

it be converted so as to follow you. Whatever you feel through it is but partial. You do not know the whole, of which sensations are but parts; and yet the parts delight you. But if my physical senses had been able to co

Chapter 93

18. If physical objects please you, praise God for them, but turn back your love

to their Creator, lest, in those things which please you, you displease him. If souls please you, let them be loved in God; for in themselves they are mutable, but in him firmly established – without him they would simpl

Chapter 94

19. But our very Life came down to earth and bore our death, and slew it with

the very abundance of his own life. And, thundering, he called us to return to him into that secret place from which he came forth to us – coming first into the virginal womb, where the human creature, our mortal flesh,

Chapter 95

20. These things I did not understand at that time, and I loved those inferior

beauties, and I was sinking down to the very 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 allures and unites us to the things w

Chapter 96

21. What was it, O Lord my God, that prompted me to dedicate these books to

Hierius, an orator of Rome, a man I did not know by sight but whom I loved for his reputation of learning, in which he was famous – and also for some words of his that I had heard which had pleased me? But he pleased me

Chapter 97

22. Thus it was that I loved men on the basis of other men’s judgment, and not

yours, O my God, in whom no man is deceived. But why is it that the feeling I had for such men was not like my feeling toward the renowned charioteer, or the great gladiatorial hunter, famed far and wide and popular with

Chapter 98

23. But that orator whom I admired so much was the kind of man I wished

myself to be. Thus I erred through a swelling pride and “was carried about with every wind,”106 but through it all I was being piloted by you, though most secretly. And how is it that I know – whence comes my confident c

Chapter 99

24. But I had not seen how the main point in these great issues [concerning the

nature of beauty] lay really in your craftsmanship, O Omnipotent One, “who alone do great wonders.”107 And so my mind ranged through the corporeal forms, and I defined and distinguished as “beautiful” that which is so in

Chapter 100

25. For just as in violent acts, if the emotion of the soul from whence the violent

impulse springs is depraved and asserts itself insolently and mutinously – and just as in the acts of passion, if the affection of the soul which gives rise to carnal desires is unrestrained – so also, in the same way, e

Chapter 101

26. But I pushed on toward you, and was pressed back by you that I might know

the taste of death, for “you resist the proud.”112 And what greater pride could there be for me than, with a marvelous madness, to assert myself to be that nature which you are? I was mutable – this much was clear enough

Chapter 102

27. I was about twenty-six or twenty-seven when I wrote those books, analyzing

and reflecting upon those sensory images which clamored in the ears of my heart. I was straining those ears to hear your inward melody, O sweet Truth, pondering on “the beautiful and the fitting” and longing to stay and

Chapter 103

28. And what did it profit me that, when I was scarcely twenty years old, a book

of Aristotle’s entitled The Ten Categories116 fell into my hands? On the very title of this I hung as on something great and divine, since my rhetoric master at Carthage and others who had reputations for learning were a

Chapter 104

29. What did all this profit me, since it actually hindered me when I imagined

that whatever existed was comprehended within those ten categories? I tried to interpret them, O my God, so that even your wonderful and unchangeable unity could be understood as subjected to your own magnitude or beauty

Chapter 105

30. And what did it profit me that I could read and understand for myself all the

books I could get in the so-called “liberal arts,” when I was actually a worthless slave of wicked lust? I took delight in them, not knowing the real source of what it was in them that was true and certain. For I had my

Chapter 106

31. And yet what did this profit me, since I still supposed that you, O Lord God,

the Truth, wert a bright and vast body and that I was a particle of that body? O perversity gone too far! But so it was with me. And I do not blush, O my God, to confess your mercies to me in your presence, or to call up

Chapter 107

1. Accept this sacrifice of my confessions from the hand of my tongue. You did

form it and have prompted it to praise your name. Heal all my bones and let them say, “O Lord, who is like unto you?”120 It is not that one who confesses to you instructs you as to what goes on within him. For the closed

Chapter 108

2. Let the restless and the unrighteous depart, and flee away from you. Even so,

you see them and your eye pierces through the shadows in which they run. For lo, they live in a world of beauty and yet are themselves most foul. And how have they harmed you? Or in what way have they discredited your po

Chapter 109

3. Let me now lay bare in the sight of God the twenty-ninth year of my age.

There had just come to Carthage a certain bishop of the Manicheans, Faustus by name, a great snare of the devil; and many were entangled by him through the charm of his eloquence. Now, even though I found this eloquence

Chapter 110

4. For it is by the mind and the intelligence which you gave them that they

-- 73 of 934 -- investigate these things. They have discovered much; and have foretold, many years in advance, the day, the hour, and the extent of the eclipses of those luminaries, the sun and the moon. Their calculati

Chapter 111

5. They do not know the way which is your word, by which you did create all

the things that are and also the men who measure them, and the senses by which they perceive what they measure, and the intelligence whereby they discern the patterns of measure. Thus they know not that your wisdom is no

Chapter 112

6. Yet I remembered many a true saying of the philosophers about the creation,

and I saw the confirmation of their calculations in the orderly sequence of seasons and in the visible evidence of the stars. And I compared this with the doctrines of Mani, who in his voluminous folly wrote many books o

Chapter 113

7. Yet, O Lord God of Truth, is any man pleasing to you because he knows these

things? No, for surely that man is unhappy who knows these things and does not know you. And that man is happy who knows you, even though he does not know these things. He who knows both you and these things is not the m

Chapter 114

8. And who ordered this Mani to write about these things, knowledge of which is

not necessary to piety? For you have said to man, “Behold, godliness is -- 75 of 934 -- wisdom”133 – and of this he might have been ignorant, however perfectly he may have known these other things. Yet, since he did no

Chapter 115

9. When I hear of a Christian brother, ignorant of these things, or in error

concerning them, I can tolerate his uninformed opinion; and I do not see that any lack of knowledge as to the form or nature of this material creation can do him much harm, as long as he does not hold a belief in anythin

Chapter 116

10. For almost the whole of the nine years that I listened with unsettled mind to

the Manichean teaching I had been looking forward with unbounded eagerness to the arrival of this Faustus. For all the other members of the sect that I happened to meet, when they were unable to answer the questions I ra

Chapter 117

11. That eagerness, therefore, with which I had so long awaited this man, was in

truth delighted with his action and feeling in a disputation, and with the fluent and apt words with which he clothed his ideas. I was delighted, therefore, and I joined with others – and even exceeded them – in exalting

Chapter 118

12. For as soon as it became plain to me that Faustus was ignorant in those arts

in which I had believed him eminent, I began to despair of his being able to clarify and explain all these perplexities that troubled me – though I realized that such ignorance need not have affected the authenticity of

Chapter 119

13. Thus the zeal with which I had plunged into the Manichean system was

checked, and I despaired even more of their other teachers, because Faustus who was so famous among them had turned out so poorly in the various matters that -- 78 of 934 -- puzzled me. And so I began to occupy myself

Chapter 120

14. You did so deal with me, therefore, that I was persuaded to go to Rome and

teach there what I had been teaching at Carthage. And how I was persuaded to do this I will not omit to confess to you, for in this also the profoundest workings of your wisdom and your constant mercy toward us must be p

Chapter 121

15. You knew the cause of my going from one country to the other, O God, but

you did not disclose it either to me or to my mother, who grieved deeply over my departure and followed me down to the sea. She clasped me tight in her embrace, willing either to keep me back or to go with me, but I dece

Chapter 122

16. And lo, I was received in Rome by the scourge of bodily sickness; and I was

very near to falling into hell, burdened with all the many and grievous sins I had committed against you, myself, and others – all over and above that fetter of original sin whereby we all die in Adam. For you had forgiv

Chapter 123

17. I cannot conceive, therefore, how she could have been healed if my death

(still in my sins) had pierced her inmost love. Where, then, would have been all -- 81 of 934 -- her earnest, frequent, and ceaseless prayers to you? Nowhere but with you. But couldst you, O most merciful God, despise

Chapter 124

18. You did restore me then from that illness, and did heal the son of your

handmaid in his body, that he might live for you and that you might endow him with a better and more certain health. After this, at Rome, I again joined those deluding and deluded “saints”; and not their “hearers” only,

Chapter 125

19. But now, hopeless of gaining any profit from that false doctrine, I began to

hold more loosely and negligently even to those points which I had decided to rest content with, if I could find nothing better. I was now half inclined to believe that those philosophers whom they call “The Academics”14

Chapter 126

20. And thus I also believed that evil was a similar kind of substance, and that it

had its own hideous and deformed extended body – either in a dense form which they called the earth or in a thin and subtle form as, for example, the substance of the air, which they imagined as some malignant spirit pen

Chapter 127

21. Furthermore, the things they censured in your Scriptures I thought

impossible to be defended. And yet, occasionally, I desired to confer on various matters with someone well learned in those books, to test what he thought of them. For already the words of one Elpidius, who spoke and dis

Chapter 128

22. I set about diligently to practice what I came to Rome to do – the teaching of

rhetoric. The first task was to bring together in my home a few people to whom and through whom I had begun to be known. And lo, I then began to learn that other offenses were committed in Rome which I had not had to bea

Chapter 129

23. When, therefore, the officials of Milan sent to Rome, to the prefect of the

city, to ask that he provide them with a teacher of rhetoric for their city and to send him at the public expense, I applied for the job through those same persons, drunk with the Manichean vanities, to be freed from who

Chapter 130

24. For, although I took no trouble to learn what he said, but only to hear how he

said it – for this empty concern remained foremost with me as long as I despaired of finding a clear path from man to you – yet, along with the eloquence I prized, there also came into my mind the ideas which I ignored;

Chapter 131

25. But now I earnestly bent my mind to require if there was possible any way to

prove the Manicheans guilty of falsehood. If I could have conceived of a spiritual substance, all their strongholds would have collapsed and been cast out of my mind. But I could not. Still, concerning the body of this w

Chapter 132

1. O Hope from my youth,149 where were you to me and where had you gone

away?150 For had you not created me and differentiated me from the beasts of the field and the birds of the air, making me wiser than they? And yet I was wandering about in a dark and slippery way, seeking you outside my

Chapter 133

2. So also my mother brought to certain oratories, erected in the memory of the

saints, offerings of porridge, bread, and wine – as had been her custom in Africa – and she was forbidden to do so by the doorkeeper [ostiarius]. And as soon as she learned that it was the bishop who had forbidden it, sh

Chapter 134

3. Nor had I come yet to groan in my prayers that you would help me. My mind

was wholly intent on knowledge and eager for disputation. Ambrose himself I esteemed a happy man, as the world counted happiness, because great personages held him in honor. Only his celibacy appeared to me a painful bur

Chapter 135

4. But actually I could find no opportunity of putting the questions I desired to

that holy oracle of yours in his heart, unless it was a matter which could be dealt with briefly. However, those surgings in me required that he should give me his full leisure so that I might pour them out to him; but I

Chapter 136

5. Since I could not then understand how this image of yours could subsist, I

should have knocked on the door and propounded the doubt as to how it was to be believed, and not have insultingly opposed it as if it were actually believed. Therefore, my anxiety as to what I could retain as certain gn

Chapter 137

6. I was also glad that the old Scriptures of the Law and the Prophets were laid

before me to be read, not now with an eye to what had seemed absurd in them when formerly I censured your holy ones for thinking thus, when they actually did not think in that way. And I listened with delight to Ambrose,

Chapter 138

7. Still, from this time forward, I began to prefer the Catholic doctrine. I felt that

it was with moderation and honesty that it commanded things to be believed that were not demonstrated – whether they could be demonstrated, but not to everyone, or whether they could not be demonstrated at all. This was

Chapter 139

8. This much I believed, some times more strongly than other times. But I

always believed both that you are and that you have a care for us,160 although I was ignorant both as to what should be thought about your substance and as to which way led, or led back, to you. Thus, since we are too we

Chapter 140

9. I was still eagerly aspiring to honors, money, and matrimony; and you did

mock me. In pursuit of these ambitions I endured the most bitter hardships, in which you were being the more gracious the less you would allow anything that was not you to grow sweet to me. Look into my heart, O Lord, wh

Chapter 141

10. Let my soul take its leave of those who say: “It makes a difference as to the

object from which a man derives his joy. The beggar rejoiced in drunkenness; you longed to rejoice in glory.” What glory, O Lord? The kind that is not in you, for, just as his was no true joy, so was mine no true glory;

Chapter 142

11. Those of us who were living like friends together used to bemoan our lot in

our common talk; but I discussed it with Alypius and Nebridius more especially and in very familiar terms. Alypius had been born in the same town as I; his -- 95 of 934 -- parents were of the highest rank there, but he

Chapter 143

12. But it slipped my memory to try to deal with his problem, to prevent him

from ruining his excellent mind in his blind and headstrong passion for frivolous sport. But you, O Lord, who hold the helm of all that you have created,161 you had not forgotten him who was one day to be numbered among

Chapter 144

13. He had gone on to Rome before me to study law – which was the worldly

way which his parents were forever urging him to pursue – and there he was carried away again with an incredible passion for the gladiatorial shows. For, although he had been utterly opposed to such spectacles and detest

Chapter 145

14. But this was all being stored up in his memory as medicine for the future. So

also was that other incident when he was still studying under me at Carthage and was meditating at noonday in the market place on what he had to recite – as scholars usually have to do for practice – and you did allow hi

Chapter 146

15. But this is as far as his lesson was to go. For immediately, O Lord, you did

come to the rescue of his innocence, of which you were the sole witness. As he was being led off to prison or punishment, they were met by the master builder who had charge of the public buildings. The captors were espec

Chapter 147

16. I found him at Rome, and he was bound to me with the strongest possible

ties, and he went with me to Milan, in order that he might not be separated from me, and also that he might obtain some law practice, for which he had qualified with a view to pleasing his parents more than himself. He h

Chapter 148

17. Nebridius also had come to Milan for no other reason than that he might live

with me in a most ardent search after truth and wisdom. He had left his native place near Carthage – and Carthage itself, where he usually lived – leaving behind his fine family estate, his house, and his mother, who wou

Chapter 149

18. And I especially puzzled and wondered when I remembered how long a time

had passed since my nineteenth year, in which I had first fallen in love with wisdom and had determined as soon as I could find her to abandon the empty hopes and mad delusions of vain desires. Behold, I was now getting

Chapter 150

20. While I talked about these things, and the winds of opinions veered about

and tossed my heart hither and thither, time was slipping away. I delayed my conversion to the Lord; I postponed from day to day the life in you, but I could not postpone the daily death in myself. I was enamored of a ha

Chapter 151

21. Actually, it was Alypius who prevented me from marrying, urging that if I

did so it would not be possible for us to live together and to have as much undistracted leisure in the love of wisdom as we had long desired. For he himself was so chaste that it was wonderful, all the more because in h

Chapter 152

22. For he wondered that I, for whom he had such a great esteem, should be

stuck so fast in the gluepot of pleasure as to maintain, whenever we discussed the subject, that I could not possibly live a celibate life. And when I urged in my defense against his accusing questions that the hasty and

Chapter 153

23. Active efforts were made to get me a wife. I wooed; I was engaged; and my

mother took the greatest pains in the matter. For her hope was that, when I was once married, I might be washed clean in health-giving baptism for which I was being daily prepared, as she joyfully saw, taking note that h

Chapter 154

24. Many in my band of friends, consulting about and abhorring the turbulent

vexations of human life, had often considered and were now almost determined to undertake a peaceful life, away from the turmoil of men. This we thought could be obtained by bringing together what we severally owned and

Chapter 155

25. Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied. My mistress was torn from my

side as an impediment to my marriage, and my heart which clung to her was torn and wounded till it bled. And she went back to Africa, vowing to you never to know any other man and leaving with me my natural son by her. B

Chapter 156

26. Yours be the praise; unto you be the glory, O Fountain of mercies. I became

more wretched and you did come nearer. Your right hand was ever ready to pluck me out of the mire and to cleanse me, but I did not know it. Nor did anything call me back from a still deeper plunge into carnal pleasure ex

Chapter 157

1. Dead now was that evil and shameful youth of mine, and I was passing into

full manhood.176 As I increased in years, the worse was my vanity. For I could not conceive of any substance but the sort I could see with my own eyes. I no longer thought of you, O God, by the analogy of a human body. E

Chapter 158

2. Being thus gross-hearted and not clear even to myself, I then held that

whatever had neither length nor breadth nor density nor solidity, and did not or could not receive such dimensions, was absolutely nothing. For at that time my mind dwelt only with ideas, which resembled the forms with w

Chapter 159

3. But it was not sufficient for me, O Lord, to be able to oppose those deceived

deceivers and those dumb orators – dumb because your Word did not sound forth from them – to oppose them with the answer which, in the old Carthaginian days, Nebridius used to propound, shaking all of us who heard it: “W

Chapter 160

4. But as yet, although I said and was firmly persuaded that you our Lord, the

true God, who made not only our souls but our bodies as well – and not only our souls and bodies but all creatures and all things – were free from stain and alteration and in no way mutable, yet I could not readily and c

Chapter 161

5. And I directed my attention to understand what I now was told, that free will

-- 108 of 934 -- is the cause of our doing evil and that your just judgment is the cause of our having to suffer from its consequences. But I could not see this clearly. So then, trying to draw the eye of my mind up out

Chapter 162

6. For in my struggle to solve the rest of my difficulties, I now assumed

henceforth as settled truth that the incorruptible must be superior to the corruptible, and I did acknowledge that you, whatever you are, are incorruptible. For there never yet was, nor will be, a soul able to conceive o

Chapter 163

7. And I kept seeking for an answer to the question, Whence is evil? And I

sought it in an evil way, and I did not see the evil in my very search. I marshaled before the sight of my spirit all creation: all that we see of earth and sea and air and stars and trees and animals; and all that we do

Chapter 164

8. By now I had also repudiated the lying divinations and impious absurdities of

the astrologers. Let your mercies, out of the depth of my soul, confess this to you also, O my God. For you, you only (for who else is it who calls us back from the death of all errors except the Life which does not know

Chapter 165

9. Upon hearing and believing these things related by so reliable a person all my

resistance melted away. First, I endeavored to reclaim Firminus himself from his -- 112 of 934 -- superstition by telling him that after inspecting his horoscope, I ought, if I could foretell truly, to have seen in it

Chapter 166

10. An opening being thus made in my darkness, I began to consider other

implications involved here. Suppose that one of the fools – who followed such an occupation and whom I longed to assail, and to reduce to confusion – should urge against me that Firminus had given me false information, o

Chapter 167

11. By now, O my Helper, you had freed me from those fetters. But still I

inquired, “Whence is evil?” – and found no answer. But you did not allow me to -- 113 of 934 -- be carried away from the faith by these fluctuations of thought. I still believed both that you do exist and that your sub

Chapter 168

12. But you, O Lord, are forever the same, yet you are not forever angry with us,

for you have compassion on our dust and ashes.183 It was pleasing in your sight to reform my deformity, and by inward stings you did disturb me so that I was impatient until you wert made clear to my inward sight. By the

Chapter 169

13. And first of all, willing to show me how you do “resist the proud, but give

grace to the humble,”184 and how mercifully you have made known to men the way of humility in that your Word “was made flesh and dwelt among men,”185 you did procure for me, through one inflated with the most monstrous p

Chapter 170

14. Similarly, I read there that God the Word was born “not of flesh nor of blood,

nor of the will of man, nor the will of the flesh, but of God.”189 But, that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us”190 – I found this nowhere there. And I discovered in those books, expressed in many and various w

Chapter 171

15. And, moreover, I also read there how “they changed the glory of your

incorruptible nature into idols and various images – into an image made like corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts, and creeping things”199: namely, into that Egyptian food200 for which Esau lost his birthr

Chapter 172

16. And being admonished by these books to return into myself, I entered into

my inward soul, guided by you. This I could do because you were my helper. And I entered, and with the eye of my soul – such as it was – saw above the same eye of my soul and above my mind the Immutable Light. It was not

Chapter 173

17. And I viewed all the other things that are beneath you, and I realized that

they are neither wholly real nor wholly unreal. They are real in so far as they come from you; but they are unreal in so far as they are not what you art. For that is truly real which remains immutable. It is good, then,

Chapter 174

18. And it was made clear to me that all things are good even if they are

corrupted. They could not be corrupted if they were supremely good; but unless they were good they could not be corrupted. If they were supremely good, they would be incorruptible; if they were not good at all, there wou

Chapter 175

19. To you there is no such thing as evil, and even in your whole creation taken

as a whole, there is not; because there is nothing from beyond it that can burst in and destroy the order which you have appointed for it. But in the parts of creation, some things, because they do not harmonize with oth

Chapter 176

20. There is no health in those who find fault with any part of your creation; as

there was no health in me when I found fault with so many of your works. And, because my soul dared not be displeased with my God, it would not allow that the things which displeased me were from you. Hence it had wander

Chapter 177

21. And I looked around at other things, and I saw that it was to you that all of

them owed their being, and that they were all finite in you; yet they are in you not as in a space, but because you hold all things in the hand of your truth, and because all things are true in so far as they are; and be

Chapter 178

22. And I saw and found it no marvel that bread which is distasteful to an

unhealthy palate is pleasant to a healthy one; or that the light, which is painful to sore eyes, is a delight to sound ones. Your righteousness displeases the wicked, and they find even more fault with the viper and the

Chapter 179

23. And I marveled that I now loved you, and no fantasm in your stead, and yet I

was not stable enough to enjoy my God steadily. Instead I was transported to you by your beauty, and then presently torn away from you by my own weight, sinking with grief into these lower things. This weight was carnal

Chapter 180

24. I sought, therefore, some way to acquire the strength sufficient to enjoy you;

but I did not find it until I embraced that “Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,”215 “who is over all, God blessed forever,”216 who came calling and saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,”217 and

Chapter 181

25. But I thought otherwise. I saw in our Lord Christ only a man of eminent

wisdom to whom no other man could be compared – especially because he was miraculously born of a virgin – sent to set us an example of despising worldly things for the attainment of immortality, and thus exhibiting his d

Chapter 182

26. By having thus read the books of the Platonists, and having been taught by

them to search for the incorporeal Truth, I saw how your invisible things are understood through the things that are made. And, even when I was thrown back, I still sensed what it was that the dullness of my soul would n

Chapter 183

27. With great eagerness, then, I fastened upon the venerable writings of your

Spirit and principally upon the apostle Paul. I had thought that he sometimes contradicted himself and that the text of his teaching did not agree with the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets; but now all these doubt

Chapter 184

1. O my God, let me remember with gratitude and confess to you your mercies

toward me. Let my bones be bathed in your love, and let them say: “Lord, who is like unto you?231 you have broken my bonds in sunder, I will offer unto you the sacrifice of thanksgiving.”232 And how you did break them I

Chapter 185

2. For I saw the Church full; and one man was going this way and another that.

Still, I could not be satisfied with the life I was living in the world. Now, indeed, my passions had ceased to excite me as of old with hopes of honor and wealth, and it was a grievous burden to go on in such servitude.

Chapter 186

3. I went, therefore, to Simplicianus, the spiritual father of Ambrose (then a

bishop), whom Ambrose truly loved as a father. I recounted to him all the mazes -- 126 of 934 -- of my wanderings, but when I mentioned to him that I had read certain books of the Platonists which Victorinus – formerly

Chapter 187

4. O Lord, Lord, “who did bow the heavens and did descend, who did touch the

mountains and they smoked,”242 by what means did you find your way into that breast? He used to read the Holy Scriptures, as Simplicianus said, and thought out and studied all the Christian writings most studiously. He s

Chapter 188

5. Finally, when the hour arrived for him to make a public profession of his faith

– which at Rome those who are about to enter into your grace make from a platform in the full sight of the faithful people, in a set form of words learned by heart – the presbyters offered Victorinus the chance to make h

Chapter 189

6. O good God, what happens in a man to make him rejoice more at the salvation

of a soul that has been despaired of and then delivered from greater danger than over one who has never lost hope, or never been in such imminent danger? For you also, O most merciful Father, “dost rejoice more over one

Chapter 190

7. What, then, happens in the soul when it takes more delight at finding or

having restored to it the things it loves than if it had always possessed them? Indeed, many other things bear witness that this is so – all things are full of witnesses, crying out, “So it is.” The commander triumphs in

Chapter 191

8. This can be seen in the case of base and dishonorable pleasure. But it is also

apparent in pleasures that are permitted and lawful: in the sincerity of honest friendship; and in him who was dead and lived again, who had been lost and was found. The greater joy is everywhere preceded by the greater

Chapter 192

9. Go on, O Lord, and act: stir us up and call us back; inflame us and draw us to

you; stir us up and grow sweet to us; let us now love you, let us run to you. Are there not many men who, out of a deeper pit of darkness than that of Victorinus, return to you – who draw near to you and are illuminated

Chapter 193

10. Now when this man of yours, Simplicianus, told me the story of Victorinus, I

was eager to imitate him. Indeed, this was Simplicianus’ purpose in telling it to me. But when he went on to tell how, in the reign of the Emperor Julian, there was a law passed by which Christians were forbidden to teac

Chapter 194

11. Thus I came to understand from my own experience what I had read, how

“the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.”248 I truly lusted both ways, yet more in that which I approved in myself than in that which I disapproved in myself. For in the latter it was not no

Chapter 195

12. Thus with the baggage of the world I was sweetly burdened, as one in

slumber, and my musings on you were like the efforts of those who desire to awake, but who are still overpowered with drowsiness and fall back into deep slumber. And as no one wishes to sleep forever (for all men rightly

Chapter 196

13. And now I will tell and confess unto your name, O Lord, my helper and my

redeemer, how you did deliver me from the chain of sexual desire by which I was so tightly held, and from the slavery of worldly business.252 With increasing anxiety I was going about my usual affairs, and daily sighing

Chapter 197

14. On a certain day, then, when Nebridius was away – for some reason I cannot

remember – there came to visit Alypius and me at our house one Ponticianus, a fellow countryman of ours from Africa, who held high office in the emperor’s court. What he wanted with us I do not know; but we sat down to t

Chapter 198

15. From this, his conversation turned to the multitudes in the monasteries and

their manners so fragrant to you, and to the teeming solitudes of the wilderness, of which we knew nothing at all. There was even a monastery at Milan, outside the city’s walls, full of good brothers under the fostering

Chapter 199

16. Such was the story Ponticianus told. But while he was speaking, you, O

Lord, turned me toward myself, taking me from behind my back, where I had put myself while unwilling to exercise self-scrutiny. And now you did set me face to face with myself, that I might see how ugly I was, and how cr

Chapter 200

17. But now, the more ardently I loved those whose wholesome affections I

heard reported – that they had given themselves up wholly to you to be cured – the more did I abhor myself when compared with them. For many of my years – perhaps twelve – had passed away since my nineteenth, when, upon

Chapter 201

18. And I had thought that I delayed from day to day in rejecting those worldly

hopes and following you alone because there did not appear anything certain by which I could direct my course. And now the day had arrived in which I was laid bare to myself and my conscience was to chide me: “Where are

Chapter 202

19. Then, as this vehement quarrel, which I waged with my soul in the chamber

of my heart, was raging inside my inner dwelling, agitated both in mind and countenance, I seized upon Alypius and exclaimed: “What is the matter with us? What is this? What did you hear? The uninstructed start up and ta

Chapter 203

20. Finally, in the very fever of my indecision, I made many motions with my

body; like men do when they will to act but cannot, either because they do not have the limbs or because their limbs are bound or weakened by disease, or incapacitated in some other way. Thus if I tore my hair, struck my

Chapter 204

21. How can there be such a strange anomaly? And why is it? Let your mercy

shine on me, that I may inquire and find an answer, amid the dark labyrinth of human punishment and in the darkest contritions of the sons of Adam. Whence such an anomaly? And why should it be? The mind commands the body

Chapter 205

22. Let them perish from your presence, O God, as vain talkers, and deceivers of

the soul perish, who, when they observe that there are two wills in the act of deliberation, go on to affirm that there are two kinds of minds in us: one good, the other evil. They are indeed themselves evil when they ho

Chapter 206

23. For if there are as many opposing natures as there are opposing wills, there

will not be two but many more. If any man is trying to decide whether he should go to their conventicle or to the theater, the Manicheans at once cry out, “See, here are two natures – one good, drawing this way, another

Chapter 207

24. Let them no longer maintain that when they perceive two wills to be

contending with each other in the same man the contest is between two opposing minds, of two opposing substances, from two opposing principles, the one good and the other bad. Thus, O true God, you do reprove and confute

Chapter 208

25. Thus I was sick and tormented, reproaching myself more bitterly than ever,

rolling and writhing in my chain till it should be utterly broken. By now I was held but slightly, but still was held. And you, O Lord, did press upon me in my inmost heart with a severe mercy, redoubling the lashes of f

Chapter 209

26. It was, in fact, my old mistresses, trifles of trifles and vanities of vanities,

who still enthralled me. They tugged at my fleshly garments and softly whispered: “Are you going to part with us? And from that moment will we never be with you any more? And from that moment will not this and that be fo

Chapter 210

27. But now it said this very faintly; for in the direction I had set my face, and

yet toward which I still trembled to go, the chaste dignity of continence appeared to me – cheerful but not wanton, modestly alluring me to come and doubt nothing, extending her holy hands, full of a multitude of good ex

Chapter 211

28. Now when deep reflection had drawn up out of the secret depths of my soul

all my misery and had heaped it up before the sight of my heart, there arose a mighty storm, accompanied by a mighty rain of tears. That I might give way fully to my tears and lamentations, I stole away from Alypius, for

Chapter 212

29. I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my

heart, when suddenly I heard the voice of a boy or a girl I know not which – coming from the neighboring house, chanting over and over again, “Pick it up, read it; pick it up, read it.”260 Immediately I ceased weeping an

Chapter 213

30. Closing the book, then, and putting my finger or something else for a mark I

began – now with a tranquil countenance – to tell it all to Alypius. And he in turn disclosed to me what had been going on in himself, of which I knew nothing. He asked to see what I had read. I showed him, and he looked

Chapter 214

CHAPTER I

1. “O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant and the son of your handmaid. You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving.”267 Let my heart and my tongue praise you, and let all my bones

Chapter 215

2. And it seemed right to me, in your sight, not to snatch my tongue’s service

abruptly out of the speech market, but to withdraw quietly, so that the young men who were not concerned about your law or your peace, but with mendacious follies and forensic strifes, might no longer purchase from my mo

Chapter 216

3. You had pierced our heart with your love, and we carried your words, as it

were, thrust through our vitals. The examples of your servants whom you had changed from black to shining white, and from death to life, crowded into the bosom of our thoughts and burned and consumed our sluggish temper,

Chapter 217

4. Furthermore, this same summer my lungs had begun to be weak from too

much literary labor. Breathing was difficult; the pains in my chest showed that the lungs were affected and were soon fatigued by too loud or prolonged speaking. This had at first been a trial to me, for it would have co

Chapter 218

5. Verecundus was severely disturbed by this new happiness of mine, since he

was still firmly held by his bonds and saw that he would lose my companionship. For he was not yet a Christian, though his wife was; and, indeed, he was more firmly enchained by her than by anything else, and held back f

Chapter 219

6. Thus Verecundus was full of grief; but Nebridius was joyous. For he was not

yet a Christian, and had fallen into the pit of deadly error, believing that the flesh of your Son, the Truth, was a phantom.273 Yet he had come up out of that pit and now held the same belief that we did. And though he

Chapter 220

7. Finally the day came on which I was actually to be relieved from the

professorship of rhetoric, from which I had already been released in intention. And it was done. And you did deliver my tongue as you had already delivered my heart; and I blessed you for it with great joy, and retired w

Chapter 221

8. O my God, how did I cry to you when I read the psalms of David, those

hymns of faith, those paeans of devotion which leave no room for swelling pride! I was still a novice in your true love, a catechumen keeping holiday at the villa, with Alypius, a catechumen like myself. My mother was al

Chapter 222

9. By turns I trembled with fear and warmed with hope and rejoiced in your

mercy, O Father. And all these feelings showed forth in my eyes and voice when your good Spirit turned to us and said, “O sons of men, how long will you be slow of heart, how long will you love vanity, and seek after fal

Chapter 223

10. I read on further, “Be angry, and sin not.” And how deeply was I touched, O

my God; for I had now learned to be angry with myself for the things past, so that in the future I might not sin. Yes, to be angry with good cause, for it was not another nature out of the race of darkness that had sinne

Chapter 224

11. And with a loud cry from my heart, I read the following verse: “Oh, in

peace! Oh, in the Selfsame!”284 See how he says it: “I will lay me down and take my rest.”285 For who shall withstand us when the truth of this saying that is written is made manifest: “Death is swallowed up in victory”2

Chapter 225

12. When shall I call to mind all that happened during those holidays? I have not

forgotten them; nor will I be silent about the severity of your scourge, and the amazing quickness of your mercy. During that time you did torture me with a toothache; and when it had become so acute that I was not able

Chapter 226

13. Now that the vintage vacation was ended, I gave notice to the citizens of

-- 150 of 934 -- Milan that they might provide their scholars with another word-merchant. I gave as my reasons my determination to serve you and also my insufficiency for the task, because of the difficulty in breathing

Chapter 227

14. When the time arrived for me to give in my name, we left the country and

returned to Milan. Alypius also resolved to be born again in you at the same time. He was already clothed with the humility that befits your sacraments, and was so brave a tamer of his body that he would walk the frozen

Chapter 228

15. The church of Milan had only recently begun to employ this mode of

consolation and exaltation with all the brethren singing together with great earnestness of voice and heart. For it was only about a year – not much more – since Justina, the mother of the boy-emperor Valentinian, had pe

Chapter 229

16. Then by a vision you made known to your renowned bishop the spot where

lay the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, the martyrs, whom you had preserved uncorrupted for so many years in your secret storehouse, so that you might produce them at a fit time to check a woman’s fury – a woman indee

Chapter 230

17. You, O Lord, who makes men of one mind to dwell in a single house, also

brought Evodius to join our company. He was a young man of our city, who, while serving as a secret service agent, was converted to you and baptized before us. He had relinquished his secular service, and prepared himsel

Chapter 231

18. And yet, as your handmaid related to me, her son, there had stolen upon her a

love of wine. For, in the ordinary course of things, when her parents sent her as a sober maiden to draw wine from the cask, she would hold a cup under the tap; and then, before she poured the wine into the bottle, she w

Chapter 232

19. Thus modestly and soberly brought up, she was made subject to her parents

by you, rather more than by her parents to you. She arrived at a marriageable age, and she was given to a husband whom she served as her lord. And she busied herself to gain him to you, preaching you to him by her behavi

Chapter 233

20. Even her mother-in-law, who was at first prejudiced against her by the

whisperings of malicious servants, she conquered by submission, persevering in -- 155 of 934 -- it with patience and meekness; with the result that the mother-in-law told her son of the tales of the meddling servants w

Chapter 234

21. This other great gift you also did bestow, O my God, my Mercy, upon that

good handmaid of yours, in whose womb you did create me. It was that whenever she could she acted as a peacemaker between any differing and discordant spirits, and when she heard very bitter things on either side of a co

Chapter 235

22. Finally, her own husband, now toward the end of his earthly existence, she

won over to you. Henceforth, she had no cause to complain of unfaithfulness in him, which she had endured before he became one of the faithful. She was also the servant of your servants. All those who knew her greatly pr

Chapter 236

23. As the day now approached on which she was to depart this life – a day

which you knew, but which we did not – it happened (though I believe it was by your secret ways arranged) that she and I stood alone, leaning in a certain window from which the garden of the house we occupied at Ostia co

Chapter 237

24. And when our conversation had brought us to the point where the very

highest of physical sense and the most intense illumination of physical light seemed, in comparison with the sweetness of that life to come, not worthy of comparison, nor even of mention, we lifted ourselves with a more

Chapter 238

25. What we said went something like this: “If to any man the tumult of the flesh

were silenced; and the phantoms of earth and waters and air were silenced; and the poles were silent as well; indeed, if the very soul grew silent to herself, and went beyond herself by not thinking of herself; if fancie

Chapter 239

26. Such a thought I was expressing, and if not in this manner and in these

words, still, O Lord, you know that on that day we were talking thus and that this world, with all its joys, seemed cheap to us even as we spoke. Then my mother said: “Son, for myself I have no longer any pleasure in any

Chapter 240

27. I do not well remember what reply I made to her about this. However, it was

-- 158 of 934 -- scarcely five days later – certainly not much more – that she was prostrated by fever. While she was sick, she fainted one day and was for a short time quite unconscious. We hurried to her, and when she

Chapter 241

28. But as I thought about your gifts, O invisible God, which you plant in the

heart of your faithful ones, from which such marvelous fruits spring up, I rejoiced and gave thanks to you, remembering what I had known of how she had always been much concerned about her burial place, which she had pro

Chapter 242

29. I closed her eyes; and there flowed in a great sadness on my heart and it was

passing into tears, when at the strong behest of my mind my eyes sucked back the fountain dry, and sorrow was in me like a convulsion. As soon as she breathed her last, the boy Adeodatus burst out wailing; but he was che

Chapter 243

30. What was it, then, that hurt me so grievously in my heart except the newly

made wound, caused from having the sweet and dear habit of living together with her suddenly broken? I was full of joy because of her testimony in her last illness, when she praised my dutiful attention and called me kin

Chapter 244

31. When the boy was restrained from weeping, Evodius took up the Psalter and

began to sing, with the whole household responding, the psalm, “I will sing of mercy and judgment unto you, O Lord.”306 And when they heard what we were doing, many of the brethren and religious women came together. And

Chapter 245

32. So, when the body was carried forth, we both went and returned without

tears. For neither in those prayers which we poured forth to you, when the sacrifice of our redemption was offered up to you for her – with the body placed by the side of the grave as the custom is there, before it is lo

Chapter 246

33. And then, little by little, there came back to me my former memories of your

handmaid: her devout life toward you, her holy tenderness and attentiveness toward us, which had suddenly been taken away from me – and it was a solace for me to weep in your sight, for her and for myself, about her and

Chapter 247

34. Now that my heart is healed of that wound – so far as it can be charged

against me as a carnal affection – I pour out to you, O our God, on behalf of your handmaid, tears of a very different sort: those which flow from a spirit broken by the thoughts of the dangers of every soul that dies in

Chapter 248

35. Thus now, O my Praise and my Life, O God of my heart, forgetting for a

little her good deeds for which I give joyful thanks to you, I now beseech you for -- 162 of 934 -- the sins of my mother. Hearken unto me, through that Medicine of our wounds, who did hang upon the tree and who sit at

Chapter 249

36. Indeed, I believe you have already done what I ask of you, but “accept the

freewill offerings of my mouth, O Lord.”317 For when the day of her dissolution was so close, she took no thought to have her body sumptuously wrapped or embalmed with spices. Nor did she covet a handsome monument, or ev

Chapter 250

37. Therefore, let her rest in peace with her husband, before and after whom she

was married to no other man; whom she obeyed with patience, bringing fruit to you that she might also win him for you. And inspire, O my Lord my God, inspire your servants, my brothers; your sons, my masters, who with vo

Chapter 251

1. Let me know you, O my Knower; let me know you even as I am known.318 O

Strength of my soul, enter it and prepare it for yourself that you may have and hold it, without “spot or blemish.”319 This is my hope, therefore have I spoken; and in this hope I rejoice whenever I rejoice aright. But a

Chapter 252

2. And what is there in me that could be hidden from you, Lord, to whose eyes

the abysses of man’s conscience are naked, even if I were unwilling to confess it to you? In doing so I would only hide you from myself, not myself from you. But now that my groaning is witness to the fact that I am diss

Chapter 253

3. What is it to me that men should hear my confessions as if it were they who

were going to cure all my infirmities? People are curious to know the lives of others, but slow to correct their own. Why are they anxious to hear from me what I am, when they are unwilling to hear from you what they are

Chapter 254

4. But will you, O my inner Physician, make clear to me what profit I am to gain

in doing this? For the confessions of my past sins (which you have “forgiven and covered”324 that you might make me blessed in you, transforming my soul by faith and your sacrament), when they are read and heard, may sti

Chapter 255

5. But for what profit do they desire this? Will they wish me happiness when

they learn how near I have approached you, by your gifts? And will they pray for me when they learn how much I am still kept back by my own weight? To such as these I will declare myself. For it is no small profit, O Lor

Chapter 256

6. This, then, is the fruit of my confessions (not of what I was, but of what I am),

that I may not confess this before you alone, in a secret exultation with trembling and a secret sorrow with hope, but also in the ears of the believing sons of men – who are the companions of my joy and sharers of my mo

Chapter 257

7. For it is you, O Lord, who judge me. For although no man “knows the things

of a man, save the spirit of the man which is in him,”327 yet there is something of man which “the spirit of the man which is in him” does not know itself. But you, O Lord, who made him, know him completely. And even I –

Chapter 258

8. It is not with a doubtful consciousness, but one fully certain that I love you, O

Lord. You have smitten my heart with your Word, and I have loved you. And see also the heaven, and earth, and all that is in them – on every side they tell me to love you, and they do not cease to tell this to all men, “

Chapter 259

9. And what is this God? I asked the earth, and it answered, “I am not he”; and

everything in the earth made the same confession. I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping things, and they replied, “We are not your God; seek above us.” I asked the fleeting winds, and the whole air with its inha

Chapter 260

10. Is not this beauty of form visible to all whose senses are unimpaired? Why,

then, does it not say the same things to all? Animals, both small and great, see it -- 169 of 934 -- but they are unable to interrogate its meaning, because their senses are not endowed with the reason that would enabl

Chapter 261

11. What is it, then, that I love when I love my God? Who is he that is beyond

the topmost point of my soul? Yet by this very soul will I mount up to him. I will soar beyond that power of mine by which I am united to the body, and by which the whole structure of it is filled with life. Yet it is no

Chapter 262

12. I will soar, then, beyond this power of my nature also, still rising by degrees

toward him who made me. And I enter the fields and spacious halls of memory, where are stored as treasures the countless images that have been brought into -- 170 of 934 -- them from all manner of things by the senses.

Chapter 263

13. All these things, each one of which came into memory in its own particular

way, are stored up separately and under the general categories of understanding. For example, light and all colors and forms of bodies came in through the eyes; sounds of all kinds by the ears; all smells by the passages

Chapter 264

14. All this I do within myself, in that huge hall of my memory. For in it, heaven,

earth, and sea are present to me, and whatever I can cogitate about them – except what I have forgotten. There also I meet myself and recall myself337 – what, when, or where I did a thing, and how I felt when I did it. T

Chapter 265

15. Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, O my God – a large and

boundless inner hall! Who has plumbed the depths of it? Yet it is a power of my mind, and it belongs to my nature. But I do not myself grasp all that I am. Thus the mind is far too narrow to contain itself. But where can

Chapter 266

16. And yet this is not all that the unlimited capacity of my memory stores up. In

memory, there are also all that one has learned of the liberal sciences, and has not forgotten – removed still further, so to say, into an inner place which is not a place. Of these things it is not the images that are r

Chapter 267

17. But now when I hear that there are three kinds of questions – “Whether a

thing is? What it is? Of what kind it is?” – I do indeed retain the images of the sounds of which these words are composed and I know that those sounds pass through the air with a noise and now no longer exist. But the t

Chapter 268

18. Thus we find that learning those things whose images we do not take in by

our senses, but which we intuit within ourselves without images and as they actually are, is nothing else except the gathering together of those same things which the memory already contains – but in an indiscriminate an

Chapter 269

numbers and dimensions. None of these has been impressed on the memory by a

physical sense, because they have neither color nor sound, nor taste, nor sense of touch. I have heard the sound of the words by which these things are signified when they are discussed: but the sounds are one thing, the

Chapter 270

20. All these things I hold in my memory, and I remember how I learned them. I

also remember many things that I have heard quite falsely urged against them, which, even if they are false, yet it is not false that I have remembered them. And I also remember that I have distinguished between the trut

Chapter 271

21. This same memory also contains the feelings of my mind; not in the manner

in which the mind itself experienced them, but very differently according to a power peculiar to memory. For without being joyous now, I can remember that I once was joyous, and without being sad, I can recall my past sa

Chapter 272

22. But look, it is from my memory that I produce it when I say that there are

four basic emotions of the mind: desire, joy, fear, sadness. Whatever kind of analysis I may be able to make of these, by dividing each into its particular species, and by defining it, I still find what to say in my memo

Chapter 273

23. Now whether all this is by means of images or not, who can rightly affirm?

For I name a stone, I name the sun, and those things themselves are not present to my senses, but their images are present in my memory. I name some pain of the body, yet it is not present when there is no pain; yet if t

Chapter 274

numbers we use in counting, and it is not their images but themselves that are in

my memory. I name the image of the sun, and this too is in my memory. For I do not recall the image of that image, but that image itself, for the image itself is present when I remember it. I name memory and I know what

Chapter 275

24. When I name forgetfulness, and understand what I mean by the name, how

could I understand it if I did not remember it? And if I refer not to the sound of the name, but to the thing which the term signifies, how could I know what that sound signified if I had forgotten what the name means? W

Chapter 276

25. Truly, O Lord, I toil with this and labor in myself. I have become a

troublesome field that requires hard labor and heavy sweat. For we are not now searching out the tracts of heaven, or measuring the distances of the stars or inquiring about the weight of the earth. It is I myself – I, t

Chapter 277

26. Great is the power of memory. It is a true marvel, O my God, a profound and

infinite multiplicity! And this is the mind, and this I myself am. What, then, am I, O my God? Of what nature am I? A life various, and manifold, and exceedingly vast. Behold in the numberless halls and caves, in the inn

Chapter 278

27. For the woman who lost her small coin339 and searched for it with a light

would never have found it unless she had remembered it. For when it was found, how could she have known whether it was the same coin, if she had not remembered it? I remember having lost and found many things, and I have

Chapter 279

28. But what happens when the memory itself loses something, as when we

forget anything and try to recall it? Where, finally, do we search, but in the memory itself? And there, if by chance one thing is offered for another, we refuse it until we meet with what we are looking for; and when we

Chapter 280

29. How, then, do I seek you, O Lord? For when I seek you, my God, I seek a

happy life. I will seek you that my soul may live.340 For my body lives by my soul, and my soul lives by you. How, then, do I seek a happy life, since happiness is not mine till I can rightly say: “It is enough. This is

Chapter 281

30. But is it the same kind of memory as one who having seen Carthage

remembers it? No, for the happy life is not visible to the eye, since it is not a physical object. Is it the sort of memory we have for numbers? No, for the man who has these in his understanding does not keep striving t

Chapter 282

31. Where and when did I ever experience my happy life that I can call it to

mind and love it and long for it? It is not I alone or even a few others who wish to be happy, but absolutely everybody. Unless we knew happiness by a knowledge that is certain, we should not wish for it with a will whic

Chapter 283

32. Forbid it, O Lord, put it far from the heart of your servant, who confesses to

you – far be it from me to think I am happy because of any and all the joy I have. For there is a joy not granted to the wicked but only to those who worship you thankfully – and this joy you yourself art. The happy life

Chapter 284

33. Is it, then, uncertain that all men wish to be happy, since those who do not

wish to find their joy in you – which is alone the happy life – do not actually desire the happy life? Or, is it rather that all desire this, but because “the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the fle

Chapter 285

34. Why, then, does truth generate hatred, and why does your servant who

preaches the truth come to be an enemy to them who also love the happy life, which is nothing else than joy in the truth – unless it be that truth is loved in such a way that those who love something else besides her wis

Chapter 286

35. Behold how great a territory I have explored in my memory seeking you, O

Lord! And in it all I have still not found you. Nor have I found anything about you, except what I had already retained in my memory from the time I learned of you. For where I found Truth, there found I my God, who is t

Chapter 287

36. But where in my memory do you abide, O Lord? Where do you dwell there?

What sort of lodging have you made for yourself there? What kind of sanctuary have you built for yourself? You have done this honor to my memory to take up your abode in it, but I must consider further in what part of it

Chapter 288

37. Where, then, did I find you so as to be able to learn of you? For you were not

in my memory before I learned of you. Where, then, did I find you so as to be able to learn of you – save in yourself beyond me.345 Place there is none. We go “backward” and “forward” and there is no place. Everywhere an

Chapter 289

38. Belatedly I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved

you. For see, you were within and I was without, and I sought you out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things you have made. You were with me, but I was not with you. These things kept me far from yo

Chapter 290

39. When I come to be united to you with all my being, then there will be no

more pain and toil for me, and my life shall be a real life, being wholly filled by you. But since he whom you fill is the one you lift up, I am still a burden to myself because I am not yet filled by you. Joys of sorrow

Chapter 291

40. My whole hope is in your exceeding great mercy and that alone. Give what

you command and command what you wilt. You command continence from us, and when I knew, as it is said, that no one could be continent unless God gave it to him, even this was a point of wisdom to know whose gift it was.3

Chapter 292

41. Obviously you command that I should be continent from “the lust of the

flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.”348 you command me to -- 186 of 934 -- abstain from fornication, and as for marriage itself, you have counseled something better than what you do allow. And since

Chapter 293

42. Is not your hand, O Almighty God, able to heal all the diseases of my soul

and, by your more and more abundant grace, to quench even the lascivious motions of my sleep? You will increase your gifts in me more and more, O Lord, that my soul may follow me to you, wrenched free from the sticky glu

Chapter 294

43. There is yet another “evil of the day”351 to which I wish I were sufficient. By

eating and drinking we restore the daily losses of the body until that day when you destroy both food and stomach, when you will destroy this emptiness with an amazing fullness and will clothe this corruptible with an et

Chapter 295

44. This much you have taught me: that I should learn to take food as medicine.

But during that time when I pass from the pinch of emptiness to the contentment of fullness, it is in that very moment that the snare of appetite lies baited for me. For the passage itself is pleasant; there is no other

Chapter 296

45. I hear the voice of my God commanding: “Let not your heart be overcharged

with surfeiting and drunkenness.”353 Drunkenness is far from me. You will have mercy that it does not come near me. But “surfeiting” sometimes creeps upon your servant. You will have mercy that it may be put far from me.

Chapter 297

46. You have taught me, good Father, that “to the pure all things are pure”362; but

“it is evil for that man who gives offense in eating”363; and that “every creature of yours is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving”364; and that “meat does not commend us to God”365; an

Chapter 298

47. Set down, then, in the midst of these temptations, I strive daily against my

appetite for food and drink. For it is not the kind of appetite I am able to deal with by cutting it off once for all, and thereafter not touching it, as I was able to do with fornication. The bridle of the throat, there

Chapter 299

48. I am not much troubled by the allurement of odors. When they are absent, I

do not seek them; when they are present, I do not refuse them; and I am always prepared to go without them. At any rate, I appear thus to myself; it is quite possible that I am deceived. For there is a lamentable darknes

Chapter 300

49. The delights of the ear drew and held me much more powerfully, but you did

unbind and liberate me. In those melodies which your words inspire when sung -- 190 of 934 -- with a sweet and trained voice, I still find repose; yet not so as to cling to them, but always so as to be able to free mys

Chapter 301

50. On the other hand, when I avoid very earnestly this kind of deception, I err

out of too great austerity. Sometimes I go to the point of wishing that all the melodies of the pleasant songs to which David’s Psalter is adapted should be banished both from my ears and from those of the Church itself.

Chapter 302

51. There remain the delights of these eyes of my flesh, about which I must

make my confession in the hearing of the ears of your temple, brotherly and pious ears. Thus I will finish the list of the temptations of carnal appetite which still assail me – groaning and desiring as I am to be clothe

Chapter 303

52. O Light, which Tobit saw even with his eyes closed in blindness, when he

taught his son the way of life – and went before him himself in the steps of love and never went astray373; or that Light which Isaac saw when his fleshly “eyes were dim, so that he could not see”374 because of old age,

Chapter 304

53. What numberless things there are: products of the various arts and

manufactures in our clothes, shoes, vessels, and all such things; besides such things as pictures and statuary – and all these far beyond the necessary and moderate use of them or their significance for the life of piety

Chapter 305

54. Besides this there is yet another form of temptation still more complex in its

peril. For in addition to the fleshly appetite which strives for the gratification of all senses and pleasures – in which its slaves perish because they separate themselves from you – there is also a certain vain and cur

Chapter 306

55. From this, then, one can the more clearly distinguish whether it is pleasure or

curiosity that is being pursued by the senses. For pleasure pursues objects that are beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savory, soft. But curiosity, seeking new experiences, will even seek out the contrary of these, not wit

Chapter 307

56. In such a wilderness so vast, crammed with snares and dangers, behold how

many of them I have lopped off and cast from my heart, as you, O God of my salvation, have enabled me to do. And yet, when would I dare to say, since so many things of this sort still buzz around our daily lives – when w

Chapter 308

57. Now, really, in how many of the most minute and trivial things my curiosity

is still daily tempted, and who can keep the tally on how often I succumb? How often, when people are telling idle tales, we begin by tolerating them lest we should give offense to the sensitive; and then gradually we co

Chapter 309

58. Shall we, then, also reckon this vain curiosity among the things that are to be

but lightly esteemed? Shall anything restore us to hope except your complete -- 195 of 934 -- mercy since you have begun to change us? You know to what extent you have already changed me, for first of all you did heal

Chapter 310

59. But, O Lord – you who alone reign without pride, because you alone are the

true Lord, who have no Lord – has this third kind of temptation left me, or can it leave me during this life: the desire to be feared and loved of men, with no other view than that I may find in it a joy that is no joy?

Chapter 311

60. By these temptations we are daily tried, O Lord; we are tried unceasingly.

Our daily “furnace” is the human tongue.386 And also in this respect you command us to be continent. Give what you command and command what you wilt. In this matter, you know the groans of my heart and the rivers of my e

Chapter 312

61. What is it, then, that I am confessing to you, O Lord, concerning this sort of

temptation? What else, than that I am delighted with praise, but more with the truth itself than with praise. For if I were to have any choice whether, if I were mad or utterly in the wrong, I would prefer to be praised

Chapter 313

62. Behold, O Truth, it is in you that I see that I ought not to be moved at my

own praises for my own sake, but for the sake of my neighbor’s good. And whether this is actually my way, I truly do not know. On this score I know less of myself than you do. I beseech you now, O my God, to reveal mysel

Chapter 314

CHAPTER XXXVIII

63. “I am needy and poor.”389 Still, I am better when in secret groanings I -- 198 of 934 -- displease myself and seek your mercy until what is lacking in me is renewed and made complete for that peace which the eye of

Chapter 315

64. Within us there is yet another evil arising from the same sort of temptation.

By it they become empty who please themselves in themselves, although they do not please or displease or aim at pleasing others. But in pleasing themselves they displease you very much, not merely taking pleasure in thin

Chapter 316

65. Where have you not accompanied me, O Truth, teaching me both what to

avoid and what to desire, when I have submitted to you what I could understand about matters here below, and have sought your counsel about them? With my external senses I have viewed the world as I was able and have not

Chapter 317

66. And now I have thus considered the infirmities of my sins, under the

headings of the three major “lusts,” and I have called your right hand to my aid. For with a wounded heart I have seen your brightness, and having been beaten back I cried: “Who can attain to it? I am cut off from before

Chapter 318

67. Whom could I find to reconcile me to you? Should I have approached the

angels? What kind of prayer? What kind of rites? Many who were striving to return to you and were not able of themselves have, I am told, tried this and have fallen into a longing for curious visions and deserved to be d

Chapter 319

68. But the true Mediator, whom you in your secret mercy have revealed to the

humble, and have sent to them so that through his example they also might learn the same humility – that “Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,”395 appeared between mortal sinners and the immortal Just One.

Chapter 320

69. How have you loved us, O good Father, who did not spare your only Son,

but did deliver him up for us wicked ones!396 How have you loved us, for whom he who did not count it robbery to be equal with you “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross”397! He alone was “free among th

Chapter 321

70. Terrified by my sins and the load of my misery, I had resolved in my heart

and considered flight into the wilderness. But you did forbid me, and you did strengthen me, saying that “since Christ died for all, they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him who died for the

Chapter 322

1. Is it possible, O Lord, that, since you are in eternity, you are ignorant of what I

am saying to you? Or, do you see in time an event at the time it occurs? If not, then why am I recounting such a tale of things to you? Certainly not in order to acquaint you with them through me; but, instead, that thro

Chapter 323

2. But how long would it take for the voice of my pen to tell enough of your

exhortations and of all your terrors and comforts and leadings by which you did bring me to preach your Word and to administer your sacraments to your people? And even if I could do this sufficiently, the drops of time41

Chapter 324

3. O Lord my God, hear my prayer and let your mercy attend my longing. It does

not burn for itself alone but longs as well to serve the cause of fraternal love. You see in my heart that this is so. Let me offer the service of my mind and my tongue – and give me what I may in turn offer back to you.

Chapter 325

4. O Lord, have mercy on me and hear my petition. For my prayer is not for

earthly things, neither gold nor silver and precious stones, nor gorgeous apparel, nor honors and power, nor fleshly pleasures, nor of bodily necessities in this life -- 204 of 934 -- of our pilgrimage: all of these th

Chapter 326

5. Let me hear and understand how in the beginning you made heaven and

earth.419 Moses wrote of this; he wrote and passed on – moving from you to you – and he is now no longer before me. If he were, I would lay hold on him and ask him and entreat him solemnly that in your name he would open

Chapter 327

6. Look around; there are the heaven and the earth. They cry aloud that they

were made, for they change and vary. Whatever there is that has not been made, and yet has being, has nothing in it that was not there before. This having something not already existent is what it means to be changed and

Chapter 328

7. But how did you make the heaven and the earth, and what was the tool of such

a mighty work as yours? For it was not like a human worker fashioning body from body, according to the fancy of his mind, able somehow or other to impose on it a form which the mind perceived in itself by its inner eye (

Chapter 329

8. But how did you speak? Was it in the same manner in which the voice came

from the cloud saying, “This is my beloved Son”423? For that voice sounded forth and died away; it began and ended. The syllables sounded and passed away, the second after the first, the third after the second, and thenc

Chapter 330

9. You do call us, then, to understand the Word – the God who is God with you –

which is spoken eternally and by which all things are spoken eternally. For what was first spoken was not finished, and then something else spoken until the whole series was spoken; but all things, at the same time and f

Chapter 331

10. Why is this, I ask of you, O Lord my God? I see it after a fashion, but I do

not know how to express it, unless I say that everything that begins to be and then ceases to be begins and ceases when it is known in your eternal Reason that it ought to begin or cease – in your eternal Reason where no

Chapter 332

11. In this Beginning, O God, you have made heaven and earth – through your

Word, your Son, your Power, your Wisdom, your Truth: all wondrously speaking and wondrously creating. Who shall comprehend such things and who shall tell of it? What is it that shines through me and strikes my heart with

Chapter 333

12. Now, are not those still full of their old carnal nature429 who ask us: “What

was God doing before he made heaven and earth? For if he was idle,” they say, “and doing nothing, then why did he not continue in that state forever – doing nothing, as he had always done? If any new motion has arisen in

Chapter 334

13. Those who say these things do not yet understand you, O Wisdom of God, O

Light of souls. They do not yet understand how the things are made that are made by and in you. They endeavor to comprehend eternal things, but their heart still flies about in the past and future motions of created thin

Chapter 335

14. How, then, shall I respond to him who asks, “What was God doing before he

made heaven and earth?” I do not answer, as a certain one is reported to have done facetiously (shrugging off the force of the question). “He was preparing hell,” he said, “for those who pry too deep.” It is one thing to

Chapter 336

15. But if the roving thought of someone should wander over the images of past

time, and wonder that you, the Almighty God, the All-creating and All- sustaining, the Architect of heaven and earth, did for ages unnumbered abstain from so great a work before you did actually do it, let him awake and

Chapter 337

16. Nor do you precede any given period of time by another period of time. Else

you would not precede all periods of time. In the eminence of your ever-present eternity, you precede all times past, and extend beyond all future times, for they are still to come – and when they have come, they will be

Chapter 338

17. There was no time, therefore, when you had not made anything, because you

had made time itself. And there are no times that are coeternal with you, because you do abide forever; but if times should abide, they would not be times. For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who can

Chapter 339

18. And yet we speak of a long time and a short time; but never speak this way

except of time past and future. We call a hundred years ago, for example, a long time past. In like manner, we should call a hundred years hence a long time to come. But we call ten days ago a short time past; and ten da

Chapter 340

19. Let us, therefore, O human soul, see whether present time can be long, for it

has been given you to feel and measure the periods of time. How, then, will you answer me? Is a hundred years when present a long time? But, first, see whether a hundred years can be present at once. For if the first yea

Chapter 341

20. Thus it comes out that time present, which we found was the only time that

could be called “long,” has been cut down to the space of scarcely a single day. But let us examine even that, for one day is never present as a whole. For it is made up of twenty-four hours, divided between night and da

Chapter 342

21. And yet, O Lord, we do perceive intervals of time, and we compare them

with each other, and we say that some are longer and others are shorter. We even measure how much longer or shorter this time may be than that time. And we say that this time is twice as long, or three times as long, whi

Chapter 343

22. I am seeking the truth, O Father; I am not affirming it. O my God, direct and

rule me. Who is there who will tell me that there are not three times – as we learned when boys and as we have also taught boys – time past, time present, and time future? Who can say that there is only time present beca

Chapter 344

23. Give me leave, O Lord, to seek still further. O my Hope, let not my purpose

be confounded. For if there are times past and future, I wish to know where they are. But if I have not yet succeeded in this, I still know that wherever they are, they are not there as future or past, but as present. Fo

Chapter 345

24. Whatever may be the manner of this secret foreseeing of future things,

nothing can be seen except what exists. But what exists now is not future, but present. When, therefore, they say that future events are seen, it is not the events themselves, for they do not exist as yet (that is, they

Chapter 346

25. Now, therefore, O Ruler of your creatures, what is the mode by which you

teach souls those things which are still future? For you have taught your prophets. How do you, to whom nothing is future, teach future things – or rather teach things present from the signs of things future? For what do

Chapter 347

26. But even now it is manifest and clear that there are neither times future nor

times past. Thus it is not properly said that there are three times, past, present, and future. Perhaps it might be said rightly that there are three times: a time -- 215 of 934 -- present of things past; a time presen

Chapter 348

27. I have said, then, that we measure periods of time as they pass so that we can

say that this time is twice as long as that one or that this is just as long as that, and so on for the other fractions of time which we can count by measuring. So, then, as I was saying, we measure periods of time as th

Chapter 349

28. My soul burns ardently to understand this most intricate enigma. O Lord my

God, O good Father, I beseech you through Christ, do not close off these things, -- 216 of 934 -- both the familiar and the obscure, from my desire. Do not bar it from entering into them; but let their light dawn by yo

Chapter 350

29. I once heard a learned man say that the motions of the sun, moon, and stars

constituted time; and I did not agree. For why should not the motions of all bodies constitute time? What if the lights of heaven should cease, and a potter’s wheel still turn round: would there be no time by which we mi

Chapter 351

30. I thirst to know the power and the nature of time, by which we measure the

motions of bodies, and say, for example, that this motion is twice as long as that. -- 217 of 934 -- For I ask, since the word “day” refers not only to the length of time that the sun is above the earth (which separate

Chapter 352

CHAPTER XXIV

31. do you command that I should agree if anyone says that time is “the motion of a body”? You do not so command. For I hear that no body is moved but in time; this you tell me. But that the motion of a body itself is ti

Chapter 353

32. And I confess to you, O Lord, that I am still ignorant as to what time is. And

again I confess to you, O Lord, that I know that I am speaking all these things in time, and that I have already spoken of time a long time, and that “very long” is not long except when measured by the duration of time.

Chapter 354

33. Does not my soul most truly confess to you that I do measure intervals of

time? But what is it that I thus measure, O my God, and how is it that I do not know what I measure? I measure the motion of a body by time, but the time itself I do not measure. But, truly, could I measure the motion of

Chapter 355

34. Press on, O my mind, and attend with all your power. God is our Helper: “it

is he that has made us and not we ourselves.”446 Give heed where the truth begins to dawn.447 Suppose now that a bodily voice begins to sound, and continues to sound – on and on – and then ceases. Now there is silence. T

Chapter 356

35. Deus Creator omnium448: this verse of eight syllables alternates between

short and long syllables. The four short ones – that is, the first, third, fifth, and seventh – are single in relation to the four long ones – that is, the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth. Each of the long ones is doub

Chapter 357

36. It is in you, O mind of mine, that I measure the periods of time. Do not shout

me down that it exists [objectively]; do not overwhelm yourself with the -- 221 of 934 -- turbulent flood of your impressions. In you, as I have said, I measure the periods of time. I measure as time present the impres

Chapter 358

37. But how is the future diminished or consumed when it does not yet exist? Or

how does the past, which exists no longer, increase, unless it is that in the mind in which all this happens there are three functions? For the mind expects, it attends, and it remembers; so that what it expects passes i

Chapter 359

38. I am about to repeat a psalm that I know. Before I begin, my attention

-- 222 of 934 -- encompasses the whole, but once I have begun, as much of it as becomes past while I speak is still stretched out in my memory. The span of my action is divided between my memory, which contains what I h

Chapter 360

39. But “since your loving-kindness is better than life itself,”450 observe how my

life is but a stretching out, and how your right hand has upheld me in my Lord, the Son of Man, the Mediator between you, the One, and us, the many – in so many ways and by so many means. Thus through him I may lay hold

Chapter 361

40. And I will be immovable and fixed in you, and your truth will be my mold.

And I shall not have to endure the questions of those men who, as if in a morbid disease, thirst for more than they can hold and say, “What did God make before he made heaven and earth?” or, “How did it come into his min

Chapter 362

41. O Lord my God, what a chasm there is in your deep secret! How far short of

it have the consequences of my sins cast me? Heal my eyes, that I may enjoy your light. Surely, if there is a mind that so greatly abounds in knowledge and foreknowledge, to which all things past and future are as well k

Chapter 363

1. My heart is deeply stirred, O Lord, when in this poor life of mine the words of

your Holy Scripture strike upon it. This is why the poverty of the human intellect expresses itself in an abundance of language. Inquiry is more loquacious than discovery. Demanding takes longer than obtaining; and the h

Chapter 364

2. In lowliness my tongue confesses to your exaltation, for you made heaven and

earth. This heaven which I see, and this earth on which I walk – from which came this “earth” that I carry about me – you did make. But where is that heaven of heavens, O Lord, of which we hear in the words of the psalm,

Chapter 365

3. And truly this earth was invisible and unformed,459 and there was an

inexpressibly profound abyss460 above which there was no light since it had no form. You did command it written that “darkness was on the face of the deep.”461 What else is darkness except the absence of light? For if th

Chapter 366

4. What, then, should that formlessness be called so that somehow it might be

indicated to those of sluggish mind, unless we use some word in common speech? But what can be found anywhere in the world nearer to a total formlessness than the earth and the abyss? Because of their being on the lowest

Chapter 367

5. When our thought seeks something for our sense to fasten to [in this concept

of unformed matter], and when it says to itself, “It is not an intelligible form, such as life or justice, since it is the material for bodies; and it is not a former perception, for there is nothing in the invisible and

Chapter 368

6. But if, O Lord, I am to confess to you, by my mouth and my pen, the whole of

what you have taught me concerning this unformed matter, I must say first of all that when I first heard of such matter and did not understand it – and those who told me of it could not understand it either – I conceived

Chapter 369

7. Whence and how was this, unless it came from you, from whom all things are,

in so far as they are? But the farther something is from you, the more unlike you it is – and this is not a matter of distance or place. Thus it was that you, O Lord, who are not one thing in one place and another thing

Chapter 370

8. That heaven of heavens was yours, O Lord, but the earth which you did give

to the sons of men to be seen and touched was not then in the same form as that in which we now see it and touch it. For then it was invisible and unformed and there was an abyss over which there was no light. The darkne

Chapter 371

9. And therefore the Spirit, the Teacher of your servant,470 when he mentions that

“in the beginning you made heaven and earth,” says nothing about times and is silent as to the days. For, clearly, that heaven of heavens which you did create in the beginning is in some way an intellectual creature, alt

Chapter 372

10. O Truth, O Light of my heart, let not my own darkness speak to me! I had

fallen into that darkness and was darkened thereby. But in it, even in its depths, I came to love you. I went astray and still I remembered you. I heard your voice behind me, bidding me return, though I could scarcely he

Chapter 373

11. You have told me already, O Lord, with a strong voice in my inner ear, that

you are eternal and alone have immortality. You are not changed by any shape or motion, and your will is not altered by temporal process, because no will that changes is immortal. This is clear to me, in your sight; let

Chapter 374

12. Likewise, you have told me, with a strong voice in my inner ear, that this

creation – whose delight you alone art – is not coeternal with you. With a most persevering purity it draws its support from you and nowhere and never betrays its own mutability, for you are ever present with it; and it

Chapter 375

13. From this let the soul that has wandered far away from you understand – if

now it thirsts for you; if now its tears have become its bread, while daily they -- 230 of 934 -- say to it, “Where is your God?”471; if now it requests of you just one thing and seeks after this: that it may dwell in

Chapter 376

14. Now I do not know what kind of formlessness there is in these mutations of

these last and lowest creatures. Yet who will tell me, unless it is someone who, in the emptiness of his own heart, wanders about and begins to be dizzy in his own fancies? Who except such a one would tell me whether, if

Chapter 377

15. These things I have considered as you have given me ability, O my God, as

you have excited me to knock, and as you have opened to me when I knock. Two things I find which you have made, not within intervals of time, although neither is coeternal with you. One of them is so formed that, without

Chapter 378

16. Meanwhile this is what I understand, O my God, when I hear your Scripture

saying, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth, but the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss.” It does not say on what day you did create these things. Thus, for the time being I

Chapter 379

17. Marvelous is the depth of your oracles. Their surface is before us, inviting

the little ones; and yet wonderful is their depth, O my God, marvelous is their depth! It is a fearful thing to look into them: an awe of honor and a tremor of love. Their enemies I hate vehemently. Oh, if you would slay

Chapter 380

CHAPTER XV

18. “Will you say that these things are false which Truth tells me, with a loud voice in my inner ear, about the very eternity of the Creator: that his essence is changed in no respect by time and that his will is not di

Chapter 381

20. For, although we can find no time before it (for wisdom was created before

all things),473 this is certainly not that Wisdom which is absolutely coeternal and equal with you, our God, its Father, the Wisdom through whom all things were created and in whom, in the beginning, you did create the h

Chapter 382

21. Thus it is that the intelligible heaven came to be from you, our God, but in

such a way that it is quite another being than you art; it is not the Selfsame. Yet we find that time is not only not before it, but not even in it, thus making it able to behold your face forever and not ever be turned

Chapter 383

23. Now, I would like to discuss a little further, in your presence, O my God,

with those who admit that all these things are true that your Truth has indicated to my mind. Let those who deny these things bark and drown their own voices with as much clamor as they please. I will endeavor to persuad

Chapter 384

24. For they say: “Even if these things are true, still Moses did not refer to these

-- 235 of 934 -- two things when he said, by divine revelation, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ By the term ‘heaven’ he did not mean that spiritual or intelligible created order which always beh

Chapter 385

25. But now, what if another one should say, “This same formlessness and chaos

of matter was first mentioned by the name of heaven and earth because, out of it, this visible world – with all its entities which clearly appear in it and which we are accustomed to be called by the name of heaven and e

Chapter 386

26. And if anyone wished, he might also say, “The entities already perfected and

formed, invisible and visible, are not signified by the terms ‘heaven and earth,’ when it reads, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’; instead, the unformed beginning of things, the matter capable of r

Chapter 387

27. When all these things have been said and considered, I am unwilling to

contend about words, for such contention is profitable for nothing but the subverting of the hearer.484 But the law is profitable for edification if a man use it lawfully: for the end of the law “is love out of a pure he

Chapter 388

28. For it is certainly true, O Lord, that you did create the heaven and the earth.

It is also true that “the beginning” is your wisdom in which you did create all things. It is likewise true that this visible world has its own great division (the -- 237 of 934 -- heaven and the earth) and these two t

Chapter 389

29. From all these truths, which are not doubted by those to whom you have

granted insight in such things in their inner eye and who believe unshakably that your servant Moses spoke in the spirit of truth – from all these truths, then, one man takes the sense of “In the beginning God created th

Chapter 390

30. Again, regarding the interpretation of the following words, one man selects

for himself, from all the various truths, the interpretation that “the earth was invisible and unformed and darkness was over the abyss” means, “That corporeal entity which God made was as yet the formless matter of phys

Chapter 391

31. Now suppose that someone tried to argue against these last two opinions as

follows: “If you will not admit that this formlessness of matter appears to be called by the term ‘heaven and earth,’ then there was something that God had not made out of which he did make heaven and earth. And Scriptur

Chapter 392

32. I have heard and considered these theories as well as my weak apprehension

-- 240 of 934 -- allows, and I confess my weakness to you, O Lord, though already you know it. Thus I see that two sorts of disagreements may arise when anything is related by signs, even by trustworthy reporters. There

Chapter 393

33. But in the midst of so many truths which occur to the interpreters of these

words (understood as they can be in different ways), which one of us can discover that single interpretation which warrants our saying confidently that Moses thought thus and that in this narrative he wishes this to be u

Chapter 394

34. Let no man fret me now by saying, “Moses did not mean what you say, but

what I say.” Now if he asks me, “How do you know that Moses meant what you deduce from his words?”, I ought to respond calmly and reply as I have already done, or even more fully if he happens to be untrained. But when h

Chapter 395

35. Hear, O God, best judge of all! O Truth itself, hear what I say to this

disputant. Hear it, because I say it in your presence and before my brethren who use the law rightly to the end of love. Hear and give heed to what I shall say to him, if it pleases you. For I would return this brotherly

Chapter 396

36. And yet, O my God, you exaltation of my humility and rest of my toil, who

hear my confessions and forgive my sins, since you command me to love my neighbor as myself, I cannot believe that you gave your most faithful servant Moses a lesser gift than I should wish and desire for myself from you

Chapter 397

37. For just as a spring dammed up is more plentiful and affords a larger supply

of water for more streams over wider fields than any single stream led off from the same spring over a long course – so also is the narration of your minister: it is intended to benefit many who are likely to discourse a

Chapter 398

38. But others, to whom these words are no longer a nest but, rather, a shady

thicket, spy the fruits concealed in them and fly around rejoicing and search among them and pluck them with cheerful chirpings: For when they read or hear these words, O God, they see that all times past and times futur

Chapter 399

39. Again, one of these men502 directs his attention to the verse, “In the

beginning God made the heaven and the earth,” and he beholds Wisdom as the true “beginning,” because it also speaks to us. Another man directs his attention to the same words, and by “beginning” he understands simply the

Chapter 400

40. But he who understands “In the beginning he made” as if it meant, “At first

he made,” can truly interpret the phrase “heaven and earth” as referring only to the “matter” of heaven and earth, namely, of the prior universal, which is the intelligible and corporeal creation. For if he would try to

Chapter 401

41. In this discord of true opinions let Truth itself bring concord, and may our

God have mercy on us all, that we may use the law rightly to the end of the commandment which is pure love. Thus, if anyone asks me which of these opinions was the meaning of your servant Moses, these would not be my con

Chapter 402

42. Thus, when one man says, “Moses meant what I mean,” and another says,

“No, he meant what I do,” I think that I speak more faithfully when I say, “Why could he not have meant both if both opinions are true?” And if there should be still a third truth or a fourth one, and if anyone should se

Chapter 403

43. Finally, O Lord – who are God and not flesh and blood – if any man sees

anything less, can anything lie hid from “Your good Spirit” who shall “lead me into the land of uprightness,”503 which you yourself, through those words, were revealing to future readers, even though he through whom they

Chapter 404

1. I call on you, my God, my Mercy, who made me and did not forget me,

though I was forgetful of you. I call you into my soul, which you did prepare for your reception by the desire which you inspire in it. Do not forsake me when I call on you, who did anticipate me before I called and who

Chapter 405

2. Indeed, it is from the fullness of your goodness that your creation exists at all:

-- 249 of 934 -- to the end that the created good might not fail to be, even though it can profit you nothing, and is nothing of you nor equal to you – since its created existence comes from you. For what did the heaven

Chapter 406

3. What has corporeal matter deserved of you – even in its invisible and

unformed state – since it would not exist even in this state if you had not made it? And, if it did not exist, it could not merit its existence from you. Or, what has that formless spiritual creation deserved of you – th

Chapter 407

4. Now what you said in the beginning of the creation – “Let there be light: and

there was light” – I interpret, not unfitly, as referring to the spiritual creation, because it already had a kind of life which you couldst illuminate. But, since it had not merited from you that it should be a life cap

Chapter 408

5. What, therefore, would there have been lacking in your good, which you

yourself are, even if these things had never been made or had remained unformed? You did not create them out of any lack but out of the plenitude of your goodness, ordering them and turning them toward form,510 but not b

Chapter 409

6. See now,513 how the Trinity appears to me in an enigma. And you are the

Trinity, O my God, since you, O Father – in the beginning of our wisdom, that is, in your wisdom born of you, equal and coeternal with you, that is, your Son – -- 251 of 934 -- created the heaven and the earth. Many th

Chapter 410

7. But why, O truth-speaking Light? To you I lift up my heart – let it not teach

me vain notions. Disperse its shadows and tell me, I beseech you, by that Love which is our mother; tell me, I beseech you, the reason why – after the reference to heaven and to the invisible and unformed earth, and dark

Chapter 411

8. Now let him who is able follow your apostle with his understanding when he

says, “Your love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us”515 and who teaches us about spiritual gifts516 and shows us a more excellent way of love; and who bows his knee unto you for us, that

Chapter 412

9. The angels fell, and the soul of man fell; thus they indicate to us the deep

darkness of the abyss, which would have still contained the whole spiritual creation if you had not said, in the beginning, “Let there be light: and there was light” – and if every obedient mind in your heavenly city had

Chapter 413

10. But was neither the Father nor the Son “moving over the waters”? If we

understand this as a motion in space, as a body moves, then not even the Holy -- 253 of 934 -- Spirit “moved.” But if we understand the changeless supereminence of the divine Being above every changeable thing, then Fa

Chapter 414

11. Happy would be that creature who, though it was in itself other than you, still

had known no other state than this from the time it was made, so that it was never without your gift which moves over everything mutable – who had been borne up by the call in which you said, “Let there be light: and the

Chapter 415

12. Who can understand the omnipotent Trinity? And yet who does not speak

about it, if indeed it is of it that he speaks? Rare is the soul who, when he speaks of it, also knows of what he speaks. And men contend and strive, but no man sees the vision of it without peace. I could wish that men

Chapter 416

13. Go forward in your confession, O my faith; say to the Lord your God, “Holy,

holy, holy, O Lord my God, in your name we have been baptized, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” In your name we baptize, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For among us also God in

Chapter 417

14. But even so, we still live by faith and not by sight, for we are saved by hope;

but hope that is seen is not hope. Thus far deep calls unto deep, but now in “the noise of your waterfalls.”537 And thus far he who said, “I could not speak to you as if you were spiritual ones, but only as if you were c

Chapter 418

15. And I myself say: “O my God, where are thou? See now, where are thou?” In

you I take my breath for a little while, when I pour out my soul beyond myself in the voice of joy and praise, in the voice of him that keeps holyday.553 And still it is cast down because it relapses and becomes an abyss

Chapter 419

16. Now who but you, our God, did make for us that firmament of the authority

of your divine Scripture to be over us? For “the heaven shall be folded up like a scroll”564; but now it is stretched over us like a skin. Your divine Scripture is of more sublime authority now that those mortal men thro

Chapter 420

17. Let us see, O Lord, “the heavens, the work of your fingers,”566 and clear

away from our eyes the fog with which you have covered them. In them567 is that testimony of yours which gives wisdom even to the little ones. O my God, out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, perfect your praise.568 Fo

Chapter 421

18. There are other waters that are above this firmament, and I believe that they

are immortal and removed from earthly corruption. Let them praise your name – this super-celestial society, your angels, who have no need to look up at this firmament or to gain a knowledge of your Word by reading it – l

Chapter 422

19. For just as you are the utterly Real, you alone do fully know, since you are

immutably, and you know immutably, and you will immutably. And your Essence knows and wills immutably. Your Knowledge is and wills immutably. Your Will is and knows immutably. And it does not seem right to you that the i

Chapter 423

20. Who has gathered the “embittered ones”579 into a single society? For they all

have the same end, which is temporal and earthly happiness. This is their motive for doing everything, although they may fluctuate within an innumerable diversity of concerns. Who but you, O Lord, gathered them together,

Chapter 424

21. But as for the souls that thirst after you and who appear before you –

separated from “the society of the [bitter] sea” by reason of their different ends – you water them by a secret and sweet spring, so that “the earth” may bring forth her fruit and – you, O Lord, commanding it – our souls

Chapter 425

22. Thus, O Lord, thus I beseech you: let it happen as you have prepared it, as

you give joy and the capacity for joy. Let truth spring up out of the earth, and let righteousness look down from heaven,583 and let there be lights in the firmament.584 Let us break our bread with the hungry, let us bri

Chapter 426

23. For “to one there is given by your Spirit the word of wisdom”591 (which

resembles the greater light – which is for those whose delight is in the clear light of truth – as the light which is given for the ruling of the day592). But to another the word of knowledge is given by the same Spirit

Chapter 427

24. But, first, “wash yourselves and make you clean; put away iniquity from

your souls and from before my eyes”595 – so that “the dry land” may appear. “Learn to do well, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow,”596 that the earth may bring forth the green herb for food and fruit-bearing trees

Chapter 428

25. But you, O elect people, set in the firmament of the world,602 who have

forsaken all that you may follow the Lord: follow him now, and confound the mighty! Follow him, O beautiful feet,603 and shine in the firmament, that the heavens may declare his glory, dividing the light of the perfect o

Chapter 429

26. Also let the sea conceive and bring forth your works, and let the waters bear

the moving creatures that have life.608 For by separating the precious from the vile you are made the mouth of God609 by whom he said, “Let the waters bring forth.” This does not refer to the living creatures which the e

Chapter 430

27. Am I speaking falsely? Am I mingling and confounding and not rightly

distinguishing between the knowledge of these things in the firmament of heaven and those corporeal works in the swelling sea and beneath the firmament of heaven? For there are those things, the knowledge of which is sol

Chapter 431

28. Now all the things that you have made are fair, and yet, lo, you who did

make all things are inexpressibly fairer. And if Adam had not fallen away from you, that brackish sea – the human race – so deeply prying, so boisterously swelling, so restlessly moving, would never have flowed forth fro

Chapter 432

29. And thus, in your Word, it was not the depth of the sea but “the earth,”611

separated from the brackishness of the water, that brought forth, not “the creeping and the flying creature that has life,” but “the living soul” itself!612 And now this soul no longer has need of baptism, as the heathen

Chapter 433

30. Now, therefore, let your ministers do their work on “the earth” – not as they

did formerly in “the waters” of infidelity, when they had to preach and speak by miracles and mysteries and mystical expressions, in which ignorance – the mother of wonder – gives them an attentive ear because of its fea

Chapter 434

31. But your Word, O God, is a fountain of life eternal, and it does not pass

away. Therefore, this desertion is restrained by your Word when it says to us, “Be not conformed to this world,” to the end that “the earth” may bring forth a “living soul” in the fountain of life – a soul disciplined by

Chapter 435

32. Thus, O Lord, our God, our Creator, when our affections have been turned

from the love of the world, in which we died by living ill; and when we began to be “a living soul” by living well; and when the word, “Be not conformed to this world,” which you did speak through your apostle, has been

Chapter 436

33. Now this phrase, “he judges all things,” means that man has dominion over

the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over all cattle and wild beasts, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And he does this by the power of reason in his mind

Chapter 437

34. Man, then, even if he was made after your own image, did not receive the

power of dominion over the lights of heaven, nor over the secret heaven, nor over the day and the night which you called forth before the creation of the -- 267 of 934 -- heaven, nor over the gathering together of the

Chapter 438

35. But what is this; what kind of mystery is this? Behold, O Lord, you do bless

men in order that they may be “fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.” In this are you not making a sign to us that we may understand something [allegorically]? Why did you not also bless the light, which you ca

Chapter 439

36. What, then, shall I say, O Truth, O my Life: that it was idly and vainly said?

Surely not this, O Father of piety; far be it from a servant of your Word to say anything like this! But if I do not understand what you meanest by that phrase, let those who are better than I – that is, those more intel

Chapter 440

37. If, then, we consider the nature of things, in their strictly literal sense, and

not allegorically, the phrase, “Be fruitful and multiply,” applies to all things that are begotten by seed. But if we treat these words figuratively, as I judge that the Scripture intended them to be – since it cannot be

Chapter 441

38. I also desire to say, O my Lord God, what the following Scripture suggests to

me. Indeed, I will speak without fear, for I will speak the truth, as you inspire me to know what you do will that I should say concerning these words. For I do not believe I can speak the truth by any other inspiration

Chapter 442

39. Those who find their joy in it are fed by these “fruits”; but those whose god

is their belly find no joy in them. For in those who offer these fruits, it is not the fruit itself that matters, but the spirit in which they give them. Therefore, he who serves God and not his own belly may rejoice in

Chapter 443

40. Where do you find joy in all things, O great Paul? What is the cause of your

joy? On what do you feed, O man, renewed now in the knowledge of God after the image of him who created you, O living soul of such great continence – O tongue like a winged bird, speaking mysteries? What food is owed suc

Chapter 444

41. Was it on account of his own needs alone that he said, “You have sent me

gifts according to my needs?” Does he find joy in that? Certainly not for that alone. But how do we know this? We know it because he himself adds, “Not because I desire a gift, but because I desire fruit.”643 Now I have

Chapter 445

42. Therefore I will speak before you, O Lord, what is true, in order that the

uninstructed645 and the infidels, who require the mysteries of initiation and great -- 272 of 934 -- works of miracles – which we believe are signified by the phrase, “Fishes and great whales” – may be helped in being

Chapter 446

43. And you, O God, did see everything that you had made and, behold, it was

very good.646 We also see the whole creation and, behold, it is all very good. In each separate kind of your work, when you did say, “Let them be made,” and they were made, you did see that it was good. I have counted se

Chapter 447

44. And I looked attentively to find whether it was seven or eight times that you

did see your works were good, when they were pleasing to you, but I found that there was no “time” in your seeing which would help me to understand in what sense you had looked so many “times” at what you had made. And I

Chapter 448

45. And I heard this, O Lord my God, and drank up a drop of sweetness from

your truth, and understood that there are some men to whom your works are displeasing, who say that many of them you did make under the compulsion of necessity – such as the pattern of the heavens and the courses of the

Chapter 449

46. But for those who see these things through your Spirit, it is you who see

them in them. When, therefore, they see that these things are good, it is you who see that they are good; and whatsoever things are pleasing because of you, it is you who do give us pleasure in those things. Those things

Chapter 450

47. Thanks be to you, O Lord! We see the heaven and the earth, either the

corporeal part – higher and lower – or the spiritual and physical creation. And we see the light made and divided from the darkness for the adornment of these parts, from which the universal mass of the world or the univ

Chapter 451

48. Let your works praise you, that we may love you; and let us love you that

your works may praise you – those works which have a beginning and an end in time – a rising and a setting, a growth and a decay, a form and a privation. Thus, they have their successions of morning and evening, partly h

Chapter 452

49. We have also explored the question of what you did desire to figure forth,

both in the creation and in the description of things in this particular order. And we have seen that things taken separately are good, and all things taken together are very good, both in heaven and earth. And we have s

Chapter 453

50. O Lord God, grant us your peace – for you have given us all things. Grant us

the peace of quietness, the peace of the Sabbath, the peace without an evening. All this most beautiful array of things, all so very good, will pass away when all their courses are finished – for in them there is both mo

Chapter 454

51. But the seventh day is without an evening, and it has no setting, for you have

sanctified it with an everlasting duration. After all your works of creation, which were very good, you did rest on the seventh day, although you had created them all in unbroken rest – and this so that the voice of your

Chapter 455

52. For then also you shall so rest in us as now you work in us; and, thus, that

will be your rest through us, as these are your works through us. But you, O Lord, work evermore and are always at rest. You see not in time, you move not -- 277 of 934 -- in time, you rest not in time. And yet you mak

Chapter 456

53. We can see all those things which you have made because they are – but they

are because you see them.654 And we see with our eyes that they are, and we see with our minds that they are good. But you saw them as made when you saw that they would be made. And now, in this present time, we have bee