FOR this space of nine years (from my nineteenth year to my eight-and-twentieth)
we lived seduced and seducing, deceived and deceiving, in divers
lusts; openly, by sciences which they call liberal; secretly,
with a false-named religion; here proud, there superstitious,
every where vain! Here, hunting after the emptiness of popular
praise, down even to theatrical applauses, and poetic prizes,
and strifes for grassy garlands, and the follies of shows, and
the intemperance of desires. There, desiring to be cleansed from
these defilements, by carrying food to those who were called "elect"
and "holy," out of which, in the workhouse of their
stomachs, they should forge for us Angels and Gods, by whom we
might be cleansed. These things did I follow, and practise with
my friends, deceived by me, and with me. Let the arrogant mock
me, and such as have not been, to their soul's health, stricken
and cast down by Thee, O my God; but I would still confess to
Thee mine own shame in Thy praise. Suffer me, I beseech Thee,
and give me grace to go over in my present remembrance the wanderings
of my forepassed time, and to offer unto Thee the sacrifice of
thanksgiving. For what am I to myself without Thee, but a guide
to mine own downfall? Or what am I even at the best, but an infant
sucking the milk Thou givest, and feeding upon Thee, the food
that perisheth not? But what sort of man is any man, seeing he
is but a man? Let now the strong and the mighty laugh at us, but
let us poor and needy confess unto Thee.
In those years I taught rhetoric, and, overcome by cupidity, made
sale of a loquacity to overcome by. Yet I preferred (Lord, Thou
knowest) honest scholars (as they are accounted), and these I,
without artifice, taught artifices, not to be practised against
the life of the guiltless, though sometimes for the life of the
guilty. And Thou, O God, from afar perceivedst me stumbling in
that slippery course, and amid much smoke sending out some sparks
of faithfulness, which I showed in that my guidance of such as
loved vanity, and sought after leasing, myself their companion.
In those years I had one, -- not in that which is called lawful
marriage, but whom I had found out in a wayward passion, void
of understanding; yet but one, remaining faithful even to her;
in whom I in my own case experienced what difference there is
betwixt the self-restraint of the marriage-covenant, for the sake
of issue, and the bargain of a lustful love, where children are
born against their parents' will, although, once born, they constrain
love.
I remember also, that when I had settled to enter the lists for
a theatrical prize, some wizard asked me what I would give him
to win; but I, detesting and abhorring such foul mysteries, answered,
"Though the garland were of imperishable gold, I would not
suffer a fly to be killed to gain me it." For he was to kill
some living creatures in his sacrifices, and by those honours
to invite the devils to favour me. But this ill also I rejected,
not out of a pure love for Thee, O God of my heart; for I knew
not how to love Thee, who knew not how to conceive aught beyond
a material brightness. And doth not a soul, sighing after such
fictions, commit fornication against Thee, trust in things unreal,
and feed the wind? Still I would not forsooth have sacrifices
offered to devils for me, to whom I was sacrificing myself by
that superstition. For what else is it to feed the wind, but to
feed them, that is, by going astray to become their pleasure and
derision?
Those impostors then, whom they style Mathematicians, I consulted
without scruple; because they seemed to use no sacrifice, nor
to pray to any spirit for their divinations: which art, however,
Christian and true piety consistently rejects and condemns. For,
it is a good thing to confess unto Thee, and to say, Have mercy
upon me, heal my soul, for I have sinned against Thee; and not
to abuse Thy mercy for a licence to sin, but to remember the Lord's
words, Behold, thou art made whole, sin no more, lest a worse
thing come unto thee. All which wholesome advice they labour to
destroy, saying, "The cause of thy sin is inevitably determined
in heaven"; and "This did Venus, or Saturn, or Mars":
that man, forsooth, flesh and blood, and proud corruption, might
be blameless; while the Creator and Ordainer of heaven and the
stars is to bear the blame. And who is He but our God? The very
sweetness and well-spring of righteousness, who renderest to every
man according to his works: and a broken and contrite heart wilt
Thou not despise.
There was in those days a wise man, very skilful in physic, and
renowned therein, who had with his own proconsular hand put the
Agonistic garland upon my distempered head, but not as a physician:
for this disease Thou only curest, who resistest the proud, and
givest grace to the humble. But didst Thou fail me even by that
old man, or forbear to heal my soul? For having become more acquainted
with him, and hanging assiduously and fixedly on his speech (for
though in simple terms, it was vivid, lively, and earnest), when
he had gathered by my discourse that I was given to the books
of nativity-casters, he kindly and fatherly advised me to cast
them away, and not fruitlessly bestow a care and diligence, necessary
for useful things, upon these vanities; saying, that he had in
his earliest years studied that art, so as to make it the profession
whereby he should live, and that, understanding Hippocrates, he
could soon have understood such a study as this; and yet he had
given it over, and taken to physic, for no other reason but that
he found it utterly false; and he, a grave man, would not get
his living by deluding people. "But thou," saith he,
"hast rhetoric to maintain thyself by, so that thou followest
this of free choice, not of necessity: the more then oughtest
thou to give me credit herein, who laboured to acquire it so perfectly
as to get my living by it alone." Of whom when I had demanded,
how then could many true things be foretold by it, he answered
me (as he could) "that the force of chance, diffused throughout
the whole order of things, brought this about. For if when a man
by haphazard opens the pages of some poet, who sang and thought
of something wholly different, a verse oftentimes fell out, wondrously
agreeable to the present business: it were not to be wondered
at, if out of the soul of man, unconscious what takes place in
it, by some higher instinct an answer should be given, by hap,
not by art, corresponding to the business and actions of the demander."