Friday
BOOK FIVESt. Augustine's twenty-ninth year. Faustus, a snare of
Satan to many, made an instrument of deliverance to St. Augustine,
by showing the ignorance of the Manichees on those things, wherein
they professed to have divine knowledge. Augustine gives up all
thought of going further among the Manichees: is guided to Rome
and Milan, where he hears St. Ambrose, leaves the Manichees, and
becomes again a Catechumen in the Church Catholic.
And lo, there was I received by the scourge
of bodily sickness, and I was going down to hell, carrying all
the sins which I had committed, both against Thee, and myself,
and others, many and grievous, over and above that bond of original
sin, whereby we all die in Adam. For Thou hadst not forgiven me
any of these things in Christ, nor had He abolished by His cross
the enmity which by my sins I had incurred with Thee. For how
should He, by the crucifixion of a phantasm, which I believed
Him to be? So true, then, was the death of my soul, as that of
His flesh seemed to me false; and how true the death of His body,
so false was the life of my soul, which did not believe it. And
now the fever heightening, I was parting and departing for ever.
For had I then parted hence, whither had I departed, but into
fire and torments, such as my misdeeds deserved in the truth of
Thy appointment? And this she knew not, yet in absence prayed
for me. But Thou, everywhere present, heardest her where she was,
and, where I was, hadst compassion upon me; that I should recover
the health of my body, though frenzied as yet in my sacrilegious
heart. For I did not in all that danger desire Thy baptism; and
I was better as a boy, when I begged it of my mother's piety,
as I have before recited and confessed. But I had grown up to
my own shame, and I madly scoffed at the prescripts of Thy medicine,
who wouldest not suffer me, being such, to die a double death.
With which wound had my mother's heart been pierced, it could
never be healed. For I cannot express the affection she bare to
me, and with how much more vehement anguish she was now in labour
of me in the spirit, than at her childbearing in the flesh.
I see not then how she should have been healed, had such a death
of mine stricken through the bowels of her love. And where would
have been those her so strong and unceasing prayers, unintermitting
to Thee alone? But wouldest Thou, God of mercies, despise the
contrite and humbled heart of that chaste and sober widow, so
frequent in almsdeeds, so full of duty and service to Thy saints,
no day intermitting the oblation at Thine altar, twice a day,
morning and evening, without any intermission, coming to Thy church,
not for idle tattlings and old wives' fables; but that she might
hear Thee in Thy discourses, and Thou her in her prayers. Couldest
Thou despise and reject from Thy aid the tears of such an one,
wherewith she begged of Thee not gold or silver, nor any mutable
or passing good, but the salvation of her son's soul? Thou, by
whose gift she was such? Never, Lord. Yea, Thou wert at hand,
and wert hearing and doing, in that order wherein Thou hadst determined
before that it should be done. Far be it that Thou shouldest deceive
her in Thy visions and answers, some whereof I have, some I have
not mentioned, which she laid up in her faithful heart, and ever
praying, urged upon Thee, as Thine own handwriting. For Thou,
because Thy mercy endureth for ever, vouchsafest to those to whom
Thou forgivest all of their debts, to become also a debtor by
Thy promises.
Thou recoveredst me then of that sickness, and healedst the son
of Thy handmaid, for the time in body, that he might live, for
Thee to bestow upon him a better and more abiding health. And
even then, at Rome, I joined myself to those deceiving and deceived
"holy ones"; not with their disciples only (of which
number was he, in whose house I had fallen sick and recovered);
but also with those whom they call "The Elect." For
I still thought "that it was not we that sin, but that I
know not what other nature sinned in us"; and it delighted
my pride, to be free from blame; and when I had done any evil,
not to confess I had done any, that Thou mightest heal my soul
because it had sinned against Thee: but I loved to excuse it,
and to accuse I know not what other thing, which was with me,
but which I was not. But in truth it was wholly I, and mine impiety
had divided me against myself: and that sin was the more incurable,
whereby I did not judge myself a sinner; and execrable iniquity
it was, that I had rather have Thee, Thee, O God Almighty, to
be overcome in me to my destruction, than myself of Thee to salvation.
Not as yet then hadst Thou set a watch before my mouth, and a
door of a safe keeping around my lips, that my heart might not
turn aside to wicked speeches, to make excuses of sins, with men
that work iniquity: and, therefore, was I still united with their
Elect.
But now despairing to make proficiency in that false doctrine,
even those things (with which if I should find no better, I had
resolved to rest contented) I now held more laxly and carelessly.
For there half arose a thought in me that those philosophers,
whom they call Academics, were wiser than the rest, for that they
held men ought to doubt everything, and laid down that no truth
can be comprehended by man: for so, not then understanding even
their meaning, I also was clearly convinced that they thought,
as they are commonly reported. Yet did I freely and openly discourage
that host of mine from that over-confidence which I perceived
him to have in those fables, which the books of Manicheus are
full of. Yet I lived in more familiar friendship with them, than
with others who were not of this heresy. Nor did I maintain it
with my ancient eagerness; still my intimacy with that sect (Rome
secretly harbouring many of them) made me slower to seek any other
way: especially since I despaired of finding the truth, from which
they had turned me aside, in Thy Church, O Lord of heaven and
earth, Creator of all things visible and invisible: and it seemed
to me very unseemly to believe Thee to have the shape of human
flesh, and to be bounded by the bodily lineaments of our members.
And because, when I wished to think on my God, I knew not what
to think of, but a mass of bodies (for what was not such did not
seem to me to be any thing), this was the greatest, and almost
only cause of my inevitable error. For hence I believed Evil also
to be some such kind of substance, and to have its own foul and
hideous bulk; whether gross, which they called earth, or thin
and subtile (like the body of the air), which they imagine to
be some malignant mind, creeping through that earth. And because
a piety, such as it was, constrained me to believe that the good
God never created any evil nature, I conceived two masses, contrary
to one another, both unbounded, but the evil narrower, the good
more expansive. And from this pestilent beginning, the other sacrilegious
conceits followed on me. For when my mind endeavoured to recur
to the Catholic faith, I was driven back, since that was not the
Catholic faith which I thought to be so. And I seemed to myself
more reverential, if I believed of Thee, my God (to whom Thy mercies
confess out of my mouth), as unbounded, at least on other sides,
although on that one where the mass of evil was opposed to Thee,
I was constrained to confess Thee bounded; than if on all sides
I should imagine Thee to be bounded by the form of a human body.
And it seemed to me better to believe Thee to have created no
evil (which to me ignorant seemed not some only, but a bodily
substance, because I could not conceive of mind unless as a subtile
body, and that diffused in definite spaces), than to believe the
nature of evil, such as I conceived it, could come from Thee.
Yea, and our Saviour Himself, Thy Only Begotten, I believed to
have been reached forth (as it were) for our salvation, out of
the mass of Thy most lucid substance, so as to believe nothing
of Him, but what I could imagine in my vanity. His Nature then,
being such, I thought could not be born of the Virgin Mary, without
being mingled with the flesh: and how that which I had so figured
to myself could be mingled, and not defiled, I saw not. I feared
therefore to believe Him born in the flesh, lest I should be forced
to believe Him defiled by the flesh. Now will Thy spiritual ones
mildly and lovingly smile upon me, if they shall read these my
confessions. Yet such was I.