Saturday
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.
Furthermore, what the Manichees had criticised
in Thy Scriptures, I thought could not be defended; yet at times
verily I had a wish to confer upon these several points with some
one very well skilled in those books, and to make trial what he
thought thereon; for the words of one Helpidius, as he spoke and
disputed face to face against the said Manichees, had begun to
stir me even at Carthage: in that he had produced things out of
the Scriptures, not easily withstood, the Manichees' answer whereto
seemed to me weak. And this answer they liked not to give publicly,
but only to us in private. It was, that the Scriptures of the
New Testament had been corrupted by I know not whom, who wished
to engraft the law of the Jews upon the Christian faith: yet themselves
produced not any uncorrupted copies. But I, conceiving of things
corporeal only, was mainly held down, vehemently oppressed and
in a manner suffocated by those "masses"; panting under
which after the breath of Thy truth, I could not breathe it pure
and untainted.
I began then diligently to practise that for which I came to Rome,
to teach rhetoric; and first, to gather some to my house, to whom,
and through whom, I had begun to be known; when lo, I found other
offences committed in Rome, to which I was not exposed in Africa.
True, those "subvertings" by profligate young men were
not here practised, as was told me: but on a sudden, said they,
to avoid paying their master's stipend, a number of youths plot
together, and remove to another;- breakers of faith, who for love
of money hold justice cheap. These also my heart hated, though
not with a perfect hatred: for perchance I hated them more because
I was to suffer by them, than because they did things utterly
unlawful. Of a truth such are base persons, and they go a whoring
from Thee, loving these fleeting mockeries of things temporal,
and filthy lucre, which fouls the hand that grasps it; hugging
the fleeting world, and despising Thee, who abidest, and recallest,
and forgivest the adulteress soul of man, when she returns to
Thee. And now I hate such depraved and crooked persons, though
I love them if corrigible, so as to prefer to money the learning
which they acquire, and to learning, Thee, O God, the truth and
fulness of assured good, and most pure peace. But then I rather
for my own sake misliked them evil, than liked and wished them
good for Thine.
When therefore they of Milan had sent to Rome to the prefect of
the city, to furnish them with a rhetoric reader for their city,
and send him at the public expense, I made application (through
those very persons, intoxicated with Manichean vanities, to be
freed wherefrom I was to go, neither of us however knowing it)
that Symmachus, then prefect of the city, would try me by setting
me some subject, and so send me. To Milan I came, to Ambrose the
Bishop, known to the whole world as among the best of men, Thy
devout servant; whose eloquent discourse did then plentifully
dispense unto Thy people the flour of Thy wheat, the gladness
of Thy oil, and the sober inebriation of Thy wine. To him was
I unknowing led by Thee, that by him I might knowingly be led
to Thee. That man of God received me as a father, and showed me
an Episcopal kindness on my coming. Thenceforth I began to love
him, at first indeed not as a teacher of the truth (which I utterly
despaired of in Thy Church), but as a person kind towards myself.
And I listened diligently to him preaching to the people, not
with that intent I ought, but, as it were, trying his eloquence,
whether it answered the fame thereof, or flowed fuller or lower
than was reported; and I hung on his words attentively; but of
the matter I was as a careless and scornful looker-on; and I was
delighted with the sweetness of his discourse, more recondite,
yet in manner less winning and harmonious, than that of Faustus.
Of the matter, however, there was no comparison; for the one was
wandering amid Manichean delusions, the other teaching salvation
most soundly. But salvation is far from sinners, such as I then
stood before him; and yet was I drawing nearer by little and little,
and unconsciously.
For though I took no pains to learn what he spake, but only to
hear how he spake (for that empty care alone was left me, despairing
of a way, open for man, to Thee), yet together with the words
which I would choose, came also into my mind the things which
I would refuse; for I could not separate them. And while I opened
my heart to admit "how eloquently he spake," there also
entered "how truly he spake"; but this by degrees. For
first, these things also had now begun to appear to me capable
of defence; and the Catholic faith, for which I had thought nothing
could be said against the Manichees' objections, I now thought
might be maintained without shamelessness; especially after I
had heard one or two places of the Old Testament resolved, and
ofttimes "in a figure," which when I understood literally,
I was slain spiritually. Very many places then of those books
having been explained, I now blamed my despair, in believing that
no answer could be given to such as hated and scoffed at the Law
and the Prophets. Yet did I not therefore then see that the Catholic
way was to be held, because it also could find learned maintainers,
who could at large and with some show of reason answer objections;
nor that what I held was therefore to be condemned, because both
sides could be maintained. For the Catholic cause seemed to me
in such sort not vanquished, as still not as yet to be victorious.
Hereupon I earnestly bent my mind, to see if in any way I could
by any certain proof convict the Manichees of falsehood. Could
I once have conceived a spiritual substance, all their strongholds
had been beaten down, and cast utterly out of my mind; but I could
not. Notwithstanding, concerning the frame of this world, and
the whole of nature, which the senses of the flesh can reach to,
as I more and more considered and compared things, I judged the
tenets of most of the philosophers to have been much more probable.
So then after the manner of the Academics (as they are supposed)
doubting of every thing, and wavering between all, I settled so
far, that the Manichees were to be abandoned; judging that, even
while doubting, I might not continue in that sect, to which I
already preferred some of the philosophers; to which philosophers
notwithstanding, for that they were without the saving Name of
Christ, I utterly refused to commit the cure of my sick soul.
I determined therefore so long to be a Catechumen in the Catholic
Church, to which I had been commended by my parents, till something
certain should dawn upon me, whither I might steer my course.