Wednesday
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 for almost all those nine years, wherein
with unsettled mind I had been their disciple, I had longed but
too intensely for the coming of this Faustus. For the rest of
the sect, whom by chance I had lighted upon, when unable to solve
my objections about these things, still held out to me the coming
of this Faustus, by conference with whom these and greater difficulties,
if I had them, were to be most readily and abundantly cleared.
When then he came, I found him a man of pleasing discourse, and
who could speak fluently and in better terms, yet still but the
self-same things which they were wont to say. But what availed
the utmost neatness of the cup-bearer to my thirst for a more
precious draught? Mine ears were already cloyed with the like,
nor did they seem to me therefore better, because better said;
nor therefore true, because eloquent; nor the soul therefore wise,
because the face was comely, and the language graceful. But they
who held him out to me were no good judges of things; and therefore
to them he appeared understanding and wise, because in words pleasing.
I felt however that another sort of people were suspicious even
of truth, and refused to assent to it, if delivered in a smooth
and copious discourse. But Thou, O my God, hadst already taught
me by wonderful and secret ways, and therefore I believe that
Thou taughtest me, because it is truth, nor is there besides Thee
any teacher of truth, where or whencesoever it may shine upon
us. Of Thyself therefore had I now learned, that neither ought
any thing to seem to be spoken truly, because eloquently; nor
therefore falsely, because the utterance of the lips is inharmonious;
nor, again, therefore true, because rudely delivered; nor therefore
false, because the language is rich; but that wisdom and folly
are as wholesome and unwholesome food; and adorned or unadorned
phrases as courtly or country vessels; either kind of meats may
be served up in either kind of dishes.
That greediness then, wherewith I had of so long time expected
that man, was delighted verily with his action and feeling when
disputing, and his choice and readiness of words to clothe his
ideas. I was then delighted, and, with many others and more than
they, did I praise and extol him. It troubled me, however, that
in the assembly of his auditors, I was not allowed to put in and
communicate those questions that troubled me, in familiar converse
with him. Which when I might, and with my friends began to engage
his ears at such times as it was not unbecoming for him to discuss
with me, and had brought forward such things as moved me; I found
him first utterly ignorant of liberal sciences, save grammar,
and that but in an ordinary way. But because he had read some
of TuIly's Orations, a very few books of Seneca, some things of
the poets, and such few volumes of his own sect as were written
in Latin and neatly, and was daily practised in speaking, he acquired
a certain eloquence, which proved the more pleasing and seductive
because under the guidance of a good wit, and with a kind of natural
gracefulness. Is it not thus, as I recall it, O Lord my God, Thou
Judge of my conscience? Before Thee is my heart, and my remembrance,
Who didst at that time direct me by the hidden mystery of Thy
providence, and didst set those shameful errors of mine before
my face, that I might see and hate them.
For after it was clear that he was ignorant of those arts in which
I thought he excelled, I began to despair of his opening and solving
the difficulties which perplexed me (of which indeed however ignorant,
he might have held the truths of piety, had he not been a Manichee).
For their books are fraught with prolix fables, of the heaven,
and stars, sun, and moon, and I now no longer thought him able
satisfactorily to decide what I much desired, whether, on comparison
of these things with the calculations I had elsewhere read, the
account given in the books of Manicheus were preferable, or at
least as good. Which when I proposed to be considered and discussed,
he, so far modestly, shrunk from the burden. For he knew that
he knew not these things, and was not ashamed to confess it. For
he was not one of those talking persons, many of whom I had endured,
who undertook to teach me these things, and said nothing. But
this man had a heart, though not right towards Thee, yet neither
altogether treacherous to himself. For he was not altogether ignorant
of his own ignorance, nor would he rashly be entangled in a dispute,
whence he could neither retreat nor extricate himself fairly.
Even for this I liked him the better. For fairer is the modesty
of a candid mind, than the knowledge of those things which I desired;
and such I found him, in all the more difficult and subtile questions.