30 THANKS GOD, HE WAS 'wonderfulLY MADE’

CHAPTER XX.

For the Blessings conferred upon him in Childhood, he gives Thanks to God.

BUT yet, O Lord, to Thee—most excellent and good

Creator and Ruler of the universe-our God,

thanks were due, even if Thou hast willed that I should not survive the age of childhood. For even then I existed, I lived, and I felt; I had intrusted to me a completeness of being—a trace of that most secret Unity whence I was derived; I guarded the integrity of all my senses by an inward sense, and in little ways, and in my thoughts about little things, I began to delight in truth. I disliked to be deceived, I had a strong memory, I had facility of speech, I found a comfort in friendship, I shrunk from pain, reproach, and ignorance. What was not wonderful, and a ground for praise, in that little life? But these are all the gifts of my God; I did not give them to myself; and they are good, and all these are myself. Good, then, is He Who made me, and He Himself is my good; and before Him do I rejoice for all those goods which were mine when I was a boy. For this was my sin, that not in Him, but in His creatures-in myself and other creatures, I sought for pleasures, honours, and realities; and so rushed headlong into trouble, shame, and error. Thanks be to Thee, my Sweetness, my Glory, and my Confidence, my God: thanks be to Thee for Thy gifts; but do Thou preserve them to me. For in so doing, Thou wilt preserve me; and Thy gifts shall be increased and perfected, and I shall be with Thee myself, for my very being is Thy gift.

BOOK II.

He passes to another age, that which commenced at sixteen, when having given up study in his father's house, he indulged his own will and desires; he remembers this time with deep remorse, and marvels at the way he was betrayed into committing a theft, and yet the human heart is not led into evil, unless in some way evil presents itself under the form of good.

CHAPTER I.

He reflects upon his Condition and the Vices of his Youth.

I

WISH now to recall the foulness of my past life,

and the carnal corruptions of my soul: not for love of them, but for love of Thee, my God. Through love of Thy Love I do this, reviewing my most wicked ways in the bitterness of my remembrance, that Thou mayest become sweet to me—a sweetness not deceptive but blessed and abiding, gathering me from that dissipation in which I was torn to pieces, when turned away from Thee as from the only One, I lost myself in many directions. I burned in my youth to be satisfied with things below, and I dared to run wild with manifold and shadowy loves; and "my beauty consumed away," and I became loathsome in Thine Eyes; pleasing myself, and desiring to please in the eyes of

man.

32

THE SINS OF HIS YOUTH

CHAPTER II.

Ir his Sirteenth Year, he was consumed with
Sensual Passions.

AN

ND what was it that delighted me, but to love and to be loved? But the intercourse of

mind with mind was not restricted within the clear bounds of honest love; but dense vapours arose from the miry lusts of the flesh, and the bubblings of youth, and clouded and darkened my heart; so that the clearness of true love could not be discerned from the thick mist of sensuality. Both boiled together confusedly within me, and carried away my weak young life over the precipices of passion, and merged me in a whirlpool of disgrace. Thy wrath was thickening over me, and I knew it not. I was deafened by the clanking of the chain of my mortality, the punishment of the pride of my soul; and I was going further and further from Thee, and Thou didst let me alone, and I was tossed about and poured out, and I flowed away and boiled over through my fornications, and Thou didst hold Thy peace, O Thou-at last my Joy! Thou then didst hold Thy peace, and I went still further from Thee into more and more fruitless sources of sorrow, with a proud dejection, and a restless weariness.

O that some one had set bounds to my disorder, and turned to account the fleeting charms of these novelties and limited their seductive power, that the waves of youthful passion might have broken themselves, if they could not be calmed, upon the shore of

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE MARRIED STATE 33

marriage, and have been content with the end, the procreation of children, which Thy law ordains, O Lord; Thou Who thus perpetuatest our mortal race, being able with a gentle hand to blunt the sharpness of the thorns which found no place in Thy paradise? For Thy Omnipotence is not far from us, even when we are far from Thee; or certainly I ought to have more carefully heeded the voice from Thy clouds-"Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh, but I spare you;" and, "it is good for a man not to touch a "2 and "he that is unmarried thinketh of the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he that is married careth for the things of the world, how he may please his wife."3 Therefore to these words I should have listened more attentively, and so, having become "an eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake," I should have more happily awaited Thy embraces.

I

woman;

But I, wretch as I was, became like a boiling sea, following the tide of my own violent impulses, having forsaken Thee; and I exceeded all bounds, yet I did not escape Thy scourges for what mortal can? For Thou wast never wanting in Thy merciful anger, and didst sprinkle all my unlawful pleasures with the bitterest misfortunes, that so I might be led to seek pleasures which were unalloyed. But such I could not find, save in Thee, O Lord, save in Thee, "Who teachest by trouble as by a precept," "5 and woundest that Thou mayest make whole, and killest lest we die from Thee. Where was I, and how far was I exiled from the delights of Thy house, in that sixteenth year 1 I Cor. vii. 28. I Cor. vii. I. 31 Cor. vii. 32, 33. 4 Matt. xix. 12. Deut. xxxii. 39.

2

5 Ps. xciv. 20.

C

34

HIS FATHEr's care foR HIM

of my life, when a raging passion, allowed indeed by the shameful habits of men, but disallowed by Thy laws, held me in its grasp, and I gave myself entirely up to it? My friends, meanwhile, took no care to hinder my ruin by lawful wedlock; but they only took care that I should learn to make an excellent speech, and become a persuasive orator.

CHAPTER III.

Concerning his Journey, taken for the sake of his Education, and the purpose of his Parents.

N

OW for that year my studies were given over; and in the meantime, after my return from Madaura (a neighbouring city to which I had begun to go for the purpose of learning grammar and rhetoric), the expenses of a longer journey to Carthage were being provided for me, by the energy rather than by the affluence of my father, for he was but a poor freeman in Thagaste. To whom am I relating these things? not indeed to Thee, O God, but before Thee I am relating them to my own kind, to humankind, or rather to that small part of it which may light upon these my writings. And for what end do I write this? that I myself and whoever reads it may consider "from what a depth we must cry unto Thee." For what is nearer to Thy Ears than a confessing heart, and a life of faith? And who did not extol my father for thus, beyond his means, providing for his son what was necessary for so long a journey for the sake of his education? For there were many wealthy citizens

1 Ps. cxxx. I.

I