Summa.
Confessions
Chapter 1. He Proclaims the Greatness of God, Whom He Desires to Seek and Invoke, Being Awakened by Him.
You are great, Lord, and greatly to be praised. Your power is great. Your wisdom cannot be numbered. Yet man desires to praise you. He is only a small part of your creation. Man carries around his mortality. He carries around the evidence of his sin. He carries around the evidence that you resist the proud. Still man desires to praise you. He is only a small part of your creation. You stir us up so that praising you brings delight. You made us for yourself. Our heart is restless until it rests in you. Grant me, Lord, to know and understand something. Should we call upon you first, or praise you first? Should we know you first, or call upon you first? But who calls upon you without knowing you? Someone who does not know you might call upon something else instead of you. Or rather, must you be called upon so that you may be known? But how will they call upon one in whom they have not believed? Or how will they believe without someone to preach? Those who seek the Lord will praise him. Those who seek will find him. Those who find will praise him. I will seek you, Lord, by calling upon you. I will call upon you by believing in you. You have been preached to us. My faith calls upon you, Lord. This is the faith you gave me. This is the faith you breathed into me through the humanity of your Son. You did this through the ministry of your preacher.
Chapter 2. That the God Whom We Invoke is in Us, and We in Him.
How can I call upon my God, my God and my Lord? When I call upon him, I will surely be calling him into myself. What place is there within me where my God might come? Where can God come into me—God who made heaven and earth? Lord my God, is there anything in me that could contain you? Do heaven and earth, which you made and in which you made me, contain you? Since nothing that exists would exist without you, does everything that exists contain you? Since I too exist, why do I ask you to come into me? I would not exist unless you were already in me. I am not in the depths of hell, yet even there you are present. For if I go down to hell, you are there. I would not exist at all, my God—I would not exist in any way—unless you were in me. Or rather, I would not exist unless I existed in you, from whom all things come, through whom all things exist, in whom all things have their being. Even so, Lord, even so. Where can I call you to, since I am already in you? From where would you come into me? Where can I withdraw beyond heaven and earth, so that from there my God might come into me—he who said,"I fill heaven and earth"?
Chapter 3. Everywhere God Wholly Fills All Things, But Neither Heaven Nor Earth Contains Him.
Do heaven and earth contain you since you fill them? Or do you fill them with something left over because they cannot contain you? Where do you pour out whatever remains of you after heaven and earth are filled? Do you not need to be contained anywhere since you contain all things? You fill what you contain by the very act of containing it. Vessels that are full of you do not make you stable. Even if they shatter you are not spilled out. When you pour yourself out upon us you do not fall down. You lift us up instead. You are not scattered. You gather us together. You fill all things with your whole self when you fill all things. Is it because all things cannot contain your whole self that they contain only a part of you? Do all things contain the same part at once? Do individual things contain individual parts? Do greater things contain greater parts and lesser things contain lesser parts? Is some part of you therefore greater and some part lesser? Or are you wholly present everywhere while nothing contains your whole self?
Chapter 4. The Majesty of God is Supreme, and His Virtues Inexplicable.
What are you then, my God? What, I ask, except the Lord God? Who is Lord besides the Lord? Who is God besides our God? You are the highest, the best, the most powerful, the most almighty, the most merciful and most just, the most hidden and most present, the most beautiful and most strong, stable and incomprehensible. You are unchangeable, yet you change all things. You are never new, never old. You renew all things. You lead the proud into old age, and they do not know it. You are always acting, always at rest. You gather, yet you need nothing. You carry, you fill, you protect. You create, you nourish, you perfect. You seek, though nothing is lacking to you. You love, yet you do not burn with passion. You are jealous, yet you are secure. You repent, yet you do not grieve. You grow angry, yet you are tranquil. You change your works, but you do not change your purpose. You receive what you find, though you never lost it. You are never poor, yet you rejoice in gains. You are never greedy, yet you demand interest. We pay you more than we owe, so that you might owe us. Yet who has anything that is not yours? You pay debts while owing nothing to anyone. You forgive debts while losing nothing. What have we said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? What does anyone say when speaking about you? Woe to those who are silent about you. Those who chatter are mute.
Chapter 5. He Seeks Rest in God, and Pardon of His Sins.
Who will grant me rest in you? Who will grant that you come into my heart and intoxicate it? Then I will forget my evils and embrace you as my one good. What are you to me? Have mercy so I may speak. What am I to you that you command me to love you? If I do not obey you grow angry with me. You threaten vast miseries. Is it really such a small thing if I do not love you? Woe is me! Tell me through your mercies, Lord my God, what you are to me. Say to my soul: I am your salvation. Speak this way so I may hear. Look, the ears of my heart are before you, Lord. Open them and say to my soul: I am your salvation. I will run after this voice and seize hold of you. Do not hide your face from me. Let me die rather than die without seeing it.
The house of my soul is too small for you to come to it. Let it be enlarged by you. It lies in ruins. Restore it. It contains things that would offend your eyes. I confess this and I know it. But who will cleanse it? To whom else besides you shall I cry out:"Cleanse me from my hidden faults, O Lord, and spare your servant from the sins of others"? I believe, and therefore I speak. Lord, you know. Have I not declared my sins against myself to you, my God? And you forgave the wickedness of my heart. I do not contend with you in judgment, for you are truth itself. I do not want to deceive myself, lest my iniquity lie to itself. Therefore I do not contend with you in judgment. For if you should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
Chapter 6. He Describes His Infancy, and Lauds the Protection and Eternal Providence of God.
But still, let me speak before your mercy, though I am dust and ashes. Let me speak nonetheless. Your mercy listens to me, not some human mocker. You might laugh at me too. But when you turn toward me, you will have compassion. What do I want to say, Lord my God? Simply this: I don't know where I came from when I arrived here. I mean this mortal life—or should I call it living death? I don't know. Your compassionate comfort received me. I heard this from my flesh-and-blood parents, from whom and in whom you shaped me in time. I don't remember it myself. Human comfort welcomed me through milk. My mother and nurses didn't fill their breasts by themselves. You gave me infant nourishment through them. You followed your own design and the riches you arranged down to the foundation of all things. You also gave me the desire for no more than you provided. You gave those who nursed me the wish to give me what you gave them. They wanted to give me sustenance through their natural love, which overflowed from you. My good was good for them, coming from them. But it wasn't really from them—it was through them. All good things come from you, God. All my salvation comes from my God. I realized this later. You called out to me through these very gifts you give, both within and without. Back then I only knew how to suck and rest in pleasures and cry when my flesh was hurt. Nothing more.
Later I began to laugh, first while sleeping, then while awake. This has been told to me about myself and I believed it, since we see other infants do the same. I do not remember these things about myself. Gradually I began to sense where I was. I wanted to show my desires to those who could fulfill them, but I could not. My desires were inside me, while they were outside. They had no way to enter into my soul through any sense of their own. So I threw my limbs about and made sounds. These were signs similar to my desires, the few I could make, as best I could make them. They were not truly similar to my desires. When I was not obeyed, either because I was not understood or because it would harm me, I became angry. I was indignant that my elders did not submit to me. I was angry that free people did not serve me. I took revenge on them by crying. I learned that infants are like this from those I was able to observe. That I was like this too was shown to me more by my caregivers who did not know they were teaching me than by those who knew they were.
My infancy died long ago. I continue to live. But you, Lord, live always. Nothing dies in you. Before the beginning of ages you existed. Before anything that could even be called"before"you were already there. You are God and Lord of everything you created. The causes of all unstable things stand firm with you. The unchanging origins of all changeable things remain with you. The eternal principles of all irrational and temporal things live with you. Tell me, God, as I beg you. Show mercy to this wretched man. Tell me whether my infancy followed after some other dead age of mine. Or was that time I spent in my mother's womb the beginning? I have learned something about that time. I have seen pregnant women myself. But what came before even that time, my sweetness, my God? Did I exist somewhere? Was I someone? I have no one to tell me these things. Neither father nor mother could know. No one else's experience helps. My own memory fails me. Do you laugh at me for asking these questions? Do you command me to praise you for what I do know and confess my faith to you?
I confess to you, Lord of heaven and earth. I praise you for my earliest days and infancy which I cannot remember. You have given man the ability to guess about himself from observing others. You have given him the ability to believe many things about himself based on the testimony of women. I existed and lived even then. By the end of my infancy I was already seeking signs to make my feelings known to others. Where does such a creature come from except from you, Lord? Can anyone be the maker of himself? Is there any channel flowing from elsewhere that brings existence and life to us other than the fact that you make us, Lord? For you, being and living are not two different things. You are supreme being and supreme living in one. You are supreme. You do not change. Today does not pass away in you. Yet today does pass through you because all these things exist in you. They would have no way to pass by unless you contained them. Since your years do not fail, your years are this present day. How many of our days and our fathers' days have already passed through your present day! They received their measures from it. They existed in whatever way they did. Still other days will pass through. They will receive their measures. They will exist in whatever way they do. But you remain the same. All tomorrows and beyond, all yesterdays and before—you will make them today. You have made them today. What does it matter to me if someone does not understand? Let him rejoice anyway and say: What is this? Let him rejoice even so. Let him love finding you by not finding rather than not finding you by finding.
Chapter 7. He Shows by Example that Even Infancy is Prone to Sin.
Listen, God. How terrible are the sins of mankind! Yet when a person says this, you have mercy on him. You made him, but you did not make sin in him. Who will remind me of the sin of my infancy? No one is clean from sin before you. Not even an infant whose life on earth lasts only one day. Who will remind me? Perhaps some tiny child now, in whom I see what I cannot remember about myself? What sin was I committing then? Was it because I cried while greedily sucking at the breast? If I did that now—not at the breast, but greedily devouring food suitable to my age—I would be mocked and criticized most justly. So then I was doing things worthy of criticism. But I could not understand anyone criticizing me. Neither custom nor reason allowed anyone to scold me. We root out and cast away these behaviors as we grow up. I have never seen anyone who knowingly throws away good things when cleaning something out. Were those things actually good for that time of life? Was it good to cry and beg for things that would harm me if given? Was it good to be bitterly angry at free people and my elders who would not submit to me? Was it good to rage at those who gave me life and many others wiser than I because they would not obey my every whim? Was it good to try to hurt them as much as I could because they would not obey commands that would have been destructive to obey? The weakness of infant limbs is innocent. The minds of infants are not. I have seen and experienced a jealous little child. He could not yet speak. He stared with a pale and bitter expression at his fellow nursling. Who does not know this? Mothers and nurses claim they can cleanse away such things with remedies of some kind. But surely this is not innocence either. At a fountain of milk flowing richly and abundantly, the child cannot bear to have a companion. That companion desperately needs help and still lives on that one food alone. These behaviors are tolerated kindly. This is not because they are nothing or small matters. It is because they will disappear as age advances. You can prove this point. These same behaviors cannot be endured calmly when they are found in someone older.
Therefore, Lord my God, you gave life to an infant. You fashioned a body and equipped it with senses as we see. You joined its limbs together. You adorned it with beauty. For its complete well-being you implanted all the instincts of a living creature. You command me to praise you for these things. You command me to give thanks to you and sing psalms to your name, Most High. You are God, all-powerful and good. Even if you had made only these things, you would deserve praise. No one else can do what you do. You are the One from whom all measure comes. You are most beautiful, forming all things. By your law you order everything. Lord, I lived through that early time though I do not remember it. I have believed others about it. I have guessed what I did by watching other infants. Though this is quite reliable guessing, I am reluctant to count that time as part of this life I live in this world. As far as the darkness of my forgetting goes, that time equals the time I lived in my mother's womb. If I was conceived in wickedness and my mother nourished me in sins in her womb, then where, I ask you, my God—where, Lord—was I ever innocent? I, your servant, where or when was I innocent? But look, I pass over that time. What does it matter to me now? I recall no traces of it.
Chapter 8. That When a Boy He Learned to Speak, Not by Any Set Method, But from the Acts and Words of His Parents.
Did I not come here by progressing from infancy into boyhood? Or rather, did boyhood not come into me and replace infancy? Infancy did not depart. Where could it have gone? Yet it was no longer there. I was no longer an infant who could not speak. I was now a boy who could talk. I remember this. I later realized how I had learned to speak. Older people did not teach me by presenting words to me in some fixed order of instruction, as they would later do with letters. Instead, I used the mind you gave me, my God. I wanted to express the feelings of my heart through groans and various sounds and movements of my limbs so that my will might be obeyed. I could not express everything I wanted, nor could I express it to everyone I wanted to reach. So I grasped things with my memory. When people called something by name and moved their bodies toward that thing according to their voice, I watched and remembered that they called that thing by the sound they made when they wanted to point it out. I understood their intention from their bodily movement. This was like the natural language common to all peoples. It consists of facial expressions and nods of the eyes and gestures of other limbs and tones of voice. These indicate the mind's attitude in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding things. So I gradually gathered that words, placed in their proper positions in various sentences and heard repeatedly, were signs of things. I trained my mouth to use these signs and through them announced my own wishes. In this way I shared with those around me the signs for expressing desires. I entered more deeply into the stormy society of human life. I depended on my parents' authority and the guidance of my elders.
Chapter 9. Concerning the Hatred of Learning, the Love of Play, and the Fear of Being Whipped Noticeable in Boys: and of the Folly of Our Elders and Masters.
My God, my God, what miseries I experienced there, and what mockeries! The right way to live as a boy was set before me. I was to obey those who advised me. I was to flourish in this world and excel in the arts of speech. These arts served human honor and false riches. I was sent to school to learn letters. I did not know what use these had, wretch that I was. Yet if I was lazy in learning, I was beaten. This was praised by my elders. Many who had lived this life before us had built these toilsome paths. We were forced to travel them. The labor and pain of Adam's sons was multiplied. But we found people who prayed to you, Lord. We learned from them. We sensed, as we were able, that you were someone great. You could hear us and help us, even though you did not appear to our senses. As a boy I began to pray to you, my help and refuge. I broke the bonds of my tongue in calling upon you. Though I was small, my feeling was not small when I begged you not to let me be beaten at school. When you did not hear me—which was not foolishness on your part—my beatings were laughed at by grown men, even by my own parents. They wanted no harm to come to me. Yet my beatings were then my great and grievous suffering.
Is there anyone, Lord, whose soul is so great and clings to you with such overwhelming devotion? Is there anyone, I ask—for a certain foolishness can produce this effect—is there someone who cleaves to you so piously and is moved so powerfully that he considers racks and claws and various torments of this kind as nothing? These are the very torments to escape which people throughout all lands pray to you with great fear. Does such a person mock those who dread these sufferings most bitterly? Does he laugh at them the way our parents laughed at the punishments we children endured from our teachers? We feared those punishments no less. We begged you no less to help us escape them. Yet we still fell short in our writing or reading or thinking about our studies below what was required of us. It was not that we lacked memory or ability, Lord. You had given us enough of these for our age. But we delighted in play. And we were punished for this by those who were certainly doing the same things themselves. But when adults engage in such trifles, they are called business. When children do the same things, they are punished by adults. No one pities the children or the adults or both groups. Unless some good judge of affairs would approve that I was beaten because I played ball as a boy. Unless he would say this game hindered me from learning my letters quickly enough—letters with which I would later play in more shameful ways as an adult. But the very man who beat me was doing something similar. If he had been defeated by his fellow teacher in some small debate, he would have been tortured more by anger and envy than I was when my playmate beat me in a ball game.
Chapter 10. Through a Love of Ball-Playing and Shows, He Neglects His Studies and the Injunctions of His Parents.
And yet I was sinning, Lord God, who orders and creates all natural things but only orders sins. Lord my God, I was sinning by acting against the commands of my parents and teachers. I could have made good use later of the learning they wanted me to acquire, whatever their motives were. I was disobedient not because I was choosing something better, but because I loved playing games. I loved proud victories in competitions. I loved having my ears tickled by false stories so they would itch more intensely. The same curiosity blazed more and more through my eyes toward the shows and games of adults. Yet those who put on these shows are distinguished by such high rank that almost all parents want this for their little children. But these same parents willingly allow their children to be beaten if such spectacles interfere with the studies by which they hope their children will reach the point of putting on such shows themselves. Look upon these things mercifully, Lord, and free us who now call upon you. Free also those who do not yet call upon you, so that they may call upon you and you may free them.
Chapter 11. Seized by Disease, His Mother Being Troubled, He Earnestly Demands Baptism, Which on Recovery is Postponed — His Father Not as Yet Believing in Christ.
Even as a child I had heard about the eternal life promised to us through the humility of our Lord God who descended to meet our pride. I was already marked with the sign of his cross and seasoned with his salt from my mother's womb. She hoped greatly in you. You saw me, Lord, when I was still a boy. One day stomach pain suddenly seized me with such heat that I nearly died. You saw, my God, that you were already my guardian. You witnessed the emotion and faith with which I begged my mother and your Church for the baptism of Christ my God and Lord. My earthly mother was deeply troubled. She carried my eternal salvation in her pure heart through faith in you more tenderly than she had carried me in her womb. She would have rushed immediately to have me initiated and washed clean in the saving sacraments while I confessed you, Lord Jesus, for the forgiveness of sins. But then I recovered suddenly. So my cleansing was postponed. It seemed necessary that I should become more defiled if I lived. After that washing, guilt from sinful defilements would have been greater and more dangerous. I already believed this way. So did my mother and our whole household. Only my father differed. Yet he did not overcome my mother's holy influence that led me to believe in Christ, since he had not yet believed himself. My mother worked to make you my father, my God, rather than him. In this you helped her overcome her husband. She served him as the better woman serves. But in this matter she served you, who commanded it.
I ask you, my God, I wish I could know, if you also wished it, by what reasoning I was delayed from being baptized then. Was it for my good that the reins of sinning were loosened for me? Or were they not loosened? Why then does this saying still sound everywhere in our ears about different people:"Let him be. Let him do it. He is not yet baptized."Yet when it comes to bodily health we do not say:"Let him be wounded more. He is not yet healed."How much better it would have been if I had been healed quickly. How much better if it had been arranged through the care of my family and myself that the salvation of my soul, once received, would be safe under your protection—you who would have given it. Yes, that would have been better. But my mother already knew how many and how great were the waves of temptation that seemed to threaten after childhood. She preferred to commit to those waves the clay from which I would later be formed rather than the image already shaped.
Chapter 12. Being Compelled, He Gave His Attention to Learning; But Fully Acknowledges that This Was the Work of God.
Even in my very childhood, which caused less fear for me than my teenage years would, I did not love learning. I hated being forced into it. Yet I was forced. And it was good for me. But I was not doing good myself, for I would not have learned unless I was compelled. No one does good unwillingly, even when what he does is actually good. Those who forced me were not doing good either. But good was being done for me by you, my God. They could not see the purpose for which they made me learn, except to satisfy the insatiable desires of a wealthy poverty and a shameful glory. But you, who have numbered the hairs of our heads, used the error of all those who pressed me to learn for my benefit. And you used my own unwillingness to learn as my punishment, which I deserved as such a small boy yet such a great sinner. Thus from those who were not doing good, you were doing good for me. And for my own sinning, you were justly repaying me. For you have commanded it, and so it is, that every disordered soul becomes its own punishment.
Chapter 13. He Delighted in Latin Studies and the Empty Fables of the Poets, But Hated the Elements of Literature and the Greek Language.
I still cannot fully understand why I hated Greek literature as a young boy learning it. I had fallen in love with Latin literature. Not the Latin taught by elementary teachers, but the Latin taught by those called grammarians. I found those elementary classes as burdensome and punishing as all the Greek classes. In those classes you learn to read and write and count. But where did this hatred come from except from the sin and emptiness of life? I was flesh, and a spirit that walks away and does not return. Those elementary subjects were certainly better because they were more reliable. Through them I gained and still possess the ability to read whatever writing I find. I can write whatever I want. This was better than being forced to memorize the wanderings of some Aeneas whose story I didn't know. I forgot my own wanderings. I wept for dead Dido because she killed herself for love. Meanwhile I was dying in these studies, separated from you, O God my life. I bore this with dry eyes, most wretched of all.
What could be more wretched than a wretch who feels no pity for himself? I wept for Dido's death, which came from loving Aeneas. But I did not weep for my own death, which came from not loving you, O God. You are the light of my heart. You are the bread of my inner mouth and soul. You are the power that weds my mind to the depths of my thought. I did not love you. I committed adultery against you. As I played the adulterer, voices rang out from every side:"Well done! Well done!"Friendship with this world is adultery against you. People cry"Well done! Well done!"so that a man feels ashamed if he does not act this way. I did not weep over these things. Instead I wept for Dido, who"died and followed the sword to her final end."I myself was following my own final end—your created things—having abandoned you. I was earth going to earth. If I had been forbidden to read these stories, I would have grieved that I could not read what would make me grieve. Such madness is considered more noble and rich literature than the books that taught me to read and write.
But now let my God cry out in my soul. Let your truth speak to me:"It is not so. It is not so. That earlier teaching was far better."Look, I am more ready to forget the wanderings of Aeneas and all such things than to forget writing and reading. True, curtains hang at the doorways of grammar schools. But they do not represent the honor of hidden mysteries so much as a covering for error. Let those I no longer fear not cry out against me while I confess to you what my soul desires, my God. Let me find peace in the correction of my evil ways so that I may love your good ways. Let the sellers and buyers of grammar not cry out against me. If I ask them whether it is true that the poet says Aeneas once came to Carthage, the less educated will answer that they do not know. The more educated will even deny it is true. But if I ask with what letters the name Aeneas is written, all who have learned this will give me the true answer. They answer according to that agreement and understanding by which people have established these signs among themselves. Again, if I ask which of these things anyone would forget with greater harm to this life—reading and writing, or those poetic inventions—who does not see what answer he will give who has not completely forgotten himself? Therefore I sinned as a boy when I preferred those empty things to these more useful ones in my love. Or rather, I hated these things and loved those things. Already"one and one, two; two and two, four"was a hateful chant to me. But the sweetest spectacle of vanity was the wooden horse full of armed men. There was the burning of Troy. There was the very ghost of Creusa.
Chapter 14. Why He Despised Greek Literature, and Easily Learned Latin.
Why then did I hate Greek grammar when it sang such tales? Homer was skilled at weaving such stories. He was delightfully imaginative. Yet as a boy I found him bitter. I believe Virgil seems the same way to Greek boys when they are forced to learn him as I learned Homer. The difficulty of mastering a foreign language was like bitter gall sprinkled over all the sweet pleasures of Greek storytelling. I knew none of those words. I was pressured violently with savage terrors and punishments to learn them. As an infant I certainly knew no Latin words either. Yet I learned by paying attention without any fear or torment. I learned amid the caresses of nurses and the jokes of those who smiled at me and the joys of those who played with me. I learned those words without the burdensome pressure of those who force learning. My heart urged me to give birth to its thoughts. I could not do this unless I had learned some words. I learned them not from teachers but from speakers. In their ears I labored to bring forth whatever I felt. This makes it clear enough that free curiosity has greater power for learning these things than fearful necessity. But necessity restrains curiosity's flow by your laws, God. Your laws extend from schoolmasters' rods all the way to the trials of martyrs. Your laws have power to mix wholesome bitterness with pleasure. They call us back to you from the deadly delight that led us away from you.
Chapter 15. He Entreats God, that Whatever Useful Things He Learned as a Boy May Be Dedicated to Him.
Hear my prayer, Lord. Do not let my soul fail under your discipline. Do not let me fail to confess your mercies to you. You have rescued me from all my worst ways. Be sweeter to me than all the seductions I once followed. Let me love you with the greatest strength. Let me embrace your hand with all my heart. Rescue me from every temptation until the end. Look, you are my Lord, my King, and my God. Let whatever useful things I learned as a boy serve you. Let my speaking serve you. Let my writing serve you. Let my reading serve you. Let my counting serve you. When I was learning empty things, you were giving me discipline. In those empty things you forgave me the sins of my pleasures. I learned many useful words in those studies. But these same things can be learned from subjects that are not empty. That is the safe path where children should walk.
Chapter 16. He Disapproves of the Mode of Educating Youth, and He Points Out Why Wickedness is Attributed to the Gods by the Poets.
But woe to you, river of human custom! Who can resist you? How long will you refuse to dry up? How long will you sweep the children of Eve into that great and terrible sea which even those who board the ship barely cross? Did I not read in your waters of Jupiter both thundering and committing adultery? Surely he could not do both at once. But it was arranged so that false thunder might serve as a cover for imitating true adultery. What teacher in his shabby cloak listens with a sober ear to a man shouting from that same dust and saying:"Homer invented these stories and transferred human qualities to the gods. I would prefer that divine qualities be transferred to us instead"? But it would be more accurate to say that Homer did indeed invent these tales. By attributing divine nature to wicked men, he ensured that wickedness would not be thought wicked. Anyone who committed such acts would appear to have imitated not corrupt humans, but the gods of heaven.
And yet, you hellish river, the sons of men are cast into you with payments so they might learn these things. A great matter is conducted when this happens publicly in the forum under the gaze of laws that decree salaries above mere wages. You strike your rocks and roar out saying:"Here words are learned. Here eloquence is acquired, most necessary for persuading in matters and explaining thoughts."Indeed, we would not know these words—golden shower, lap, deception, temples of heaven—and other words written in that place unless Terence brought forward a wicked young man setting Jupiter before himself as a model for his lust. The youth gazes at a painting on a wall where this picture appeared:"Jupiter, in what manner they say he once sent a golden shower into Danae's lap, having deceived the woman."See how he stirs himself to passion as if by heavenly instruction."But what god?"he says."The one who shakes the highest temples of heaven with his thunder. Should I, a mere mortal, not do the same? Indeed I did it willingly and gladly."Words are not learned more conveniently through this filth. Rather, through these words that filth is performed more boldly. I do not accuse the words themselves, like choice and precious vessels. But I accuse the wine of error that was served to us in them by drunken teachers. If we did not drink, we were beaten. We were not allowed to appeal to any sober judge. And yet, my God, in whose sight my memory is now secure, I learned these things willingly. Wretched as I was, I delighted in them. For this I was called a boy of good promise.
Chapter 17. He Continues on the Unhappy Method of Training Youth in Literary Subjects.
Let me speak about my own talent—your gift, my God—and the foolish pursuits that wore it away. A task was set before me that deeply troubled my soul. I was driven by the promise of praise and the fear of disgrace or beating. I had to speak the words of Juno in her rage and grief. She could not turn the Trojan king away from Italy. I had never heard that Juno actually spoke these words. We were forced to follow the wandering tracks of poetic fiction. We had to say in prose what the poet had said in verse. The student who spoke most admirably was the one whose emotions of anger and pain best matched the dignity of this imagined character. His words clothed his thoughts in fitting dress. What good did this do me, O my true life, my God? Why did I receive applause above many of my fellow students and readers? Look—all of this was smoke and wind. Was there nothing else to exercise my mind and tongue? Your praises, Lord, your praises through your Scriptures should have supported the branch of my heart. Then I would not have been carried off as shameful prey through empty trifles to the birds of the air. There is more than one way to sacrifice to the fallen angels.
Chapter 18. Men Desire to Observe the Rules of Learning, But Neglect the Eternal Rules of Everlasting Safety.
Why should it surprise anyone that I was swept away by empty things and wandered far from you, my God? The men held up as examples for me would be scolded and embarrassed if they spoke of their good deeds using bad grammar or incorrect speech. But if they described their lustful actions with correct and flowing words in rich and elegant language, they were praised and glorified. You see all this, Lord, yet you remain silent. You are patient and full of mercy and truth. Will you stay silent forever? Even now you rescue from this terrible pit a soul that seeks you and thirsts for your delights. This soul's heart cries out to you:"I have sought your face. Your face, Lord, I will seek."To be far from your face means to live in dark emotion. We don't travel away from you or return to you by walking with our feet or crossing distances. Did your younger son in the parable need to find horses or chariots or ships? Did he fly away on visible wings or walk with moving legs to live wastefully in that distant country and squander what you had given him when he left? You were a sweet father when you gave those gifts. You were even sweeter to him when he returned in need. Living in lustful emotion means living in darkness. This is what it means to be far from your face.
Look, Lord God, and see with the patience that marks your seeing. See how carefully the children of men observe the agreements of letters and syllables received from earlier speakers. Yet they neglect the eternal agreements of perpetual salvation received from you. Consider this: someone holds or teaches those ancient conventions of sounds. If he speaks against grammatical discipline and says"ominem"without aspirating the first syllable, this displeases men more than if he hates a human being in violation of your commandments, though he himself is human. It is as if someone feels that any human enemy harms him more than the very hatred that stirs him against that enemy. It is as if someone who destroys another by persecution does not damage himself more gravely than he damages his own heart by making enemies. Certainly the knowledge of letters is not more interior than the written conscience that tells us not to do to another what we would not wish to suffer ourselves. How hidden you are, dwelling on high in silence, God alone great! By your tireless law you scatter punishing blindness over illicit desires. When a man seeks fame for eloquence, he stands before a human judge surrounded by a crowd of people. He pursues his enemy with the most savage hatred. Yet he watches most carefully lest he make an error of tongue and say"among humans"incorrectly. But he does not watch carefully lest through fury of mind he remove a human being from among the living.
I was a miserable boy lying at the threshold of these customs. That arena was my training ground. There I feared making a grammatical error more than I was careful to avoid envying others when they didn't make mistakes. I say these things and confess them to you, my God. These were the things for which I was praised by those whose approval I thought was honorable living. I did not see the abyss of shame into which I had been cast away from your eyes. What could have been more disgusting about me in those days than this? I was displeasing even to people like myself. I deceived my tutor and teachers and parents with countless lies. I did this out of love for games, eagerness to watch foolish spectacles, and restless desire to imitate performances. I also stole from my parents' storeroom and from their table. Sometimes gluttony drove me to it. Sometimes I wanted something to give to other boys in exchange for their games, which delighted them just as much as they delighted me, even though they were selling them. Even in these games I often hunted for fraudulent victories. I was conquered by my desire for empty superiority. What did I hate to suffer more than the very thing I was doing to others? When I was caught and accused, I preferred to rage rather than yield. Is this boyish innocence? It is not, Lord. It is not. I beg you, my God. These same things pass from tutors and teachers, from nuts and balls and birds, to governors and kings, to gold, estates, and slaves. These very same things transfer to the greater stages of life, just as greater punishments replace the rod. Therefore, our King, you approved humility as the sign of childhood's stature when you said:"Of such is the kingdom of heaven."
But even so, Lord, I give thanks to you, the most excellent and perfect creator and ruler of the universe, our God, even if you had wanted me to remain only a child. For even then I existed. I lived and I felt. I cared for my own well-being, which was a trace of that most secret unity from which I came. I protected the wholeness of my senses with an inner awareness. In small things and in thoughts about small matters, I took delight in truth. I did not want to be deceived. My memory was strong. I was learning to speak. Friendship soothed me. I fled from pain, rejection, and ignorance. What is not wonderful and praiseworthy in such a living being? But all these things are gifts from my God. I did not give them to myself. They are good, and all of them together make up who I am. Therefore, the one who made me is good. He himself is my good. I rejoice in him for all the good things I possessed even as a child. This was my sin: I sought pleasures, heights, and truths not in him but in his creatures—in myself and in others. And so I plunged into sorrows, confusions, and errors. Thanks be to you, my sweetness, my honor, and my confidence, my God. Thanks be to you for your gifts. But preserve them for me. In preserving me this way, you will also increase and perfect what you have given me. I will be with you. For you have given me the gift of existence itself.