Summa.
Confessions
Chapter 1. That It Becomes the Soul to Praise God, and to Confess Unto Him.
Accept the sacrifice of my confessions from the hand of my tongue. You formed it and stirred it to confess your name. Heal all my bones so they may say:"Lord, who is like you?"The one who confesses to you does not teach you what is happening within himself. No closed heart shuts out your eye. No human hardness pushes away your hand. You dissolve that hardness when you choose. You act either in mercy or in judgment. No one can hide from your heat. Let my soul praise you so it may love you. Let it confess your mercies to you so it may praise you. Your entire creation never stops or falls silent in praising you. Every human spirit praises through the mouth turned toward you. Animals and physical things praise through the mouth of those who contemplate them. Our soul rises up to you from weariness. It leans on the things you have made. It passes on to you who made these things so wonderfully. There is refreshment and true strength.
Chapter 2. On the Vanity of Those Who Wished to Escape the Omnipotent God.
Let the restless and wicked go and flee from you. You see them and distinguish the shadows. Look how beautiful all things are with them, yet they themselves are ugly. What harm have they done to you? How have they dishonored your reign that stretches from the heavens to the lowest depths, just and complete? Where did they flee when they ran from your face? Where do you not find them? They fled so they would not see you seeing them. Blinded, they stumbled against you. You do not abandon anything you have made. The unjust stumbled against you and were justly tormented. They withdrew from your gentleness. They struck against your righteousness. They fell into their own harshness. Clearly they do not know that you are everywhere. No place contains you. You alone are present even to those who go far from you. Let them turn back and seek you. You have not abandoned your creation as they abandoned their Creator. Let them turn back and seek you. Look, there you are in their hearts. You are in the hearts of those who confess to you. You are with those who throw themselves upon you and weep in your embrace after their difficult ways. You gently wipe away their tears. They weep more and rejoice in their weeping. You are the Lord, not some man of flesh and blood. You are the Lord who made them. You restore and comfort them. Where was I when I was seeking you? You were before me. But I had departed from myself and could not find myself. How much less could I find you!
Chapter 3. Having Heard Faustus, the Most Learned Bishop of the Manichæans, He Discerns that God, the Author Both of Things Animate and Inanimate, Chiefly Has Care for the Humble.
I will speak before my God of that thirty-first year of my life. A certain bishop of the Manicheans had come to Carthage. His name was Faustus. He was a great snare of the devil. Many were entangled by him through the charm of his smooth speech. Though I praised his eloquence, I still distinguished it from the truth of things I was eager to learn. I did not look at what kind of vessel his speech was. I looked at what knowledge this Faustus might set before me to feed upon. He was famous among them. Fame had already spoken to me about him. It said he was most skilled in all respectable learning. It said he was excellently educated in the liberal disciplines. I had read many works of the philosophers. I kept them committed to memory. From these I compared certain things to those long tales of the Manicheans. Those things seemed more probable to me which were said by men who had such power that they could judge the world. Yet they never found its Lord. You are great, Lord, and you look upon the humble. But the lofty things you know from afar. You do not draw near except to the broken in heart. The proud do not find you. They do not find you even if with curious skill they count the stars and the sand. They do not find you even if they measure the regions of the heavens and trace the paths of the stars.
They search for these things with their own minds and the intelligence you gave them. They have discovered much and predicted many years in advance the eclipses of the sun and moon. They foretold what day they would occur. They foretold what hour. They foretold how much of each light would be darkened. Their calculations did not fail them. Everything happened just as they predicted. They wrote down the rules they discovered. These rules are still read today. From them people predict what year an eclipse will come. They predict what month and what day of that month. They predict what hour of that day. They predict how much of the moon's or sun's light will fail. And it happens exactly as predicted. People who don't understand these things are amazed and stunned. People who do understand them rejoice and boast. But through wicked pride they withdraw from your light and fail. They can foresee a solar eclipse so far in advance. Yet they cannot see their own present darkness. They do not reverently ask where they got the intelligence to search for these things. When they discover that you made them, they do not give themselves to you to preserve what you created. Instead they kill what they have made of themselves as an offering to you. They slaughter their proud thoughts like birds. They slaughter their idle curiosities like fish of the sea that roam the secret paths of the deep. They slaughter their lusts like beasts of the field. They do this so that you, God who are a consuming fire, may devour their dead concerns and remake them for immortality.
But they do not know the way. They do not know your Word through which you made all the things they count. They do not know you made the counters themselves. They do not know you made the sense by which they perceive what they count. They do not know you made the mind from which they count. Your wisdom cannot be numbered. But your Only-begotten became wisdom for us. He became righteousness and sanctification. He was numbered among us. He paid tribute to Caesar. They do not know this way by which they might descend from themselves to him. They do not know how through him they might ascend to you. They do not know this way. They think themselves lofty like the stars and brilliant. But look how they have crashed to earth. Their foolish heart has been darkened. They speak many true things about creation. But they do not seek the Truth who is creation's Maker with reverence. Therefore they do not find him. Or if they do find him, they know God but do not honor him as God. They do not give thanks. Instead they become futile in their thinking. They claim to be wise. They credit themselves with what belongs to you. Through this twisted blindness they try to credit you with what belongs to them. They heap lies upon you who are truth itself. They exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for images resembling corruptible man and birds and four-footed beasts and serpents. They turn your truth into a lie. They worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator.
Still, I held onto many true things they had said about creation itself. The mathematical principles came to mind, along with the order of seasons and the visible evidence of the stars. I compared these with the teachings of Mani, who had written volumes of complete nonsense about these matters. But I found no rational explanation for the solstices and equinoxes. There was no account of eclipses. There was nothing like what I had learned from books of worldly wisdom. Yet I was commanded to believe. Those explanations I had tested with mathematics and my own eyes were nowhere to be found. The difference was enormous.
Chapter 4. That the Knowledge of Terrestrial and Celestial Things Does Not Give Happiness, But the Knowledge of God Only.
Lord God of truth, does anyone who knows these things now please you? The man who knows all these facts but does not know you is wretched. The man who knows you is blessed, even if he knows none of these facts. The man who knows both you and these facts is not more blessed because of the facts. He is blessed because of you alone. This is true if he knows you and glorifies you as God and gives thanks and does not become vain in his thoughts. Consider the man who knows he owns a tree and gives thanks to you for its usefulness. He does not know how many feet tall it is or how wide it spreads. He is better than the man who measures the tree and counts all its branches but does not own it and does not know or love its creator. In the same way, the faithful man owns the whole world of riches. Having nothing, he possesses everything by clinging to you whom all things serve. He may not even know the circuits of the northern stars. Yet it would be foolish to doubt that he is far better than the man who measures the heavens and counts the stars and weighs the elements but neglects you. You have arranged all things in measure and number and weight.
Chapter 5. Of Manichæus Pertinaciously Teaching False Doctrines, and Proudly Arrogating to Himself the Holy Spirit.
But who was asking for this unknown Manichaeus to write about these things? Piety could be learned without any skill in such matters. You said to man,"Behold piety and wisdom."A person could ignore this wisdom even if he knew those other subjects perfectly. But because he did not know those subjects yet dared most shamelessly to teach them, he could not possibly know true wisdom at all. It is vanity to boast of knowing these worldly things even when you do know them. But piety means confessing faith to you. That deceiver spoke at length about these matters for this reason. When those who had truly learned these subjects exposed him, his understanding of other more hidden things would be clearly revealed. He did not want to be considered insignificant. Instead he tried to convince people that the Holy Spirit himself lived in him personally with full authority as the comforter and enricher of your faithful ones. So when he was caught speaking falsely about the heavens and stars and the movements of sun and moon, his audacity proved sacrilegious. These subjects do not pertain to religious doctrine. Yet he spoke about things he not only did not know but actually falsified. He spoke with such insane prideful vanity that he tried to claim these abilities for himself as if he were a divine person.
When I hear that some Christian brother is ignorant of these matters and holds one opinion instead of another, I look upon this person with patience as he forms his views. I do not see that it harms him when he does not believe unworthy things about you, Lord and creator of all, even if he happens to be ignorant about the position and nature of physical creation. However, it does harm him if he thinks this belongs to the very framework of religious doctrine. It harms him if he dares to stubbornly affirm what he does not know. But even such weakness is supported by mother charity in the cradle of faith. This continues until the new man rises up into a perfect man and cannot be carried about by every wind of doctrine. But consider someone who dared to become a teacher, author, leader and chief of those he would persuade. Consider someone who acted so that his followers would think they were following not just any man, but your holy Spirit. Who would not judge such madness detestable and worthy of complete rejection if he were proven to have spoken falsehoods? Nevertheless, I had not yet clearly discovered whether the alternations of longer and shorter days and nights could be explained according to his words. I had not discovered whether night and day themselves, the eclipses of lights, and similar things I had read in other books could be explained by his teachings. If perhaps they could be explained, it would become uncertain to me whether things were actually this way or not. But I would place his authority before my own judgment because of his reputed holiness.
Chapter 6. Faustus Was Indeed an Elegant Speaker, But Knew Nothing of the Liberal Sciences.
For nearly nine years I wandered restlessly in spirit while listening to them. I awaited this Faustus with intense longing. The other Manicheans I happened to encounter would fail when I pressed them with difficult questions. They kept promising me that when Faustus arrived and we could speak together, he would easily solve these problems for me. If I sought answers to even greater questions, he would untangle those most clearly too. When he finally came, I found him to be a pleasant and charming speaker. He talked about the same things the others usually discussed, but with much more sweetness. But what good was this most elegant server of cups to my thirst for more precious drink? My ears were already satiated with such things. These ideas did not seem better to me simply because they were expressed more beautifully. They were not true because they were eloquent. The soul was not wise because the face was attractive and the speech was graceful. Those who had promised him to me were not good judges of substance. He seemed prudent and wise to them only because his speaking delighted them. But I had noticed another type of person who also viewed truth with suspicion. They refused to accept truth if it was presented through polished and rich language. You had already taught me, my God, in wonderful and hidden ways. I believe you taught me this because it is true. No one besides you is a teacher of truth, wherever and however it may shine forth. I had already learned from you that something should not seem true simply because it is spoken eloquently. Neither should it seem false because the sounds from the lips are poorly arranged. Again, something is not true because it is stated crudely. Neither is it false because the speech is splendid. Wisdom and foolishness are like useful and useless foods. Both types of food can be served in decorated vessels or plain ones, just as both can be served with ornate words or simple ones.
My eagerness had awaited this man for so long. I was delighted by his passionate manner when he debated. I was delighted by his fitting words. I was delighted by how easily he found phrases to clothe his thoughts. I delighted in this along with many others. I praised and exalted him above many others. But I was troubled that in the crowd of listeners I could not approach him directly. I could not share with him the concerns of my questions. I could not confer with him intimately. I could not give and receive conversation with him. When I was finally able to do this, I began to occupy his attention with my close friends at a time when it was proper to speak in turns. I brought forward certain matters that moved me. I discovered first that this man lacked training in the liberal arts except for grammar, and even that in the ordinary way. He had read some speeches of Cicero. He had read very few books of Seneca. He had read some poets. He had read whatever volumes of his sect were written in Latin with polish. Daily practice in speaking was always present with him. From these sources came his eloquence. This became more appealing and more seductive through his controlled talent and a certain natural charm. Is this how it was as I remember, Lord my God, judge of my conscience? Before you are my heart and my memory. You were then guiding me by the hidden secret of your providence. You were already turning my shameful errors before my face so that I might see them and hate them.
Chapter 7. Clearly Seeing the Fallacies of the Manichæans, He Retires from Them, Being Remarkably Aided by God.
After it became clear to me that he was ignorant of those subjects in which I had thought he excelled, I began to despair that he could reveal and resolve the questions that troubled me. Someone ignorant of these matters might indeed possess the truth of piety, but only if he were not a Manichean. Their books are filled with the longest tales about heaven and stars and sun and moon. I had hoped he could carefully explain to me whether these things were as the Manichean books described them, or whether some other equally valid explanation could be given, by comparing them with the mathematical calculations I had read elsewhere. I no longer thought he could do this. When I brought forward these matters for consideration and discussion, he quite modestly did not dare to take on the task itself. He knew that he did not know these things, and he was not ashamed to admit it. He was not like the many chatterboxes I had endured, who tried to teach me these things while saying nothing of substance. This man truly had a heart, though not one directed toward you, yet not too reckless toward himself either. He was not completely ignorant of his own ignorance. He did not want to get himself trapped in rash argument from which he could find no way out or easy return. For this reason too he pleased me even more. The restraint of a mind that confesses its limits is more beautiful than those things I was eager to know. I found him to be this way in all the more difficult and subtle questions.
My enthusiasm for studying Manichean writings was now broken. I despaired even more of their other teachers. The famous Faustus had failed to resolve the many questions that troubled me. I began to spend time with him because of his passion for literature. He burned with enthusiasm for the same writings I was then teaching to young students as a rhetoric professor in Carthage. I would read with him. Sometimes he wanted to hear certain works. Sometimes I chose works I thought suited to his talent. But my entire effort to advance in that sect was completely cut short once I got to know this man. I didn't separate from them entirely. I found nothing better. I decided to remain content for now with what I had already stumbled into. I would stay unless something more worthy of choice should shine forth. So Faustus became the one who began to loosen the snare that had trapped me. He had been a deadly trap for many others. He did this without willing it or knowing it. Your hands, my God, never abandoned my soul in the hidden workings of your providence. My mother's heart-blood was sacrificed to you through her tears. She wept for me day and night. You dealt with me in wondrous ways. You accomplished this, my God. A man's steps are directed by the Lord. The Lord desires his path. What other provision for salvation exists except your hand? You remake what you have made.
Chapter 8. He Sets Out for Rome, His Mother in Vain Lamenting It.
You worked on me until I was convinced to go to Rome. I would teach there what I had been teaching in Carthage. I will not pass over confessing to you how this conviction came about. Your deepest purposes and your mercy so present with us must be considered and proclaimed even in these matters. I did not want to go to Rome because my friends promised me greater profits and higher status when they urged this move. Though these things did influence my mind at the time. The main reason was almost the only one. I had heard that students there studied more quietly. They were kept in line by more orderly discipline. They could not burst into any teacher's classroom rudely and shamelessly unless they were his own students. The teacher had to give permission before outsiders could be admitted at all. The opposite was true in Carthage. There was a foul and uncontrolled license among the students. They would break in shamelessly. With almost furious boldness they would disrupt whatever order each teacher had established to help his students make progress. They committed many wrongs with amazing stupidity. These should have been punished by law if custom had not protected them. This showed them to be more wretched. They now did what they thought was permitted. But it would never be allowed under your eternal law. They thought they acted with impunity. Yet they were punished by the very blindness that drove their actions. They suffered incomparably worse things than what they inflicted. When I was a student I had refused to adopt such behavior. When I became a teacher I was forced to endure it from others. So I was pleased to go where everyone who knew said such things did not happen. But you are my hope and my portion in the land of the living. To bring about a change of location for my soul's salvation you were applying spurs at Carthage to tear me away from there. You were setting before me attractions at Rome to draw me there. You used people who loved a dead kind of life. Some acted insanely on one side. Others made empty promises on the other side. You secretly used both their perversity and mine to correct my steps. Those who disturbed my peace were blind with foul rage. Those who invited me elsewhere had their minds on earthly things. I detested the true misery where I was. I sought the false happiness of another place.
You knew why I was leaving this place and going there, God. But you told neither me nor my mother. She wept bitterly when I departed. She followed me all the way to the sea. I deceived her as she clung to me violently. She wanted either to call me back or go with me. I pretended that I didn't want to abandon a friend until the wind came up and he could sail. I lied to my mother. I lied to that mother. I escaped. You mercifully forgave me for this too. You preserved me from the waters of the sea. I was full of detestable filth. You saved me until I reached the water of your grace. When that water washed me, the rivers from my mother's eyes would dry up. Every day she watered the ground beneath her face with those tears for me before you. She refused to return without me. I barely persuaded her to stay that night in a place near our ship. It was the shrine of blessed Cyprian. But I departed secretly that night. She did not remain there praying and weeping. What was she asking of you with such tears, my God? Only that you would not let me sail. But you were planning from on high. You heard the heart of her desire. You ignored what she asked for then. You did this so you could make me what she always asked for. The wind blew. It filled our sails. The shore withdrew from our sight. There in the morning she was mad with grief. She filled your ears with complaints and groaning. You despise such things. Yet you were carrying me away through my own desires to end those very desires. Her fleshly longing was being beaten with the just whip of sorrows. She loved having me present with her as mothers do. But she loved it much more than most. She did not know what joys you would create for her from my absence. She did not know. Therefore she wept and wailed. Through those torments the remnant of Eve was being convicted in her. With groaning she sought what she had brought forth with groaning. Yet after accusing my deceptions and cruelty, she turned again to pleading with you for me. She went back to her usual places. I went to Rome.
Chapter 9. Being Attacked by Fever, He is in Great Danger.
Then I was struck down by the lash of bodily sickness. I was heading toward the underworld. I carried with me all the evil I had committed against you and against myself and against others. These sins were many and grave. They lay on top of the chain of original sin by which all of us die in Adam. You had forgiven me nothing through Christ. Christ had not dissolved on his cross the hostility I had built up with you through my sins. How could he dissolve that hostility on the cross of a phantom? That is what I believed him to be. My view of his bodily death was as false as the death of my soul was real. His bodily death was as real as the life of my soul was false. My soul did not believe the truth. My fevers grew worse. I was departing and perishing. Where would I go if I left this world then? I would go into fire and torments. These punishments would fit my deeds according to the truth of your justice. My mother knew nothing of this. Yet she prayed for me even though she was far away. You are present everywhere. You heard her where she was. You showed mercy to me where I was. You restored my bodily health even though my sacrilegious heart was still insane. I did not desire your baptism during that great danger. I had been better as a boy when I begged for baptism out of my mother's devotion. I have already remembered this and confessed it. But I had grown up into disgrace. In my madness I mocked the remedies of your medicine. You did not allow me to die twice in such a condition. If my mother's heart had been struck by such a wound, it would never have healed. I cannot adequately express what feelings she had toward me. I cannot express with how much greater anxiety she gave birth to me in spirit than she had given birth to me in flesh.
I cannot see how she would have been healed if such a death had pierced through the depths of her love for me. Where would all those prayers have gone? Those constant prayers offered without interruption went nowhere but to you. Would you really spurn the broken and humbled heart of a chaste and sober widow? You are the God of mercies. She gave frequent alms. She served and waited upon your saints. She never missed a day bringing her offering to your altar. She came to your church twice daily without fail. She came morning and evening. She did not come for idle tales and old wives' chatter. She came to hear you in your sermons. She came so you might hear her in her prayers. Would you despise her tears? Through those tears she asked you for no gold or silver. She sought no changeable or fleeting good. She asked only for her son's salvation. You made her what she was through your own gift. Would you scorn such tears and push them away from your help? Never, Lord. You were present instead. You heard her prayers. You acted according to the order you had predetermined. Far be it from you to deceive her in those visions and responses of yours. I have mentioned some already. Others I have not mentioned. She treasured them all in her faithful heart. She was always praying. Like your own written promises, she kept pressing them before you. You deign to become a debtor even to your own promises to those whose debts you forgive completely. Your mercy endures forever.
Chapter 10. When He Had Left the Manichæans, He Retained His Depraved Opinions Concerning Sin and the Origin of the Saviour.
You restored me from that illness. You saved the son of your servant. You preserved my body for a time so that you could give it a better and more certain salvation. Even then in Rome I joined with those false and deceiving holy ones. I associated not only with their Hearers. Among these was the man in whose house I had been sick and recovered. I also joined with those they call the Elect. It still seemed to me that we ourselves do not sin. Rather some other nature within us commits sin. This pleased my pride. I thought I was free from blame. When I did something evil I refused to confess that I had done it. I would not let you heal my soul because it had sinned against you. Instead I loved to make excuses for my soul. I preferred to accuse some other thing that was with me but was not myself. But in truth I was the whole person. My wickedness had divided me against myself. This was a sin more incurable because I thought I was not a sinner. This was detestable injustice. I preferred that you, almighty God, should be defeated in me to my destruction rather than that I should be defeated by you for my salvation. You had not yet placed a guard over my mouth. You had not set a door of restraint around my lips. My heart still turned to evil words. I still made excuses for my sins with those who worked wickedness. Therefore I still kept company with their Elect.
But by then I was losing hope that I could make any progress in that false teaching. The very ideas I had decided to settle for if nothing better could be found—I now held them more loosely and carelessly. A new thought had begun to dawn on me. Those philosophers called Academics seemed wiser than the rest. They had concluded that everything should be doubted. They had decreed that no truth could be grasped by human beings. This appeared to me exactly how they had reasoned, as they are commonly understood, even though I did not yet grasp their real purpose. I did not hide my efforts to restrain my host from the excessive confidence I sensed he had in fantastical stories. The Manichean books are full of such tales. Yet I maintained closer friendship with them than with other people who were not part of that heresy. I no longer defended it with my former passion. But still their companionship made me slower to seek something else. Rome conceals many of them. I was especially discouraged about finding truth in your Church, Lord of heaven and earth, creator of all things visible and invisible. They had turned me away from it. It seemed deeply shameful to me to believe that you have the form of human flesh. It seemed wrong that you should be bounded by the physical outlines of our bodily parts. When I wanted to think about my God, I knew how to think only of masses of physical bodies. Nothing seemed to me to exist that was not like this. This was the greatest and almost the only cause of my inescapable error.
I believed evil was some kind of substance with its own foul and hideous bulk. This substance was either thick like earth or thin and subtle like air. They imagined an evil mind creeping through that earthly matter. My sense of devotion forced me to believe that a good God had created no evil nature of any kind. So I set up two opposing masses. Both were infinite. But the evil one was smaller and the good one was larger. This poisonous beginning led me into other blasphemies. When my mind tried to return to the Catholic faith, I was beaten back. The Catholic faith was not what I thought it was. I thought I was being more devout when I believed you were infinite in all directions except one, my God. Your mercies now confess through me. I was forced to admit you were finite in that one direction where the mass of evil opposed you. This seemed better than thinking you were limited on all sides by human bodily form. I thought it was better to believe you had created no evil. But in my ignorance, evil seemed to be not just some substance but a physical one. I didn't know how to think of mind except as a subtle body spread through spaces away from you. This seemed better than believing that the nature I imagined as evil came from you. I thought even our Savior, your only Son, was stretched out from the mass of your brightest light for our salvation. I could believe nothing else about him except what my empty imagination could picture. I thought such a nature as his could not be born from the Virgin Mary unless it mixed with flesh. But I couldn't see how it could mix without being polluted, given how I pictured it. So I was afraid to believe he was born in flesh. I feared I would be forced to believe he was polluted by flesh. Now your spiritual people will smile gently and lovingly at me if they read these confessions of mine. But that is what I was then.
Chapter 11. Helpidius Disputed Well Against the Manichæans as to the Authenticity of the New Testament.
I could not defend what the Manicheans had criticized in your Scriptures. But I genuinely wanted to discuss these matters one by one with some learned teacher from their books. I wanted to test what he would think about them. The speeches of a certain Helpidius had already begun to move me even in Carthage. He spoke and argued against these same Manicheans in public. He brought forth such things from the Scriptures that could not easily be resisted. The Manicheans' response seemed weak to me. They did not easily bring forward this response in public. Instead they spoke to us in secret. They claimed that the New Testament scriptures had been corrupted by certain unknown people who wanted to insert Jewish law into the Christian faith. Yet they themselves produced no uncorrupted copies. But what held me captive most of all was those material masses that somehow choked and weighed me down. I was thinking in physical terms. Gasping under these burdens, I could not breathe into the clear and simple atmosphere of your truth.
Chapter 12. Professing Rhetoric at Rome, He Discovers the Fraud of His Scholars.
I had begun working diligently at what I came to do. I wanted to teach the art of rhetoric in Rome. First I gathered some students at home through whom I could become known. Then I discovered that other things happened in Rome that I had not endured in Africa. It was clear to me that those disruptions by worthless young men did not happen there. But they say"suddenly many students conspire together so they won't have to pay their teacher's fee. They transfer to another teacher."They are deserters of trust. Justice means nothing to them because they love money more. My heart hated these students too, though not with perfect hatred. I probably hated more what I was going to suffer from them than what they were doing wrong to anyone. Such students are certainly shameful. They commit adultery against you by loving the fleeting mockeries of time and filthy profit that stains the hand when grasped. They embrace a world that is passing away. They despise you who remain and call back and forgive the human soul that returns to you like a prostitute. Now I hate such wicked and twisted people. Yet I love them so they might be corrected. I want them to prefer learning itself to money. I want them to prefer you, God, to learning. You are truth and the abundance of certain good and most pure peace. But then I wanted more to avoid suffering evil from them for my sake than I wanted them to become good for your sake.
Chapter 13. He is Sent to Milan, that He, About to Teach Rhetoric, May Be Known by Ambrose.
So after a request was sent from Milan to Rome to the city prefect to provide a rhetoric teacher for that city, with public transport also arranged, I myself applied through those same people who were drunk on Manichaean vanities. I was going there to escape from these vanities, but neither side knew this. Based on my test speech, Prefect Symmachus approved me and sent me on. I came to Milan to Bishop Ambrose, known among the best throughout the world as your devout worshipper. His eloquent words actively served your people the richness of wheat, the joy of oil, and the sober intoxication of wine. I was being led to him by you without knowing it, so that through him I might be led to you with full knowledge. That man of God received me like a father. He loved my pilgrimage in a truly episcopal manner. I began to love him, though at first not as a teacher of truth, which I had completely despaired of finding in your Church, but as a man who was kind to me. I listened eagerly to him speaking before the people. My intention was not what it should have been, but rather I was testing his eloquence. I wondered whether it matched his reputation, or whether it flowed greater or lesser than was proclaimed. I hung on his words with focused attention. But I stood there indifferent to the actual content and contemptuous of it. I delighted in the sweetness of his speech, though it was more learned but less cheerful and charming than Faustus's style of speaking. But there was no comparison regarding the actual substance. Faustus wandered astray through Manichaean deceptions. Ambrose taught salvation in the most beneficial way. But salvation is far from sinners, which is what I was at that time. Yet I was drawing near gradually and without knowing it.
Chapter 14. Having Heard the Bishop, He Perceives the Force of the Catholic Faith, Yet Doubts, After the Manner of the Modern Academics.
I wasn't trying to learn what he was saying. I only wanted to hear how he said it. This empty concern was all that remained to me. I had given up hope that any path to you lay open for man. But something unexpected happened. The ideas I was ignoring came into my mind along with the words I loved. I could not separate them. I opened my heart to receive his eloquent speech. At the same time his truthful speech entered. This happened gradually. At first the Catholic teachings began to seem defensible to me. I had thought nothing could be said for the Catholic faith against the attacking Manichees. Now I believed it could be asserted without shame. This happened especially when I heard one puzzle after another solved from the ancient Scriptures. When I took them literally I was spiritually killed. But now many passages from those books were explained. I began to criticize my own despair. I had believed that those who hated and mocked the Law and the Prophets simply could not be resisted at all. Yet I still did not feel I should follow the Catholic way. The Catholic side could also have learned defenders. They could refute objections abundantly and reasonably. So I should not condemn what I held either. The sides were equally matched in defense. The Catholic position did not seem defeated to me. But it did not yet appear victorious either.
Then I truly set my mind with determination to see if I could somehow convict the Manicheans of falsehood with certain clear proofs. If I could have conceived of spiritual substance, all those schemes would immediately have been dissolved and cast out from my mind. But I could not. Nevertheless, concerning this world's body itself and all nature that the senses of the flesh could reach, I judged that most philosophers had thought many things more probable. I considered and compared these things more and more. Therefore, doubting everything in the manner of the Academics, as they are believed to do, and wavering among all things, I decided that the Manicheans must indeed be abandoned. I did not think I should remain in that sect during this time of my doubt, since I was already placing some philosophers above it. Yet to these philosophers, because they were without the saving name of Christ, I utterly refused to entrust the healing of my soul's sickness. I therefore decided to remain a catechumen in the Catholic Church that my parents had commended to me until something certain should shine forth to direct my course. Augustine gives a summary account of this part of his life in his book"On the Usefulness of Believing"if perhaps he might persuade Honoratus to take the same path. That narrative has some things that shed light on this account."I will tell you as I can what kind of path I followed when I sought true religion with the same mind that I have now explained should guide the search. When I departed from you across the sea, I was already hesitant and uncertain about what I should hold and what I should abandon. This uncertainty grew greater for me day by day after I heard that man whose arrival, as you know, was promised to us as if from heaven to explain all the things that troubled us. I found him to be just like the others, except for a certain eloquence. I reasoned with myself and held great deliberation, now established in Italy, not whether I should remain in that sect into which I regretted having fallen, but in what way truth might be found. You know my sighs of longing for truth better than anyone. Often it seemed to me that it could not be found. Great waves of my thoughts were carried toward supporting the Academics. Often again, looking as deeply as I could into the human mind—so lively, so keen, so penetrating—I did not think truth could remain hidden unless the method of seeking it remained hidden. I thought this very method must be taken from some divine authority. It remained to seek what that authority might be, since in such great disagreements each person promised to deliver it. Therefore an inexplicable forest appeared, and I was very reluctant to enter it at last. Amid these things my mind was stirred without any rest by the desire to discover truth. Yet I was detaching myself more and more from those whom I had already proposed to abandon. Nothing else remained in such great dangers except to beseech divine providence with tearful and pitiful voices to bring me help. I did this earnestly. Already certain discussions of the bishop of Milan had nearly moved me to desire to investigate many things about the Old Testament itself, not without some hope. As you know, we had cursed it as poorly presented to us. I had decided to remain a catechumen in the Church to which I had been entrusted by my parents until either I found what I wanted or persuaded myself it should not be sought. Anyone who could teach would therefore have found me most ready and very teachable then."