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THE FOURTH BOOK.

Aug.'s life from nineteen to eight and twenty; himself a Manichæan, and seducing others to the same heresy; partial obedience amidst vanity and sin, consulting astrologers, only partially shaken herein; loss of an early friend, who is converted by being baptized when in a swoon; reflections on grief, on real and unreal friendship, and love of fame; writes on "the fair and fit," yet cannot rightly, though God had given him great talents, since he entertained wrong notions of God; and so even his knowledge he applied ill.

[I.] 1. For this space of nine years then (from my nineteenth year, to my eight and twentieth) we lived seduced and seducing, deceived and deceiving, in divers lusts; openly, by sciences which they call liberal; secretly, with a false named religion; here proud, there superstitious, every where vain! Here, hunting after the emptiness of popular praise, down even to theatrical applauses, and poetic prizes, and strifes for grassy garlands, and the follies of shows, and the intemperance of desires. There, desiring to be cleansed from these defilements, by carrying food to those who were called "elect" and "holy," out of which, in the workhouse of their stomachs, they should forge for us Angels and Gods, by whom we might be cleansed". These things did I follow, and practise with my friends, deceived by me, and with me. Let the arrogant mock me, and such as have not been, to their soul's health, stricken and cast down by Thee, O my God; but I would still confess to Thee mine own shame in Thy praise. Suffer me, I beseech Thee, and give me grace to go over in my present remembrance the wanderings of my forepassed time, and to offer unto Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving. For what Ps. 49, am I to myself without Thee, but a guide to mine own downfall? or what am I even at the best, but an infant sucking the milk Thou givest, and feeding upon Thee, the food that John 6, perisheth not? But what sort of man is any man, seeing he

a See note A at the end; §. iii. a.
b"To be happy, by his own power,

without superintendence, belongs to God
only." Aug. de Gen. c. Manich. ii. 5.

14.

27.

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Sin restrained, but without fixed principle.

CONF. is but a man? Let now the strong and the mighty laugh at us, but let us poor and needy confess unto Thee.

B. IV. Ps. 73,

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21.

[II.] 2. In those years I taught rhetoric, and, overcome by cupidity, made sale of a loquacity to overcome by. Yet I preferred (Lord, Thou knowest) honest scholars, (as they are accounted,) and these I, without artifice, taught artifices, not to be practised against the life of the guiltless, though sometimes for the life of the guilty. And Thou, O God, from afar Is. 42, perceivedst me stumbling in that slippery course, and amid much smoke sending out some sparks of faithfulness, which I Ps. 4, 2, shewed in that my guidance of such as loved vanity, and

5. Mat.

12, 20.

sought after leasing, myself their companion. In those years I had one, not in that which is called lawful marriage, but whom I had found out in a wayward passion, void of understanding; yet but one, remaining faithful even to her; in whom I in my own case experienced, what difference there is betwixt the self-restraint of the marriage-covenant, for the sake of issue, and the bargain of a lustful love, where children are born against their parents' will, although, once born, they constrain love.

3. I remember also, that when I had settled to enter the lists for a theatrical prize, some wizard asked me what I would give him to win: but I, detesting and abhorring such foul mysteries, answered, "Though the garland were of imperishable gold, I would not suffer a fly to be killed to gain me it." For he was to kill some living creatures in his sacrifices, and by those honours to invite the devils to favour me. But this ill also I rejected, not out of a pure love for Thee, O

"He alone is truly pure, who waiteth on God, and keepeth himself to Him alone." Aug.de vita beata, §. 18.“ Whoso seeketh God, is pure, because the soul hath in God her legitimate Husband. Whosoever seeketh of God any thing besides God, doth not love God purely. If a wife loved her husband, because he is rich, she is not pure, for she loveth not her husband, but the gold of her husband." Aug. Serm. 137. "Whoso seeks from God any other reward but God, and for it would serve God, esteems what he wishes to receive, more than Him from whom he would receive it. What then? hath God no reward? None, save Himself. The reward of God is God Himself. This it

loveth; if it love aught beside, it is no pure love. You depart from the immortal flame, you will be chilled, corrupted. Do not depart; it will be thy corruption, will be fornication in thee." Aug. in Ps. 72. §. 32. "The pure fear of the Lord (Ps. 19,9.) is that, wherewith the Church, the more ardently she loveth her Husband, the more diligently she avoids offending Him, and therefore love when perfected casteth not out this fear, but it remaineth for ever and ever." Aug. in loc. "Under the name of pure fear, is signified that will, whereby we must needs be averse from sin, and avoid sin, not through the constant anxiety of infirmity, but through the tranquillity of affection." De Civ. Dei, xiv. §. 65.

No real love of God, without sound faith.

47

God of my heart; for I knew not how to love Thee, who knew not how to conceive aught beyond a material brightness". And doth not a soul, sighing after such fictions, commit fornication against Thee, trust in things unreale, and feed the Hos. 12, wind? Still I would not forsooth have sacrifices offered to 1. devils for me, to whom I was sacrificing myself by that superstition. For, what else is it to feed the wind, but to feed them, that is, by going astray to become their pleasure and derision?

14.

[III.] 4. Those impostors then, whom they style Mathematicians, I consulted without scruple; because they seemed to use no sacrifice, nor to pray to any spirit for their divinations: which art, however, Christian and true piety consistently rejects and condemns. For, it is a good thing to confess unto Ps. 41, Thee, and to say, Have mercy upon me, heal my soul, for 14. have sinned against Thee; and not to abuse Thy mercy for a license to sin, but to remember the Lord's words, Behold, John 5, thou art made whole, sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. All which wholesome advice they labour to destroy, saying, "The cause of thy sin is inevitably determined in heaven;" and "This did Venus, or Saturn, or Mars:" that man, forsooth, flesh and blood, and proud corruption, might be blameless; while the Creator and Ordainer of heaven and the stars is to bear the blame. And who is He but our God? the very sweetness and well-spring of righteousness, who renderest to every man according to his works: and a Rom. 2, broken and contrite heart wilt Thou not despise. 16, 27.

6. Mat.

17.

5. There was in those days a wise man', very skilful in Ps. 51, physic, and renowned therein, who had with his own proconsular hand put the Agonistic garland upon my distempered head, but not as a physician: for this disease Thou only curest, who resistest the proud, and givest grace to the humble. But! Pet. 5, didst Thou fail me even by that old man, or forbear to heal my Jam. 4, soul? For having become more acquainted with him, and hang- 6.

d See note A at the end; §. i. a. e "Who loves what he knows not ? and what is to know God but to behold, and firmly to perceive Him? But we must beware, lest the mind believing that it does not see, feign to itself something which is not, and hope and love

something unreal. And if this be, it will
no longer be love out of a pure conscience
and faith unfeigned." Aug. de Trin. viii.
66.

f Vindicianus, named below, l. vii.
c. 6. S. Aug. Ep. 138. §. 3. calls him
"the great physician of our times."

5.

B. IV.

48 Absolute proof even of vanity of Divination hard to find.

CONF. ing assiduously and fixedly on his speech, (for though in simple terms, it was vivid, lively, and earnest,) when he had gathered by my discourse, that I was given to the books of nativitycasters, he kindly and fatherly advised me to cast them away, and not fruitlessly bestow a care and diligence, necessary for useful things, upon these vanities; saying, that he had in his earliest years studied that art, so as to make it the profession whereby he should live, and that, understanding Hippocrates, he could soon have understood such a study as this; and yet he had given it over, and taken to physic, for no other reason, but that he found it utterly false; and he, a grave man, would not get his living by deluding people. "But thou," saith he, " hast rhetoric to maintain thyself by, "so that thou followest this of free choice, not of necessity: "the more then oughtest thou to give me credit herein, who "laboured to acquire it so perfectly, as to get my living by "it alone." Of whom when I had demanded, how then could many true things be foretold by it, he answered me (as he could)" that the force of chance, diffused throughout the "whole order of things, brought this about. For if when a "man by hap-hazard opens the pages of some poet, who

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sang and thought of something wholly different, a verse "oftentimes fell out, wondrously agreeable to the present "business: it were not to be wondered at, if out of the soul "of man, unconscious what takes place in it, by some higher "instinct an answer should be given, by hap, not by art, corresponding to the business and actions of the demander." 6. And thus much, either from or through him, Thou conveyedst to me, and tracedst in my memory, what I might hereafter examine for myself. But at that time neither he, nor my dearest Nebridius, a youth singularly good and of a holy fear, who derided the whole body of divination, could persuade me to cast it aside, the authority of the authors swaying me yet more, and as yet I had found no certain proof (such as I sought) whereby it might without all doubt appear, that what had been truly foretold by those consulted was the result of hap-hazard, not of the art of the star-gazers.

[IV.] 7. In those years when I first began to teach rhetoric in my native town, I had made one my friend, but too See above, §. 3. not.

He jests at his friend's baptism, and is reproved.

49

5.

dear to me, from a community of pursuits, of mine own age, and, as myself, in the first opening flower of youth. He had grown up of a child with me, and we had been both schoolfellows, and play-fellows. But he was not yet my friend as afterwards, nor even then, as true friendship is; for true it cannot be, unless in such as Thou cementest together, cleaving unto Thee, by that love which is shed abroad in our Rom. 5, hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. Yet was it but too sweet, ripened by the warmth of kindred studies: for, from the true faith (which he as a youth had not soundly and throughly imbibed,) I had warped him also to those superstitious and pernicious fables, for which my mother bewailed me. With me he now erred in mind, nor could my soul be without him. But behold Thou wert close on the steps of Thy fugitives, at once God of vengeance, and Fountain of mercies, Ps. 94, turning us to Thyself by wonderful means; Thou tookest1· that man out of this life, when he had scarce filled up one whole year of my friendship, sweet to me above all sweetness of that my life.

2.

8. Who can recount all Thy praises, which he hath felt in Ps. 106, his one self? What diddest Thou then, my God, and how unsearchable is the abyss of Thy judgments? For long, sore Ps. 36, sick of a fever, he lay senseless in a death-sweat; and his 2. recovery being despaired of, he was baptized, unknowing ; myself meanwhile little regarding, and presuming that his soul would retain rather what it had received of me, not what was wrought on his unconscious body. But it proved far otherwise for he was refreshed, and restored. Forthwith, as soon as I could speak with him, (and I could, so soon as he was able, for I never left him, and we hung but too much upon each other,) I essayed to jest

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with him, as though he

"The Manichæans say that the washing
of regeneration, i. e. the water itself, is
superfluous, and with a profane mind
contend that it profits nothing.--The Ma-
nichæans destroy the visible element; the
Pelagians also the invisible mystery. (c.
2. Epp. Pelag. ii. 2.) "What avails it
them (the Pelagians) to confess that bap-
tism is necessary for all ages, which the
Manichæans say is superfluous in all."(ib.
iv.4.)" He knows not, or feigns he knows
not, that among them [the Manichaans]

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