Aug. determines to devote his life to God, and to abandon his profession of Rhetoric, quietly however; retires to the country to prepare himself to receive the grace of Baptism, and is baptized with Alypius, and his son Adeodatus. At Ostia, in his way to Africa, his mother Monnica dies, in her fifty-sixth year, the thirty-third of Augustine. Her life and character. 155
Having in the former books spoken of himself before his receiving the grace of Baptism, in this Aug. confesses what he then was. But first, he enquires by what faculty we can know God at all; whence he enlarges on the mysterious character of the memory, wherein God, being made known, dwells, but which could not discover Him. Then he examines his own trials under the triple division of temptation, "lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride;" what Christian continency prescribes as to each. On Christ the Only Mediator, who heals and will heal all infirmities. 182
Aug. breaks off the history of the mode whereby God led him to holy Orders, in order to "confess" God's mercies in opening to him the Scripture. Moses is not to be understood, but in Christ, not even the first words In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Answer to cavillers who asked, "what did God before He created the heaven and the earth, and whence willed He at length to make them, whereas He did not make them before?" Inquiry into the nature of Time. 225
Aug. proceeds to comment on Gen. 1, 1. and explains the "heaven" to mean that spiritual and incorporeal creation, which cleaves to God unintermittingly, always beholding His countenance; "earth," the formless matter whereof the corporeal creation was afterwards formed. He does not reject, however, other interpretations, which he adduces, but rather confesses that such is the depth of Holy Scripture, that manifold senses may and ought to be extracted from it, and that whatever truth can be obtained from his words, does, in fact, lie concealed in them.