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18. Thou restoredst me then from that illness, and made sound the
son of Thy hand-maid meanwhile in body, that he might live for
Thee, to endow him with a higher and more enduring health. And even
then at Rome I joined those deluding and deluded "saints;" not
their "hearers" only, of the number of whom was he in whose house
I had fallen ill, and had recovered, but those also whom they
designate "The Elect." For it still seemed to me "that it was not
we that sin, but that I know not what other nature sinned in us."
And it gratified my pride to be free from blame and, after I had
committed any fault, not to acknowledge that I had done any, "
that Thou mightest heal my soul because it had sinned against Thee;"
but I loved to excuse it, and to accuse something else (I wot not
what) which was with me, but was not I. But assuredly it was wholly
I, and my impiety had divided me against myself; and that sin was all
the more incurable in that I did not deem myself a sinner. And
execrable iniquity it was, O God omnipotent, that I would rather
have Thee to be overcome in me to my destruction, than myself of Thee
to salvation! Not yet, therefore, hadst Thou set a watch before my
mouth, and kept the door of my lips, that my heart might not incline
to wicked speeches, to make excuses of sins, with men that work
iniquity and, therefore, was I still united with their
"Elect."
19. But now, hopeless of making proficiency in that false
doctrine, even those things with which I had decided upon contenting
myself, providing that I could find nothing better, I now held more
loosely and negligently. For I was half inclined to believe that
those philosophers whom they call "Academics" s were more sagacious
than the rest, in that they held that we ought to doubt everything,
and ruled that man had not the power of comprehending any truth; for
so, not yet realizing their meaning, I a/so was fully persuaded that
they thought just as they are commonly held to do. And I did not fail
frankly to restrain in my host that assurance which I observed him to
have in those fictions of which the works of Manichaeus are full.
Notwithstanding, I was on terms of more intimate friendship with them
than with others who were not of this heresy. Nor did I defend it
with my former ardour; still my familiarity with that sect (many of
them being concealed in Rome) made me slower to seek any other
way, particularly since I was hopeless of finding the truth, from
which in Thy Church, O Lord of heaven and earth, Creator' of all
things visible and invisible, they had turned me aside, and it
seemed to me most unbecoming to believe Thee to have the form of human
flesh, and to be bounded by the bodily lineaments of our members. And
because, when I desired to meditate on my God, I knew not what to
think ' of but a mass of bodies (for what was not such ' did not seem
to me to be), this was the greatest 'and almost sole cause of my
inevitable error.
20. For hence I also believed evil to be a similar sort of
substance, and to be possessed of its own foul and misshapen
mass -whether dense, which they denominated earth, or thin and
subtle, as is the body of the air, which they fancy some malignant
spirit crawling through that earth. And because a piety such as it
was -compelled me to believe that the good God never created any
evil nature, I conceived two masses, the one opposed to the other,
both infinite, but the evil the more contracted, the good the more
expansive.
And from this mischievous commencement the other profanities followed
on me.
For when my mind tried to revert to the Catholic faith, I was cast
back, since what I had held to be the Catholic faith was not so.
And it appeared to me more de vout to look upon Thee, my God, to
whom i make confession of Thy mercies, as infinite, at least, on
other sides, although on that side where the mass of evil was in
opposition to Thee x I was compelled to confess Thee finite, that if
on every side I should conceive Thee to be confined by the form of a
human body. And better did it seem to me to believe that no evil had
been created by Thee which to me in my ignorance appeared not only
some substance, but a bodily one, because I had no conception of the
mind excepting as a subtle body, and that diffused in local
spaces than to believe that anything could emanate from Thee of such
a kind as I considered the nature of evil to be. And our very
Saviour Himself, also, Thine only-begotten, I believed to have
been reached forth, as it were, for our salvation out of the lump of
Thy most effulgent mass, so as to believe nothing of Him but what I
was able to imagine in my vanity. Such a nature, then, I thought
could not be born of the Virgin Mary without being mingled with the
flesh; and how that which I had thus figured to myself could be
mingled without being contaminated, I saw not. I was afraid,
therefore, to believe Him to be born in the flesh, lest I should be
compelled to believe Him contaminated by the flesh? Now will Thy
spiritual ones blandly and lovingly smile at me if they shall read these
my confessions; yet such was I.
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