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4. Those impostors, then, whom they designate Mathematicians, I
consulted without hesitation, because they used no sacrifices, and
invoked the aid of no spirit for their divinations, which art
Christian and true piety fitly rejects and condemns? For good it is
to confess unto Thee, and to say, "Be merciful unto me, heal my
soul, for I have sinned against Thee;" and not to abuse Thy
goodness for a license to sin, but to remember the words of the Lord,
"Behold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing come
unto thee." T All of which salutary advice they endeavour to destroy
when they say, "The cause of thy sin is inevitably determined in
heaven;" and, "This did Venus, or Saturn, or Mars;" in order
that man, forsooth, flesh and blood, and proud corruption, may be
blameless, while the Creator and Ordainer of heaven and stars is to
bear the blame. And who is this but Thee, our God, the sweetness
and well-spring of righteousness, who renderest "to every man
according to his deeds," and despisest not "a broken and a contrite
heart!"
5. There was in those days a wise man, very skilful in medicine,
and much renowned therein, who had with his own proconsular hand put
the Agonistic garland upon my distempered head, not, though, as a
physician; for this disease Thou alone healest, who resistest the
proud, and givest grace to the humble.u But didst Thou fail me even
by that old man, or forbear from healing my soul? For when I had
become more familiar with him, and hung assiduously and fixedly on his
conversation (for though couched in simple language, it was replete
with vivacity, life, and earnestness), when he had perceived from my
discourse that I was given to books of the horoscope-casters, he, in
a kind and fatherly manner, advised me to throw them away, and not
vainly bestow the care and labour necessary for useful things upon these
vanities; saying that he himself in his earlier years had studied that
art with a view to gaining his living by following it as a profession,
and that, as he had understood Hippocrates, he would soon have
understood this, and yet he had given it up, and followed medicine,
for no other reason than that he discovered it to be utterly false, and
he, being a man of character, would not gain his living by beguiling
people. "But thou," saith he," who hast rhetoric to support
thyself by, so that thou followest this of free will, not of necessity
all the more, then, oughtest thou to give me credit herein, who
laboured to attain it so perfectly, as I wished to gain my living by
it alone." When I asked him to account for so many true things being
foretold by it, he answered me (as he could) "that the force of
chance, diffused throughout the whole order of nature, brought this
about. For if when a man by accident opens the leaves of some poet,
who sang and intended something far different, a verse oftentimes fell
out wondrously apposite to the present business, it were not to be
wondered at," he continued, "if out of the soul of man, by some
higher instinct, not knowing what goes on within itself, an answer
should be given by chance, not art, which should coincide with the
business and actions of the questioner."
6. And thus truly, either by or through him, Thou didst look after
me. And Thou didst delineate in my memory what I might afterwards
search out for myself. But at that time neither he, nor my most dear
Nebridius, a youth most good and most circumspect, who scoffed at
that whole stock of divination, could persuade me to forsake it, the
authority of the authors influencing me still more; and as yet I had
lighted upon no certain proof such as I sought whereby it
might without doubt appear that what had been truly foretold by those
consulted was by accident or chance, not by the art of the
star-gazers.
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