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13. He, not relinquishing that worldly way which his parents had
bewitched him to pursue, had gone before me to Rome, to study law,
and there he was carried away in an extraordinary manner with an
incredible eagerness after the gladiatorial shows. For, being utterly
opposed to and detesting such spectacles, he was one day met by chance
by divers of his acquaintance and fellow-students returning from
dinner, and they with a friendly violence drew him, vehemently
objecting and resisting, into the amphitheatre, on a day of these
cruel and deadly shows, he thus protesting: "Though you drag my body
to that place, and there place me, can you force me to give my mind
and lend my eyes to these shows? Thus shall I be absent while
present, and so shall overcome both you and them." They hearing
this, dragged him on nevertheless, desirous, perchance, to see
whether he could do as he said. When they had arrived thither, and
had taken their places as they could, the whole place became excited
with the inhuman sports. But he, shutting up the doors of his eyes,
forbade his mind to roam abroad after such naughtiness; and would that
he had shut his ears also! For, upon the fall of one in the fight, a
mighty cry from the whole audience stirring him strongly, he, overcome
by curiosity, and prepared as it were to despise and rise superior to
it, no matter what it were, opened his eyes, and was struck with a
deeper wound in his soul than the other, whom he desired to see, was
in his body; and he fell more miserably than he on whose fall that
mighty clamour was raised, which entered through his ears, and
unlocked his eyes, to make way for the striking and beating down of his
soul, which was bold rather than valiant hitherto; and so much the
weaker in that it presumed on itself, which ought to have depended on
Thee. For, directly he saw that blood, he therewith imbibed a sort
of savageness; nor did he turn away, but fixed his eye, drinking in
madness unconsciously, and was delighted with the guilty contest, and
drunken with the bloody pastime. Nor was he now the same he came in,
but was one of the throng he came unto, and a true companion of those
who had brought him thither. Why need I say more? He looked,
shouted, was excited, carried away with him the madness which would
stimulate him to return, not only with those who first enticed him,
but also before them, yea, and to draw in others. And from all this
didst Thou, with a most powerful and most merciful hand, pluck him,
and taughtest him not to repose confidence in himself, but in Thee
but not till long after.
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