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24. For although I took no trouble to learn what he spake, but
only to hear how he spake (for that empty care alone remained to me,
despairing of a way accessible for man to Thee), yet, together with
the words which I prized, there came into my mind also the things
about which I was careless; for I could not separate them. And
whilst I opened my heart to admit "how skilfully he spake," there
also entered with it, but gradually, "and how truly he spake!" For
first, these things also had begun to appear to me to be defensible;
and the Catholic faith, for which I had fancied nothing could be said
against the attacks of the Manichaeans, I now conceived might be
maintained without presumption; especially after I had heard one or
two parts of the Old Testament explained, and often
allegorically which when I accepted literally, I was "killed"
spiritually.s Many places, then, of those books having been
ex-pounded to me, I now blamed my despair in having believed that no
reply could be made to those who hated and derided the Law and the
Prophets. Yet I did not then see that for that reason the Catholic
way was to be held because it had its learned advocates, who could at
length, and not irrationally, answer objections; nor that what I
held ought therefore to be condemned because both sides were equally
defensible. For that way did not appear to me to be vanquished; nor
yet did it seem to me to be victorious.
25. Hereupon did I earnestly bend my mind to see if in any way I
could possibly prove the Manichaeans guilty of falsehood. Could I
have realized a spiritual substance, all their strongholds would have
been beaten down, and cast utterly out of my mind; but I could not.
But vet, concerning the body of this world, and the whole of nature,
which the senses of the flesh can attain unto, I, now more and more
considering and comparing things, judged that the greater part of the
philosophers held much the more probable opinions. So, then, after
the manner of the Academics (as they are supposed), doubting of
everything and fluctuating between all, I decided that the
Manichaeans were to be abandoned; judging that, even while in that
period of doubt, I could not remain in a sect to which I preferred
some of the philosophers; to which philosophers, however, because
they were without the saving name of Christ, I utterly refused to
commit the cure of my fainting soul. I resolved, therefore, to be a
catechumen in the Catholic Church, which my i parents had commended
to me, until something settled should manifest itself to me whither I
might steer my course.
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