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5. And for that year my studies were intermitted, while after my
return from Madaura (a neighbouring city, whither I had begun to go
in order to learn grammar and rhetoric), the expenses for a further
residence at Carthage were provided for me; and that was rather by the
determination than the means of my father, who was but a poor freeman
of Thagaste. To whom do I narrate this? Not unto Thee, my God;
but before Thee unto my own kind, even to that small part of the human
race who may: chance to light upon these my writings. And to what
end? That I and all who read the same may reflect out of what depths
we are' to cry unto Thee.s For what cometh nearer to Thine ears
than a confessing heart and a life of faith? For who did not extol and
praise my father, in that he went even beyond his means to supply his
son with all the necessaries for a far journey for the sake of his
studies? For many far richer citizens did not the like for their
children. But yet this same father did not trouble himself how I grew
towards Thee, nor how chaste I was, so long as I was skilful in
speaking however barren I was to Thy tilling, O God, who art
the sole true and good Lord of my heart, which is Thy field.
6. But while, in that sixteenth year of my age, I resided with my
parents, having holiday from school for a time (this idleness being
imposed upon me by my parents' necessitous circumstances), the thorns
of lust grew rank over my head, and there was no hand to pluck them
out. Moreover when my father, seeing me at the baths, perceived that
I was becoming a man, and was stirred with a restless youthfulness,
he, as if from this anticipating future descendants, joyfully told it
to my mother; rejoicing in that intoxication wherein the world so often
forgets Thee, its Creator, and fails in love with Thy creature
instead of Thee, from the invisible wine of its own perversity turning
and bowing down to the 'most infamous things. But in my mother's
breast Thou hadst even now begun Thy temple, and the commencement of
Thy holy habitation, whereas my father was only a catechumen as yet,
and that but recently. She then started up with a pious fear and
trembling; and, although I had not yet been baptized, she feared
those crooked ways in which they walk who turn their back to Thee, and
not their face?
7. Woe is me! and dare I affirm that Thou heldest Thy peace, O
my God, while I strayed farther from Thee? Didst Thou then hold
Thy peace to me? And whose words were they but Thine which by my
mother, Thy faithful handmaid, Thou pouredst into my ears, none of
which sank into my heart to make me do it? For she desired, and I
remember privately warned me, with great solicitude, "not to commit
fornication; but above all things never to defile another man's
wife." These appeared to me but womanish counsels, which I should
blush to obey. But they were Thine, and I knew it not, and I
thought that Thou heldest Thy peace, and that it was she who spoke,
through whom Thou heldest not Thy peace to me, and in her person wast
despised by me, her son, "the son of Thy handmaid, Thy servant."
But this I knew not; and rushed on headlong with such blindness,
that amongst my equals I was ashamed to be less shameless, when I
heard them pluming themselves upon their disgraceful acts, yea, and
glorying all the more in proportion to the greatness of their baseness;
and I took pleasure in doing it, not for the pleasure's sake only,
but for the praise. What is worthy of dispraise but vice? But I
made myself out worse than I was, in order that I might not be
dispraised; and when in anything I had not sinned as the abandoned
ones, I would affirm that I had done what I had not, that I might
not appear abject for being more innocent, or of less esteem for being
more chaste.
8. Behold with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon, in
whose filth I was rolled, as if in cinnamon and precious ointments.
And that I might cleave the more tens ciously to its very centre, my
invisible enemy trod me down, and seduced me, I being easily
seduced. Nor did the mother of my flesh, although she herself had ere
this fled "out of the midst of Babylon," progressing,
however, but slowly in the skirts of it, in counselling me to
chastity, so bear in mind what she had been told about me by her
husband as to restrain in the limits of conjugal affection (if it could
not be cut away to the quick) what she knew to be destructive in the
present and dangerous in the future. But she took no heed of this,
for she was afraid lest a wife should prove a hindrance and a clog to my
hopes. Not those hopes of the future world, which my mother had in
Thee; but the hope of learning, which both my parents were too
anxious that I should acquire,-he, because he had little or no
thought of Thee, and but vain thoughts for me she, because she
calculated that those usual courses of learning would not only be no
drawback, but rather a. furtherance towards my attaining Thee. For
thus I conjecture, recalling as well as I can the dispositions of my
parents. The reins, meantime, were slackened towards me beyond the
restraint of due severity, that I might play, yea, even to
dissoluteness, in whatsoever I fancied. And in all there was a
mist, shutting out from my sight the brightness of Thy truth, O my
God; and my iniquity displayed itself as from very "fatness." '
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