Confessions

This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Book 5. Chapter 1. Accept this sacrifice of my confessions from the hand of my tongue. Thou didst form it, and hast prompted it to praise thy name. Heal all my bones, and let them say, O Lord, who is like unto thee? It is not that one who confesses to thee instructs thee as to what goes on within him. For the closed heart does not bar thy sight into it, nor does the hardness of our heart hold back thy hands. For thou canst soften it at will, either by mercy or in vengeance. And there is no one who can hide himself from thy heat. But let my soul praise thee, that it may love thee, and let it confess thy mercies to thee, that it may praise thee. Thy whole creation praises thee without ceasing. The spirit of man, by his own lips, by his own voice, lift it up to thee, animals and lifeless matter, by the mouths of those who meditate upon them. Thus our souls may climb out of their weariness toward thee, and lean on those things which thou hast created, and pass through them to thee, who didst create them in a marvellous way. With thee there is refreshment and true strength. Let the restless and the unrighteous depart, and flee away from thee. Even so, thou seest them, and thy eye pierces through the shadows in which they run. For, lo, they live in a world of beauty, and yet are themselves most foul. And how have they harmed thee? Or in what way have thou discredited thy power, which is just and perfect in its rule, even to the last item in creation? Indeed, where would they fly when they fled from thy presence? Wouldst thou be unable to find them? But they fled, that they might not see thee, who sawest them, that they might be blinded and stumble into thee. But thou forsakest nothing that thou hast made. The unrighteous stumble against thee, that they might be justly plagued, fleeing from thy gentleness and colliding with thy justice, and falling on their own rough paths. For in truth, they do not know that thou art everywhere, that no place contains thee, and that only thou art near even to those who go farthest from thee. Let them, therefore, turn back and seek thee, because even if they have abandoned thee, their Creator, thou hast not abandoned their creatures. Let them turn back and seek thee, and, lo, thou art there in their hearts, there in the hearts of those who confess to thee. Let them cast themselves upon thee, and weep on thy bosom, after all their weary wanderings, and thou wilt gently wipe away their tears. And they weep them more, and rejoice in their weeping, since thou, O Lord, art not a man of flesh and blood. Thou art the Lord, who canst remake what thou didst make, and canst comfort them. And where was I when I was seeking thee? There thou wast before me, but I had gone away, even from myself, and I could not find myself, much less thee. Chapter 3 Let me now bear in the sight of God the twenty-ninth year of my age. There had just come to Carthage a certain bishop of the Manichaeans, Faustus by name, a great snare of the devil, and many were entangled by him through the charm of his eloquence. Now, even though I found this eloquence admirable, I was beginning to distinguish the charm of words from the truth of things, which I was eager to learn. Nor did I consider the dish as much as I did the kind of meat that their famous Faustus served up to me in it. His fame had run before him as one very skilled in an honourable learning, and pre-eminently skilled in the liberal arts. And as I had already read, and stored up in memory many of the injunctions of the philosophers, I began to compare some of their doctrines with the tedious fables of the Manichaeans, and it struck me that the probability was on the side of the philosophers, whose power reached far enough to enable them to form a fair judgment of the world, even though they had not discovered the sovereign lord of it all. For thou art great, O Lord, and thou hast respect unto the lowly, but the proud thou knowest afar off. Thou draw'st near to none but the contrite in heart, and canst not be found by the proud, even if in their inquisitive skill they may number the stars and the suns, and map out the constellations, and trace the courses of the planets. For it is by the mind and the intelligence which thou gavest them that they investigate these things. They have discovered much, and have foretold many years in advance the day, the hour, and the extent of all the eclipses of those luminaries, the sun and the moon. Their calculations did not fail, and it came to pass as they predicted. And they wrote down the rules they had discovered, so that to this day they may be read, and from them may be calculated in what year and month and day and hour of the day, and at what quarter of its light either the moon or the sun will be eclipsed, and it will come to pass, just as predicted. And men who are ignorant in these matters marvel and are amazed, and those who understand them exult and are exalted. Both, by an impious pride, withdraw from thee and forsake thy light. They foretell an eclipse of the sun before it happens, but they do not see their own eclipse which is even now occurring. For they do not ask, as religious men should, what is the source of the intelligence by which they investigate these matters. Moreover, when they discover that thou didst make them, they do not give themselves up to thee that thou mightest preserve what thou hast made. Nor do they offer as sacrifice to thee what they have made of themselves. For they do not slaughter their own pride, as they do the sacrificial fowls, nor their own curiosities, by which, like the fishes of the sea, they wander through the unknown paths of the deep. Nor do they curb their own extravagances, as they do those of the beasts of the field. And that thou, O LORD, a consuming fire, mayst burn up their mortal cares and renew them into immortality. They do not know the way which is thy word, by which thou didst create all the things that are, and also the men who measure them, and the senses by which they perceive what they measure, and the intelligence whereby they discern the patterns of measure. Thus they know not that thy wisdom is not a matter of measure. But the only begotten hath been made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification, and hath been numbered among us and paid tribute to Caesar. And they do not know this way by which they could descend from themselves to him, in order to ascend through him to him. They did not know this way, and so they fancied themselves exalted to the stars and the shining heavens, and lo, they fell upon the earth, and their foolish heart was darkened. They saw many true things about the creature, but they do not seek with true piety for the truth, the architect of creation, and hence they do not find him. Or, if they do find him, and know that he is God, they do not glorify him as God. Neither are they thankful, but become vain in their imagination, and say that they themselves are wise, and attribute to themselves what is thine. At the same time, with a most perverse blindness, they wish to attribute to thee their own quality, so that they load their lies on thee who are the truth, changing the glory of the incorruptible God for an image of corruptible man and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. They exchange thy truth for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator. Yet, I remembered many a true saying of the philosophers about the creation, and I saw the confirmation of their calculations in the orderly sequence of seasons and in the visible evidence of the stars. And I compared this with the doctrines of Mani, who in his voluminous folly wrote many books on these subjects. But I could not discover there any account of either the solstices or the equinoxes, or the eclipses of the sun and moon, or anything of the sort that I had learned in the books of secular philosophy. But still, I was ordered to believe, even where the ideas did not correspond with, even when they contradicted, the rational theories established by mathematics and my own eyes, but were very different. Chapter 4 Yet, O Lord God of truth, is any man pleasing to thee because he knows these things? No, for surely that man is unhappy who knows these things and does not know thee. And that man is happy who knows thee, even though he does not know these things. He who knows both thee and these things is not the more blessed for his learning, for thou only art his blessing, if knowing thee as God he glorifies thee and give thanks and does not become vain in his thoughts. For just as that man who knows how to possess a tree and give thanks to thee for the use of it, although he may not know how many feet high it is or how wide it spreads, is better than the man who can measure it and count all its branches, but neither owns it nor knows or loves its creator. Just so is a faithful man who possesses the world's wealth as though he had nothing, and possesses all things through his union through thee, whom all things serve, even though he does not know the circlins of the great bear. Just so, it is foolish to doubt that this faithful man may truly be better than the one who can measure the heavens and number the stars and weigh the elements, but who is forgetful of thee who has set in order all things in number, weight, and measure. Chapter 5. And who ordered this many to write about these things, knowledge of which is not necessary to piety? For thou hast said to man, Behold, godliness is wisdom. And of this he might have been ignorant, however perfectly he may have known these other things. Yet, since he did not know even these other things, and most impudently dared to teach them, it is clear that he had no knowledge of piety. For, even when we had a knowledge of this worldly law, it is folly to make a profession of it, when piety comes from confession to thee. From piety, therefore, many had gone astray, and all his show of learning only enabled the truly learned to perceive, from his ignorance of what they knew, how little he was to be trusted to make plain these more really difficult matters. For he did not aim to be lightly esteemed, but went around trying to persuade men that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter and Enricher of thy faithful ones, was personally resident in him with full authority. And therefore, when he was detected in manifest errors about the sky, the stars, the movements of the sun and moon, even though these things do not relate to religious doctrine, the impious presumption of the man became clearly evident. For he not only taught things about which he was ignorant, but also perverted them. And this with pride so foolish and mad, that he sought to claim that his own utterances were as if they had been those of a divine person. When I hear of a Christian brother ignorant of these things, or in error concerning them, I can tolerate his uninformed opinion, and I do not see that any lack of knowledge as to the form or nature of this material creation can do him much harm, as long as he does not hold a belief in anything which is unworthy of thee, O Lord, the Creator of all. But if he thinks that his secular knowledge pertains to the essence of the doctrine of piety, or ventures to assert dogmatic opinions in matters in which he is ignorant, there lies the injury. And yet, even a weakness such as this in the infancy of our faith is tolerated by our mother charity until the new man can grow up unto a perfect man, and not be carried away with every wind of doctrine. But Manny had presumed to be at once the teacher, author, guide, and leader of all whom he could persuade to believe this, so that all who followed him believed that they were following not an ordinary man, but thy Holy Spirit. And who would not judge that such great madness, when it once stood convicted of false teaching, should then be abhorred and utterly rejected? But I had not yet clearly decided whether the alternation of day and night, and of longer and shorter days and nights, and the eclipses of sun and moon, and whatever else I read about in other books, could be explained consistently with his theories. If they could have been so explained, there would still have remained a doubt in my mind whether the theories were right or wrong. Yet I was prepared, on the strength of his reputed godliness, to rest my faith on his authority. For almost the whole of the nine years that I listened with unsettled mind to the Manichean teaching, I had been looking forward with unbounded eagerness to the arrival of this Faustus. For all the other members of the sect that I happened to meet, when they were unable to answer the questions I raised, always referred me to his coming. They promised that, in discussion with him, these and even greater difficulties, if I had them, would be quite easily and amply cleared away. When at last he did come, I found him to be a man of pleasant speech, who spoke of the very same things they themselves did, although more fluently and in a more agreeable style. But what profit was there to me in the elegance of my cup-bearer, since he could not offer me the more precious draught for which I thirsted? My ears had already had their fill of such stuff, and now it did not seem any better because it was better expressed, nor more true because it was dressed up in rhetoric, nor could I think the man's soul necessarily wise because his face was comely and his language eloquent. But they who extolled him to me were not competent judges. They thought him able and wise because his eloquence delighted them. At the same time, I realized that there is another kind of man who is suspicious even of truth itself, if it is expressed in smooth and flowing language. But thou, O my God, hast already taught me in wonderful and marvellous ways, and therefore I believed, because it is true, that thou didst teach me, and that beside thee there is no other teacher of truth, wherever truth shines forth. Already I had learned from thee that because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true, nor because it is uttered with stammering lips should it be supposed false. Nor again is it necessarily true because rudely uttered, nor untrue because the language is brilliant. Wisdom and folly both are like meats that are wholesome and unwholesome, and courtly or simple words are like town-made or rustic vessels. Both kinds of food may be served in either kind of dish. That eagerness, therefore, with which I had so long awaited this man, was in truth delighted with his action and feeling in a disputation, and with the fluent and apt words with which he clothed his ideas. I was delighted, therefore, and I joined with others and even exceeded them in exalting and praising him. Yet it was a source of annoyance to me that in his lecture-room I was not allowed to introduce and raise any of those questions that troubled me in a familiar exchange of discussion with him. Soon as I found an opportunity for this and gained his ear at a time when it was not inconvenient for him to enter into a discussion with me and my friends, I laid before him some of my doubts. I discovered at once that he knew nothing of the liberal arts except grammar, and that only in an ordinary way. He had, however, read some of Tully's orations, a very few books of Seneca and some of the poets, and such few books of his own sect as were written in good Latin. With this meagre learning and his daily practice in speaking he had acquired a sort of eloquence which proved the more delightful and enticing because it was under the direction of a ready wit and a sort of native grace. Was this not even, as I now recall it, O Lord my God, Judge of my conscience? My heart and my memory are laid open before Thee, who watched even then guiding me by the secret impulse of Thy providence, and were setting my shameful errors before my face so that I might see and hate them. Chapter 7 For as soon as it became plain to me that Faustus was ignorant in those arts in which I believed him eminent, I began to despair of his being able to clarify and explain all these perplexities that troubled me, though I realized that such ignorance need not have affected the authenticity of his piety if he had not been a Manichean. For their books were full of long fables about the sky and the stars, the sun and the moon, and I had ceased to believe him able to show me in any satisfactory fashion what I so ardently desired, whether the explanations contained in the Manichean books were better or at least as good as the mathematical explanations I had read elsewhere. But when I proposed that these subjects should be considered and discussed, he quite modestly did not dare to undertake the task, for he was aware that he had no knowledge of these things and was not ashamed to confess it. For he was not one of those talkative people from whom I had endured so much, who undertook to teach me what I wanted to know and then said nothing. Faustus had a heart which, if not right toward thee, was at least not altogether false toward himself, for he was not ignorant of his own ignorance, and he did not choose to be entangled in a controversy from which he could not draw back or retire gracefully. For this I liked him all the more, for the modesty of an ingenious mind is a finer thing than the acquisition of that knowledge I desired, and this I found to be his attitude towards all abstruse and difficult questions. Thus the zeal with which I had plunged into the Manichean system was checked, and I despaired even more of their other teachers, because Faustus, who was so famous among them, had turned out so poorly in the various matters that puzzled me. And so I began to occupy myself with him in the study of his own favourite pursuit, that of literature, in which I was already teaching a class as a professor of rhetoric among the young Carthaginian students. With Faustus, then, I read whatever he himself wished to read, or what I judged suitable to his bent of mind, but all my endeavours to make further progress in Manichaeism came completely to an end through my acquaintance with that man. I did not wholly separate myself from them, but as one who had not yet found anything better, I decided to content myself, for the time being, with what I had stumbled upon one way or another, until by chance something more desirable should present itself. Thus, that Faustus, who had entrapped so many to their death, though neither willing nor witting it, now began to loosen the snare in which I had been caught. For thy hands, O my God, in the hidden design of thy providence, did not desert my soul. And out of the blood of my mother's heart, through the tears that she poured out by day and by night, there was a sacrifice offered to thee for me. And by marvellous ways thou didst deal with me. For it was thou, O my God, who did it. For the steps of a man are ordered by the Lord, and he shall choose his way. How shall we attain salvation without thy hand remaking what it had already made?