Chapter III
5. And still your faithful mercy hovered over me from afar. In what unseemly iniquities did I wear myself out, following a sacrilegious curiosity, which, having deserted you, then began to drag me down into the treacherous abyss, into the beguiling obedience of devils, to whom I made offerings of my wicked deeds. And still in all this you did not fail to scourge me. I dared, even while your solemn rites were being celebrated inside the walls of your church, to desire and to plan a project that merited death as its fruit. For this you chastised me with grievous punishments, but nothing in comparison with my fault, O you my greatest mercy, my God, my refuge from those terrible dangers in which I wandered with stiff neck, receding farther from you, loving my own ways and not yours — loving a vagrant liberty!
6. Those studies I was then pursuing, generally accounted as respectable, were aimed at distinction in the courts of law — to excel in which, the more crafty I was, the more I should be praised. Such is the blindness of men that they even glory in their blindness. And by this time I had become a master in the School of Rhetoric, and I rejoiced proudly in this honor and became inflated with arrogance. Still I was relatively sedate, O Lord, as you know, and had no share in the wreckings of “The Wreckers”1 (for this stupid and diabolical name was regarded as the very badge of gallantry) among whom I lived with a sort of ashamed embarrassment that I was not even as they were. But I lived with them, and at times I was delighted with their friendship, even when I abhorred their acts (that is, their “wrecking”) in which they insolently attacked the modesty of strangers, tormenting them by uncalled-for jeers, gratifying their mischievous mirth. Nothing could more nearly resemble the actions of devils than these fellows. By what name, therefore, could they be more aptly called than “wreckers”? — being themselves wrecked first, and altogether turned upside down. They were secretly mocked at and seduced by the deceiving spirits, in the very acts by which they amused themselves in jeering and horseplay at the expense of others.
Chapter IV
7. Among such as these, in that unstable period of my life, I studied the books of eloquence, for it was in eloquence that I was eager to be eminent, though from a reprehensible and vainglorious motive, and a delight in human vanity. In the ordinary course of study, I came upon a certain book of Cicero’s, whose language almost all admire, though not his heart. This particular book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy and was called Hortensius.2 Now it was this book which quite definitely changed my whole attitude and turned my prayers toward you, O Lord, and gave me new hope and new desires. Suddenly every vain hope became worthless to me, and with an incredible warmth of heart I yearned for an immortality of wisdom and began now to arise that I might return to you. It was not to sharpen my tongue further that I made use of that book. I was now nineteen; my father had been dead two years,3 and my mother was providing the money for my study of rhetoric. What won me in it [Hortensius] was not its style but its substance.
8. How ardent was I then, my God, how ardent to fly from earthly things to you! Nor did I know how you were even then dealing with me. For with you is wisdom. In Greek the love of wisdom is called “philosophy,” and it was with this love that that book inflamed me. There are some who seduce through philosophy, under a great, alluring, and honorable name, using it to color and adorn their own errors. And almost all who did this, in Cicero’s own time and earlier, are censored and pointed out in his book. In it there is also manifest that most salutary admonition of your Spirit, spoken by your good and pious servant: “See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:8–9). Since at that time, as you know, O Light of my heart, the words of the apostle were unknown to me, I was delighted with Cicero’s exhortation, at least enough so that I was stimulated by it, and enkindled and inflamed to love, to seek, to obtain, to hold, and to embrace, not this or that sect, but wisdom itself, wherever it might be. Only this checked my ardor: that the name of Christ was not in it. For this name, by your mercy, O Lord, this name of my Savior your Son, my tender heart had piously drunk in, deeply treasured even with my mother’s milk. And whatsoever was lacking that name, no matter how erudite, polished, and truthful, did not quite take complete hold of me.
Chapter V
9. I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind to the Holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. And behold, I saw something not comprehended by the proud, not disclosed to children, something lowly in the hearing, but sublime in the doing, and veiled in mysteries. Yet I was not of the number of those who could enter into it or bend my neck to follow its steps. For then it was quite different from what I now feel. When I then turned toward the Scriptures, they appeared to me to be quite unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Tully.4 For my inflated pride was repelled by their style, nor could the sharpness of my wit penetrate their inner meaning. Truly they were of a sort to aid the growth of little ones, but I scorned to be a little one and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as fully grown.
Chapter VI
10. Thus I fell among men, delirious in their pride, carnal and voluble, whose mouths were the snares of the devil — a trap made out of a mixture of the syllables of your name and the names of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Paraclete.5 These names were never out of their mouths, but only as sound and the clatter of tongues, for their hearts were empty of truth. Still they cried, “Truth, Truth,” and were forever speaking the word to me. But the thing itself was not in them. Indeed, they spoke falsely not only of you — who truly are the Truth — but also about the basic elements of this world, your creation. And, indeed, I should have passed by the philosophers themselves even when they were speaking truth concerning your creatures, for the sake of your love, O Highest Good, and my Father, O Beauty of all things beautiful.
O Truth, Truth, how inwardly even then did the marrow of my soul sigh for you when, frequently and in manifold ways, in numerous and vast books, [the Manicheans] sounded out your name though it was only a sound! And in these dishes — while I starved for you — they served up to me, in your stead, the sun and moon your beauteous works — but still only your works and not yourself; indeed, not even your first work. For your spiritual works came before these material creations, celestial and shining though they are. But I was hungering and thirsting, not even after those first works of yours, but after you, the Truth, “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas 1:17). Yet they still served me glowing fantasies in those dishes. And, truly, it would have been better to have loved this very sun — which at least is true to our sight — than those illusions of theirs that deceive the mind through the eye. And yet because I supposed the illusions to be from you, I fed on them — not with avidity, for you did not taste in my mouth as you are, and you were not these empty fictions. Neither was I nourished by them, but was instead exhausted. Food in dreams appears like our food awake; yet the sleepers are not nourished by it, for they are asleep. But the fantasies of the Manicheans were not in any way like you as you have spoken to me now. They were simply fantastic and false. In comparison to them, the actual bodies that we see with our fleshly sight, both celestial and terrestrial, are far more certain. These true bodies even the beasts and birds perceive as well as we do, and they are more certain than the images we form about them. And again, we do with more certainty form our conceptions about them than, from them, we go on by means of them to imagine of other greater and infinite bodies that have no existence. With such empty husks was I then fed, and yet was not fed.