Chapter IX
14. O my God! What miseries and mockeries did I then experience when it was impressed on me that obedience to my teachers was proper to my boyhood estate if I was to flourish in this world and distinguish myself in those tricks of speech that would gain honor for me among men, and deceitful riches! To this end I was sent to school to get learning, the value of which I knew not — wretch that I was. Yet if I was slow to learn, I was flogged. For this was deemed praiseworthy by our forefathers and many had passed before us in the same course, and thus had built up the precedent for the sorrowful road on which we too were compelled to travel, multiplying labor and sorrow upon the sons of Adam. About this time, O Lord, I observed men praying to you, and I learned from them to conceive you — after my capacity for understanding as it was then — to be some great Being, who, though not visible to our senses, was able to hear and help us. Thus as a boy I began to pray to you, my help and my refuge, and, in calling on you, broke the bands of my tongue. Small as I was, I prayed with no slight earnestness that I might not be beaten at school. And when you did not heed me — for that would have been giving me over to my folly — my elders and even my parents too, who wished me no ill, treated my stripes as a joke, though they were then a great and grievous ill to me.
15. Is there anyone, O Lord, with a spirit so great, who cleaves to you with such steadfast affection (or is there even a kind of obtuseness that has the same effect) — is there any man who, by cleaving devoutly to you, is endowed with so great a courage that he can regard indifferently those racks and hooks and other torture weapons from which men throughout the world pray so fervently to be spared; and can they scorn those who so greatly fear these torments, just as my parents were amused at the torments with which our teachers punished us boys? For we were no less afraid of our pains, nor did we beseech you less to escape them. Yet, even so, we were sinning by writing or reading or studying less than our assigned lessons.
For I did not, O Lord, lack memory or capacity, for, by your will, I possessed enough for my age. However, my mind was absorbed only in play, and I was punished for this by those who were doing the same things themselves. But the idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men. For will any common-sense observer agree that I was rightly punished as a boy for playing ball — just because this hindered me from learning more quickly those lessons by means of which, as a man, I could play at more shameful games? And did he by whom I was beaten do anything different? When he was worsted in some small controversy with a fellow teacher, he was more tormented by anger and envy than I was when beaten by a playmate in the ball game.
Chapter X
16. And yet I sinned, O Lord my God, you ruler and creator of all natural things — but of sins only the ruler — I sinned, O Lord my God, in acting against the precepts of my parents and of those teachers. For this learning that they wished me to acquire — no matter what their motives were — I might have put to good account afterward. I disobeyed them, not because I had chosen a better way, but from a sheer love of play. I loved the vanity of victory, and I loved to have my ears tickled with lying fables, which made them itch even more ardently, and a similar curiosity glowed more and more in my eyes for the shows and sports of my elders. Yet those who put on such shows are held in such high repute that almost all desire the same for their children. They are therefore willing to have them beaten, if their childhood games keep them from the studies by which their parents desire them to grow up to be able to give such shows. Look down on these things with mercy, O Lord, and deliver us who now call upon you; deliver those also who do not call upon you, that they may call upon you, and you may deliver them.
Chapter XI
17. Even as a boy I had heard of eternal life promised to us through the humility of the Lord our God, who came down to visit us in our pride, and I was signed with the sign of his cross and was seasoned with his salt even from the womb of my mother, who greatly trusted in you. You saw, O Lord, how, once, while I was still a child, I was suddenly seized with stomach pains and was at the point of death — you saw, O my God, for even then you were my keeper, with what agitation and with what faith I solicited from the piety of my mother and from your Church (which is the mother of us all) the baptism of your Christ, my Lord and my God. The mother of my flesh was much perplexed, for, with a heart pure in your faith, she was always in deep travail for my eternal salvation. If I had not quickly recovered, she would have provided forthwith for my initiation and washing by your life-giving sacraments, confessing you, O Lord Jesus, for the forgiveness of sins. So my cleansing was deferred, as if it were inevitable that, if I should live, I would be further polluted — and, further, because the guilt contracted by sin after Baptism would be still greater and more perilous.
Thus, at that time, I “believed” along with my mother and the whole household, except my father. But he did not overcome the influence of my mother’s piety in me, nor did he prevent my believing in Christ, although he had not yet believed in him. For it was her desire, O my God, that I should acknowledge you as my Father rather than him. In this you aided her to overcome her husband, to whom, though his superior, she yielded obedience. In this way she also yielded obedience to you, who so command.
18. I ask you, O my God, for I would gladly know if it be your will, to what good end my Baptism was deferred at that time? Was it indeed for my good that the reins were slackened, as it were, to encourage me in sin? Or, were they not slackened? If not, then why is it still dinned into our ears on all sides, “Let him alone, let him do as he pleases, for he is not yet baptized”? In the matter of bodily health, no one says, “Let him alone; let him be worse wounded; for he is not yet cured”! How much better, then, would it have been for me to have been cured at once — and if thereafter, through the diligent care of friends and myself, my soul’s restored health had been kept safe in your keeping, who gave it in the first place! This would have been far better, in truth. But how many and great the waves of temptation that appeared to hang over me as I grew out of childhood! These were foreseen by my mother, and she preferred that the unformed clay should be risked to them rather than the clay molded after Christ’s image.2
Chapter XII
19. But in this time of childhood — which was far less dreaded for me than my adolescence — I had no love of learning, and hated to be driven to it. Yet I was driven to it just the same, and good was done for me, even though I did not do it well, for I would not have learned if I had not been forced to it. For no man does well against his will, even if what he does is a good thing. Neither did they who forced me do well, but the good that was done me came from you, my God. For they did not care about the way in which I would use what they forced me to learn, and took it for granted that it was to satisfy the inordinate desires of a rich beggary and a shameful glory. But you, Lord, by whom the hairs of our head are numbered, did use for my good the error of all who pushed me on to study: but my error in not