cormacburke.me.ke

BOOK II
1. I will now call to mind my past foulness, and the carnal corruptions of my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love You, O my God. For love of Your love I do it; reviewing my most wicked ways in the very bitterness of my remembrance, that You may grow sweet unto me (You sweetness never failing, You blissful and assured sweetness); and gathering me again out of that my dissipation, wherein I was torn piecemeal, while turned from You, the One Good, I lost myself among a multiplicity of things. For I even burnt in my youth heretofore, to be satiated in things below; and I dared to grow wild again, with these various and shadowy loves: my beauty consumed away, and I stank in your eyes; pleasing myself, and desirous to please in the eyes of men.
2. And what was it that I delighted in, but to love, and be loved? but I kept not the measure of love, of mind to mind, friendship's bright boundary: but out of the muddy concupiscence of the flesh, and the bubblings of youth, mists fumed up which beclouded and overcast my heart, that I could not discern the clear brightness of love from the fog of lustfulness. Both did confusedly boil in me, and hurried my unstayed youth over the precipice of unholy desires, and sunk me in a gulf of flagitiousnesses. Your wrath had gathered over me, and I knew it not. I was grown deaf by the clanking of the chain of my mortality, the punishment of the pride of my soul, and I strayed further from You, and You let me alone, and I was tossed about, and wasted, and dissipated, and I boiled over in my fornications, and You held Your peace, O You my tardy joy! You then held Your peace, and I wandered further and further from You, into more and more fruitless seed-plots of sorrows, with a proud dejectedness, and a restless weariness.
Oh! that some one had then attempered my disorder, and turned to account the fleeting beauties of these, the extreme points of Your creation! had put a bound to their pleasureableness, that so the tides of my youth might have cast themselves upon the marriage shore, if they could not be calmed, and kept within the object of a family, as Your law prescribes, O Lord: who this way form the offspring of this our death, being able with a gentle hand to blunt the thorns which were excluded from Your paradise? For Your omnipotency is not far from us, even when we be far from You. Else ought I more watchfully to have heeded the voice from the clouds: Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh, but I spare You. And it is good for a man not to touch a woman. And, he that is unmarried thinks of the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he that is married cares for the things of this world, how he may please his wife.
To these words I should have listened more attentively, and being severed for the kingdom of heaven's sake, had more happily awaited Your embraces; but I, poor wretch, foamed like a troubled sea, following the rushing of my own tide, forsaking You, and exceeded all Your limits; yet I escaped not Your scourges. For what mortal can? For You were ever with me mercifully rigorous, and besprinkling with most bitter alloy all my unlawful pleasures: that I might seek pleasures without alloy. But where to find such, I could not discover, save in You, O Lord, who teach by sorrow, and wound us, to heal; and kill us, lest we die from You. Where was I, and how far was I exiled from the delights of Your house, in that sixteenth year of the age of my flesh, when the madness of lust (to which human shamelessness gives free licence, though unlicensed by Your laws) took the rule over me, and I resigned myself wholly to it? My friends meanwhile took no care by marriage to save my fall; their only care was that I should learn to speak excellently, and be a persuasive orator.
3. For that year were my studies intermitted: whilst after my return from Madaura (a neighbour city, whither I had journeyed to learn grammar and rhetoric), the expenses for a further journey to Carthage were being provided for me; and that rather by the resolution than the means of my father, who was but a poor freeman of Thagaste. To whom tell I this? not to You, my God; but before You to mine own kind, even to that small portion of mankind as may light upon these writings of mine. And to what purpose? that whosoever reads this, may think out of what depths we are to cry unto You. For what is nearer to your ears than a confessing heart, and a life of faith? Who did not extol my father, for that beyond the ability of his means, he would furnish his son with all necessaries for a far journey for his studies' sake? For many far abler citizens did no such thing for their children. But yet this same father had no concern how I grew towards You, or how chaste I were; so that I were but copious in speech, however barren I were to Your culture, O God, who are the only true and good Lord of Your field, my heart.
But while in that my sixteenth year I lived with my parents, leaving all school for a while (a season of idleness being interposed through the narrowness of my parents' fortunes), the briers of unclean desires grew rank over my head, and there was no hand to root them out. When that my father saw me at the baths, now growing towards manhood, and endued with a restless youthfulness, he, as already hence anticipating his descendants, gladly told it to my mother; rejoicing in that tumult of the senses wherein the world forgets You its Creator, and becomes enamoured of Your creature, instead of Yourself, through the fumes of that invisible wine of its self-will, turning aside and bowing down to the very basest things. But in my mother's breast You had already begun Your temple, and the foundation of Your holy habitation, whereas my father was as yet but a Catechumen, and that but recently. She then was startled with a holy fear and trembling; and though I was not as yet baptised, feared for me those crooked ways in which they walk who turn their back to You, and not their face.
Woe is me! and dare I say that You held Your peace, O my God, while I wandered further from You? did You then indeed hold Your peace to me? And whose but yours were these words which by my mother, Your faithful one, You sang in my ears? Nothing whereof sunk into my heart, so as to do it. For she wished, and I remember in private with great anxiety warned me, "not to commit fornication; but especially never to defile another man's wife." These seemed to me womanish advices, which I should blush to obey. But they were yours, and I knew it not: and I thought You were silent and that it was she who spake; by whom You were not silent unto me; and in her were despised by me, her son, the son of Your handmaid, Your servant. But I knew it not; and ran headlong with such blindness, that amongst my equals I was ashamed of a less shamelessness, when I heard them boast of their flagitiousness, yea, and the more boasting, the more they were degraded: and I took pleasure, not only in the pleasure of the deed, but in the praise. What is worthy of dispraise but vice? But I made myself worse than I was, that I might not be dispraised; and when in any thing I had not sinned as the abandoned ones, I would say that I had done what I had not done, that I might not seem contemptible in proportion as I was innocent; or of less account, the more chaste.
Behold with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon, and wallowed in the mire thereof, as if in a bed of spices and precious ointments. And that I might cleave the faster to its very centre, the invisible enemy trod me down, and seduced me, for that I was easy to be seduced. Neither did the mother of my flesh (who had now fled out of the centre of Babylon, yet went more slowly in the skirts thereof as she advised me to chastity, so heed what she had heard of me from her husband, as to restrain within the bounds of conjugal affection (if it could not be pared away to the quick) what she felt to be pestilent at present and for the future dangerous. She heeded not this, for she feared lest a wife should prove a clog and hindrance to my hopes. Not those hopes of the world to come, which my mother reposed in you; but the hope of learning, which both my parents were too desirous I should attain; my father, because he had next to no thought of You, and of me but vain conceits; my mother, because she accounted that those usual courses of learning would not only be no hindrance, but even some furtherance towards attaining You. For thus I conjecture, recalling, as well as I may, the disposition of my parents. The reins, meantime, were slackened to me, beyond all temper of due severity, to spend my time in sport, yea, even unto dissoluteness in whatsoever I affected. And in all was a mist, intercepting from me, O my God, the brightness of Your truth; and mine iniquity burst out as from very fatness.
4. Theft is punished by Your law, O Lord, and the law written in the hearts of men, which iniquity itself effaces not. For what thief will abide a thief? not even a rich thief, one stealing through want. Yet I lusted to thieve, and did it, compelled by no hunger, nor poverty, but through a cloyedness of well-doing, and a pamperedness of iniquity. For I stole that, of which I had enough, and much better. Nor cared I to enjoy what I stole, but joyed in the theft and sin itself. A pear tree there was near our vineyard, laden with fruit, tempting neither for colour nor taste. To shake and rob this, some lewd young fellows of us went, late one night (having according to our pestilent custom prolonged our sports in the streets till then), and took huge loads, not for our eating, but to fling to the very hogs, having only tasted them. And this, but to do what we liked only, because it was misliked. Behold my heart, O God, behold my heart, which You had pity upon in the bottom of the bottomless pit. Now, behold, let my heart tell You what it sought there, that I should be gratuitously evil, having no temptation to ill, but the ill itself. It was foul, and I loved it; I loved to perish, I loved mine own fault, not that for which I was faulty, but my fault itself. Foul soul, falling from Your firmament to utter destruction; not seeking aught through the shame, but the shame itself!
5. For there is an attractiveness in beautiful bodies, in gold and silver, and all things; and in bodily touch, sympathy has much influence, and each other sense has his proper object answerably tempered. Worldy honour has also its grace, and the power of overcoming, and of mastery; whence springs also the thirst of revenge. But yet, to obtain all these, we may not depart from You, O Lord, nor decline from Your law. The life also which here we live has its own enchantment, through a certain proportion of its own, and a correspondence with all things beautiful here below. Human friendship also is endeared with a sweet tie, by reason of the unity formed of many souls. Upon occasion of all these, and the like, is sin committed, while through an immoderate inclination towards these goods of the lowest order, the better and higher are forsaken, - You, our Lord God, Your truth, and Your law. For these lower things have their delights, but not like my God, who made all things; for in Him does the righteous delight, and He is the joy of the upright in heart.
When, then, we ask why a crime was done, we believe it not, unless it appear that there might have been some desire of obtaining some of those which we called lower goods, or a fear of losing them. For they are beautiful and comely; although compared with those higher and beatific goods, they be abject and low. A man has murdered another; why? he loved his wife or his estate; or would rob for his own livelihood; or feared to lose some such things by him; or, wronged, was on fire to be revenged. Would any commit murder upon no cause, delighted simply in murdering? who would believe it? for as for that furious and savage man, of whom it is said that he was gratuitously evil and cruel, yet is the cause assigned; "lest" (said he) "through idleness hand or heart should grow inactive." And to what end? that, through that practice of guilt, he might, having taken the city, attain to honours, empire, riches, and be freed from fear of the laws, and his embarrassments from domestic needs, and consciousness of villainies. So then, not even Catiline himself loved his own villainies, but something else, for whose sake he did them.
6. What then did wretched I so love in You, You theft of mine, You deed of darkness, in that sixteenth year of my age? Lovely You were not, because You were theft. But are You any thing, that thus I speak to You? Fair were the pears we stole, because they were Your creation, You fairest of all, Creator of all, You good God; God, the sovereign good and my true good. Fair were those pears, but not them did my wretched soul desire; for I had store of better, and those I gathered, only that I might steal. For, when gathered, I flung them away, my only feast therein being my own sin, which I was pleased to enjoy. For if aught of those pears came within my mouth, what sweetened it was the sin. And now, O Lord my God, I enquire what in that theft delighted me; and behold it has no loveliness; I mean not such loveliness as in justice and wisdom; nor such as is in the mind and memory, and senses, and animal life of man; nor yet as the stars are glorious and beautiful in their orbs; or the earth, or sea, full of embryo-life, replacing by its birth that which decays; nay, nor even that false and shadowy beauty which belongs to deceiving vices.
For so does pride imitate exaltedness; whereas You alone are God exalted over all. Ambition, what seeks it, but honours and glory? whereas You alone are to be honoured above all, and glorious for evermore. The cruelty of the great would fain be feared; but who is to be feared but God alone, out of whose power what can be wrested or withdrawn? when, or where, or whither, or by whom? The tendernesses of the wanton would fain be counted love: yet is nothing more tender than Your charity; nor is aught loved more healthfully than that Your truth, bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity makes semblance of a desire of knowledge; whereas You supremely know all. Yea, ignorance and foolishness itself is cloaked under the name of simplicity and uninjuriousness; because nothing is found more single than you: and what less injurious, since they are his own works which injure the sinner? Yea, sloth would fain be at rest; but what stable rest besides the Lord? Luxury affects to be called plenty and abundance; but You are the fulness and never-failing plenteousness of incorruptible pleasures. Prodigality presents a shadow of liberality: but You are the most overflowing Giver of all good. Covetousness would possess many things; and You possess all things. Envy disputes for excellency: what more excellent than You? Anger seeks revenge: who revenges more justly than You? Fear startles at things unwonted and sudden, which endangers things beloved, and takes forethought for their safety; but to You what unwonted or sudden, or who separates from You what You love? Or where but with You is unshaken safety? Grief pines away for things lost, the delight of its desires; because it would have nothing taken from it, as nothing can from You.
Thus does the soul commit fornication, when she turns from You, seeking without You, what she finds not pure and untainted, till she returns to You. Thus all pervertedly imitate You, who remove far from You, and lift themselves up against You. But even by thus imitating You, they imply You to be the Creator of all nature; whence there is no place whither altogether to retire from You. What then did I love in that theft? and wherein did I even corruptly and pervertedly imitate my Lord? Did I wish even by stealth to do contrary to Your law, because by power I could not, so that being a prisoner, I might mimic a maimed liberty by doing with impunity things unpermitted me, a darkened likeness of Your Omnipotency? Behold, Your servant, fleeing from his Lord, and obtaining a shadow. O rottenness, O monstrousness of life, and depth of death! could I like what I might not, only because I might not?
7. What shall I render unto the Lord, that, whilst my memory recalls these things, my soul is not affrighted at them? I will love You, O Lord, and thank You, and confess unto Your name; because You have forgiven me these so great and heinous deeds of mine. To Your grace I ascribe it, and to Your mercy, that You have melted away my sins as it were ice. To Your grace I ascribe also whatsoever I have not done of evil; for what might I not have done, who even loved a sin for its own sake? Yea, all I confess to have been forgiven me; both what evils I committed by my own wilfulness, and what by Your guidance I committed not. What man is he, who, weighing his own infirmity, dares to ascribe his purity and innocency to his own strength; that so he should love You the less, as if he had less needed Your mercy, whereby You remit sins to those that turn to You? For whosoever, called by You, followed Your voice, and avoided those things which he reads me recalling and confessing of myself, let him not scorn me, who being sick, was cured by that Physician, through whose aid it was that he was not, or rather was less, sick: and for this let him love You as much, yea and more; since by whom he sees me to have been recovered from such deep consumption of sin, by Him he sees himself to have been from the like consumption of sin preserved.
8. What fruit had I then (wretched man!) in those things, of the remembrance whereof I am now ashamed? Especially, in that theft which I loved for the theft's sake; and it too was nothing, and therefore the more miserable I, who loved it. Yet alone I had not done it: such was I then, I remember, alone I had never done it. I loved then in it also the company of the accomplices, with whom I did it? I did not then love nothing else but the theft, yea rather I did love nothing else; for that circumstance of the company was also nothing. What is, in truth? who can teach me, save He that enlightens my heart, and discovers its dark corners? What is it which has come into my mind to enquire, and discuss, and consider? For had I then loved the pears I stole, and wished to enjoy them, I might have done it alone, had the bare commission of the theft sufficed to attain my pleasure; nor needed I have inflamed the itching of my desires by the excitement of accomplices. But since my pleasure was not in those pears, it was in the offence itself, which the company of fellow-sinners occasioned.
9. What then was this feeling? For of a truth it was too foul: and woe was me, who had it. But yet what was it? Who can understand his errors? It was the sport, which as it were tickled our hearts, that we beguiled those who little thought what we were doing, and much disliked it. Why then was my delight of such sort that I did it not alone? Because none does ordinarily laugh alone? ordinarily no one; yet laughter sometimes masters men alone and singly when no one whatever is with them, if anything very ludicrous presents itself to their senses or mind. Yet I had not done this alone; alone I had never done it. Behold my God, before You, the vivid remembrance of my soul; alone, I had never committed that theft wherein what I stole pleased me not, but that I stole; nor had it alone liked me to do it, nor had I done it. O friendship too unfriendly! You incomprehensible inveigler of the soul, You greediness to do mischief out of mirth and wantonness, You thirst of others' loss, without lust of my own gain or revenge: but when it is said, "Let's go, let's do it," we are ashamed not to be shameless.
10. Who can disentangle that twisted and intricate knottiness? Foul is it: I hate to think on it, to look on it. But You I long for, O Righteousness and Innocency, beautiful and comely to all pure eyes, and of a satisfaction unsating. With You is rest entire, and life imperturbable. Whoso enters into You, enters into the joy of his Lord: and shall not fear, and shall do excellently in the All-Excellent. I sank away from You, and I wandered, O my God, too much astray from You my stay, in these days of my youth, and I became to myself a barren land.