Book I
The Restless Heart
You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised. Great is Your power, and Your wisdom is infinite.1 And man would praise You — man, who is but a particle of Your creation; man, who bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness that You resist the proud. Yet man would praise You — he, but a particle of Your creation. You awaken us to delight in Your praise; for You made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.2
Grant me, Lord, to know and understand which comes first — to call on You, or to praise You? And again, to know You, or to call on You? For who can call on You without knowing You? He who does not know You may call on You as other than You are. Or is it rather that we call on You so that we may come to know You? But "how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe without a preacher?" And "those who seek the LORD shall praise Him," for those who seek shall find Him, and those who find shall praise Him. I will seek You, Lord, by calling on You; and I will call on You, believing in You — for You have been preached to us. My faith, Lord, calls on You — that faith which You have given me, which You have inspired in me through the Incarnation of Your Son, through the ministry of the Preacher.
Where Can God Come Into Me?
And how shall I call upon my God, my God and Lord — since, when I call for Him, I shall be calling Him to myself? And what room is there within me where my God can come into me? Where can God come into me — God who made heaven and earth? Is there indeed, O Lord my God, anything in me that can contain You? Do then heaven and earth, which You have made, and in which You have made me, contain You? Or — because nothing which exists could exist without You — does therefore whatever exists contain You?
Since then I too exist, why do I ask that You should enter into me, who would not exist at all if You were not in me? Why? Because I have not gone down into hell — and yet You are there also. For "if I go down into hell, You are there." I could not exist then, O my God, could not exist at all, were You not in me. Or rather — unless I were in You, "of whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are all things."
Even so, Lord, even so. Where do I call You, since I am in You? Or from where can You enter into me? For where can I go beyond heaven and earth, that from there my God should come into me — He who has said, "I fill the heaven and the earth"?
The God Who Overflows
Do the heaven and earth then contain You, since You fill them? Or do You fill them and yet overflow, since they do not contain You? And where, when the heaven and the earth are filled, do You pour forth the remainder of Yourself? Or do You have no need that anything contain You, who contain all things — since what You fill, You fill by containing it? For the vessels which You fill do not hold You up, since even if they were broken, You would not be poured out. And when You are poured out on us, You are not cast down but You uplift us; You are not scattered but You gather us.
But You who fill all things — do You fill them with Your whole self? Or, since all things cannot contain You wholly, do they contain part of You? And all at once the same part? Or each its own part — the greater more, the smaller less? Is then one part of You greater, another less? Or are You wholly everywhere, while nothing contains You wholly?
What Are You Then, My God?
What are You then, my God? What, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? Or who is God except our God? Most high, most good, most powerful, most almighty; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong; stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud — and they know it not. Ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking; supporting, filling, and protecting; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things.
You love, without passion; are jealous, without anxiety; repent, yet do not grieve; are angry, yet serene; change Your works, Your purpose unchanged; receive again what You find, yet never lost; never in need, yet rejoicing in gains; never covetous, yet exacting interest. You receive more than is owed, that You may become the debtor; and who has anything that is not Yours? You pay debts, owing nothing; forgive debts, losing nothing.
And what have I now said, my God, my life, my holy joy? Or what does anyone say when he speaks of You? Yet woe to him who is silent about You, since even the most eloquent are mute.
Say to My Soul: I Am Your Salvation
Oh, that I might rest in You! Oh, that You would enter into my heart and fill it to overflowing, that I might forget my troubles and embrace You, my only good! What are You to me? In Your pity, teach me to say it. Or what am I to You, that You demand my love — and if I do not give it, are displeased with me and threaten me with grievous sorrows? Is it then a small sorrow not to love You?
Oh! For Your mercies' sake, tell me, O Lord my God, what You are to me. Say to my soul, "I am your salvation." So speak, that I may hear. Behold, Lord, my heart is before You. Open its ears, and say to my soul, "I am your salvation." After that voice let me run, and take hold of You. Do not hide Your face from me. Let me die — lest I die — only let me see Your face.
Narrow is the house of my soul; enlarge it, that You may enter in. It is in ruins; repair it. It has within it what must offend Your eyes; I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? Or to whom should I cry but to You? Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults, and spare Your servant from the power of the enemy. I believe, and therefore I speak. Lord, You know. Have I not confessed my transgressions to You, and You, my God, have forgiven the iniquity of my heart? I do not contend in judgment with You, who are the truth; I fear to deceive myself, lest my iniquity lie to itself. Therefore I do not contend in judgment with You; for if You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
Infancy
Yet allow me to speak to Your mercy — me, dust and ashes. Yet allow me to speak, since I speak to Your mercy and not to scornful man. You too, perhaps, look down on me — yet You will turn and have compassion upon me.
For what would I say, O Lord my God, but that I do not know how I came into this dying life — shall I call it? — or living death. Then immediately the comforts of Your compassion took me up, as I heard (for I do not remember it) from the parents of my flesh, out of whose substance You fashioned me. So there received me the comforts of a mother's milk. For neither my mother nor my nurses filled their own breasts for me; but You bestowed the food of my infancy through them, according to Your ordering, by which You distribute Your riches through the hidden springs of all things.
You also gave me to desire no more than You gave; and to my nurses the willingness to give me what You gave them. For they, with a heaven-taught affection, willingly gave me what they had in abundance from You. For this good that came to me from them was good for them. Nor indeed did it come from them, but through them; for from You, O God, are all good things, and from my God is all my well-being. This I have since learned — You, through these Your gifts, within me and without, proclaiming Yourself to me. For then I knew only how to nurse; to rest in what pleased, and cry at what hurt my flesh; nothing more.
Afterward I began to smile — first in sleep, then waking. So it was told me about myself, and I believed it; for we see the same in other infants, though of myself I remember it not. Thus, little by little, I became aware of where I was; and I wished to express my desires to those who could satisfy them, and I could not. For the desires were within me, and they were outside; nor could they by any sense of theirs enter within my spirit. So I flung about my limbs and voice at random, making the few signs I could, and such as I could — though in truth very little like what I wished. And when I was not quickly obeyed (my wishes being hurtful or unintelligible), then I was angry with my elders for not submitting to me, with those who owed me no service for not serving me; and I avenged myself on them by tears. Such I have learned infants to be from observing them; and that I was myself such, they — all unknowing — have shown me better than my nurses who knew it.
Infancy and Eternity
And look! My infancy died long ago, and I live. But You, Lord, who live forever and in whom nothing dies — for before the foundation of the worlds, and before all that can be called "before," You are, and are God and Lord of all which You have created — in You abide, fixed forever, the first causes of all things that do not abide; and of all things changeable, the springs abide in You unchangeable; and in You live the eternal reasons of all things unreasoning and temporal.
Say, Lord, to me Your suppliant; say, all-pitying One, to me Your pitiable one: did my infancy succeed another age of mine that died before it? Was it that which I spent within my mother's womb? For of that I have heard something, and have myself seen women with child. And what before that life again, O God my joy — was I anywhere or anybody? For this I have no one to tell me — neither father nor mother, nor experience of others, nor my own memory. Do You laugh at me for asking this, and bid me praise You and acknowledge You for what I do know?
I acknowledge You, Lord of heaven and earth, and praise You for my first beginnings of being, and my infancy, of which I remember nothing. For You have ordained that man should guess much about himself from others, and believe much on the word of mothers and nurses. Even then I had being and life, and at my infancy's close I could seek for signs by which to make my thoughts known to others. From where could such a being come, except from You, Lord? Shall anyone be his own maker? Or can there be any other source from which being and life stream into us, except that You make us, O Lord — You in whom being and life are one? For You Yourself are supremely Being and Life. For You are most high, and are not changed; neither in You does today come to a close — yet in You it does come to a close, because all such things also are in You. For they would have no way to pass away unless You sustained them. And since Your years do not fail, Your years are one today. How many of our years and our fathers' years have flowed away through Your "today," and from it received the measure and the shape of such being as they had; and still others shall flow away, and so receive the shape of their degree of being. But You are still the same, and all things of tomorrow and all beyond, and all of yesterday and all behind it, You have done today.
The Sins of Infancy
Hear, O God. Alas for man's sin! So says man, and You pity him; for You made him, but sin in him You did not make. Who reminds me of the sins of my infancy? For in Your sight none is pure from sin, not even the infant whose life is but a day upon the earth. Who reminds me? Does not each little infant, in whom I see what of myself I do not remember?
What then was my sin? Was it that I hung upon the breast and cried? For should I now so do for food suitable to my age, I would justly be laughed at and reproved. What I did then was worthy of reproof; but since I could not understand reproof, custom and reason forbade me to be reproved. For those habits, when grown, we root out and cast away. Now no one, though he prunes, knowingly casts away what is good. Or was it then good, even for a while, to cry for what, if given, would cause harm? To bitterly resent that persons free, and its own elders — the very authors of its birth — did not serve it? To do its best to strike and hurt, because commands were not obeyed which would have been obeyed to its harm?
The weakness then of infant limbs, not its will, is its innocence. I myself have seen and known even a baby who was envious; it could not speak, yet it turned pale and looked bitterly on its foster-brother. Who does not know this? Mothers and nurses say that they remedy these things by various means. Is that too innocence — when the fountain of milk is flowing in rich abundance — not to endure one to share it, though that one in extremest need, and whose very life as yet depends on it? We bear gently with all this, not because these are nothing or only slight evils, but because they will disappear as the years increase; for though tolerated now, the very same impulses are utterly intolerable when found in older years.
Boyhood and School
You then, O Lord my God, who gave life to this my infancy — furnishing with senses the body You gave, fitting its limbs together, adorning its proportions, and for its general good and safety implanting in it all vital functions — You command me to praise You in these things, to confess to You, and sing to Your name, O Most High.
Passing on from infancy, I came to boyhood — or rather it came to me, displacing infancy. Nor did infancy depart (for where did it go?); and yet it was no more. For I was no longer a speechless infant, but a speaking boy. This I remember; and I have since observed how I learned to speak. It was not that my elders taught me words in any set method; but I, longing by cries and broken sounds and various motions of my limbs to express my thoughts so that I might have my way — yet unable to express all I wished, or to whom I wished — did myself, by the understanding which You, my God, gave me, practice the sounds in my memory. When they named any thing, and as they spoke turned toward it, I saw and remembered that they called what they would point out by the name they uttered. And thus by constantly hearing words as they occurred in various sentences, I gradually gathered what they stood for; and having trained my mouth to these signs, I thereby gave utterance to my will. Thus I exchanged with those about me these common signs of our wishes, and so launched deeper into the stormy life of human society.
O God my God, what miseries and mockeries did I then experience, when obedience to my teachers was set before me as proper for a boy, so that I might get on in the world and excel in the arts of language, which should serve to gain "the praise of men" and deceitful riches. Next I was put to school to get learning, in which I — poor wretch — knew not what use there was; and yet, if slow in learning, I was beaten. For this was judged right by our forefathers; and many who passed the same course before us framed for us weary paths, through which we were forced to pass — multiplying toil and grief upon the sons of Adam.
But, Lord, we found that people called upon You, and we learned from them to think of You (according to our ability) as of some great One, who — though hidden from our senses — could hear and help us. For so I began, as a boy, to pray to You, my aid and refuge; and broke the bonds of my tongue to call on You, praying You, though small, yet with no small earnestness, that I might not be beaten at school. And when You did not hear me (not thereby giving me over to folly), my elders, even my very parents who wished me no ill, mocked my beatings — my then great and grievous suffering.
The Boy and the Baptism
As a boy, then, I had already heard of an eternal life promised us through the humility of the Lord our God stooping to our pride; and even from the womb of my mother, who greatly hoped in You, I was sealed with the mark of His cross and salted with His salt. You saw, Lord, how while yet a boy, being seized one time with sudden pain in the stomach and near to death — You saw, my God (for You were my keeper), with what eagerness and what faith I sought, from the care of my mother and Your Church, the mother of us all, the baptism of Your Christ, my God and Lord.
My mother, being much troubled (since with a heart pure in Your faith she labored even more lovingly in the birth of my salvation), would in eager haste have provided for my consecration and cleansing by the life-giving sacraments, confessing You, Lord Jesus, for the remission of sins — had I not suddenly recovered. And so my cleansing was deferred, because the defilements of sin would, after that washing, bring greater and more perilous guilt. I then already believed; and my mother and the whole household, except my father. Yet he did not prevail over the power of my mother's devotion in me — that as he did not yet believe, so neither should I. For it was her earnest care that You, my God, rather than he, should be my father; and in this You aided her to prevail over her husband, whom she — the better of the two — obeyed, thereby also obeying You, who so command.
Latin and Greek, Dido and Aeneas
In boyhood, however (so much less dreaded for me than youth), I loved not study, and hated to be forced to it. Yet I was forced; and this was well done toward me, but I did not do well. For unless forced, I would not have learned. But no one does well against his will, even though what he does is good. Yet neither did those who forced me do well — but what was good came to me from You, my God. For they were careless how I should use what they forced me to learn, except to satisfy the insatiable desires of a wealthy poverty and a shameful glory. But You, by whom the very hairs of our head are numbered, used for my good the error of all who urged me to learn; and my own error, who would not learn, You used for my punishment — a fit penalty for one so small a boy and so great a sinner. So by those who did not act well, You acted well for me; and by my own sin You justly punished me. For You have commanded, and so it is, that every disordered affection should be its own punishment.
But why did I so much hate the Greek I studied as a boy? I do not yet fully know. For the Latin I loved — not what my first masters, but what the grammarians taught me. For those first lessons — reading, writing, and arithmetic — I thought as great a burden and penalty as any Greek. And yet where did this come from, but from the sin and vanity of this life — because I was flesh, and a breath that passes away and does not come again? For those first lessons were better certainly, because more reliable; by them I obtained, and still retain, the power of reading what I find written, and writing what I wish. Whereas in the others, I was forced to learn the wanderings of one Aeneas, forgetful of my own, and to weep for dead Dido because she killed herself for love — while with dry eyes I endured my miserable self dying among these things, far from You, O God my life.
For what is more miserable than a miserable person who does not pity himself — weeping the death of Dido for love of Aeneas, but weeping not his own death for want of love to You, O God? You, the light of my heart, the bread of my inmost soul, the power who gives vigor to my mind, who quickens my thoughts — I did not love You. I strayed from You, and all around me there echoed, "Well done! Well done!" For the friendship of this world is unfaithfulness to You; and "Well done! Well done!" echoes on until one is ashamed not to be like everyone else. And for all this I did not weep — I who wept for Dido.
The Torrent of Human Custom
But now, my God, cry aloud in my soul; and let Your truth tell me: "Not so, not so. Far better was that first study." For I would readily forget the wanderings of Aeneas and all the rest, rather than how to read and write.
But woe to you, torrent of human custom! Who shall stand against you? How long shall you not be dried up? How long will you roll the sons of Eve into that huge and hideous ocean, which even those who climb the cross scarcely pass over? Did I not read in you of Jove the thunderer and the adulterer? Both he certainly could not be; but so the imagined thunder might serve as a cover and an excuse for real adultery. And now which of our robed masters lends a sober ear to one who from their own school cries out, "These were Homer's fictions, transferring human things to the gods; would he had brought down divine things to us!" Yet more truly it should be said, "These are indeed his fictions; but attributing a divine nature to wicked men, so that crimes might no longer be crimes — and whoever commits them might seem to imitate not abandoned men, but the gods of heaven."
And yet, you hellish torrent, into you are cast the sons of men with rich rewards for mastering such learning; and a great ceremony is made of it. Not one bit more easily are the words learned for all this vileness; but by their means the vileness is committed with less shame. Not that I blame the words — being, as it were, choice and precious vessels — but the wine of error which is drunk to us in them by intoxicated teachers; and if we too do not drink, we are beaten, and have no sober judge to whom we may appeal. Yet, O my God (in whose presence I now without harm may remember this), all this unhappily I learned willingly with great delight, and for this was pronounced a hopeful boy.
A Boyhood Confessed
This was the world at whose gate I lay as an unhappy boy; this the stage where I had feared more to commit a grammatical error than — having committed one — to envy those who had not. These things I speak and confess to You, my God, for which I received praise from those whom I then thought it was the whole of virtue to please. For I did not see the abyss of vileness into which I was cast away from Your eyes.
Before Your eyes what could be more foul than I already was — displeasing even people like myself? With countless lies I deceived my tutor, my masters, my parents, out of love of play, eagerness to see vain shows, and restlessness to imitate them. I also committed thefts from my parents' cellar and table — enslaved by greediness, or so that I might have something to give to boys who sold me their games, which they enjoyed no less than I. In these games too I often sought unfair victories, being myself conquered by the vain desire to win. And what could I so poorly endure — or, when I detected it, what did I rebuke so fiercely — as the very thing I was doing to others? And if I was caught and rebuked, I chose rather to quarrel than to yield.
And is this the innocence of boyhood? Not so, Lord, not so — I cry to Your mercy, my God. For these very sins, as older years come, these very sins are transferred from tutors and masters, from nuts and balls and sparrows, to magistrates and kings, to gold and estates and slaves — just as heavier punishments replace the cane. It was the small stature of childhood, then, which You, our King, commended as an emblem of humility, when You said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven."
Closing Praise
Yet, Lord, to You, the Creator and Governor of the universe, most excellent and most good, thanks were due to You our God, even had You destined for me boyhood only. For even then I existed, I lived, and felt; and I had an implanted care for my own well-being — a trace of that mysterious Unity from which I was derived. I guarded by my inner sense the wholeness of my outer senses, and in these small pursuits, and in my thoughts on small things, I learned to delight in truth. I hated to be deceived, had a vigorous memory, was gifted with speech, was soothed by friendship, avoided pain, lowliness, and ignorance. In so small a creature, what was not wonderful, not admirable?
But all are gifts of my God; it was not I who gave them to myself. And good these are, and these together are myself. Good, then, is He who made me, and He is my good; and before Him will I exult for every good which as a boy I had. For it was my sin that not in Him, but in His creatures — myself and others — I sought for pleasures, heights, and truths, and so fell headlong into sorrows, confusions, and errors.
Thanks be to You, my joy and my glory and my confidence, my God — thanks be to You for Your gifts. But preserve them in me. For so will You preserve me, and those things shall be enlarged and perfected which You have given me, and I myself shall be with You, since even to exist You have given me.
Footnotes
1 The original: "Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite." This is one of the most famous opening lines in all of Christian literature, and Pusey's rendering has its own majesty. The modernization preserves the structure while removing only the barrier of archaic pronouns.
2 The original: "Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee." Perhaps the single most quoted sentence Augustine ever wrote. Pusey's "repose" is more beautiful than "rests" — but "rests" is what Le will read before dawn without pausing. The original is given here so nothing is lost.