Book VI

My Hope from My Youth

O You, my hope from my youth, where were You, and where had You gone? Had You not created me, and set me apart from the beasts of the field and the birds of the air? You had made me wiser, yet I walked in darkness and on slippery ground, and sought You outside myself, and did not find the God of my heart. I had come into the depths of the sea, and distrusted and despaired of ever finding truth.

My mother had now come to me — resolute in her devotion, following me over sea and land, in all perils trusting in You. For in the perils of the sea she comforted the very sailors (by whom passengers unfamiliar with the deep are usually the ones comforted), assuring them of safe arrival, because You had promised her this in a vision. She found me in serious danger — through despair of ever finding truth.

But when I told her I was no longer a Manichee, though not yet a Catholic Christian, she was not overjoyed as at something unexpected. She was already assured concerning that part of my misery, for which she had mourned me as one dead — though one to be raised by You, carried on the stretcher of her thoughts, so that You might say to the widow's son, "Young man, I say to you, arise," and he should revive, and You should deliver him to his mother.

Her heart was shaken by no wild exultation when she heard that what she daily begged of You with tears was already in so great part accomplished — that though I had not yet found the truth, I was rescued from falsehood. Rather, as one assured that You who had promised the whole would one day give the rest, she replied to me most calmly, and with a heart full of confidence: "She believed in Christ that before she departed this life she would see me a faithful Catholic."

This much she said to me. But to You, Fountain of mercies, she poured forth still more abundant prayers and tears, that You would hasten Your help and enlighten my darkness. And she hastened all the more eagerly to church, and hung upon the words of Ambrose, praying for the fountain of that water which springs up into everlasting life. She loved that man as an angel of God, because she knew that through him I had been brought to my present uncertain state — through which she most confidently expected I would pass from sickness to health, as through the crisis, that sharper fit which doctors know must come before the cure.

Ambrose Reading

I did not yet groan in my prayers that You would help me. My mind was wholly bent on learning and restless to dispute. And Ambrose himself — as the world counts happy — I considered a happy man, held in such honor by such important people. Only his celibacy seemed to me a painful course. But what hope he carried within him, what struggles he had against the temptations that came with his very eminence, what comfort in adversity, and what sweet joys Your bread gave to the hidden mouth of his spirit — these I could neither guess nor experience.

Nor did he know the tides of my feelings, or the depth of my danger. For I could not ask him what I wished, as I wished — being shut off from his ear and speech by crowds of busy people, whose weaknesses he served. When he was not occupied with these (which was very little time), he was either refreshing his body with necessary food, or his mind with reading.

But when he was reading, his eyes glided over the pages, and his heart searched out the meaning, but his voice and tongue were at rest. Often when we came in (for no one was forbidden to enter, nor was it his custom to have visitors announced), we saw him reading silently, and never otherwise; and having sat long in silence (for who dared interrupt one so absorbed?), we would leave, guessing that in the small interval he obtained — free from the noise of other people's business — he was reluctant to be pulled away.¹

Learning to Read Scripture Again

I heard him indeed every Lord's Day, rightly explaining the Word of truth among the people; and I became more and more convinced that all the clever objections which the Manichees had tied against the sacred books could be untied. And I was delighted to hear Ambrose often recommend to his congregation this principle: "The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Corinthians 3:6) — while he drew aside the mystical veil, opening spiritually what according to the letter seemed to teach something unsound.

I joyed also that the old Scriptures of the Law and the Prophets were laid before me no longer with that eye which had formerly made them seem absurd. With joy I heard Ambrose explain them; teaching nothing that offended me, though he taught what I did not yet know to be true. For I kept my heart from assenting to anything, fearing to fall headlong; but by hanging in suspense I was being killed all the worse. For I wished to be as certain of things I could not see as I was that seven and three are ten.

But as it happens that someone who has had a bad physician fears to trust himself with a good one — so it was with the health of my soul, which could not be healed except by believing, and yet refused to be cured lest it should believe falsehoods; resisting Your hands, which have prepared the medicines of faith and applied them to the diseases of the whole world.

Then You, O Lord, little by little, with most tender and most merciful hand, touching and composing my heart, persuaded me — considering how many things I believed that I had not seen: events in history, reports of places and cities I had never visited, things told me by friends and physicians, and countless other matters which unless we believe, we could do nothing at all in this life; lastly, with what unshaken certainty I believed of what parents I was born, which I could not know except by hearsay — considering all this, You persuaded me that those who believed Your Scriptures (which You have established in such great authority among nearly all nations) were not to be blamed, but rather those who did not believe them.

These things I thought on, and You were with me. I sighed, and You heard me. I wavered, and You guided me. I wandered through the broad way of the world, and You did not forsake me.

The Beggar of Milan

I panted after honors, wealth, and marriage; and You mocked me. In these desires I endured most bitter troubles — You being the more gracious, the less You allowed anything to grow sweet to me that was not You.

Behold my heart, O Lord, You who willed that I should remember all this and confess it to You. How wretched was I then, and how did You deal with me to make me feel my wretchedness on that day when I was preparing to recite a speech in praise of the Emperor, in which I was to tell many lies — and lying, be applauded by those who knew I lied. My heart was panting with these anxieties and boiling with feverish thoughts.

For passing through one of the streets of Milan, I noticed a poor beggar — with a full belly, I suppose — joking and happy. And I sighed, and spoke to the friends around me of the many sorrows that come from our ambitions. For by all such efforts as I was then laboring at — dragging along, under the goading of desire, the burden of my own wretchedness, and by dragging it making it heavier — we aimed to arrive at nothing but the very cheerfulness where that beggar had already arrived before us. What he had obtained by a few begged coins — the joy of a temporary happiness — I was plotting for through many a painful winding of the road.

He certainly did not have true joy; but I, with all my ambitious plans, was seeking one far less true. He was happy; I was anxious. He was free from care; I was full of fears. Should anyone have asked me whether I would rather be merry or fearful, I would answer: merry. But if asked whether I would rather be that beggar or what I then was, I would choose to be myself, worn with cares and fears — but out of wrong judgment. For I ought not to have preferred myself to him because I was more learned, seeing I had no joy in my learning, but sought only to please others by it.

Alypius and the Gladiators

These things we who were living as friends together mourned together — but chiefly I spoke of them with Alypius and Nebridius. Alypius was born in the same town as I, of a prominent family, but younger than me. He had studied under me, and he loved me much because I seemed to him kind and learned.

He had gone before me to Rome to study law, and there he was carried away with an incredible eagerness for the gladiatorial shows. For being utterly opposed to such spectacles, he was one day dragged by friends into the Amphitheater, protesting: "Though you drag my body to that place and set me there, can you also force me to turn my mind or my eyes to those shows? I shall be absent while present, and so shall overcome both you and them."

Hearing this, they led him in nonetheless. When they had taken their seats, the whole place was on fire with savage excitement. But he, closing the gates of his eyes, forbade his mind to wander toward that evil. And would that he had stopped his ears as well! For during the fight, when one fell, a mighty roar from the whole crowd struck him powerfully. Overcome by curiosity — thinking himself prepared to despise whatever it was — he opened his eyes. He was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the gladiator was in his body; and he fell more wretchedly than the one whose fall had raised that great shout. The roar entered through his ears and unlocked his eyes, to strike and beat down a soul that was bold rather than strong — and all the weaker because it had relied on itself, when it should have relied on You.

For as soon as he saw that blood, he drank down savagery with it. He did not turn away, but fixed his gaze, drinking in frenzy without knowing it. He was delighted with the guilty contest and intoxicated with the bloody entertainment. He was no longer the man who had come; he was one of the crowd he had come to — a true companion of those who had dragged him there. He watched, he shouted, he burned, and he carried away with him a madness that would goad him to return. Yet from there You plucked him with Your most strong and most merciful hand, and taught him to put his confidence not in himself, but in You. But this was later.

The Concubine Sent Away

Continual effort was made to have me married. I courted; I was engaged — chiefly through my mother's efforts, so that once married, the health-giving baptism might cleanse me, toward which she rejoiced that I was being daily fitted.

Meanwhile my companion of many years was torn from my side as a hindrance to my marriage, and my heart which clung to her was torn and wounded and bleeding. And she returned to Africa, vowing to You never to know any other man, leaving with me my son by her. But unhappy I — who could not even imitate a woman — impatient of the two-year delay until I could marry the girl to whom I was engaged, and being not so much a lover of marriage as a slave to lust, procured another companion, though no wife. So the disease of my soul was kept alive and carried on in full strength — even increased — into the reign of marriage.²

Nor was that wound healed which had been made by the tearing away of the first. After the burning inflammation and most sharp pain, it festered; and my suffering became less acute but more hopeless.

I Was Becoming More Miserable, and You Nearer

To You be praise, glory to You, Fountain of mercies. I was becoming more miserable, and You were drawing nearer. Your right hand was continually ready to pluck me out of the mire and wash me clean — and I did not know it.

Nothing called me back from an even deeper gulf of carnal pleasures except the fear of death and of Your judgment to come — which through all my changes never departed from my heart. And in my discussions with my friends Alypius and Nebridius about the nature of good and evil, I would have given the prize to Epicurus, had I not believed that after death there remained a life for the soul and a recompense according to our deeds — which Epicurus would not believe. And I asked, "If we were immortal, and could live in perpetual bodily pleasure without fear of losing it, why should we not be happy? What else should we seek?" — not knowing that this very question showed my great misery: that being so sunk and blinded, I could not perceive that light of goodness and beauty which deserves to be embraced for its own sake, which the eye of flesh cannot see, and which is seen only by the inner person.

Nor did I, unhappy as I was, consider this: that the very fact that I could discuss these ugly questions with pleasure, among friends, and could not be happy without friends no matter how abundant the physical pleasures — showed that I did love something beyond the body. And yet these friends I loved for themselves, and I knew that I was loved by them in return for myself.

O crooked paths! Woe to the audacious soul which hoped, by forsaking You, to gain something better! It has turned and turned again — upon back, sides, and stomach — yet everything was painful; and You alone are rest. And behold, You are at hand, and deliver us from our wretched wanderings, and place us in Your way, and comfort us, and say: "Run; I will carry you; yes, I will bring you through; there also will I carry you."³

Footnotes

¹ This is one of the most remarked-upon passages in the Confessions. Ambrose reading silently was unusual enough in the ancient world that Augustine comments on it at length. In antiquity, reading was almost always done aloud. But more than a historical curiosity, this scene captures Augustine's frustration: the man who could answer all his questions is right there, but unreachable — busy, reading, surrounded by crowds. God's timing, not Augustine's.

² "She returned to Africa, vowing to You never to know any other man, leaving with me my son by her. But unhappy I — who could not even imitate a woman." Augustine's unnamed concubine of many years goes home to Africa and vows perpetual celibacy. He, unable to wait two years for his fiancée, takes another woman immediately. His own judgment is devastating: a woman showed more strength than he did. The son she left with him was Adeodatus — "given by God" — who would be baptized alongside Augustine and die young.

³ "Run; I will carry you; yes, I will bring you through; there also will I carry you." The closing promise of Book VI. Augustine cannot run to God under his own power — he is too tangled in flesh, ambition, and habit. So God says: run anyway. I will do the carrying. This echoes Isaiah 46:4: "Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you."