When Carthage Was Monte Carlo
November 13, 2014![]() |
Saint Augustine |
Saint
Augustine. (354–430). The Confessions of St.
Augustine.
Vol. 7, pp. 31-38 of
The Harvard Classics
Carthage was the
playground of the ancient world. In that city of many sins, Augustine
was a leader of the revels. His conversion to Christianity amazed
those who knew him.
(St. Augustine born
Nov. 13, 354.)
The
Third Book
His residence at
Carthage from his seventeenth to his nineteenth year. Source of his
disorders. Love of shows. Advance in studies, and love of wisdom.
Distaste for Scripture. Led astray to the Manichæans. Refutation of
some of their tenets. Grief of his mother Monnica at his heresy, and
prayers for his conversion. Her vision from God, and answer through a
Bishop.
TO CARTHAGE I
came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy
loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated
want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in
love with loving, and safety I hated, and a way without snares. For
within me was a famine of that inward food, Thyself, my God; yet,
through that famine I was not hungered; but was without all longing
for incorruptible sustenance, not because filled therewith, but the
more empty, the more I loathed it. For this cause my soul was sickly
and full of sores, it miserably cast itself forth, desiring to be
scraped by the touch of objects of sense. Yet if these had not a
soul, they would not be objects of love. To love then, and to be
beloved, was sweet to me; but more, when I obtained to enjoy the
person I loved. I defiled, therefore, the spring of friendship with
the filth of concupiscense, and I beclouded its brightness with the
hell of lustfulness; and thus foul and unseemly, I would fain,
through exceeding vanity, be fine and courtly. I fell headlong then
into the love wherein I longed to be ensnared. My God, my Mercy, with
how much gall didst Thou out of Thy great goodness besprinkle for me
that sweetness? For I was both beloved, and secretly arrived at the
bond of enjoying; and was with joy fettered with sorrow-bringing
bonds, that I might be scourged with the iron burning rods of
jealousy, and suspicion, and fears, and angers, and quarrels.
Stage-plays also carried me away, full
of images of my miseries, and of fuel to my fire. Why is it, that man
desires to be made sad, beholding doleful and tragical things, which
yet himself would by no means suffer? yet he desires as a spectator
to feel sorrow at them, and this very sorrow is his pleasure. What is
this but a miserable madness? for a man is the more affected with
these actions, the less free he is from such affections. Howsoever,
when he suffers in his own person, it used to be styled misery; when
he compassionates others, then it is mercy. But what sort of
compassion is this for feigned and scenical passions? for the auditor
is not called on to relieve, but only to grieve: and he applauds the
actor of these fictions the more, the more he grieves. And if the
calamities of those persons (whether of old times, or mere fiction)
be so acted, that the spectator is not moved to tears, he goes away
disgusted and criticising; but if he be moved to passion, he stays
intent, and weeps for joy.
Are
griefs then too loved? Verily all desire joy. Or whereas no man likes
to be miserable, is he yet pleased to be merciful? which because it
cannot be without passion, for this reason alone are passions loved?
This also springs from that vein of friendship. But whither goes that
vein? whither flows it? wherefore runs it into that torrent of pitch
bubbling forth those monstrous tides of foul lustfulness, into which
it is wilfully changed and transformed, being of its own will
precipitated and corrupted from its heavenly clearness? Shall
compassion then be put away? by no means. Be griefs then sometimes
loved. But beware of uncleanness, O my soul, under the guardianship
of my God, the God of our fathers, who is to be praised and
exalted above all for ever, 1 beware of
uncleanness. For I have not now ceased to pity; but then in the
theatres I rejoiced with lovers when they wickedly enjoyed one
another, although this was imaginary only in the play. And when they
lost one another, as if very compassionate, I sorrowed with them, yet
had my delight in both. But now I much more pity him that rejoiceth
in his wickedness, than him who is thought to suffer hardship, by
hissing some pernicious pleasure, and the loss of some miserable
felicity. This certainly is the truer mercy, but in it grief delights
not. For though he that grieves for the miserable, be commended for
his office of charity; yet had he, who is genuinely compassionate,
rather there were nothing for him to grieve for. For it good will be
ill willed (which can never be), then may he, who truly and sincerely
commiserates, wish there might be some miserable, that he might
commiserate. Some sorrow may then be allowed, none loved. For thus
dost Thou, O Lord God, who lovest souls far more purely than we, and
hast more incorruptibly pity on them, yet are wounded with no
sorrowfulness. And who is sufficient for these things? 2
But I, miserable, then loved to
grieve, and sought out what to grieve at, when in another’s and
that feigned and personated misery, that acting best pleased me, and
attracted me the most vehemently, which drew tears from me. What
marvel that an unhappy sheep straying from Thy flock, and impatient
of Thy keeping, I became infected with a foul disease? And hence the
love of griefs; not such as should sink deep into me; for I loved not
to suffer, what I loved to look on; but such as upon hearing their
fictions should lightly scratch the surface; upon which, as on
envenomed nails, followed inflamed swelling, impostumes, and a
putrefied sore. My life being such, was it life, O my God?
And Thy faithful mercy hovered over me
afar. Upon how grievous iniquities consumed I myself, pursuing a
sacrilegious curiosity, that having forsaken Thee, it might bring me
to the treacherous abyss, and the beguiling service of devils, to
whom I sacrificed my evil actions, and in all these things Thou didst
scourge me! I dared even, while Thy solemnities were celebrated
within the walls of Thy church, to desire, and to compass a business
deserving death for its fruits, for which Thou scourgedst me with
grievous punishments, though nothing to my fault, O Thou my exceeding
mercy, my God, my refuge from those terrible destroyers, among whom I
wandered with a stiff neck, withdrawing further from Thee, loving
mine own ways, and not Thine; loving a vagrant liberty.
Those studies also, which were
accounted commendable, had a view to excelling in the courts of
litigation; the more bepraised, the craftier. Such is men’s
blindness, glorying even in their blindness. And now I was chief in
the rhetoric school, whereat I joyed proudly, and I swelled with
arrogancy, though (Lord, Thou knowest) far quieter and altogether
removed from the subvertings of those “Subverters” (for this
ill-omened and devilish name was the very” badge of gallantry)
among whom I lived, with a shameless shame that I was not even as
they. With them I lived, and was sometimes delighted with their
friendship, whose doings I ever did abhor—i. e., their
“subvertings,” wherewith they wantonly persecuted the modesty of
strangers, which they disturbed by a gratuitous jeering, feeding
thereon their malicious mirth. Nothing can be liker the very actions
of devils than these. What then could they be more truly called than
“subverters”? themselves subverted and altogether perverted
first, the deceiving spirits secretly deriding and seducing them,
wherein themselves delight to jeer at, and deceive others.
Among such as these, in that unsettled
age of mine, learned I books of eloquence, wherein I desired to be
eminent, out of a damnable and vainglorious end, a joy in human
vanity. In the ordinary course of study, I fell upon a certain book
of Cicero, whose speech almost all admire, not so his heart. This
book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy, and is
called “Hortensius.” But this book altered my
affections, and turned my prayers to Thyself, O Lord; and made me
have other purposes and desires. Every vain hope at once became
worthless to me; and I longed with an incredibly burning desire for
an immortality of wisdom, and began now to arise, that I might return
to Thee. For not to sharpen my tongue (which thing I seemed to be
purchasing with my mother’s allowances, in that my nineteenth year,
my father being dead two years before), not to sharpen my tongue did
I employ that book; nor did it infuse into me its style, but its
matter.
How did I burn
then, my God, how did I burn to re-mount from earthly things to Thee,
nor knew I what Thou wouldst do with me? For with Thee is wisdom. But
the love of wisdom is in Greek called “philosophy,” with which
that book inflamed me. Some there be that seduce through philosophy,
under a great, and smooth, and honourable name colouring and
disguising their own errors: and almost all who in that and former
ages were such, are in that book censured and set forth: there also
is made plain that wholesome advice of Thy Spirit, by Thy good and
devout servant: Beware lest any man spoil you through
philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the
rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in Him dwelleth all
the fullness of the Godhead bodily. 3And since at
that time (Thou, O light of my heart, knowest) Apostolic Scripture
was not known to me, I was delighted with that exhortation, so far
only, that I was thereby strongly roused, and kindled, and inflamed
to love, and seek, and obtain, and hold, and embrace not this or that
sect, but wisdom itself whatever it were; and this alone checked me
thus enkindled, that the name of Christ was not in it. For this name,
according to Thy mercy, O Lord, this name of my Saviour Thy Son, had
my tender heart, even with my mother’s milk, devoutly drunk in, and
deeply treasured; and whatsoever was without that name, though never
so learned, polished, or true, took not entire hold of me.
I resolved then to bend my mind to the
holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. But behold, I see a
thing not understood by the proud, nor laid open to children, lowly
in access, in its recesses lofty, and veiled with mysteries; and I
was not such as could enter into it, or stoop my neck to follow its
steps. For not as I now speak, did I feel when I turned to those
Scriptures; but they seemed to me unworthy to be compared to the
stateliness of Tully: for my swelling pride shrunk from their
lowliness, nor could my sharp wit pierce the interior thereof. Yet
were they such as would grow up in a little one. But I disdained to
be a little one; and, swollen with pride, took myself to be a great
one.
Therefore I fell among men proudly doting, exceeding
carnal and prating, in whose mouths were the snares of the Devil,
limed with the mixture of the syllables of Thy name, and of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, our Comforter.
These names departed not out of their mouth, but so far forth as the
sound only and the noise of the tongue, for the heart was void of
truth. Yet they cried out “Truth, Truth,” and spake much thereof
to me, yet it was not in them: 4 but
they spake falsehood, not of Thee only (who truly art Truth), but
even of those elements of this world, Thy creatures. And I indeed
ought to have passed by even philosophers who spake truth concerning
them, for love of Thee, my Father, supremely good, Beauty of all
things beautiful. O Truth, Truth, how inwardly did even then the
marrow of my soul pant after Thee, when they often and diversly, and
in many and huge books, echoed of Thee to me, though it was but an
echo? And these were the dishes wherein to me, hungering after Thee,
they, instead of Thee, served up the Sun and Moon, beautiful works of
Thine, but yet Thy works, not Thyself, no nor Thy first works. For
Thy spiritual works are before these corporeal works, celestial
though they be, and shining. But I hungered and thirsted not even
after those first works of Thine, but after Thee Thyself, the
Truth, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of
turning. 5 yet they still set before me in
those dishes, glittering fantasies, than which better were it to love
this very sun (which is real to our sight at least), than those
fantasies which by our eyes deceive our mind. Yet because I thought
them to be Thee, I fed thereon; not eagerly, for Thou didst not in
them taste to me as Thou art; for Thou wast not these emptiness, nor
was I nourished by them, but exhausted rather. Food in sleep shows
very like our food awake; yet are not those asleep nourished by it,
for they are asleep. But those were not even any way like to Thee, as
Thou hast now spoken to me; for those were corporeal fantasies, false
bodies, than which these true bodies, celestial or terrestrial, which
with our fleshy sight we behold, are far more certain: these things
the beasts and birds discern as well as we, and they are more certain
than when we fancy them. And again, we do with more certainty fancy
them, than by them conjecture other vaster and infinite bodies which
have no being. Such empty husks was I then fed on; and was not fed.
But Thou, my soul’s Love, in looking for whom I
fail, 6 that I may become strong, art
neither those bodies which we see, though in heaven; nor those which
we see not there; for Thou hast created them, nor dost Thou account
them among the chiefest of Thy works. How far then art Thou from
those fantasies of mine, fantasies of bodies which altogether are
not, than which the images of those bodies, which are, are far more
certain, and more certain still the bodies themselves, which yet Thou
art not; no, nor the soul, which is the life of the bodies. So then,
better and more certain is the life of the bodies than the bodies.
But Thou art the life of souls, the life of lives, having life in
Thyself; and changest not, life of my soul.
Where
then wert Thou then to me, and how far from me? Far verily was I
straying from Thee, barred from the very husks of the swine, whom
with husks I fed. For how much better are the fables of poets and
grammarians than these snares? For verses, and poems, and “Medea
flying,” are more profitable truly than these men’s five
elements, variously disguised, answering to five dens of darkness
which have no being, yet slay the believer. For verses and poems I
can turn to true food, and “Medea flying,” though I did sing, I
maintained not; though I heard it sung, I believed not; but those
things I did believe. Woe, woe, by what steps was I brought down
to the depths of hell! 7 toiling and
turmoiling through want of Truth, since I sought after Thee, my God
(to Thee I confess it, who hadst mercy on me, not as yet confessing),
not according to the understanding by the mind, wherein Thou willedst
that I should excel the beasts, but according to the sense of the
flesh. But Thou wert more inward to me, than my most inward part; and
higher than my highest. I lighted upon that bold woman, simple
and knoweth nothing, shadowed out in Solomon, sitting
at the door, and saying, Eat ye bread of secrecies willingly, and
drink ye stolen waters which are sweet: 8 she
seduced me, because she found my soul dwelling abroad in the eye of
my flesh, and ruminating on such food as through it I had devoured.
For other than this, that which really is I knew not; and
was, as it were through sharpness of wit, persuaded to assent to
foolish deceivers, when they asked me, “whence is evil?” “is
God bounded by a bodily shape, and has hairs and nails?” “are
they to be esteemed righteous who had many wives at once, and did
kill men, and sacrificed living creatures?” 9 At
which I, in my ignorance, was much troubled, and departing from the
truth, seemed to myself to be making towards it; because as yet I
knew not that evil was nothing but a privation of good, until at last
a thing ceases altogether to be; which how should I see, the sight of
whose eyes reached only to bodies, and of my mind to a phantasm? And
I knew not God to be a Spirit, 10 not
one who hath parts extended in length and breadth, or whose being was
bulk; for every bulk is less in a part than in the whole: and if it
be infinite, it must be less in such part as is defined by a certain
space, than in its infinitude; and so is not wholly every where, as
Spirit, as God. And what that should be in us, by which we were like
to God, and might in Scripture be rightly said to be after
the image of God, 11 I was altogether
ignorant.
Note
1. Song of the Three Children, ver. 3.
Note
11. Gen. i. 27.
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