Chapter III.—Concerning His Father, a Freeman of Thagaste, the Assister of His Son’s Studies, and on the Admonitions of His Mother on the Preservation of Chastity.

5. And for that year my studies were intermitted, while after my return from Madaura76    “Formerly an episcopal city: now a small village. At this time the inhabitants were heathen. St. Augustin calls them ‘his fathers,’ in a letter persuading them to embrace the gospel.—Ep. 232.”—E. B. P. (a neighbouring city, whither I had begun to go in order to learn grammar and rhetoric), the expenses for a further residence at Carthage were provided for me; and that was rather by the determination than the means of my father, who was but a poor freeman of Thagaste. To whom do I narrate this? Not unto Thee, my God; but before Thee unto my own kind, even to that small part of the human race who may chance to light upon these my writings. And to what end? That I and all who read the same may reflect out of what depths we are to cry unto Thee.77    Ps. cxxx. 1. For what cometh nearer to Thine ears than a confessing heart and a life of faith? For who did not extol and praise my father, in that he went even beyond his means to supply his son with all the necessaries for a far journey for the sake of his studies? For many far richer citizens did not the like for their children. But yet this same father did not trouble himself how I grew towards Thee, nor how chaste I was, so long as I was skilful in speaking—however barren I was to Thy tilling, O God, who art the sole true and good Lord of my heart, which is Thy field.

6. But while, in that sixteenth year of my age, I resided with my parents, having holiday from school for a time (this idleness being imposed upon me by my parents’ necessitous circumstances), the thorns of lust grew rank over my head, and there was no hand to pluck them out. Moreover when my father, seeing me at the baths, perceived that I was becoming a man, and was stirred with a restless youthfulness, he, as if from this anticipating future descendants, joyfully told it to my mother; rejoicing in that intoxication wherein the world so often forgets Thee, its Creator, and falls in love with Thy creature instead of Thee, from the invisible wine of its own perversity turning and bowing down to the most infamous things. But in my mother’s breast Thou hadst even now begun Thy temple, and the commencement of Thy holy habitation, whereas my father was only a catechumen as yet, and that but recently. She then started up with a pious fear and trembling; and, although I had not yet been baptized,78    Nondum fideli, not having rehearsed the articles of the Christian faith at baptism. See i. sec. 17, note, above; and below, sec. 1, note. she feared those crooked ways in which they walk who turn their back to Thee, and not their face.79    Jer. ii. 27.

7. Woe is me! and dare I affirm that Thou heldest Thy peace, O my God, while I strayed farther from Thee? Didst Thou then hold Thy peace to me? And whose words were they but Thine which by my mother, Thy faithful handmaid, Thou pouredst into my ears, none of which sank into my heart to make me do it? For she desired, and I remember privately warned me, with great solicitude, “not to commit fornication; but above all things never to defile another man’s wife.” These appeared to me but womanish counsels, which I should blush to obey. But they were Thine, and I knew it not, and I thought that Thou heldest Thy peace, and that it was she who spoke, through whom Thou heldest not Thy peace to me, and in her person wast despised by me, her son, “the son of Thy handmaid, Thy servant.”80    Ps. cxvi. 16. But this I knew not; and rushed on headlong with such blindness, that amongst my equals I was ashamed to be less shameless, when I heard them pluming themselves upon their disgraceful acts, yea, and glorying all the more in proportion to the greatness of their baseness; and I took pleasure in doing it, not for the pleasure’s sake only, but for the praise. What is worthy of dispraise but vice? But I made myself out worse than I was, in order that I might not be dispraised; and when in anything I had not sinned as the abandoned ones, I would affirm that I had done what I had not, that I might not appear abject for being more innocent, or of less esteem for being more chaste.

8. Behold with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon, in whose filth I was rolled, as if in cinnamon and precious ointments. And that I might cleave the more tenaciously to its very centre, my invisible enemy trod me down, and seduced me, I being easily seduced. Nor did the mother of my flesh, although she herself had ere this fled “out of the midst of Babylon,”81    Jer. li. 6.—progressing, however, but slowly in the skirts of it,—in counselling me to chastity, so bear in mind what she had been told about me by her husband as to restrain in the limits of conjugal affection (if it could not be cut away to the quick) what she knew to be destructive in the present and dangerous in the future. But she took no heed of this, for she was afraid lest a wife should prove a hindrance and a clog to my hopes. Not those hopes of the future world, which my mother had in Thee; but the hope of learning, which both my parents were too anxious that I should acquire,—he, because he had little or no thought of Thee, and but vain thoughts for me—she, because she calculated that those usual courses of learning would not only be no drawback, but rather a furtherance towards my attaining Thee. For thus I conjecture, recalling as well as I can the dispositions of my parents. The reins, meantime, were slackened towards me beyond the restraint of due severity, that I might play, yea, even to dissoluteness, in whatsoever I fancied. And in all there was a mist, shutting out from my sight the brightness of Thy truth, O my God; and my iniquity displayed itself as from very “fatness.”82    Ps. lxxiii. 7.

CAPUT III. De peregrinatione studiorum causa, et de parentum proposito.

5. Et anno quidem illo intermissa erant studia mea, dum mihi reducto a Madauris, in qua vicina urbe jam coeperam litteraturae atque oratoriae percipiendae gratia peregrinari, longinquioris apud Carthaginem peregrinationis sumptus praeparabantur, animositate magis quam opibus patris, municipis Thagastensis admodum tenuis. Cui narro haec? Neque enim tibi, Deus meus: sed apud te narro haec generi meo, generi humano, quantulacumque ex particula incidere potest in istas meas litteras. Et utquid hoc? Ut videlicet ego et quisquis haec legit, cogitemus de quam profundo clamandum sit ad te. Et quid propius auribus tuis, si cor confitens et vita ex fide est? Quis enim non extollebat laudibus tunc hominem patrem meum , quod ultra vires rei familiaris suae impenderet filio quidquid etiam longe peregrinanti studiorum causa opus esset? Multorum enim civium longe opulentiorum nullum tale negotium pro liberis erat: cum interea non satageret idem pater qualis crescerem tibi, aut quam castus essem; dummodo essem disertus, vel desertus potius a cultura tua, Deus, qui es unus verus et bonus Dominus agri tui cordis mei.

6. Sed ubi sexto illo et decimo anno, interposito otio ex necessitate domestica feriatus ab omni schola, cum parentibus esse coepi, excesserunt caput meum vepres libidinum; et nulla erat eradicans manus. Quinimo ubi me ille pater in balneis vidit pubescentem, et inquieta indutum adolescentia, quasi jam ex hoc in nepotes gestiret, gaudens matri indicavit; gaudens vinolentia in qua te iste mundus oblitus est creatorem suum, et creaturam tuam pro te amavit, de vino invisibili perversae atque inclinatae in ima voluntatis suae. Sed matris in pectore jam inchoaveras templum tuum, et exordium sanctae habitationis tuae: nam ille adhuc catechumenus, et hoc recens erat. Itaque illa exsilivit pia trepidatione ac tremore; et quamvis mihi nondum fideli, timuit tamen vias distortas, in quibus ambulant qui ponunt ad te tergum, et non faciem.

7. Hei mihi! et audeo dicere tacuisse te, Deus meus, 0678 cum irem abs te longius. Itane tu tacebas tunc mihi? Et cujus erant, nisi tua, verba illa per matrem meam, fidelem tuam, quae cantasti in aures meas? Nec inde quidquam descendit in cor, ut facerem illud. Volebat enim illa, et secreto memini ut monuerit cum sollicitudine ingenti ne fornicarer, maximeque ne adulterarem cujusquam uxorem. Qui mihi monitus muliebres videbantur, quibus obtemperare erubescerem. Illi autem tui erant, et nesciebam; et te tacere putabam, atque illam loqui, per quam mihi tu non tacebas, et in illa contemnebaris a me filio ejus, filio ancillae tuae, servo tuo. Sed nesciebam, et praeceps ibam tanta caecitate, ut inter coaetaneos meos puderet me minoris dedecoris, quoniam audiebam eos jactantes flagitia sua, et tanto gloriantes magis, quanto magis turpes essent: et libebat facere non solum libidine facti, verum etiam laudis. Quid dignum est vituperatione nisi vitium? Ego ne vituperarer, vitiosior fiebam; et ubi non suberat quo admisso aequarer perditis, fingebam me fecisse quod non feceram, ne viderer abjectior quo eram innocentior, et ne vilior haberer quo eram castior.

8. Ecce cum quibus comitibus iter agebam platearum Babyloniae, et volutabar in coeno ejus, tanquam in cinnamis et unguentis pretiosis. Et in umbilico ejus, quo tenacius haererem, calcabat me inimicus invisibilis, et seducebat me, quia ego seductilis eram. Non enim et illa, quae jam de medio Babylonis fugerat, sed ibat in caeteris ejus tardior mater carnis meae, sicut monuit me pudicitiam, ita curavit quod de me a viro suo audierat, jamque pestilentiosum et in posterum periculosum sentiebat, coercere termino conjugalis affectus, si resecari ad vivum non poterat. Non curavit hoc, quia metus erat ne impediretur spes mea compede uxoria; non spes illa quam in te futuri saeculi habebat mater, sed spes litterarum, quas ut nossem nimis volebat parens uterque: ille, quia de te prope nihil cogitabat, de me autem inania; illa autem, quia non solum nullo detrimento, sed etiam nonnullo adjumento ad te adipiscendum futura existimabat usitata illa studia doctrinae. Ita enim conjicio, recolens, ut possum, mores parentum meorum. Relaxabantur etiam mihi ad ludendum habenae, ultra temperamentum severitatis, in dissolutionem affectionum variarum, et in omnibus erat caligo intercludens mihi, Deus meus, serenitatem veritatis tuae; et prodibat tanquam ex adipe iniquitas mea (Psal. LXXII, 7).