| new books:The
Confessions
Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) by Garry Wills |
Childhood and Faith
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 Thee, I was sealed with the mark of His cross and salted with His
salt. Thou sawest, Lord, how while yet a boy, being seized on a time with
sudden oppression of the stomach, and like near to
death- Thou sawest, my God (for Thou wert my keeper), with what eagerness
and what faith I
sought, from the pious care of my mother and Thy Church, the mother
of us all, the baptism of Thy Christ, my God and Lord. Whereupon the mother
my flesh, being much troubled (since, with a heart pure in Thy faith, she
even more lovingly travailed in birth of my salvation), would in eager
haste have provided for my consecration and cleansing by the health-giving
sacraments, confessing Thee, Lord Jesus, for the remission of sins, unless
I had suddenly recovered. And so, as if I must needs
be again polluted should I live, 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 did not he prevail over the power of my mother's
piety in me, that as he did not yet believe, so neither should I. For it
was her earnest care that Thou my God, rather than he, shouldest be my
father; and in this Thou didst aid her to prevail over her husband, whom
she, the better, obeyed, therein also obeying Thee, who hast so commanded.
I beseech Thee, my God, I would fain know, if so Thou willest, for what
purpose my baptism was then deferred? was it for my good that the rein
was laid loose, as it were, upon me, for me to sin? or was it not laid
loose? If not, why does it still echo in our ears on all sides, "Let him
alone, let him do as he will, for he is not yet baptised?" but as to bodily
health, no one says, "Let him be worse wounded, for he is not yet healed."
How much better then, had I been at once healed; and then, by my friends'
and my own, my soul's recovered health had been kept safe in Thy keeping
who gavest it. Better truly. But how many and great
waves of temptation seemed to hang over me
after my boyhood! These my mother foresaw;
and preferred to expose to them the clay whence I might afterwards be moulded,
than the very cast, when made.
In boyhood itself, 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 towards me, but I did not well; for, unless forced, I had not learnt. But no one doth well against his will, even though what he doth, be well. Yet neither did they well who forced me, but what was well came to me from Thee, my God. For they were regardless how I should employ what they forced me to learn, except to satiate the insatiate desires of a wealthy beggary, and a shameful glory. But Thou, by whom the very hairs of our head are numbered, didst use for my good the error of all who urged me to learn; and my own, who would not learn, Thou didst use for my punishment- a fit penalty for one, so small a boy and so great a sinner. So by those who did not well, Thou didst well for me; and by my own sin Thou didst justly punish me. For Thou hast commanded, and so it is, that every inordinate affection should be its own punishment.
But why did I so much hate the Greek, which I
studied as a boy? I do not yet fully know. For the
Latin I loved; not what my first masters, but what the so-called grammarians
taught me. For those
first lessons, reading, writing and arithmetic, I thought as great
a burden and penalty as any Greek. And yet whence was this too, but from
the sin and vanity of this life, because I was flesh, and a breath that
passeth away and cometh not again? For those first lessons were better
certainly, because more certain; by them I obtained, and still retain,
the power of reading what I find written, and myself writing what I will;
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; the while, with dry eyes, I endured
my miserable self dying among these things, far from Thee, O God my life.
For what more miserable than a miserable being who commiserates not himself; weeping the death of Dido for love to Aeneas, but weeping not his own death for want of love to Thee, O God. Thou light of my heart, Thou bread of my inmost soul, Thou Power who givest vigour to my mind, who quickenest my thoughts, I loved Thee not. I committed fornication against Thee, and all around me thus fornicating there echoed "Well done! well done!" for the friendship of this world is fornication against Thee; and "Well done! well done!" echoes on till one is ashamed not to he thus a man. And for all this I wept not, I who wept for Dido slain, and "seeking by the sword a stroke and wound extreme," myself seeking the while a worse extreme, the extremest and lowest of Thy creatures, having forsaken Thee, earth passing into the earth. And if forbid to read all this, I was grieved that I might not read what grieved me. Madness like this is thought a higher and a richer learning, than that by which I learned to read and write.
But now, my God, cry Thou aloud in my soul; and let Thy truth tell me, "Not so, not so. Far better was that first study." For, lo, I would readily forget the wanderings of Aeneas and all the rest, rather than how to read and write. But over the entrance of the Grammar School is a vail drawn! true; yet is this not so much an emblem of aught recondite, as a cloak of error. Let not those, whom I no longer fear, cry out against me, while I confess to Thee, my God, whatever my soul will, and acquiesce in the condemnation of my evil ways, that I may love Thy good ways. Let not either buyers or sellers of grammar-learning cry out against me. For if I question them whether it be true that Aeneas came on a time to Carthage, as the poet tells, the less learned will reply that they know not, the more learned that he never did. But should I ask with what letters the name "Aeneas" is written, every one who has learnt this will answer me aright, as to the signs which men have conventionally settled. If, again, I should ask which might be forgotten with least detriment to the concerns of life, reading and writing or these poetic fictions? who does not foresee what all must answer who have not wholly forgotten themselves? I sinned, then, when as a boy I preferred those empty to those more profitable studies, or rather loved the one and hated the other. "One and one, two"; "two and two, four"; this was to me a hateful singsong: "the wooden horse lined with armed men," and "the burning of Troy," and "Creusa's shade and sad similitude," were the choice spectacle of my vanity.
Why then did I hate the Greek classics, which have the like tales? For Homer also curiously wove the like fictions, and is most sweetly vain, yet was he bitter to my boyish taste. And so I suppose would Virgil be to Grecian children, when forced to learn him as I was Homer. Difficulty, in truth, the difficulty of a foreign tongue, dashed, as it were, with gall all the sweetness of Grecian fable. For not one word of it did I understand, and to make me understand I was urged vehemently with cruel threats and punishments. Time was also (as an infant) I knew no Latin; but this I learned without fear or suffering, by mere observation, amid the caresses of my nursery and jests of friends, smiling and sportively encouraging me. This I learned without any pressure of punishment to urge me on, for my heart urged me to give birth to its conceptions, which I could only do by learning words not of those who taught, but of those who talked with me; in whose ears also I gave birth to the thoughts, whatever I conceived. No doubt, then, that a free curiosity has more force in our learning these things, than a frightful enforcement. Only this enforcement restrains the rovings of that freedom, through Thy laws, O my God, Thy laws, from the master's cane to the martyr's trials, being able to temper for us a wholesome bitter, recalling us to Thyself from that deadly pleasure which lures us from Thee.
........
Bear with me, my God, while I say somewhat of my wit, Thy gift, and on what dotages I wasted it. For a task was set me, troublesome enough to my soul, upon terms of praise or shame, and fear of stripes, to speak the words of Juno, as she raged and mourned that she could not
"This Trojan prince from Latinum turn."
Which words I had heard that Juno never uttered; but we were forced to go astray in the footsteps of these poetic fictions, and to say in prose much what he expressed in verse. And his speaking was most applauded, in whom the passions of rage and grief were most preeminent, and clothed in the most fitting language, maintaining the dignity of the character. What is it to me, O my true life, my God, that my declamation was applauded above so many of my own age and class? is not all this smoke and wind? and was there nothing else whereon to exercise my wit and tongue? Thy praises, Lord, Thy praises might have stayed the yet tender shoot of my heart by the prop of Thy Scriptures; so had it not trailed away amid these empty trifles, a defiled prey for the fowls of the air. For in more ways than one do men sacrifice to the rebellious angels.
But what marvel that I was thus carried away to vanities, and went out from Thy presence, O my God, when men were set before me as models, who, if in relating some action of theirs, in itself not ill, they committed some barbarism or solecism, being censured, were abashed; but when in rich and adomed and well-ordered discourse they related their own disordered life, being bepraised, they gloried? These things Thou seest, Lord, and holdest Thy peace; long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth. Wilt Thou hold Thy peace for ever? and even now Thou drawest out of this horrible gulf the soul that seeketh Thee, that thirsteth for Thy pleasures, whose heart saith unto Thee, I have sought Thy face; Thy face, Lord, will I seek. For darkened affections is removal from Thee. For it is not by our feet, or change of place, that men leave Thee, or return unto Thee. Or did that Thy younger son look out for horses or chariots, or ships, fly with visible wings, or journey by the motion of his limbs, that he might in a far country waste in riotous living all Thou gavest at his departure? a loving Father, when Thou gavest, and more loving unto him, when he returned empty. So then in lustful, that is, in darkened affections, is the true distance from Thy face.
..........
This was the world at whose gate unhappy I lay
in my boyhood; this the stage where I had feared more to commit
a barbarism, than having committed one, to envy those who had not. These
things I speak and confess to Thee, my God; for which I had praise from
them, whom I then thought it all virtue to please. For I saw not the abyss
of vileness, wherein I was cast away from Thine eyes. Before them what
more foul than I was already, displeasing even such as myself? with innumerable
lies deceiving my tutor, my masters, my parents, from love of play, eagerness
to see vain shows and restlessness to imitate them! Thefts also I committed,
from my parents' cellar and table, enslaved by greediness, or that I might
have to give to boys, who sold me their play, which all the while they
liked no less than I. In this play, too, I often sought unfair conquests,
conquered myself meanwhile by vain desire of preeminence. And what could
I so ill endure, or, when I detected it, upbraided I so fiercely, as that
I was doing to others? and for which if, detected, I was upbraided, I chose
rather to quarrel than to yield. And is this the innocence of boyhood?
Not so, Lord, not so; I cry Thy mercy, my God. For these very sins, as
riper years succeed, these very sins are transferred from tutors and masters,
from nuts and balls and sparrows, to magistrates and kings, to gold and
manors and slaves, just as severer punishments displace the cane. It was
the low stature then of childhood which Thou our King didst commend as
an emblem of lowliness, when Thou saidst, Of such is the kingdom of heaven.
Yet, Lord, to Thee, the Creator and Governor of the universe, most excellent and most good, thanks were due to Thee our God, even hadst Thou destined for me boyhood only. For even then I was, I lived, and felt; and had an implanted providence over my well-being- a trace of that mysterious
Unity whence I was derived; I guarded by the inward sense the entireness
of my senses, and in these minute pursuits, and in my thoughts on things
minute, I learnt to delight in truth, I hated to be deceived, had a vigorous
memory, was gifted with speech, was soothed by friendship, avoided pain,
baseness, 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 me;
and good these are, and these together are myself. Good, then, is He that
made me, and He is my good; and before Him will I exult for every good
which of a boy I had. For it was my sin, that not in Him, but in His creatures-
myself and others- I sought for pleasures, sublimities, truths, and so
fell headlong into sorrows, confusions, errors. Thanks
be to Thee, my joy and my glory and my confidence, my God, thanks be to
Thee for Thy gifts; but do Thou preserve them to me. For so wilt
Thou preserve me, and those things shall be enlarged and perfected which
Thou hast given me, and I myself shall be with Thee, since even to be Thou
hast given me.
Amazon.com
100 Hot Books|100
Hot CDs|Top
Electronics|Gift
Ideas|Hot
DVDs|Awards|Children's|Music