Confessions of St. Augustine
LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 735
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Confessions of St. Augustine
Edited, with Introduction, by
Lloyd E. Smith
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1924.
Haldeman-Julius Company.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
INTRODUCTION
Saint Augustine, “one of the four great fathers of the Latin Church,”
was born in what is now Algeria (North Africa), November, 354 A. D. His
mother was a devout Christian, but his father was unconverted at the
time of Augustine’s birth. The piety of the mother finally won both
father and son to the Christian faith.
Augustine’s early life, especially his youth, was characterized by
sinful lapses into the evils of temptation, temptation to which he often
yielded, for which weakness he has chastised himself mercilessly in his
_Confessions_. His self-condemned wickedness did not prevent his being a
determined student, however, and he was carefully trained to become a
teacher of rhetoric. At nineteen, his mind was stirred by Cicero’s
_Hortensius_ to seek the truth, but he wandered aimlessly about in the
mazes of various schools of thought without adopting any one of them,
good or bad. Manicheism (a religious philosophy in which goodness and
light, identified with God, were in conflict with evil and chaos,
identified with the powers of darkness) attracted Augustine, until he
became an enthusiastic exponent of its doctrines. He hoped that his own
dark path of sensuality might be directed to the light by the influence
of this oriental system (Manicheism originated in Persia and had a
bright coloring of eastern myth), but he had not acquired sufficient
moral strength to enable him to attain his ideal of chastity and
temperance. Because it did not lead him out of his evil ways, as he had
hoped, Manicheism gradually weakened in its sway over him. Then, too,
Augustine was well-versed in the exact sciences, and so found it
impossible to coordinate the superstitions of Manicheism with known
facts.
Augustine, became a teacher of grammar, was, by all accounts, an
excellent instructor. He returned to his birthplace, and, while teaching
there, secured the lasting friendship of Alypius. Staying here about a
year—the chief happening, besides his friendship with Alypius, being a
vision of his mother comforting her for her son’s lack of faith,
described in the _Confessions_ (III, xi)—Augustine went back to
Carthage, and from there to Rome. This was in 383; but Rome, since his
interest in Manicheism was on the wane, held little attraction for him,
so he accepted a position as teacher of rhetoric at Milan.
Now openly separated from Manicheism, Augustine turned to Skepticism
(Pyrrhonism: disbelief in all doctrines and principles derived from
either the reason or the senses; the judgment was to be kept in aloof
non-committal on all subjects) temporarily, and from that to
Neo-Platonism (involving that all matter was evil, that all ideas were
emanations from the mind of God, that human reason was in affinity with
Divine reason, that the soul was to be redeemed by separation from
matter, and that the human reason was to be absorbed in the divine by
“continuous contemplation;” it professed a trinity composed of the One,
Intelligence, and the Soul) which gave him his first hint of a God minus
materialism: invisible, eternal, and changeless. A devout preacher of
Milan further influenced him in this trend toward faith, and his battle
with the curse of sensuality that was upon him became an intolerable
conflict within him.
His struggle toward truth culminated in one poignant moment of
realization, which he has described in the _Confessions_ (VIII, xii,
30). This conversion occurred in 386, when he withdrew, accompanied by
several friends, to a country place near Milan and offered himself as a
candidate for baptism. Augustine’s mother rejoiced at this fulfilment of
her vision, and, when she was dying soon after this realization of her
life-long hopes, her last hours of life were made happy by her son’s
Christian understanding. The account of their companionship in the
_Confessions_ (IX, x-xi, 23-28) displays Augustine’s “literary power at
its highest.”
Unwilling to assume religious responsibility in any official capacity
too soon, Augustine, within a year, was persuaded to become presbyter of
Hippo (now Bona, Algiers), and about 395 he became coadjutor to the
bishop, and subsequently bishop of the see. The remaining years of his
life were occupied with his ecclesiastical duties, and by prolific
writing, which was largely controversial. His _Confessions_, consisting
of an autobiographical record of his spiritual conversion and growth,
are his most famous achievement, and were written about 397. Probably
his greatest work, from the point of view of intellectual as well as
literary power, is the _City of God_, begun in 413 and continuing over a
period of thirteen years, which was planned as an elaborate treatise “in
vindication of Christianity and the Christian Church.” In 427 he wrote
the _Retractions_, which are a review of all his literary work, and
include revisions, corrections, explanations, etc., to bring them all
into line with the maturity of mind to which he had then attained. A
work entitled _The Trinity_ occupied him for some thirty years, and was
not, as most of his writings were, inspired by the strife of religious
controversy, but was the result of steady growth by contemplation in the
author’s pious mind. These four, here named, are by no means all that
Augustine wrote, but they serve to indicate his remarkable devotion and
energy in his life of faith, a faith which came to him, a self-flailed
sinner, as a remarkable sign of redemption.
Augustine died, sick and weary, while the Vandals were besieging Hippo,
in 430, at seventy-five years of age. He did not live to see the city in
the hands of its conquerors. “None can deny the greatness of Augustine’s
soul—his enthusiasm, his unceasing search after truth, his affectionate
disposition, his ardor, his self-devotion. And even those who may doubt
the soundness of his dogmatic conclusions, cannot but acknowledge the
depth of his spiritual convictions, and the logical force and
penetration with which he handled the most difficult questions, thus
weaving all the elements of his experience and of his profound
scriptural knowledge into a great system of Christian thought.” (Gustav
Krüger.)
The present edition has been based on the translation of E. B. Pusey,
which first appeared in 1838, and of which Pusey speaks in his Preface:
“The _Confessions_ of St. Augustine have ever been a favorite Christian
study. St. Augustine says of them himself, ‘The thirteen books of my
Confessions praise God, Holy and Good, on occasion of that which has in
me been good or evil, and raise up man’s understanding and affections to
Him: for myself, they did so while they were being written, and now do,
when read. Let others think of them, as to them seems right; yet that
they have and do much please many brethren, I know.’” Pusey says
further: “The subject of the _Confessions_ would naturally give them a
deep interest, presenting, as they do, an account of the way in which
God led perhaps the most powerful mind of Christian antiquity out of
darkness to light, and changed one who was a chosen vessel unto Himself
from a heretic and a seducer of the brethren, into one of the most
energetic defenders of Catholic Truth, both against the strange sect to
which he had belonged, and against the Arians, Pelagians, and
semi-Pelagians, Donatists, Priscillianists. Such, not an autobiography,
is the object of the _Confessions_; a praise and confession of God’s
unmerited goodness, but of himself only so much as might illustrate out
of what depth God’s mercy had raised him.”
CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE
BOOK I
(i) 1. _Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy
power, and Thy wisdom infinite._ Thee would man praise; man, but a
particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the
witness of his sin, the witness that _Thou resistest the proud_: yet
would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakest
us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our
heart is restless until it repose in Thee. Grant me, Lord, to know and
understand which is first, to call on Thee or to praise Thee? and,
again, to know Thee or to call on Thee? For who can call on Thee, not
knowing Thee? For he that knoweth Thee not may call on Thee as other
than Thou art. Or is it rather that we call on Thee that we may know
Thee? But _how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? or
how shall they believe without a preacher?_ And _they that seek the Lord
shall praise Him. For they that seek shall find Him_, and they that find
shall praise Him. I will seek Thee, Lord, by calling on Thee; and will
call on Thee, believing in Thee; for to us hast Thou been preached. My
faith, Lord, shall call on Thee, which Thou hast given me, wherewith
Thou hast inspired me, through the Incarnation of Thy Son, through the
ministry of the Preacher.[1]
(ii) 2. 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 whither my God can come into me? Whither can God come into me,
God who made heaven and earth? Is there, indeed, O Lord my God, aught in
me that can contain Thee? Do then heaven and earth, which Thou hast
made, and wherein Thou hast made me, contain Thee? or, because nothing
which exists could exist without Thee, doth therefore whatever exists
contain Thee? Since, then, I too exist, why do I seek that Thou shouldst
enter into me, who were not, wert Thou not in me? Why? Because I am not
gone down in hell, and yet Thou art there also. For _if I go down into
hell, Thou art there_. I could not be, then, O my God, could not be at
all, wert Thou not in me; or, rather, unless I were in Thee, _of whom
are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are all things_? Even
so, Lord, even so. Whither do I call Thee, since I am in Thee? or whence
canst Thou enter into me? For whither can I go beyond heaven and earth,
that thence my God should come into me, who hath said, _I fill the
heaven and the earth_?
(iv) 4. What art Thou then, my God? What but the Lord God? _For who is
Lord but the Lord? or who is God save our God?_ Most highest, most good,
most potent, most omnipotent; 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 over-spreading; creating, nourishing, and
maturing; seeking, yet having all things. Thou lovest, without passion;
art jealous, without anxiety; repentest, yet grievest not; art angry,
yet serene; changest Thy works, Thy purpose unchanged; receivest again
what Thou findest, yet didst never lose; never in need, yet rejoicing in
gains; never covetous, yet exacting usury. Thou receivest over and
above, that Thou mayest owe; and who hath aught that is not Thine? Thou
payest debts, owing nothing; remittest debts, losing nothing. And what
have I now said, my God, my life, my holy joy? or what saith any man
when he speaks of Thee? Yet woe to him that speaketh not, since mute are
even the most eloquent.
(v) 5. Oh! that I might repose on Thee! Oh! that Thou wouldst enter into
my heart, and inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee,
my sole good?...
6. Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest
enter in. It is ruinous; repair Thou it. It has that within which must
offend Thine eyes; I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? or
to whom should I cry, save Thee?...
(vi) 7. Yet suffer me to speak unto Thy mercy, me, _dust and ashes_. Yet
suffer me to speak, since I speak to Thy mercy, and not to scornful man.
Thou too, perhaps, despisest me, yet wilt Thou _return and have
compassion_ upon me....
(He gives a detailed account of his infancy and boyhood, placing
particular emphasis on the natural benefits derived from God, and laying
repentant stress on the sins of which he was guilty. “As a boy I had
already heard of an eternal life, promised us through the humility of
the Lord our God stooping to our pride.” But he was rebellious against
the commands of his elders, nevertheless. He was forced to study the
classics, to become acquainted therein with men who boasted of and were
praised for their dissolution. “These are indeed his [Homer’s] fictions;
but attributing a divine nature to wicked men that crimes might be no
longer crimes, and whoso commits them might seem to imitate not
abandoned men, but the celestial gods [that is, the gods, passionate and
sensual, have been dismissed by some as merely ‘fictions’ of Homer].”)
Footnote 1:
The preacher who influenced Augustine’s conversion and baptized him.
(see Introduction).