Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 1 part 7/22

With no turbulent exultation, therefore, did her heart tremble, when she heard that in so great a part had now been done what she daily lamented to You that it might be done—namely, that I had not yet attained the truth, but was already snatched from falsehood. Nay rather, because she was certain that what remained You would give, who had promised the whole, most calmly and with a breast full of confidence she answered me that she believed in Christ that, before she departed from this life, she should see me a faithful Catholic. And this indeed she said to me. But to You, fountain of mercies, she poured out denser prayers and tears, that You would hasten Your aid and enlighten my darkness; and more studiously she ran to the church and hung upon the lips of Ambrose, unto the fountain of water springing up into eternal life.

Now she loved that man as an angel of God, because she had learned that through him I had meanwhile been brought to that wavering fluctuation, through which she presumed for certain that I should pass from sickness to soundness, with a sharper peril intervening, as it were through a crisis which the physicians call critical. And so, when she had brought to the memorials of the saints, as she was wont in Africa, porridge and bread and unmixed wine, and was forbidden by the doorkeeper, as soon as she learned that the bishop had forbidden this, she embraced it so piously and obediently that I myself marveled how readily she became rather an accuser of her own custom than a disputant against that prohibition.

For drunkenness did not besiege her spirit, nor did love of wine goad her into hatred of the truth, as it does very many men and women who at the song of sobriety nauseate as at watered drink, when they are sodden. But she, when she had brought a basket with the customary viands to be tasted beforehand and distributed, set down for herself not even more than one little cup, tempered to her quite sober palate, from which she might take a token of reverence; and if there were many memorials of the dead that seemed in that way to be honored, she carried about that same one cup, which she set down everywhere, by now not only most watered but also most lukewarm, to share with those present in tiny sips—because she sought there piety, not pleasure.

And so, when she learned that it had been enjoined by that illustrious preacher and prelate of piety that these things should not be done, even by those who did them soberly, lest any occasion of gorging themselves should be given to the drunken, and because those, as it were, parental feasts were most like the superstition of the heathen, she most willingly abstained; and in place of a basket full of earthly fruits, she had learned to bring to the memorials of the martyrs a breast full of purer vows—that she might give to the needy what she was able, and that thus the communion of the Lord's body might be celebrated there, in imitation of whose Passion the martyrs were immolated and crowned.

Yet it seems to me, O Lord my God — and so my heart stands before You concerning this matter — that perhaps my mother would not easily have yielded about cutting off this custom, had it been forbidden by another whom she did not love as she loved Ambrose. Him she loved most dearly for the sake of my salvation, and he in turn loved her for her most devout manner of life, in which, so fervent in spirit in good works, she frequented the church; so that often, when he saw me, he would burst out in praise of her, congratulating me that I had such a mother — not knowing what a son she had, who was in doubt about all these things and supposed that the way of life could by no means be found.

Nor did I any longer groan in prayer that You would come to my help; rather my mind was bent upon inquiry and restless for disputation. And Ambrose himself I esteemed a man fortunate according to the world, since such great powers held him in honor; only his celibacy seemed to me burdensome. But what hope he bore within, what struggle he had against the temptations of his very excellence, what solace in adversities, and how the hidden mouth which was in his heart fed on the savory joys of Your bread — this I neither knew how to surmise nor had I experienced it. Nor did he know my own surgings, nor the pit of my peril.

For I could not question him as I wished, in the way I wished, since I was shut off from his ear and lips by throngs of busy men whose infirmities he served. When he was not with them — which was very little time — he was either refreshing his body with needful sustenance, or his mind with reading. But when he read, his eyes were drawn over the pages and his heart searched out the sense, while his voice and tongue were still. Often, when we were present — for no one was forbidden to enter, nor was it the custom that a visitor's coming should be announced to him — we saw him reading thus silently, and never otherwise, and after sitting in long silence — for who would dare to burden one so intent? —

— we would depart, and conjecture that in that little time which he gained for restoring his mind, free from the din of other men's affairs, he was unwilling to be called away to anything else; and perhaps he was on guard lest, if some author he was reading had set down anything too obscurely, with a hearer attentive and intent, he should be obliged also to expound it, or to discuss certain more difficult questions, and so, with time spent on this task, he should unroll fewer volumes than he wished. Although the preserving of his voice, which was very easily strained, could be a juster cause for reading silently. Yet whatever his purpose in doing it, that man surely did it with good intent.

But certainly no opportunity was given me of inquiring what I longed to know from that most holy oracle of Yours, his breast, except when something could be heard briefly. Yet my surgings required him wholly at leisure, that they might be poured out to him, and they never found him so. Indeed, every Lord's Day I heard him rightly handling the word of truth among the people, and more and more it was confirmed to me that all the knots of crafty calumnies, which those deceivers of ours wove against the divine books, could be unraveled.

But when I further learned that man, made by You after Your image, was not so understood by Your spiritual sons — whom You have regenerated through grace out of the Catholic mother — as that they believed and conceived him to be bounded by the shape of a human body (although how a spiritual substance might be, I did not even faintly and in riddle surmise) — yet rejoicing I blushed that for so many years I had barked, not against the Catholic faith, but against the figments of carnal imaginings. For I had been rash and impious in this, that what I ought to have learned by inquiring, I had pronounced by accusing.

But You, O Most High and most near, most hidden and most present, for whom there are not some members greater and some lesser, but who are everywhere wholly, and nowhere confined to places — You are surely not that bodily shape; and yet You made man after Your image, and behold, he himself from head to foot is in a place. Since therefore I did not know how this image of Yours could subsist, I should have knocked and set forth the question how it ought to be believed, not leaped to object, as though it were so believed. So much the sharper a care gnawed at my inmost parts — what certainty I might hold — the more I was ashamed that, mocked and deceived so long by the promise of certainties, I had with childish error and so much passion prattled so many uncertainties as if they were certain. For that they were false became clear to me afterward.

Yet it was certain that they were uncertain, and that I had at one time held them as certain, when with blind contentions I accused Your Catholic Church — which, although I had not yet found it teaching the truth, at least did not teach those things for which I gravely accused it. And so I was confounded and converted, and I rejoiced, O my God, that the one Church, the body of Your only Son, in which the name of Christ had been put upon me while an infant, had no taste for these infantile trifles, nor held in its sound doctrine the notion that You, the Creator of all, should be crammed into a space of place — however high and ample, yet on every side bounded — by the figure of human limbs.

I rejoiced also that the ancient writings of the Law and the Prophets were now set before me to be read with no such eye as that with which they had before seemed absurd, when I used to charge Your holy ones as though they thought thus; yet they did not think so. And gladly I heard Ambrose, as though most diligently commending a rule, often saying in his sermons to the people: 'The letter kills, but the spirit gives life'; for those things which, taken according to the letter, seemed to teach perversity, he would, with the mystical veil removed, open up spiritually — saying nothing that would offend me, although he said things whether true I still did not know. I held my heart back from all assent, fearing a headlong fall, and by that very suspense I was the more done to death.

For I wished to become as certain of those things which I did not see, as I was certain that seven and three make ten. For I was not so mad as to think that not even this could be grasped; but as I grasped this, so I longed to grasp the rest, whether bodily things which were not present before my senses, or spiritual things, of which I knew not how to think except bodily. And by believing I might have been healed, that the clearer vision of my mind might somehow be directed toward Your truth, which abides forever and falls short in nothing;

but, as it is wont to happen that one who has experienced a bad physician fears to entrust himself even to a good one, so was the condition of my soul, which could in no way be healed except by believing, and yet, lest it should believe what was false, refused to be cured, resisting Your hands — You who compounded the medicines of faith, and sprinkled them over the diseases of the whole world, and granted them so great an authority.

From this, however, I now began to prefer the Catholic teaching, perceiving that there it was more modestly and least deceitfully required that one should believe what was not demonstrated — whether it were something, but the demonstration not available to someone, or whether even what it was could not be shown — than that there, among the Manichees, with a rash promise of knowledge, credulity should be mocked, and afterward so many most fabulous and most absurd things, because they could not be demonstrated, should be commanded to be believed.

Then little by little, O Lord, with most gentle and most merciful hand handling and composing my heart, You persuaded me — when I considered how innumerable were the things I believed which I had not seen, nor been present when they were done: so many things in the history of the nations, so many things about places and cities which I had not seen, so many things from friends, so many from physicians, so many from one and another of men, which, unless they were believed, we should do nothing at all in this life; and lastly, how unshakably fixed by faith I held it from what parents I had sprung, which I could not know unless I had believed by hearing — You persuaded me that not those who believed Your books, which You have established with such authority among almost all nations, but those who did not believe them, were to be blamed; and that those were not to be listened to, if any should perhaps say to me:

'Whence do you know that those books were ministered to the human race by the Spirit of the one true and most truthful God?' For this very thing was most of all to be believed; since no contentiousness of calumnious questions among so many of the philosophers, whom I had read disputing with one another, could ever wrest from me the belief that You exist — whatever You might be, which I knew not — and that the governance of human affairs belongs to You. But this I believed sometimes more strongly, sometimes more faintly; yet always I believed both that You exist and that You have care of us, even though I was ignorant either what was to be thought concerning Your substance, or what way might lead, or lead back, to You.

And therefore, since we were too weak to find out the truth by clear reason, and on that account had need of the authority of the Holy Scriptures, I had now begun to believe that You would by no means have given so excellent an authority to that Scripture throughout all the lands now, unless You had willed both that through it You should be believed, and that through it You should be sought.

For already the absurdity which used to offend me in those writings, when I had heard many things in them probably expounded, I referred to the depth of the mysteries; and that authority appeared to me the more venerable and the more worthy of unalloyed faith, in that it was both at hand for all to read, and yet kept the dignity of its secret in a profounder understanding — offering itself to all in the plainest words and the humblest manner of speech, while exercising the attention of those who are not light of heart, that it might receive all into its open bosom, and through narrow openings convey a few across to You, yet far more than if it neither stood eminent with so lofty a peak of authority, nor drew the crowds into the bosom of holy humility.

These things I pondered, and You were present to me; I sighed, and You heard me; I was tossed about, and You steered me. I went along the broad way of the world, and yet You did not forsake me. I gaped after honors, gains, marriage, and You laughed at me. In those desires I suffered most bitter difficulties, You being the more gracious in proportion as You allowed less to grow sweet to me which was not You. Behold my heart, O Lord, You who willed that I should remember this and confess it to You. Now let my soul cleave to You, whom You have plucked out of so tenacious a birdlime of death. How wretched it was! And You pricked the feeling of its wound, that, forsaking all things, it might turn to You, who are above all things, and without whom all things would be nothing — that it might turn and be healed.

How wretched then I was, and how You dealt with me that I might feel my misery, on that day when, as I was preparing to recite a panegyric to the emperor, in which I would tell many lies, and being lied to would be applauded by those who knew it, and my heart was panting with these cares and seething with the fevers of consuming thoughts — passing through a certain street of Milan, I noticed a poor beggar, by now, I suppose, well filled, jesting and merry.

And I groaned, and spoke with the friends who were with me of the many sorrows of our madnesses; because by all such efforts of ours as I then labored at, dragging under the goads of desire the burden of my unhappiness, and by dragging it heaping it up the more, we wished for nothing else but to arrive at carefree gladness — whither that beggar had already gone before us, while we perhaps would never come there at all. For what he had already gained by a few begged coins — namely the gladness of a temporal felicity — at this I was striving through such toilsome windings and circuits. For he had no true joy; but I too, in those ambitions, was seeking a far falser one.

And certainly he was glad, I was anxious; he was carefree, I was trembling. And if anyone asked me whether I would rather exult or fear, I would answer, 'exult'; but again, if he asked whether I would rather be such as that man, or such as I then was, I would choose myself, worn out with cares and fears — but out of perversity: was it out of truth? For I ought not to have set myself before him on the ground that I was more learned, since I took no joy from that, but sought thereby to please men — not that I might teach them, but only that I might please. And therefore with the staff of Your discipline You were breaking my bones. Let them depart, then, from my soul, who say to it, 'It matters whence a man takes joy.' That beggar took joy in drunkenness; You take joy in glory. In what glory, O Lord?

A glory which is not in You. For just as his was not true joy, so neither was that true glory, and it the more overturned my mind. And he that very night would sleep off his drunkenness; I had slept with mine and risen, and was to sleep again and rise again — behold, how many days! Indeed it does matter whence a man takes joy, I know it, and the joy of faithful hope is incomparably distant from that vanity. But even then there was a distance between us: for surely he was the happier, not only because he was steeped in cheerfulness while I was disemboweled with cares, but also because he by good wishing had acquired wine, while I by lying was seeking empty conceit.

I said many things to this effect to those dear to me at that time, and often I noticed in these matters how it was with me, and I found that it went ill with me, and I grieved, and doubled that very ill; and if anything prosperous smiled on me, I was loath to seize it, because almost before it was held it flew away. We groaned together, we who lived together in friendship, and most of all I would discuss these things with Alypius and Nebridius. Of these, Alypius was sprung from the same town as I, his parents being among the chief men of the municipality, younger than I in years. For he had also studied under me, when I began to teach in our own town, and afterward at Carthage, and he loved me much, because I seemed to him good and learned; and I loved him for the great native bent toward virtue which, at no great age, was sufficiently eminent in him.

Yet the whirlpool of Carthaginian morals, in which frivolous spectacles seethe, had swallowed him into the madness of the circus games. But while he was being wretchedly tossed about in this, and I, professing rhetoric there, was using a public school, he did not yet attend me as his master, because of a certain quarrel that had arisen between me and his father. And I had learned that he loved the circus to his ruin, and was grievously distressed that he seemed to me about to lose, or even to have lost, so great a hope. But there was no opportunity of admonishing him and recalling him by any restraint, either by the goodwill of friendship or by the right of a teacher. For I supposed that he felt about me as his father did; but he was not so disposed.

And so, setting aside his father's wish in this matter, he had begun to greet me, coming into my lecture hall, hearing something, and going away. But it had slipped from my memory to deal with him, lest by a blind and headlong zeal for empty games so good a genius should be destroyed. But You, O Lord, who preside over the helm of all things You have created, had not forgotten that he was to be, among Your sons, a steward of Your sacrament; and, that his correction might be openly ascribed to You, You worked it indeed through me, but unknowingly. For on a certain day, when I was sitting in my accustomed place and my pupils were present before me, he came in, greeted me, sat down, and bent his mind to what was being treated. And it chanced that a passage was in hand for reading.

While I was expounding it, and a comparison drawn from the circus games seemed opportune for me to apply, so that what I was insinuating might be made both more pleasant and clearer, and with biting mockery of those whom that madness had taken captive — You know, O our God, that at that time I was not thinking of curing Alypius of that plague. But he caught it to himself, and believed that I had said it for no reason but on his account; and what another would have taken as ground for resentment against me, that honest young man took as ground for resentment against himself, and for loving me more ardently. For You had long since said, and woven into Your Scriptures: 'Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you.'

Yet I had not rebuked him; but You, using all men both knowing and unknowing, in the order whereby You know — and that order is just — wrought from my heart and tongue burning coals, with which to sear and heal the wasting mind of good hope. Let him be silent in Your praises who does not consider Your mercies, which confess to You out of my marrow. For indeed, after those words he rushed himself out of that pit so deep, in which he was willingly being plunged and with wondrous pleasure being blinded; and he shook out his mind with strong self-restraint, and all the filth of the circus leaped away from him, and he came there no more. Then he overcame his reluctant father, that he might have me as his master; the father yielded and gave consent.

And beginning again to hear me, he was wrapped together with me in that superstition, loving in the Manichees an ostentation of continence which he supposed to be true and genuine. But it was senseless and seductive, ensnaring precious souls not yet able to touch the height of virtue, and easily deceived by the surface — yet of an adumbrated and counterfeited virtue. Not, indeed, abandoning the earthly way charmed upon him by his parents, he had gone before me to Rome to study law; and there he was carried away by the gladiatorial spectacle with an incredible gaping, and incredibly carried off.

For although he loathed and detested such things, certain of his friends and fellow students, when they happened to meet him on their way back from dinner, with familiar violence dragged him, though vehemently refusing and resisting, into the amphitheater, on days of those cruel and deadly games — he saying this: 'If you drag my body into that place, can you also fasten my mind and my eyes upon those spectacles? I shall therefore be present yet absent, and so shall overcome both you and them.' Having heard this, they none the less led him along with them, perhaps desiring to test this very thing, whether he could accomplish it. When they had come there, and were seated in such places as they could find, all things were seething with most savage pleasures.

He, with closed doors of his eyes, forbade his mind to go forth into such great evils. And would that he had also stopped his ears! For at a certain turn of the fight, when a mighty roar of the whole people had struck him violently, overcome by curiosity, and as if prepared, whatever it might be, to despise and conquer even the sight, he opened his eyes; and he was struck with a graver wound in his soul than the man, whom he longed to behold, was struck in his body; and he fell more miserably than that man at whose fall the roar arose — a roar which entered through his ears and unbarred his eyes, so that there might be a way by which his mind, still rather bold than brave, should be smitten and cast down — and the weaker for this, that it had presumed upon itself, when it ought to have presumed upon You.

For as soon as he saw that blood, he drank in savagery along with it, and did not turn himself away, but fixed his gaze and drank in the furies, and knew it not, and was delighted with the crime of the combat, and was made drunk with the bloody pleasure. And he was no longer the man who had come, but one of the crowd to which he had come, and a true comrade of those by whom he had been brought. What more? He looked, he shouted, he caught fire, he carried away with him a madness by which he should be goaded to return — not only with those by whom he had been dragged off, but even ahead of them, and dragging others. And yet from there, with most mighty and most merciful hand, You plucked him out, and taught him to have confidence not in himself but in You — but long afterward. Nevertheless even now this was being laid up in his memory for his future healing.

For that other thing also — that, while he was still studying, now hearing me at Carthage, and at midday in the forum was pondering what he was to recite, as scholars are wont to exercise themselves, You allowed him to be seized by the keepers of the forum as a thief — I think You permitted this for no other cause, O our God, than that that man, so great as he was to be, might already begin to learn how a man ought not, by rash credulity, to be too readily condemned by a man in the examining of causes. For he was walking up and down alone before the tribunal with his tablets and stylus, when behold, a certain young man, one of the scholars, a true thief, secretly bringing an axe, entered, while the other did not perceive it, to the leaden gratings which overhang the silversmiths' street, and began to cut away the lead.

But when the sound of the axe was heard, the silversmiths who were below murmured, and sent men to seize whomever they might chance to find. He, hearing their voices, left his tool and departed, fearing lest he should be held together with it. But Alypius, who had not seen him entering, perceived him going out, and quickly saw him departing; and desiring to know the cause, he entered the place, and stood admiring the axe he had found, considering it — when behold, those who had been sent find him alone, holding the iron by the sound of which they had been roused: they hold him, drag him off, and, with the residents of the forum gathered, boast that they have caught a thief in the very act; and thence he was being led to be handed over to the examiners. But thus far only was he to be taught.

For at once, O Lord, You came to the aid of his innocence, of which You alone were witness. For as he was being led either to custody or to punishment, a certain architect met them, who had the chief charge of the public buildings. They rejoice that they have met above all the very man, to whom they were wont to fall under suspicion for things carried off that had gone missing from the forum, as though now at last he might recognize by whom these things were done. But that man had often seen Alypius in the house of a certain senator, to whom he used to come to pay his respects; and recognizing him at once, he took him by the hand, drew him aside from the crowds, and inquiring the cause of so great an evil, heard what had happened; and all those clamoring who were present, and threateningly raging, he bade come with him.

And they came to the house of that young man who had committed the deed. Now there was a boy before the door, and so small that, fearing nothing thereby for his master, he could easily tell the whole; for he had been with him in the forum as his attendant. After Alypius had recalled him, he made it known to the architect. Then he showed the axe to the boy, asking him whose it was. The boy at once said, 'Ours'; and then, being questioned, he disclosed the rest. Thus the cause was transferred to that house, and the crowds confounded who had already begun to triumph over Alypius; and the future steward of Your word, and examiner of many causes in Your Church, departed more experienced and better instructed.

This man, then, I had found at Rome, and he attached himself to me with a most strong bond, and set out with me to Milan, both that he might not forsake me, and that he might practice something of the law which he had learned — more to fulfill his parents' wish than his own. And he had three times now sat as assessor, with a marvelous self-restraint admired by others, while he rather marveled at those who preferred gold to innocence. His character was tried, not only by the allurement of cupidity, but also by the goad of fear. At Rome he sat as assessor to the count of the Italian largesses. There was at that time a certain most powerful senator, by whose benefits many were bound and to whose terror many were subject. He wished to be allowed, after the manner of his power, some thing or other which was unlawful by the laws; Alypius resisted.

A reward was promised; he laughed at it in his mind. Threats were held out; he trampled on them, all men marveling at so unwonted a spirit, which neither desired as friend nor dreaded as enemy a man so great and renowned by mighty fame for his innumerable ways of conferring benefits and of doing harm. But the judge himself, to whom he was assessor, although he too was unwilling that it should be done, yet did not openly refuse, but transferring the cause onto Alypius, declared that he was not permitted by him; for indeed in truth, if he himself did it, the other would withdraw.