Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 1 part 8/22

By this one thing alone, however, he was now almost enticed in his love of letters: that he might have manuscripts copied for himself at praetorian prices. But, consulting justice, he turned his deliberation to the better course, judging the equity by which he was forbidden more useful than the power by which he was permitted. This is a small matter; but 'he that is faithful in a little is faithful also in much,' nor shall that in any way be void which proceeded from the mouth of Your truth: 'If you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you the true? and if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?' Such a man at that time clave to me, and wavered together with me in counsel, what manner of life was to be held.

Nebridius too, who, having left his native land near Carthage, and Carthage itself where he most frequently was, having left his father's excellent country estate, having left his home and a mother who would not follow him, had come to Milan for no other cause than that he might live with me in the most ardent zeal for truth and wisdom — he likewise sighed, he likewise was tossed about, an eager inquirer after the blessed life and a most keen searcher of the most difficult questions. And there were the mouths of three needy men, breathing out their want to one another in turn, and waiting upon You, that You might give them their food in due season.

And in all the bitterness which by Your mercy followed our worldly doings, as we looked toward the end — why we should suffer these things — darkness met us, and we turned away groaning and said, 'How long these things?' And this we said often, and saying it we did not leave them, because nothing certain shone forth which, those things being left, we might lay hold of. And I most of all marveled, fretting and recalling how long a time it was from the nineteenth year of my age, in which I had begun to burn with zeal for wisdom, resolving, when it was found, to leave behind all the empty hopes and lying madnesses of vain desires.

And behold, I was now bearing the age of thirty, sticking fast in the same mire, in my greed of enjoying present things that were fleeting and scattering me, while I kept saying: 'Tomorrow I shall find it; behold, it will appear manifest, and I shall hold it; behold, Faustus will come and explain all things. O you great men, the Academics! Nothing certain for the conducting of life can be grasped. Nay rather, let us seek more diligently and not despair. Behold, those things are now not absurd in the ecclesiastical books which seemed absurd, and they can be understood otherwise and honorably. I shall plant my feet on that step on which I was placed by my parents as a boy, until the clear truth be found. But where shall it be sought? When shall it be sought? Ambrose has no leisure, there is no leisure to read. Where do we seek the very books? Whence or when do we procure them?'

From whom do we receive? Let times be set apart, let hours be apportioned for the welfare of the soul. A great hope has dawned: the Catholic faith does not teach what we supposed, and for which we vainly reproached it. Its learned teachers count it sacrilege to believe that God is bounded by the shape of a human body. And do we hesitate to knock, that the rest may be opened to us? My pupils take up my morning hours; what do we do with the others? Why do we not give them to this? But when shall we pay our respects to our greater friends, whose patronage we need? When shall we prepare what our students may buy? When shall we restore ourselves by relaxing the mind from the strain of cares? Let all things perish, and let us dismiss these vain and empty pursuits: let us devote ourselves to the one search for truth. Life is wretched, death is uncertain; let it steal upon us suddenly:

How shall we depart from here? And where shall we learn what here we have neglected? Or shall we rather pay the penalties for this negligence? What if death itself shall cut off and end every care along with all sensation? This too, then, must be inquired into. But far be it that it should be so. It is not in vain, it is not empty, that so eminent a summit of authority belonging to the Christian faith is spread throughout the whole world. Never would such and so great things be wrought for us by God, if with the death of the body the life of the soul were also consumed. Why then do we delay to forsake the hope of the world and to devote ourselves wholly to seeking God and the blessed life? But wait: even these things are pleasant, they have a sweetness of their own that is not small; the attention must not lightly be cut away from them, for it is shameful to turn back to them again.

See now, how great a thing it would be to obtain some office. And what more is to be desired in these matters? An abundance of greater friends is at hand: even if we hasten after nothing else, at the very least a governorship might be granted. And a wife must be taken with some money, lest she burden our expense, and that shall be the measure of desire. Many great men, most worthy of imitation, have been devoted to the pursuit of wisdom together with their wives.' While I was saying these things, and these winds shifted and drove my heart this way and that, the times kept passing, and I was slow to turn to the Lord, and from day to day I put off living in You, yet I did not put off dying daily within myself: loving the blessed life, I feared it in its own seat, and fleeing from it I sought it.

For I thought I should be exceedingly wretched if I were deprived of a woman's embraces, and I did not consider the medicine of Your mercy for healing that very infirmity, because I had not tried it; and I believed continence to be a matter of my own strength, of which I was not conscious, since I was so foolish that I did not know, as it is written, that no one can be continent unless You grant it. And surely You would grant it, if with inward groaning I knocked at Your ears and with solid faith cast my care upon You. Alypius indeed kept restraining me from taking a wife, chanting that we could in no way live together in untroubled leisure in the love of wisdom, as we had long desired, if I did this.

For he himself was at that time most chaste in this matter, so that it was wonderful; for though at the entrance of his youth he had had some experience of intercourse, yet he had not clung to it, but rather had grieved over it and despised it, and from then on lived most continently. But I withstood him with the examples of those who, though married, had cultivated wisdom and earned the favor of God, and had faithfully kept and loved their friends. From the greatness of their souls I was indeed far removed, and, bound fast by the disease of the flesh, with its deadly sweetness I dragged along my chain, fearing to be loosed, and as though my wound had been struck, I repelled the words of one who counseled me well, like the hand of one loosing me.

Moreover, the serpent spoke through me to Alypius himself as well, and through my tongue he wove and scattered sweet snares along his path, in which his honorable and unencumbered feet might be entangled.

For when he marveled that I, whom he held in no small esteem, clung so fast to the birdlime of that pleasure that I would affirm—whenever we discussed the matter between us—that I could in no way lead a celibate life, and so defended myself, when I saw him marveling, by saying that there was a great difference between what he had experienced hastily and by stealth, which he now scarcely even remembered and therefore could easily despise without any trouble, and the delights of my habit, to which, if the honorable name of matrimony were added, he ought not to wonder why I could not despise that life—then he too began to desire marriage, by no means overcome by the lust of such pleasure, but by curiosity.

For he said he desired to know what that thing was, without which my life—which so pleased him—seemed to me not life but punishment. For his spirit, free from that bond, was astonished at my servitude, and in its astonishment was passing into a desire of experiencing it, about to come into the experience itself, and from there perhaps to fall into that very servitude at which he was astonished, since he was willing to make a covenant with death; and he who loves danger shall fall into it. For neither of us reckoned but lightly whatever conjugal honor there is in the duty of guiding marriage and of rearing children. But for the most part, and vehemently, the habit of satisfying an insatiable concupiscence held me captive and tormented me, while admiration was drawing him on to be taken captive.

So were we, until You, most high, not forsaking our dust, took pity on us wretches and came to our aid in wondrous and hidden ways. And it was urged upon me unrelentingly that I should take a wife. Already I was asking for one, already she was being promised, my mother especially taking pains in the matter, that once I was married the saving baptism might wash me; she rejoiced that I was being fitted for this day by day, and observed that her vows and Your promises were being fulfilled in my faith. Yet when, both at my request and out of her own strong desire, she besought You daily with a loud cry of her heart that You would show her something through a vision concerning my future marriage, You never would.

And she saw certain vain and fantastic things, such as the impulse of the human spirit, busy about this matter, forced upon her; and she would relate them to me, not with that confidence which she was wont to have when You showed her things, but despising them. For she said that she discerned, by some savor which she could not put into words, what difference there was between You revealing and her own soul dreaming. Yet the matter was pressed, and the girl was sought, whose age was about two years short of marriageable; and because she was pleasing, she was waited for.

And many of us friends had stirred up our minds and, conversing together and detesting the turbulent troubles of human life, had almost resolved to withdraw from the crowds and live at leisure—planning that leisure thus: that whatever we might be able to possess we would put into a common store, and out of all of it form one household property, so that, through the sincerity of friendship, this should not belong to one and that to another, but that what came from all should be made one, and the whole should belong to each and all things to all; since it seemed to us that we could be about ten men in the same society, and there were among us some very wealthy men, especially Romanianus, our fellow townsman, whom the heavy tides of his affairs had then drawn to the imperial court, most intimate with me from my earliest years.

He especially pressed for this enterprise and had great authority in persuading us, because his ample wealth far surpassed that of the rest. And it had pleased us that, like magistrates, two each year should provide for all things necessary, while the others were at rest. But after it began to be considered whether the little women would permit this—those whom some of us already had, and which we wished to have—that whole plan, which we were so well shaping, fell to pieces in our hands and was broken and cast away. Thence we passed to sighs and groans, and our steps to following the broad and well-worn ways of the world, since many were the thoughts in our heart, but Your counsel abides forever.

Out of which counsel You laughed at ours and prepared Your own for us, about to give us food in due season, and to open Your hand and fill our souls with blessing. Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied, and she with whom I had been wont to lie was torn from my side as a hindrance to marriage; and my heart, where it had clung to her, was cut and wounded, and trailed blood. And she had returned to Africa, vowing to You that she would know no other man, leaving with me my natural son by her.

But I, unhappy, no imitator of that woman, impatient of delay—since it was after two years that I was to receive the one I sought, and because I was no lover of marriage but a slave of lust—procured another woman, by no means a wife, so that, as it were, the disease of my soul might be sustained and prolonged, whether unimpaired or aggravated, under the escort of a habit that endured into the married estate. Nor was that wound of mine healed, which had been made by the cutting away of the former one, but after a most acute fever and pain it began to fester, and ached as though more coldly, but more hopelessly. To You be praise, to You be glory, O fountain of mercies! I was becoming more wretched, and You more near. Already, already Your right hand was at hand to snatch me from the mire and to wash me, and I knew it not.

Nor did anything call me back from a deeper whirlpool of carnal pleasures except the fear of death and of Your judgment to come, which, through various opinions indeed, yet never departed from my breast. And I disputed with my friends Alypius and Nebridius about the ends of good and evil, holding that Epicurus would have carried off the palm in my mind, had I not believed that after death the soul's life remains and the consequences of our deserts—which Epicurus refused to believe.

And I would ask: if we were immortal and lived in perpetual pleasure of the body without any fear of loss, why should we not be blessed, or what else should we seek?—not knowing that this very thing belonged to great misery, that, so submerged and blind, I could not think upon the light of integrity and of the beauty to be embraced for its own sake, which the eye of flesh does not see and which is seen from within. Nor did I, wretched, consider from what vein it flowed to me, that even these foul things I shared sweetly with friends, and that I could not be blessed even according to the sense I then had, without friends, however great an abundance of carnal pleasures there might be. And these friends I surely loved for their own sake, and in turn felt myself loved by them for my own sake. O tortuous ways!

Woe to my bold soul, which hoped that, if it withdrew from You, it would have something better! Turned and turned again upon its back, its sides, and its belly, and all things are hard, and You alone are rest. And behold, You are present and deliver us from our miserable errors and set us in Your way, and console us and say: 'Run, I will bear you, and I will bring you through, and there too I will bear you.' BOOK SEVEN. Now my evil and accursed youth was dead, and I was passing into manhood; and the greater I was in age, the baser in vanity, who could conceive of nothing of substance except such as is wont to be seen through these eyes. I did not think of You, O God, in the figure of a human body, from the time I began to hear anything of wisdom;

I always fled from this, and rejoiced to find this in the faith of our spiritual mother, Your Catholic Church; but what else to think of You did not occur to me. And I, a man, and such a man, was trying to think of You as the highest and only and true God; and I believed You with all my marrow to be incorruptible and inviolable and unchangeable, because, although I did not know whence or how, I yet plainly saw and was certain that what can be corrupted is worse than what cannot, and without hesitation I set what cannot be violated above what can, and judged that what suffers no change is better than what can be changed.

My heart cried out violently against all my phantasms, and with this one blow I tried to drive away the swarming throng of uncleanness that flew about the eye of my mind:

and, scarcely removed in the twinkling of an eye, behold, gathered together again it was present and rushed upon my sight and clouded it, so that, although it was not in the form of a human body, I was nevertheless compelled to conceive of something corporeal extended through spaces of place, whether poured into the world or even diffused beyond the world through infinity—even that very incorruptible and inviolable and unchangeable thing which I set above the corruptible and violable and changeable; for whatever I deprived of such spaces seemed to me to be nothing, utterly nothing, not even a void, just as if a body were taken away from a place and the place remained emptied of every body, earthly and watery and airy and heavenly, yet there should be an empty place, as it were a spacious nothing.

I therefore, gross of heart, not even clearly seen by my own self, reckoned that whatever was not stretched out, or diffused, or massed together, or swelled up, or took on, or could take on, some such dimension, was simply nothing at all. For through such forms as my eyes are wont to range, through such images did my heart range; nor did I see that this very act of attention, by which I formed those very images, was not anything of that kind: yet it could not have formed them, were it not itself something great.

So also I conceived of You, O life of my life, as vast, penetrating on every side throughout infinite spaces the whole mass of the world, and beyond it, in every direction through the immeasurable without end, so that the earth had You, the heaven had You, all things had You, and they were bounded in You, but You nowhere. For just as the body of this air which is above the earth does not resist the light of the sun from being passed through it, penetrating it not by bursting or cutting it, but by filling it wholly—so I thought that not only the body of heaven and air and sea, but also the body of earth, was passable to You and penetrable in all its greatest and least parts, to receive Your presence, while by a hidden inspiration within and without You governed all things which You created.

So I suspected, because I could think no otherwise; for it was false. For in that manner a greater part of the earth would have a greater part of You, and a smaller a smaller, and so all things would be full of You in such a way that the body of an elephant would contain more of You than that of a sparrow, by as much as it was larger than the other and occupied a larger place; and thus, piecemeal, You would make Your parts present to the parts of the world, large to the large, small to the small. But it is not so. Yet You had not yet illumined my darkness. It was enough for me, O Lord, against those deceived deceivers and speechless babblers—since Your word did not sound forth from them—it was enough, that argument which had long been wont to be set forth, even from the days of Carthage, by Nebridius, and by which all of us who heard it were shaken:

what would that I-know-not-what race of darkness, which they are wont to set up out of the opposing mass, have done to You, if You had been unwilling to fight with it? For if it were answered that it would have done some harm, then You would be violable and corruptible.

But if it were said that it could have done no harm, then no cause would be brought forward for fighting—and for fighting in such a way that some portion of You and a member of You, or offspring from Your very substance, should be mingled with hostile powers and natures not created by You, and should be corrupted by them and changed for the worse to such a degree that it should be turned from blessedness into misery and should need help by which it might be rescued and cleansed; and that this was the soul, to which Your Word, as to a servant, came to the aid—free to one enslaved, pure to one defiled, whole to one corrupted—but itself also corruptible, since of one and the same substance. And so, if they should call You—whatever You are, that is, Your substance, by which You are—incorruptible, then all those things were false and execrable;

but if corruptible, then that very thing was already false and to be abominated at the first utterance. This, then, was enough against those men, who were in every way to be vomited forth from the oppression of my breast, because they had no way to escape without horrible sacrilege of heart and tongue, thinking and speaking such things of You. But I too, even still, although I declared and firmly held our Lord, the true God, to be incontaminable and unconvertible and in no part changeable—who made not only our souls but also our bodies, and not only our souls and bodies, but all men and all things—yet I did not grasp the unfolded and disentangled cause of evil.

Yet whatever it might be, I saw that it must be sought in such a way that I should not, through it, constrain myself to believe the unchangeable God to be changeable, lest I myself become that which I was seeking. And so I sought it free from care and certain that what those men said was not true, those whom I fled with my whole soul, because I saw that, by seeking whence evil comes, they were filled with malice, by which they would suppose that Your substance suffered evil rather than that their own did evil. And I bent my mind to discern what I had heard, that free choice of the will is the cause of our doing evil, and Your just judgment the cause of our suffering it; and I was not able to discern it clearly. So, striving to draw the eye of my mind out of the depth, I was plunged in again, and often striving, I was plunged in again and again.

For this lifted me up toward Your light, that I knew as well that I had a will as that I lived. And so, when I willed or willed not anything, I was most certain that it was none other than myself who willed and willed not, and there, more and more, I perceived the cause of my sin to be. But what I did unwillingly, I saw that I rather suffered than did, and judged it to be not fault but punishment; by which, thinking You to be just, I quickly confessed I was not unjustly chastised. But again I would say: 'Who made me? Was it not my God, who is not only good but the very Good itself? Whence then comes it that I will evil and will not good? Was it that there might be a reason why I should justly pay the penalty? Who placed this in me, and grafted into me this nursery of bitterness, when I was wholly made by my most sweet God?

If the devil is the author of it, whence comes the devil himself? But if even he, by a perverse will, was made a devil out of a good angel, whence too came in him the evil will by which he should become a devil, when the whole angel had been made by a most excellent Maker?' By these thoughts I was again pressed down and stifled, yet I was not brought down to that hell of error where no one confesses to You, where You are thought rather to suffer evil than man to do it. For thus I strove to discover the rest, just as I had already discovered that the incorruptible is better than the corruptible, and therefore confessed that You, whatever You were, were incorruptible. For no soul ever was or will be able to conceive of anything that is better than You, who are the highest and best Good.

But since most truly and most certainly the incorruptible is preferred to the corruptible, as I now preferred it, I could now reach by thought to something that should be better than my God, unless You were incorruptible. Where therefore I saw that the incorruptible was to be preferred to the corruptible, there I ought to have sought You, and from there to have observed where evil is—that is, whence comes corruption itself, by which Your substance can in no way be violated. For corruption in no way at all violates our God: by no will, by no necessity, by no unforeseen chance, since He is God, and what He wills for Himself is good, and He Himself is that same Good; but to be corrupted is not good.

Nor are You compelled against Your will to anything, because Your will is not greater than Your power. But it would be greater, if You Yourself were greater than Your very self: for the will and power of God is God Himself. And what is unforeseen to You, who know all things? And no nature exists except because You know it. And why do we say much as to why the substance which is God cannot be corruptible, since, if this were so, it would not be God? And I would seek whence evil comes, and I sought ill, and in my very inquiry I did not see the evil.

And I would set before the gaze of my spirit the whole of creation, whatever in it we are able to discern—such as earth and sea and air and stars and trees and mortal animals—and whatever in it we do not see, such as the firmament of heaven above, and all the angels and all the spiritual beings within it; but even these, as though they were bodies, my imagination arranged in places upon places;

and I made of Your creation one great mass, distinguished by the kinds of bodies, whether they really were bodies, or those which I myself had imagined in place of spirits; and I made it great, not as great as it was—which I could not know—but as great as I pleased, yet bounded on every side; but You, O Lord, surrounding and penetrating it on every part, yet everywhere infinite—as if there were a sea everywhere and on every side throughout the immeasurable, an infinite sea and nothing but sea, and it had within itself a sponge however large, yet bounded nonetheless: that sponge would surely be filled in every part of it from the immeasurable sea. So I thought Your finite creation to be full of You the infinite, and I said:

'Behold God, and behold the things which God created; and God is good, and most mightily and by far more excellent than these; but yet, being good, He created good things: and behold how He surrounds and fills them. Where, then, is evil, and whence, and by what way did it creep in hither? What is its root, and what its seed? Or does it not exist at all? Why then do we fear and beware of what does not exist? Or if we fear in vain, that very fear is an evil, by which the heart is goaded and tormented to no purpose—and an evil so much the heavier, in that there is nothing which we fear, and yet we fear. Therefore either there is the evil which we fear, or it is an evil that we fear. Whence, then, is it, since God who is good made all these good things? The greater indeed and highest Good made the lesser goods, but yet both Creator and created are all good.

Whence is evil? Or was the matter, out of which He made these things, evil, and He formed and ordered it, but left something in it which He did not convert into good? Why even this? Was He powerless to turn and change the whole of it, so that no evil should remain, though He is omnipotent? Lastly, why did He wish to make anything out of it, and not rather by that same omnipotence bring it about that there should be none at all? Or could it indeed exist against His will? Or if it were eternal, why did He so long, through the infinite stretches of past times, suffer it to exist, and only so long after was pleased to make something out of it? Or now, if He suddenly willed to do something, would He not rather, as omnipotent, have done this—that it should not exist, and He alone should be the whole, the true and highest and infinite Good?

Or if it were not well that He who was good should not also fashion and found something good, then—that matter being taken away and reduced to nothing, the matter which was evil—He Himself should have established a good matter, out of which He might create all things. For He would not be omnipotent, if He could not found something good without being helped by a matter which He Himself had not founded.' Such things I turned over in my wretched breast, weighed down with most gnawing cares from the fear of death and from truth not found; yet there clung steadfastly in my heart, within the Catholic Church, the faith of Your Christ, our Lord and Savior—in many things, indeed, still unformed and wavering beyond the rule of doctrine, but yet my mind did not forsake it; nay, day by day it took deeper and deeper hold.

By now I had also rejected the deceitful divinations and impious ravings of the astrologers. Let Your mercies confess to You from this too, O my God, out of the inmost depths of my soul! For You, You alone—for who else calls us back from the death of all error except the Life which knows not how to die, and the Wisdom which enlightens minds in need, itself needing no light, by which the world is governed even to the fluttering leaves of the trees?—