Book V.
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He describes the twenty-ninth year of his age, in which,
having discovered the fallacies of the Manichæans, he professed rhetoric at
Rome and Milan. Having heard Ambrose, he begins to come to himself.
Chapter I.—That It Becomes the Soul to Praise God, and to
Confess Unto Him.
1. Accept the sacrifice of my confessions by the agency of
my tongue, which Thou hast formed and quickened, that it may confess to Thy
name; and heal Thou all my bones, and let them say, “Lord, who is like unto
Thee?” For neither does he who confesses to Thee teach Thee what may be passing
within him, because a closed heart doth not exclude Thine eye, nor does man’s
hardness of heart repulse Thine hand, but Thou dissolvest it when Thou wiliest,
either in pity or in vengeance, “and there is no One who can hide himself from
Thy heart.” But let my soul praise Thee, that it may love Thee; and let it
confess Thine own mercies to Thee, that it may praise Thee. Thy whole creation
ceaseth not, nor is it silent in Thy praises—neither the spirit of man, by the
voice directed unto Thee, nor animal nor corporeal things, by the voice of
those meditating thereon; so that our souls may from their weariness arise
towards Thee, leaning on those things which Thou hast made, and passing on to
Thee, who hast made them wonderfully and there is there refreshment and true
strength.
Chapter II.—On the Vanity of Those Who Wished to Escape the
Omnipotent God.
2. Let the restless and the unjust depart and flee from
Thee. Thou both seest them and distinguishest the shadows. And lo! all things
with them are fair, yet are they themselves foul. And how have they injured
Thee? Or in what have they disgraced Thy government, which is just and perfect
from heaven even to the lowest parts of the earth. For whither fled they when
they fled from Thy presence? Or where dost Thou not find them? But they fled
that they might not see Thee seeing them, and blinded might stumble against
Thee; since Thou forsakest nothing that Thou hast made—that the unjust might
stumble against Thee, and justly be hurt, withdrawing themselves from Thy
gentleness, and stumbling against Thine uprightness, and falling upon their own
roughness. Forsooth, they know not that Thou art everywhere whom no place
encompasseth, and that Thou alone art near even to those that remove far from
Thee. Let them, then, be converted and seek Thee; because not as they have
forsaken their Creator hast Thou forsaken Thy creature. Let them be converted
and seek Thee; and behold, Thou art there in their hearts, in the hearts of
those who confess to Thee, and cast themselves upon Thee, and weep on Thy bosom
after their obdurate ways, even Thou gently wiping away their tears. And they
weep the more, and rejoice in weeping, since Thou, O Lord, not man, flesh and
blood, but Thou, Lord, who didst make, remakest and comfortest them. And where
was I when I was seeking Thee? And Thou wert before me, but I had gone away
even from myself; nor did I find myself, much less Thee!
Chapter III.—Having Heard Faustus, the Most Learned Bishop of the Manichæans, He Discerns that God, the Author Both of Things Animate and Inanimate, Chiefly Has Care for the Humble.
3. Let me lay bare before my God that twenty-ninth year of my age. There had at this time come to Carthage a certain bishop of the Manichæans, by name Faustus, a great snare of the devil, and in any were entangled by him through the allurement of his smooth speech; the which, although I did commend, yet could I separate from the truth of those things which I was eager to learn. Nor did I esteem the small dish of oratory so much as the science, which this their so praised Faustus placed before me to feed upon. Fame, indeed, had before spoken of him to me, as most skilled in all becoming learning, and pre-eminently skilled in the liberal sciences. And as I had read and retained in memory many injunctions of the philosophers, I used to compare some teachings of theirs with those long fables of the Manichæans and the former things which they declared, who could only prevail so far as to estimate this lower world, while its lord they could by no means find out, seemed to me the more probable. For Thou art great, O Lord, and hast respect unto the lowly, but the proud Thou knowest afar off.” Nor dost Thou draw near but to the contrite heart, nor art Thou found by the proud,—not even could they number by cunning skill the stars and the sand, and measure the starry regions, and trace the courses of the planets.
4. For with their understanding and the capacity which Thou hast bestowed upon them they search out these things; and much have they found out, and foretold many years before,—the eclipses of those luminaries, the sun and moon, on what day, at what hour, and from how many particular points they were likely to come. Nor did their calculation fail them; and it came to pass even as they foretold. And they wrote down the rules found out, which are read at this day; and from these others foretell in what year and in what month of the year, and on what day of the month, and at what hour of the day, and at what quarter of its light, either moon or sun is to be eclipsed, and thus it shall be even as it is foretold. And men who are ignorant of these things marvel and are amazed, and they that know them exult and are exalted; and by an impious pride, departing from Thee, and forsaking Thy light, they foretell a failure of the sun’s light which is likely to occur so long before, but see not their own, which is now present. For they seek not religiously whence they have the ability where-with they seek out these things. And finding that Thou hast made them, they give not themselves up to Thee, that Thou mayest preserve what Thou hast made, nor sacrifice themselves to Thee, even such as they have made themselves to be; nor do they slay their own pride, as fowls of the air, nor their own curiosities, by which (like the fishes of the sea) they wander over the unknown paths of the abyss, nor their own extravagance, as the “beasts of the field,” that Thou, Lord, “a consuming fire,” mayest burn up their lifeless cares and renew them immortally.
5. But the way—Thy Word, by whom Thou didst make these
things which they number, and themselves who number, and the sense by which
they perceive what they number, and the judgment out of which they number—they
knew not, and that of Thy wisdom there is no number. But the Only-begotten has
been “made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification,” and has been
numbered amongst us, and paid tribute to Cæsar. This way, by which they might
descend to Him from themselves, they knew not; nor that through Him they might
ascend unto Him. This way they knew not, and they think themselves exalted with
the stars and shining, and lo! they fell upon the earth, and “their foolish
heart was darkened.” They say many true things concerning the creature; but
Truth, the Artificer of the creature, they seek not with devotion, and hence
they find Him not. Or if they find Him, knowing that He is God, they glorify
Him not as God, neither are they thankful, but become vain in their
imaginations, and say that they themselves are wise, attributing to themselves
what is Thine; and by this, with most perverse blindness, they desire to impute
to Thee what is their own, forging lies against Thee who art the Truth, and
changing the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible
man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things,—changing Thy
truth into a lie, and worshipping and serving the creature more than the
Creator.
6. Many truths, however, concerning the creature did I
retain from these men, and the cause appeared to me from calculations, the
succession of seasons, and the visible manifestations of the stars; and I compared
them with the sayings of Manichæus, who in his frenzy has written most
extensively on these subjects, but discovered not any account either of the
solstices, or the equinoxes, the eclipses of the luminaries, or anything of the
kind I had learned in the books of secular philosophy. But therein I was
ordered to believe, and yet it corresponded not with those rules acknowledged
by calculation and my own sight, but was far different.
Chapter IV.—That the Knowledge of Terrestrial and Celestial
Things Does Not Give Happiness, But the Knowledge of God Only.
7. Doth, then, O Lord God of truth, whosoever knoweth those
things therefore please Thee? For unhappy is the man who knoweth all those
things, but knoweth Thee not; but happy is he who knoweth Thee, though these he
may not know. But he who knoweth both Thee and them is not the happier on
account of them, but is happy on account of Thee only, if knowing Thee he
glorify Thee as God, and gives thanks, and becomes not vain in his thoughts.
But as he is happier who knows how to possess a tree, and for the use thereof
renders thanks to Thee, although he may not know how many cubits high it is, or
how wide it spreads, than he that measures it and counts all its branches, and
neither owns it nor knows or loves its Creator; so a just man, whose is the
entire world of wealth, and who, as having nothing, yet possesseth all things
by cleaving unto Thee, to whom all things are subservient, though he know not
even the circles of the Great Bear, yet it is foolish to doubt but that he may
verily be better than he who can measure the heavens, and number the stars, and
weigh the elements, but is forgetful of Thee, “who hast set in order all things
in number, weight, and measure.”
Chapter V.—Of Manichæus Pertinaciously Teaching False
Doctrines, and Proudly Arrogating to Himself the Holy Spirit.
8. But yet who was it that ordered Manichæus to write on
these things likewise, skill in which was not necessary to piety? For Thou hast
told man to behold piety and wisdom, of which he might be in ignorance although
having a complete knowledge of these other things; but since, knowing not these
things, he yet most impudently dared to teach them, it is clear that he had no
acquaintance with piety. For even when we have a knowledge of these worldly
matters, it is folly to make a profession of them; but confession to Thee is
piety. It was therefore with this view that this straying one spake much of
these matters, that, standing convicted by those who had in truth learned them,
the understanding that he really had in those more difficult things might be
made plain. For he wished not to be lightly esteemed, but went about trying to
persuade men “that the Holy Ghost, the Comforter and Enricher of Thy faithful
ones, was with full authority personally resident in him.” When, therefore, it
was discovered that his teaching concerning the heavens and stars, and the
motions of sun and moon, was false, though these things do not relate to the
doctrine of religion, yet his sacrilegious arrogance would become sufficiently
evident, seeing that not only did he affirm things of which he knew nothing,
but also perverted them, and with such egregious vanity of pride as to seek to
attribute them to himself as to a divine being.
9. For when I hear a Christian brother ignorant of these things,
or in error concerning them, I can bear with patience to see that man hold to
his opinions; nor can I apprehend that any want of knowledge as to the
situation or nature of this material creation can be injurious to him, so long
as he does not entertain belief in anything unworthy of Thee, O Lord, the
Creator of all. But if he conceives it to pertain to the form of the doctrine
of piety, and presumes to affirm with great obstinacy that whereof he is
ignorant, therein lies the injury. And yet even a weakness such as this in the
dawn of faith is borne by our Mother Charity, till the new man may grow up
“unto a perfect man,” and not be “carried about with every wind of doctrine.”
But in him who thus presumed to be at once the teacher, author, head, and leader
of all whom he could induce to believe this, so that all who followed him
believed that they were following not a simple man only, but Thy Holy Spirit,
who would not judge that such great insanity, when once it stood convicted of
false teaching, should be abhorred and utterly cast off? But I had not yet
clearly ascertained whether the changes of longer and shorter days and nights,
and day and night itself, with the eclipses of the greater lights, and whatever
of the like kind I had read in other books, could be expounded consistently
with his words. Should I have found myself able to do so, there would still
have remained a doubt in my mind whether it were so or no, although I might, on
the strength of his reputed godliness, rest my faith on his authority.
