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| Concerning His Father, a Freeman of Thagaste, the Assister of His Son’s Studies, and on the Admonitions of His Mother on the Preservation of Chastity.
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Chapter III.—Concerning His
Father, a Freeman of Thagaste, the Assister of His Son’s Studies,
and on the Admonitions of His Mother on the Preservation of
Chastity.
5. And for that year my studies were
intermitted, while after my return from Madaura196
| 196 “Formerly an episcopal city: now a small village.
At this time the inhabitants were heathen. St. Augustin calls them
‘his fathers,’ in a letter persuading them to embrace the
gospel.—Ep. 232.”—E. B. P. | (a neighbouring city, whither I had
begun to go in order to learn grammar and rhetoric), the expenses
for a further residence at Carthage were provided for me; and that
was rather by the determination than the means of my father, who
was but a poor freeman of Thagaste. To whom do I narrate this? Not
unto Thee, my God; but before Thee unto my own kind, even to that
small part of the human race who may chance to light upon these my
writings. And to what end? That I and all who read the same may
reflect out of what depths we are to cry unto Thee.197
For what
cometh nearer to Thine ears than a confessing heart and a life of
faith? For who did not extol and praise my father, in that he went
even beyond his means to supply his son with all the necessaries
for a far journey for the sake of his studies? For many far richer
citizens did not the like for their children. But yet this same
father did not trouble himself how I grew towards Thee, nor how
chaste I was, so long as I was skilful in speaking—however barren
I was to Thy tilling, O God, who art the sole true and good Lord of
my heart, which is Thy field.
6. But while, in that sixteenth year of my
age, I resided with my parents, having holiday from school for a
time (this idleness being imposed upon me by my parents’
necessitous circumstances), the thorns of lust grew rank over my
head, and there was no hand to pluck them out. Moreover when my
father, seeing me at the baths, perceived that I was becoming a
man, and was stirred with a restless youthfulness, he, as if from
this anticipating future descendants, joyfully told it to my
mother; rejoicing in that intoxication wherein the world so often
forgets Thee, its Creator, and falls in love with Thy creature
instead of Thee, from the invisible wine of its own perversity
turning and bowing down to the most infamous things. But in my
mother’s breast Thou hadst even now begun Thy temple, and the
commencement of Thy holy habitation, whereas my father was only a
catechumen as yet, and that but recently. She then started up with
a pious fear and trembling; and, although I had not yet been
baptized,198
| 198 Nondum fideli, not having rehearsed the
articles of the Christian faith at baptism. See i. sec. 17, note,
above; and below, sec. 1, note. | she feared
those crooked ways in which they walk who turn their back to Thee,
and not their face.199
7. Woe is me! and dare I affirm that Thou
heldest Thy peace, O my God, while I strayed farther from Thee?
Didst Thou then hold Thy peace to me? And whose words were they but
Thine which by my mother, Thy faithful handmaid, Thou pouredst into
my ears, none of which sank into my heart to make me do it? For she
desired, and I remember privately warned me, with great solicitude,
“not to commit fornication; but above all things never to defile
another man’s wife.” These appeared to me but womanish
counsels, which I should blush to obey. But they were Thine, and I
knew it not, and I thought that Thou heldest Thy peace, and that it
was she who spoke, through whom Thou heldest not Thy peace to me,
and in her person wast despised by me, her son, “the son of Thy
handmaid, Thy servant.”200
But this I knew not; and rushed on
headlong with such blindness, that amongst my equals I was ashamed
to be less shameless, when I heard them pluming themselves upon
their disgraceful acts, yea, and glorying all the more in
proportion to the greatness of their baseness; and I took pleasure
in doing it, not for the pleasure’s sake only, but for the
praise. What is worthy of dispraise but vice? But I made myself out
worse than I was, in order that I might not be dispraised; and when
in anything I had not sinned as the abandoned ones, I would affirm
that I had done what I had not, that I might not appear abject for
being more innocent, or of less esteem for being more
chaste.
8. Behold with what companions I walked the streets
of Babylon, in whose filth I was rolled, as if in cinnamon and
precious ointments. And that I might cleave the more tenaciously to its very
centre, my invisible enemy trod me down, and seduced me, I being
easily seduced. Nor did the mother of my flesh, although she
herself had ere this fled “out of the midst of Babylon,”201
—progressing, however, but slowly
in the skirts of it,—in counselling me to chastity, so bear in
mind what she had been told about me by her husband as to restrain
in the limits of conjugal affection (if it could not be cut away to
the quick) what she knew to be destructive in the present and
dangerous in the future. But she took no heed of this, for she was
afraid lest a wife should prove a hindrance and a clog to my hopes.
Not those hopes of the future world, which my mother had in Thee;
but the hope of learning, which both my parents were too anxious
that I should acquire,—he, because he had little or no thought of
Thee, and but vain thoughts for me—she, because she calculated
that those usual courses of learning would not only be no drawback,
but rather a furtherance towards my attaining Thee. For thus I
conjecture, recalling as well as I can the dispositions of my
parents. The reins, meantime, were slackened towards me beyond the
restraint of due severity, that I might play, yea, even to
dissoluteness, in whatsoever I fancied. And in all there was a
mist, shutting out from my sight the brightness of Thy truth, O my
God; and my iniquity displayed itself as from very “fatness.”202
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