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| Concerning that Most Unhappy Time in Which He, Being Deceived, Deceived Others; And Concerning the Mockers of His Confession.
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Chapter I.—Concerning that Most
Unhappy Time in Which He, Being Deceived, Deceived Others; And
Concerning the Mockers of His Confession.
1. During this space
of nine years, then, from my nineteenth to my eight and twentieth
year, we went on seduced and seducing, deceived and deceiving, in
divers lusts; publicly, by sciences which they style
“liberal”—secretly, with a falsity called religion. Here
proud, there superstitious, everywhere vain! Here, striving after
the emptiness of popular fame, even to theatrical applauses, and
poetic contests, and strifes for grassy garlands, and the follies
of shows and the intemperance of desire. There, seeking to be
purged from these our corruptions by carrying food to those who
were called “elect” and “holy,” out of which, in the
laboratory of their stomachs, they should make for us angels and
gods, by whom we might be delivered.266
| 266 Augustin tells us that he went not beyond the rank
of a “hearer,” because he found the Manichæan teachers readier
in refuting others than in establishing their own views, and seems
only to have looked for some esoteric doctrine to have been
disclosed to him under their materialistic teaching as to
God—viz. that He was an unmeasured Light that extended all ways
but one, infinitely (Serm. iv. sec 5.)—rather than to have
really accepted it.—De Util. Cred. Præf. See also iii.
sec. 18, notes 1 and 2, above. | These things did I follow eagerly,
and practise with my friends—by me and with me deceived. Let the
arrogant, and such as have not been yet savingly cast down and
stricken by Thee, O my God, laugh at me; but notwithstanding I
would confess to Thee mine own shame in Thy praise. Bear with me, I
beseech Thee, and give me grace to retrace in my present
remembrance the circlings of my past errors, and to “offer to
Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving.”267
For what am I to myself without
Thee, but a guide to mine own downfall? Or what am I even at the
best, but one sucking Thy milk,268
and feeding upon Thee, the meat
that perisheth not?269
But what kind of man is any man,
seeing that he is but a man? Let, then, the strong and the mighty
laugh at us, but let us who are “poor and needy”270
confess unto
Thee.
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