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| Of the Conversion of Evodius, and the Death of His Mother When Returning with Him to Africa; And Whose Education He Tenderly Relates.
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Chapter VIII.—Of the Conversion
of Evodius, and the Death of His Mother When Returning with Him to
Africa; And Whose Education He Tenderly Relates.
17. Thou, who makest men to dwell of one mind
in a house,762
didst
associate with us Evodius also, a young man of our city, who, when
serving as an agent for Public Affairs,763
| 763 See viii. sec. 15, note, above. | was converted unto Thee and
baptized prior to us; and relinquishing his secular service,
prepared himself for Thine. We were together,764
| 764 We find from his Retractations (i. 7, sec.
1), that at this time he wrote his De Moribus Ecclesiæ
Catholicæ and his De Moribus Manichæorum. He also
wrote (ibid. 8, sec. I) his De Animæ Quantitate, and
(ibid. 9, sec. I) his three books De Libero
Arbitrio. | and together were we about to dwell
with a holy purpose. We sought for some place where we might be
most useful in our service to Thee, and were going back together to
Africa. And when we were at the Tiberine Ostia my mother died. Much
I omit, having much to hasten. Receive my confessions and
thanksgivings, O my God, for innumerable things concerning which I
am silent. But I will not omit aught that my soul has brought forth
as to that Thy handmaid who brought me forth,—in her flesh, that
I might be born to this temporal light, and in her heart, that I
might be born to life eternal.765
| 765 In his De Vita Beata and in his De Dono
Persev. he attributes all that he was to his mother’s tears
and prayers. | I will speak not of her gifts, but
Thine in her; for she neither made herself nor educated herself.
Thou createdst her, nor did her father nor her mother know what a
being was to proceed from them. And it was the rod of Thy Christ,
the discipline of Thine only Son, that trained her in Thy fear, in
the house of one of Thy faithful ones, who was a sound member of
Thy Church. Yet this good discipline did she not so much attribute
to the diligence of her mother, as that of a certain decrepid
maid-servant, who had carried about her father when an infant, as
little ones are wont to be carried on the backs of elder girls. For
which reason, and on account of her extreme age and very good
character, was she much respected by the heads of that Christian
house. Whence also was committed to her the care of her master’s
daughters, which she with diligence performed, and was earnest in
restraining them when necessary, with a holy severity, and
instructing them with a sober sagacity. For, excepting at the hours
in which they were very temperately fed at their parents’ table,
she used not to permit them, though parched with thirst, to drink
even water; thereby taking precautions against an evil custom, and
adding the wholesome advice, “You drink water only because you
have not control of wine; but when you have come to be married, and
made mistresses of storeroom and cellar, you will despise water,
but the habit of drinking will remain.” By this method of
instruction, and power of command, she restrained the longing of
their tender age, and regulated the very thirst of the girls to
such a becoming limit, as that what was not seemly they did not
long for.
18. And yet—as Thine handmaid related to me,
her son—there had stolen upon her a love of wine. For when she,
as being a sober maiden, was as usual bidden by her parents to draw
wine from the cask, the vessel being held under the opening, before
she poured the wine into the bottle, she would wet the tips of her
lips with a little, for more than that her inclination refused. For
this she did not from any craving for drink, but out of the
overflowing buoyancy of her time of life, which bubbles up with
sportiveness, and is, in youthful spirits, wont to be repressed by
the gravity of elders. And so unto that little, adding daily
littles (for “he that contemneth small things shall fall by
little and little”),766
| 766 Ecclus. xix. 1. Augustin frequently alludes
to the subtle power of little things. As when he
says,—illustrating (Serm. cclxxviii.) by the plagues of
Egypt,—tiny insects, if they be numerous enough, will be as
harmful as the bite of great beasts; and (Serm. lvi.) a hill
of sand, though composed of tiny grains, will crush a man as surely
as the same weight of lead. Little drops (Serm. lviii.) make
the river, and little leaks sink the ship; wherefore, he urges,
little things must not be despised. “Men have usually,” says
Sedgwick in his Anatomy of Secret Sins, “been first wading
in lesser sins who are now swimming in great transgressions.” It
is in the little things of evil that temptation has its greatest
strength. The snowflake is little and not to be accounted of, but
from its multitudinous accumulation results the dread power of the
avalanche. Satan often seems to act as it is said Pompey did, when
he could not gain entrance to a city. He persuaded the citizens to
admit a few of his weak and wounded soldiers, who, when they had
become strong, opened the gates to his whole army. But if little
things have such subtlety in temptation, they have likewise higher
ministries. The Jews, in their Talmudical writings, have many
parables illustrating how God by little things tries and proves men
to see if they are fitted for greater things. They say, for
example, that He tried David when keeping sheep in the wilderness,
to see whether he would be worthy to rule over Israel, the sheep of
his inheritance. See Ch. Schoettgen, Hor. Heb. et Talmud, i.
300. | she contracted such a habit as, to
drink off eagerly her little cup nearly full of wine. Where, then,
was the sagacious old woman with her earnest restraint? Could
anything prevail against a secret disease if Thy medicine, O Lord,
did not watch over us? Father, mother, and nurturers absent, Thou
present, who hast created, who callest, who also by those who are
set over us workest some good for the salvation of our souls, what
didst Thou at that time, O my God? How didst Thou heal her? How didst
Thou make her whole? Didst Thou not out of another woman’s soul
evoke a hard and bitter insult, as a surgeon’s knife from Thy
secret store, and with one thrust remove all that putrefaction?767
| 767 “‘Animam oportet assiduis saliri
tentationibus,’ says St. Ambrose. Some errors and offences do rub
salt upon a good man’s integrity, that it may not putrefy with
presumption.”—Bishop Hacket’s Sermons, p 210. | For the
maidservant who used to accompany her to the cellar, falling out,
as it happens, with her little mistress, when she was alone with
her, cast in her teeth this vice, with very bitter insult, calling
her a “wine-bibber.” Stung by this taunt, she perceived her
foulness, and immediately condemned and renounced it. Even as
friends by their flattery pervert, so do enemies by their taunts
often correct us. Yet Thou renderest not unto them what Thou dost
by them, but what was proposed by them. For she, being angry,
desired to irritate her young mistress, not to cure her; and did it
in secret, either because the time and place of the dispute found
them thus, or perhaps lest she herself should be exposed to danger
for disclosing it so late. But Thou, Lord, Governor of heavenly and
earthly things, who convertest to Thy purposes the deepest
torrents, and disposest the turbulent current of the ages,768
| 768 Not only is this true in private, but in public
concerns. Even in the crucifixion of our Lord, the wicked rulers
did (Acts. iv. 26) what God’s hand and God’s
counsel had before determined to be done. Perhaps by reason of His
infinite knowledge it is that God, who knows our thoughts long
before (Ps. cxxxix. 2; 4), weaves man’s self-willed
purposes into the pattern which His inscrutable providence has
before ordained. Or, to use Augustin’s own words (De Civ.
Dei, xxii. 2), “It is true that wicked men do many things
contrary to God’s will; but so great is His wisdom and power,
that all things which seem adverse to His purpose do still tend
towards those just and good ends and issues which He Himself has
foreknown.” | healest one
soul by the unsoundness of another; lest any man, when he remarks
this, should attribute it unto his own power if another, whom he
wishes to be reformed, is so through a word of his.
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