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| Having Heard the Bishop, He Perceives the Force of the Catholic Faith, Yet Doubts, After the Manner of the Modern Academics.
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Chapter XIV.—Having Heard the
Bishop, He Perceives the Force of the Catholic Faith, Yet Doubts,
After the Manner of the Modern Academics.
24. For although I took no trouble to learn
what he spake, but only to hear how he spake (for that empty care
alone remained to me, despairing of a way accessible for man to
Thee), yet, together with the words which I prized, there came into
my mind also the things about which I was careless; for I could not
separate them. And whilst I opened my heart to admit “how
skilfully he spake,” there also entered with it, but gradually,
“and how truly he spake!” For first, these things also had
begun to appear to me to be defensible; and the Catholic faith, for
which I had fancied nothing could be said against the attacks of
the Manichæans, I now conceived might be maintained without
presumption; especially after I had heard one or two parts of the
Old Testament explained, and often allegorically—which when I
accepted literally, I was “killed” spiritually.427
Many places,
then, of those books having been expounded to me, I now blamed my
despair in having believed that no reply could be made to those who
hated and derided428
| 428 He frequently alludes to this scoffing spirit, so
characteristic of these heretics. As an example, he says (in
Ps. cxlvi. 13): “There has sprung up a certain accursed sect
of the Manichæans which derides the Scriptures it takes and reads.
It wishes to censure what it does not understand, and by disturbing
and censuring what it understands not, has deceived many.” See
also sec. 16, and iv. sec. 8, above. | the Law and
the Prophets. Yet I did not then see that for that reason the
Catholic way was to be held because it had its learned advocates,
who could at length, and not irrationally, answer objections; nor
that what I held ought therefore to be condemned because both sides
were equally defensible. For that way did not appear to me to be
vanquished; nor yet did it seem to me to be victorious.
25. Hereupon did I earnestly bend my mind to
see if in any way I could possibly prove the Manichæans guilty of
falsehood. Could I have realized a spiritual substance, all their
strongholds would have been beaten down, and cast utterly out of my
mind; but I could not. But yet, concerning the body of this world,
and the whole of nature, which the senses of the flesh can attain
unto, I, now more and more considering and comparing things, judged
that the greater part of the philosophers held much the more
probable opinions. So, then, after the manner of the Academics (as
they are supposed),429
| 429 See above, sec. 19, and note. | doubting of everything and
fluctuating between all, I decided that the Manichæans were to be
abandoned; judging that, even while in that period of doubt, I
could not remain in a sect to which I preferred some of the
philosophers; to which philosophers, however, because they were
without the saving name of Christ, I utterly refused to commit the
cure of my fainting soul. I resolved, therefore, to be a
catechumen430
| 430 See vi. sec. 2, note, below. | in the
Catholic Church, which my parents had commended to me, until
something settled should manifest itself to me whither I might
steer my course.431
| 431 In his Benefit of Believing, Augustin
adverts to the above experiences with a view to the conviction of
his friend Honoratus, who was then a Manichæan. |
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