Confessions

Contents

Translation in progress.

Reading pages: 1.1–1.24 · 1.25–2.18 · 3.1–3.21 · 4.1–4.23 · 4.24–5.14 · 5.15–6.8 · 6.9–7.1 · 7.2–7.18 · 7.19–8.11 · 8.12–9.2 · 9.3–9.24 · 9.25–10.12 · 10.13–10.33 · 10.34–10.58 · 10.59–11.11 · 11.12–11.35 · 11.36–12.22 · 12.23–12.41 · 12.42–13.22 · 13.23–13.44 · 13.45–13.53

1. 1.1Augustine opens by praising God, who made us for himself so that our heart is restless until it rests in him, and asks whether one must know God before calling upon him.
2. 1.2Augustine asks how God, who fills heaven and earth and without whom nothing exists, can be invited to come into him.
3. 1.3Augustine explores how God can fill all things without being contained, divided, or spilled out, concluding that God is wholly present everywhere.
4. 1.4In a string of paradoxes Augustine praises God as unchanging yet changing all things, loving without passion, angry yet calm, owing nothing yet paying debts.
5. 1.5Augustine longs for God to enter his heart and asks God to say to his soul, “I am your salvation.”
6. 1.6Augustine asks God to enlarge, repair, and cleanse the house of his soul, confessing his sins without contending against God's judgment.
7. 1.7Augustine confesses that he does not know where he came from and thanks God for the nourishment he received as an infant through his mother and nurses.
8. 1.8Augustine describes, from observing other infants, how he began to smile, to try to express his wishes, and to rage and cry when he was not obeyed.
9. 1.9Augustine asks God whether he existed in any form before his infancy or before his life in the womb, and admits no one can tell him.
10. 1.10Augustine praises God as the source of all being and life, whose years are one eternal “today” through which all our days pass.
11. 1.11Augustine argues from the greed, rage, and jealousy of infants that even infancy is not free of sin, though its weakness makes it seem innocent.
12. 1.12Augustine praises God for the formation of the infant's body and asks, in light of Psalm 51, when he was ever innocent.
13. 1.13Augustine describes how, passing from infancy to boyhood, he learned to speak by observing what things his elders named and pointed to.
14. 1.14Augustine recalls being beaten at school to make him study for worldly success, and how as a boy he prayed to God not to be beaten.
15. 1.15Augustine contrasts adults' indifference to the terror of schoolboy beatings with the hypocrisy of teachers who punished children for play while indulging adult rivalries.
16. 1.16Augustine confesses that he disobeyed his parents and teachers out of love of play, contests, stories, and spectacles, and prays for deliverance for himself and others.
17. 1.17Augustine recalls how, as a catechumen boy near death, he begged for baptism, but it was postponed when he recovered, and how his mother Monica raised him in the faith though his father did not yet believe.
18. 1.18Augustine questions the custom of postponing baptism so that a young person may sin with less guilt, while explaining his mother's reasons for it.
19. 1.19Augustine sees God using both his teachers' worldly aims and his own reluctance to learn, for his good and as just punishment, since every disordered mind is its own punishment.
20. 1.20Augustine judges the basic skills of reading and writing more valuable than the literary studies he loved, in which he wept for Virgil's Dido while dying spiritually himself.
21. 1.21Augustine laments that he wept over Dido's death for love while not weeping over his own spiritual death through not loving God, a spiritual fornication the world applauded.
22. 1.22Augustine argues that the ability to read and write is worth more than the poetic fictions he loved, such as the story of Aeneas and the fall of Troy.
23. 1.23Augustine explains that he hated Greek because it was forced on him with threats, whereas he learned Latin freely as an infant, and sees God's laws at work in wholesome constraint.
24. 1.24Augustine prays that all the useful things he learned as a boy may serve God, who disciplined him and forgave his delight in vain studies.
25. 1.25Augustine denounces the custom of teaching boys the myths of the poets, in which Jupiter both thunders and commits adultery, giving divine authority to vice.
26. 1.26Augustine criticizes paid, publicly funded literary education for teaching vice through poets such as Terence, whose character cites Jupiter's seduction of Danae to justify his own lust.
27. 1.27Augustine regrets that his talent was spent declaiming Juno's angry speech from Virgil instead of on God's praises in Scripture.
28. 1.28Augustine observes that his models were praised for elegantly narrating their lusts, and reflects that distance from God is a matter of affection, not place, as in the parable of the prodigal son.
29. 1.29Augustine contrasts the care people take over correct pronunciation and grammar with their neglect of God's law against hating others.
30. 1.30Augustine confesses the lies, thefts, and cheating of his boyhood and denies that such conduct is innocence, since the same vices grow into the ambitions of adults.
31. 1.31Augustine thanks God for the good gifts he had as a boy, locating his sin in seeking pleasure and truth in creatures rather than in God.
32. 2.1Augustine begins his account of adolescence, recalling his sins not out of love for them but in order to love God, and naming his desire to love and be loved.
33. 2.2Augustine describes how in adolescence lust clouded his capacity for true love and he drifted further from God, who seemed silent.
34. 2.3Augustine wishes his adolescent passions had been channeled into marriage for the begetting of children, or that he had heeded Paul's praise of celibacy.
35. 2.4Augustine recalls how at sixteen he surrendered to lust while God embittered his pleasures, and how his family cared more for his eloquence than for arranging a marriage.
36. 2.5Augustine recalls his father's sacrifices to pay for his education at Carthage, while he cared nothing for his son's chastity or growth toward God.
37. 2.6Augustine recalls how his father, still a catechumen, rejoiced at signs of his son's manhood, while his mother feared for his soul.
38. 2.7Augustine recognizes that God spoke through his mother's warnings against fornication and adultery, which he scorned, even inventing sins to impress his companions.
39. 2.8Augustine describes his dissolute companions and explains that his mother did not arrange a marriage for him lest it hinder his studies, which she thought might lead him to God.
40. 2.9Augustine recounts how as a youth he and his companions stole pears they did not want, loving the theft itself and wickedness for its own sake.
41. 2.10Augustine explains that created things have real beauty and goodness, but sin consists in preferring these lower goods to God.
42. 2.11Augustine observes that even the worst criminals, like Catiline, commit crimes for the sake of some good they desire, not for the crime itself.
43. 2.12Augustine asks what he loved in his theft and finds that it had no beauty at all, not even the shadowy beauty of other vices.
44. 2.13Augustine shows how each vice is a perverse imitation of some perfection found truly only in God.
45. 2.14Augustine suggests that in his theft he perversely imitated God's omnipotence by doing what was forbidden simply because it was forbidden.
46. 2.15Augustine thanks God for forgiving his sins and for preserving him from sins he did not commit, urging those kept from such sins to love God no less.
47. 2.16Augustine realizes that he would not have stolen the pears alone and that his pleasure lay in the shared crime with his companions.
48. 2.17Augustine analyzes the pleasure of the shared theft as a laughing conspiracy and denounces the unfriendly friendship that makes one ashamed not to be shameless.
49. 2.18Turning from the tangled knot of his sin, Augustine longs for God's justice and rest and confesses that he became a land of want to himself.
50. 3.1Augustine recalls arriving at Carthage, in love with the idea of love, and how his entanglement in a love affair brought jealousy and quarrels.
51. 3.2Augustine asks why theater audiences enjoy feeling grief at tragic fictions they would never want to suffer themselves.
52. 3.3Augustine distinguishes the false compassion that enjoys grief in the theater from true mercy, which grieves for the wretched but would rather there were none.
53. 3.4Augustine confesses that he loved the superficial grief of the theater, which, like scratching a sore, only inflamed his condition.
54. 3.5Augustine confesses that he pursued sacrilegious curiosity and even arranged an illicit affair during a church service, while God scourged him mercifully.
55. 3.6Augustine recalls excelling in rhetoric at Carthage and living among the “Overturners,” a gang of students who harassed newcomers, though he did not share their deeds.
56. 3.7At nineteen Augustine read Cicero's Hortensius, which turned him from vain ambition to a burning love of wisdom and began his return to God.
57. 3.8The Hortensius set Augustine on fire with love of wisdom, but it could not fully captivate him because it lacked the name of Christ, which he had learned from his mother.
58. 3.9Augustine turned to the Scriptures but despised their humble style in comparison with Cicero, being too proud to become a little one.
59. 3.10Augustine recounts falling in with the Manichees, who spoke constantly of Truth and of the divine names but fed him with material fantasies about the sun and moon instead of God.
60. 3.11Augustine judges the Manichaean myths worse than the poets' fables, since he believed them, and confesses that he sought God through the senses rather than the mind.
61. 3.12Augustine explains that the Manichees won him over with questions about the origin of evil, God's form, and the conduct of the patriarchs, because he did not yet know that evil is the privation of good and that God is spirit.
62. 3.13Augustine explains that God's justice is unchanging but prescribes different things for different times, so the patriarchs were righteous even though their conduct differs from later custom.
63. 3.14Using the analogy of poetic meter, Augustine explains that one unchanging justice assigns different duties to different times, and confesses that he blindly blamed the patriarchs.
64. 3.15Augustine distinguishes sins against nature, such as those of Sodom, which are always wrong, from offenses against human custom, and teaches that God's commands must be obeyed even against custom.
65. 3.16Augustine classifies sins of violence and traces all sin to the lusts of ruling, seeing, and feeling, which violate the Ten Commandments and harm the sinner rather than God.
66. 3.17Augustine notes that some sins are those of people making progress, that some acts resemble sins but are not, and that an unusual command of God must be obeyed.
67. 3.18Augustine recalls the Manichaean belief that particles of God are trapped in fruit and released only when the elect eat it, which led him to value fruit above hungry people.
68. 3.19Augustine tells how God heard Monica's tears for her son and consoled her with a dream in which she saw him standing beside her on the same wooden rule.
69. 3.20Monica rejects Augustine's twisting of her dream, and he recalls the nearly nine years during which she kept weeping and praying for him while he remained a Manichee.
70. 3.21A bishop who had himself been a Manichee declines to argue with Augustine but assures Monica that the son of so many tears cannot perish.
71. 4.1Augustine summarizes nine years of deceiving and being deceived, pursuing fame through rhetoric while serving the Manichaean elect in hope of purification.
72. 4.2Augustine recalls teaching rhetoric for money and living faithfully with one concubine, learning the difference between marriage for children and a union based on desire.
73. 4.3Augustine refused a soothsayer's offer to secure his victory in a poetry contest by animal sacrifice, but confesses he did so not out of love for God, since he was sacrificing himself to demons through Manichaeism.
74. 4.4Augustine confesses consulting astrologers, whose teaching that the stars cause sin removes human responsibility and blames the creator.
75. 4.5A wise physician and proconsul, Vindicianus, warns Augustine against astrology, having studied and abandoned it himself, and explains its correct predictions as chance.
76. 4.6Despite the warnings of Vindicianus and his friend Nebridius, Augustine remained attached to astrology because he lacked a decisive proof against it.
77. 4.7Augustine recalls a boyhood friend at Thagaste whom he drew into Manichaeism and who died after a year of close friendship.
78. 4.8Augustine's friend, baptized while unconscious, rebukes Augustine for mocking his baptism and dies a few days later.
79. 4.9Overwhelmed by grief at his friend's death, Augustine becomes a great question to himself and finds sweetness only in weeping.
80. 4.10Augustine asks God why weeping is sweet to the grieving, even when there is no hope of recovering what was lost.
81. 4.11Augustine describes the weariness of life and fear of death that followed his friend's death, feeling that their two souls had been one.
82. 4.12Finding no rest anywhere in his grief, and unable to rest in God because his idea of God was a phantasm, Augustine left Thagaste for Carthage.
83. 4.13Time and the comfort of other friends healed Augustine's grief, and he describes the many pleasures of friendship that bound their minds together.
84. 4.14Augustine concludes that only one who loves others in God loses no one dear, since God, who fills all things, is never lost.
85. 4.15Augustine explains that transient creatures, which pass away like the words of a sentence, cannot give rest to the soul, which should praise God for them without clinging to them.
86. 4.16Augustine urges his soul to rest in the unchanging Word of God, who does not pass away, and to entrust to the Truth all it has received from it.
87. 4.17Augustine compares the parts of creation to syllables of speech, which please as a whole only by passing, and points to God, who never passes away.
88. 4.18Augustine urges that all creatures be loved in God, their maker, and warns that a happy life cannot be found in the region of death.
89. 4.19Augustine proclaims Christ, our Life, who came down through the virgin's womb, conquered death, and calls us to return to him by humility, going down in order to go up.
90. 4.20Augustine recalls how, reflecting on beauty, he wrote a now-lost treatise On the Beautiful and the Fitting.
91. 4.21Augustine asks why he dedicated his treatise to the Roman orator Hierius, whom he loved only by reputation, and reflects on how love is kindled by the praise of others.
92. 4.22Augustine reflects on the puzzling variety of loves in one soul, such as loving actors whom one would not wish to resemble, and calls the human being a great deep.
93. 4.23Augustine confesses that he admired Hierius because others praised him, showing how a soul not grounded in truth is blown about by opinion.
94. 4.24Augustine recalls how, thinking only in bodily images, he conceived of good and evil as two substances, a Monad and a Dyad, not knowing that evil is no substance.
95. 4.25Augustine explains that the mind is not itself the truth but must be enlightened by God, the true light.
96. 4.26Augustine confesses the pride of believing, as a Manichee, that his soul was of God's nature, preferring to make God changeable rather than admit his own free sin.
97. 4.27Augustine recalls writing his treatise at twenty-six or twenty-seven, longing to hear God's inner voice but prevented by his pride and errors.
98. 4.28Augustine recalls reading and understanding Aristotle's Categories on his own at about twenty, without a teacher.
99. 4.29Augustine explains that the Categories misled him into thinking of God's greatness and beauty as attributes in a subject, rather than as God himself.
100. 4.30Augustine confesses that his quick mastery of the liberal arts, a gift of God, did him no good because he did not offer it to God but squandered it like the prodigal son.
101. 4.31Augustine contrasts his useless intellectual brilliance, joined to a false idea of God as a luminous body, with the safety of simple believers in the church, and prays to be carried by God.
102. 5.1Augustine offers his confessions to God as a sacrifice of praise, noting that God already sees the heart and that all creation praises him.
103. 5.2Augustine reflects that sinners cannot escape God, who is everywhere, and that when they turn back they find him in their hearts, consoling them.
104. 5.3Augustine recalls the arrival at Carthage of the Manichaean bishop Faustus, when he was twenty-nine, and how he had come to find the philosophers' account of the world more probable than the Manichaean myths.
105. 5.4Augustine acknowledges the real achievements of astronomers in predicting eclipses, but faults their pride in not acknowledging God as the source of their intelligence.
106. 5.5The astronomers did not know the Word, Christ, the way by which to descend in humility and rise to God, and so, as Paul says, they failed to honor God and worshiped the creature.
107. 5.6Augustine found that Mani's writings on astronomy did not agree with the verified calculations of the philosophers.
108. 5.7Augustine teaches that knowledge of God, not of astronomy, makes one happy, and that a believer ignorant of the stars is better than an astronomer who neglects God.
109. 5.8Augustine argues that Mani's false astronomy exposed his sacrilegious claim to speak with the full authority of the Holy Spirit.
110. 5.9Augustine distinguishes the harmless scientific ignorance of ordinary Christians from Mani's culpable error in claiming divine authority for false teaching.
111. 5.10When Faustus finally came, Augustine found him charming and eloquent but realized that eloquence is no proof of truth.
112. 5.11Meeting Faustus privately, Augustine found that apart from grammar and some reading of Cicero and Seneca he lacked learning, though he spoke well.
113. 5.12Faustus modestly admitted that he could not answer Augustine's astronomical questions, and Augustine admired his honesty.
114. 5.13Disillusioned by Faustus, Augustine lost all hope of progress among the Manichees, though he did not yet leave them, while God worked through his mother's tears.
115. 5.14Augustine decided to move to Rome, chiefly to escape the unruly students of Carthage, and sees God's hidden providence at work in his motives.
116. 5.15Augustine deceived his mother and sailed secretly for Rome while she prayed all night at Cyprian's shrine, and God denied her immediate request in order to grant her deeper desire.
117. 5.16At Rome Augustine fell dangerously ill, unbaptized and still believing that Christ's death was only apparent, and recovered in answer to his absent mother's prayers.
118. 5.17Augustine is sure God would not have despised the prayers and tears of his devout mother, who pressed God's promises to her as if they were his signed pledges.
119. 5.18Recovered from his illness, Augustine still associated with the Manichees at Rome, clinging to their doctrine that some other nature in us sins, which spared his pride.
120. 5.19At Rome Augustine was drawn to the skepticism of the Academics, loosened his hold on Manichaeism, yet could not return to the church because he could conceive of nothing but bodies.
121. 5.20Augustine describes his former Manichaean conception of good and evil as two infinite material masses, which also made him deny that Christ truly took flesh from the Virgin Mary.
122. 5.21Augustine was impressed by Elpidius's scriptural arguments against the Manichees, whose claim that the New Testament had been falsified seemed weak, but his materialist thinking still held him captive.
123. 5.22At Rome Augustine found that students, though not rowdy, conspired to cheat teachers of their fees, and he confesses that he disliked this more for his own sake than for theirs.
124. 5.23Appointed teacher of rhetoric at Milan through the prefect Symmachus, Augustine met Bishop Ambrose, who received him kindly, and began to listen to his preaching for its eloquence.
125. 5.24Through Ambrose's spiritual interpretation of the Old Testament, Augustine came to see that the catholic faith could be defended, though he did not yet think it proven.
126. 5.25Doubting everything like the Academics, Augustine decided to leave the Manichees and to remain a catechumen in the catholic church until he found certainty.
127. 6.1Monica joins Augustine in Milan and, hearing he is no longer a Manichee, calmly declares her faith that she will see him a catholic Christian before she dies.
128. 6.2Monica obediently gave up the African custom of bringing food and wine to martyrs' shrines when she learned Ambrose had forbidden it, and Ambrose often praised her to Augustine.
129. 6.3Augustine recalls how Ambrose was so busy that he could rarely be consulted, and describes him reading silently in his spare moments.
130. 6.4Hearing Ambrose preach, Augustine learned that the church does not understand the image of God in man as a bodily form, and blushed that he had attacked a caricature of the catholic faith.
131. 6.5Ashamed of having attacked uncertain things as certain, Augustine rejoiced that the catholic church, the body of Christ, did not teach that God has a human bodily shape.
132. 6.6Through Ambrose's spiritual exegesis, based on the rule that the letter kills but the Spirit gives life, Augustine no longer found the Old Testament absurd, but he still withheld assent, wanting mathematical certainty.
133. 6.7Augustine came to prefer catholic doctrine, recognizing that much of life rests on belief and that the Scriptures, received with such authority, are to be believed.
134. 6.8Augustine came to believe that God had given the Scriptures their worldwide authority so that he might be believed and sought through them, their humble style serving all and their depth exercising the few.
135. 6.9Preparing a lying panegyric for the emperor, Augustine saw a drunken beggar in Milan who was happier than he, and recognized the misery of his ambitions.
136. 6.10Augustine judges that the drunken beggar was happier than he, having gained his wine honestly while Augustine sought vainglory by lying.
137. 6.11Augustine introduces his friend Alypius, a former student from Thagaste, who had been caught up at Carthage in a passion for the circus games.
138. 6.12A chance remark in Augustine's lecture cured Alypius of his passion for the circus, but Alypius then followed Augustine into Manichaeism, drawn by its apparent continence.
139. 6.13At Rome Alypius, dragged unwillingly to the gladiatorial games, opened his eyes at a shout and was overcome by a passion for the bloody spectacle.
140. 6.14Augustine recounts how Alypius, as a student at Carthage, was wrongly arrested as a thief in the forum, a lesson against rash judgment.
141. 6.15An architect who recognized Alypius cleared him by questioning the real thief's young slave, and Alypius, the future bishop, learned a lesson for judging cases in the church.
142. 6.16Alypius followed Augustine to Milan; as a legal assessor in Rome he had refused both the bribes and threats of a powerful senator and even the temptation to have books copied at public expense.
143. 6.17Nebridius joined Augustine and Alypius at Milan in the search for truth, and the three friends groaned together, unable to leave their worldly pursuits for lack of certainty.
144. 6.18At thirty Augustine debated with himself how to find time to seek the truth amid his teaching and social obligations.
145. 6.19Augustine's inner debate continues, weighing the urgency of seeking God against the attractions of career, a governorship, and a wealthy marriage.
146. 6.20Augustine delayed turning to God because he thought he could not live without a woman, not knowing that continence is God's gift to those who ask.
147. 6.21Alypius, who lived chastely, urged Augustine not to marry, but Augustine, bound by habit, resisted and even tempted Alypius toward marriage.
148. 6.22Augustine's insistence that he could not live celibate made Alypius curious about marriage, though neither of them thought seriously about the true purposes of marriage.
149. 6.23Monica arranged a marriage for Augustine, hoping he would then be baptized; the chosen girl was almost two years too young, so they waited.
150. 6.24Augustine and about ten friends planned a common life of philosophical leisure, pooling their property, but the plan collapsed over the question of their wives.
151. 6.25Augustine's concubine of many years was sent back to Africa as an obstacle to his marriage, vowing never to know another man, while he, unable to wait, took another mistress.
152. 6.26Only fear of death and judgment held Augustine back from deeper sensuality; he would have given the palm to Epicurus but for belief in the soul's afterlife, and God was drawing near to carry him.
153. 7.1Now in his early thirties, Augustine firmly believed God to be incorruptible and unchangeable, but still could only imagine him as something extended in space.
154. 7.2Augustine recalls imagining God as a vast presence permeating the world like sunlight through air, a view that would absurdly give an elephant more of God than a sparrow.
155. 7.3Augustine recalls Nebridius's decisive argument against the Manichaean myth of God's war with the kingdom of darkness: either God could be harmed and is corruptible, or there was no reason to fight.
156. 7.4Though he still could not explain the origin of evil, Augustine was sure it must not be explained by making God changeable, as the Manichees did.
157. 7.5Augustine began to see that the free choice of the will is the cause of sin, yet he still asked where an evil will could come from if God, who is wholly good, made him and the devil.
158. 7.6Augustine reasons that God, the highest good, must be incorruptible, since nothing can be conceived better than God, and his will and power are God himself.
159. 7.7Picturing creation as a finite sponge within the infinite sea of God, Augustine asked in anguish where evil could come from if a good God made all things good, while still holding to the faith of Christ in the catholic church.
160. 7.8Augustine's friend Firminus told him of two children, a free son and a slave, born at the same moment under identical horoscopes, whose lives turned out utterly different.
161. 7.9From the story of Firminus, Augustine concluded that correct astrological predictions come by chance, not by any art.
162. 7.10The case of twins such as Esau and Jacob confirmed that astrology cannot predict lives, and Augustine attributes whatever the astrologers say truly to God's hidden and just providence.
163. 7.11Freed from astrology but still anguished over the origin of evil, Augustine held firm to faith in God, Christ, and Scripture, while his pride kept him bound to bodily images.
164. 7.12God, who abides forever, had pity on Augustine and began healing his pride and his clouded mind through salutary pain.
165. 7.13Augustine read books of the Platonists which taught, in other words, what John's prologue says of the eternal Word, but not that the Word came to his own and made believers children of God.
166. 7.14The Platonist books taught the eternal divinity of the Word, but not his incarnation, humiliation, and death for sinners, which God hid from the proud and revealed to the humble.
167. 7.15In the Platonist books Augustine found truth mixed with idolatry; he took the gold and left the idols.
168. 7.16Turning inward, Augustine glimpses the unchangeable light above his mind and hears God say, "I am who I am."
169. 7.17Created things both are and are not; only God truly is, because he is unchangeable.
170. 7.18Whatever exists is good; evil is not a substance but a loss of good.
171. 7.19Things that seem evil fit the lower parts of an ordered universe, and the whole creation praises God.
172. 7.20Augustine recalls how dissatisfaction with creation led him into Manichaean dualism and a spatial idea of God.
173. 7.21All things owe their being to God, who holds them in truth and is before all time.
174. 7.22Wickedness is not a substance but a will that turns away from God toward lower things.
175. 7.23Augustine ascends from bodies through soul and reason to a momentary glimpse of unchangeable Being, but falls back under the weight of habit.
176. 7.24Only the humble, incarnate Christ, the mediator, gives the strength to reach God; pride is healed by his humility.
177. 7.25Augustine then saw Christ only as a supremely wise man; Alypius had thought the catholics denied Christ a human soul.
178. 7.26The Platonist books gave Augustine true knowledge of God but not the humble love found only through Christ.
179. 7.27Reading Paul, Augustine found the truths of the Platonists together with grace, confession, and the way of Christ, which those books lack.
180. 8.1Certain about God but unsettled in his life, Augustine resolves to consult the old priest Simplicianus.
181. 8.2Augustine no longer desires wealth or honor but is still bound by his desire for a woman, and he hesitates.
182. 8.3Simplicianus tells Augustine how the famous pagan rhetor Victorinus became a Christian.
183. 8.4Victorinus, after long hesitating for fear of his pagan friends, went to the church and was baptized.
184. 8.5Victorinus chose to recite the creed publicly before the congregation at Rome, to their great joy.
185. 8.6Why is there more joy over a soul rescued from great danger, as in the parables of the lost sheep, coin, and son?
186. 8.7In every part of life greater joy follows greater trouble.
187. 8.8Everywhere greater joy follows greater distress; God, eternally joyful, orders all things in their place and time.
188. 8.9The conversion of a famous man brings greater joy because it draws many after him, as with Paul and the proconsul Sergius Paulus.
189. 8.10Augustine longs to imitate Victorinus but is chained by habit: two wills, old and new, fight within him.
190. 8.11Augustine experiences the war of flesh and spirit; he now knows the truth but still refuses to follow it.
191. 8.12Like a sleeper who will not get up, Augustine keeps saying "soon" while the law of sin holds him.
192. 8.13Augustine introduces the account of his release, and describes Alypius and Nebridius at the time.
193. 8.14Ponticianus, a Christian official, finds Paul's letters on Augustine's table and tells of the monk Antony.
194. 8.15Ponticianus tells how two imperial agents at Trier, reading the Life of Antony, left their careers to serve God.
195. 8.16While Ponticianus speaks, God forces Augustine to look at himself and see his sin.
196. 8.17Augustine recalls twelve years of delay since reading Cicero, and his prayer: "Give me chastity, but not yet."
197. 8.18Augustine's conscience rebukes him: the truth is now certain, yet he still will not act.
198. 8.19In the garden at Milan, Augustine struggles with himself, knowing that to go to God he need only will it wholly.
199. 8.20The body obeys the will at once, but the will does not obey itself.
200. 8.21The mind commands itself to will and is not obeyed, because the will is divided and sick, not whole.
201. 8.22Against the Manichees, Augustine argues that the conflict of wills shows not two natures but one divided soul, punished for Adam's sin.
202. 8.23Augustine shows that the Manichaean theory of two natures breaks down when both choices are bad or both are good.
203. 8.24Many conflicting wills, bad or good, show one soul divided, not many substances.
204. 8.25Augustine struggles on the brink of decision, held back only by a slender remnant of his old habit.
205. 8.26His old pleasures whisper behind him, asking whether he can live without them.
206. 8.27Lady Continence appears with many chaste examples and urges Augustine to cast himself on God.
207. 8.28Overcome with weeping, Augustine throws himself down under a fig tree and cries out to God, "Why not now?"
208. 8.29Hearing a child's voice chant "Take up and read," Augustine opens Paul at Romans 13:13-14 and his doubts vanish.
209. 8.30Alypius joins Augustine's decision, and Monica rejoices that he now seeks neither wife nor worldly hope.
210. 9.1Augustine praises God for freeing his will and replacing the pleasures of trifles with himself.
211. 9.2Augustine decides to resign his teaching quietly at the vintage holidays.
212. 9.3Augustine waited for the holidays so that his resignation would not look like a display.
213. 9.4A lung ailment gave Augustine an honest excuse to give up teaching; he endured the last weeks patiently.
214. 9.5Verecundus, held back by marriage, lends his estate at Cassiciacum and is baptized before his death.
215. 9.6Nebridius, later baptized, lived and died a faithful Christian and now lives in "Abraham's bosom."
216. 9.7Released from teaching, Augustine retires to Cassiciacum, where God humbles him and Alypius.
217. 9.8At Cassiciacum Augustine is set on fire by the Psalms and wishes the Manichees could hear him read Psalm 4.
218. 9.9Psalm 4's "Why do you love vanity?" strikes Augustine, who sees in it the risen Christ and the gift of the Spirit.
219. 9.10Psalm 4 teaches Augustine to be angry with his own sin and to seek good within, in God's light, not in outward things.
220. 9.11Psalm 4's "in peace, in the Selfsame" speaks to Augustine of God's unchanging rest; he grieves for Scripture's enemies.
221. 9.12A severe toothache vanishes as soon as Augustine's friends kneel to pray for him.
222. 9.13Augustine resigns his post and asks Ambrose what to read; Ambrose recommends Isaiah.
223. 9.14Augustine, Alypius, and Augustine's son Adeodatus are baptized at Milan; Augustine weeps at the church's hymns.
224. 9.15Congregational singing began at Milan during the siege of Ambrose's church by the Arian empress Justina.
225. 9.16Ambrose, by a vision, finds the bodies of the martyrs Protasius and Gervasius; a blind man is healed and the persecution ceases.
226. 9.17Augustine begins his account of Monica, trained in her youth by a strict old servant.
227. 9.18As a girl Monica fell into a habit of sipping wine, and was cured by a servant's taunt.
228. 9.19Monica won her hot-tempered, unfaithful husband Patricius by patience and never quarreled with him.
229. 9.20Monica's patience won over her mother-in-law, who had been turned against her by gossiping servants.
230. 9.21Monica was a peacemaker who repeated nothing between quarreling women except what would reconcile them.
231. 9.22Monica won her husband for Christ before his death and cared for all Augustine's companions like a mother.
232. 9.23At Ostia, Augustine and Monica talk together at a window about the eternal life of the saints.
233. 9.24Mother and son ascend in thought beyond all creatures and their own minds and for a moment touch eternal Wisdom.
234. 9.25If all creatures fell silent and God alone spoke, eternal life would be like that moment of understanding.
235. 9.26Monica says that her one wish, to see Augustine a catholic Christian, has been more than fulfilled.
236. 9.27Falling ill at Ostia, Monica asks only to be remembered at the Lord's altar, wherever her sons may be.
237. 9.28Monica no longer cared to be buried beside her husband, trusting God to raise her from anywhere; she died aged fifty-six.
238. 9.29At Monica's death Augustine and the household hold back their tears, since she did not die wretchedly or wholly.
239. 9.30Augustine grieves because the life he shared with his mother has been torn apart.
240. 9.31Psalms are sung, friends gather, and Augustine hides his grief and grieves at his own grief.
241. 9.32Augustine does not weep even at the eucharist offered for Monica; a bath does not help, but sleep and Ambrose's hymn ease his grief.
242. 9.33Alone before God, Augustine at last weeps for his mother, and asks readers not to mock but to pray.
243. 9.34Augustine now weeps for Monica in another way, praying for her sins, since no one is sinless before God.
244. 9.35Augustine prays that God will forgive his mother any sins committed after her baptism.
245. 9.36Monica asked only to be remembered at the altar, where the sacrifice that cancels our debts is offered.
246. 9.37Augustine asks his readers to remember Monica and Patricius at the altar.
247. 10.1Augustine begins Book 10 by asking to know God as he is known, and to do the truth in confession.
248. 10.2God already sees everything; confession means being displeased with oneself and crediting all good to God.
249. 10.3Men cannot verify Augustine's confession, but love makes them believe it.
250. 10.4Confessing past sins encourages others; now Augustine will confess what he is at present.
251. 10.5Augustine confesses so that brothers may give thanks and pray for him.
252. 10.6Augustine confesses his present state to his fellow Christians, whom God has made his masters to be served.
253. 10.7God alone knows Augustine fully; he will confess both what he knows and what he does not know of himself.
254. 10.8Augustine loves God, not bodily beauty, but an inner light, voice, fragrance, food, and embrace.
255. 10.9Augustine asks all creatures whether they are God; they answer, "He made us."
256. 10.10Creation speaks to all, but only those who judge it by inward truth understand that God is not a body.
257. 10.11Augustine passes beyond the powers of life and sensation, which animals share, in his search for God.
258. 10.12Augustine enters the vast palaces of memory, where images of all things are stored and recalled.
259. 10.13Memory stores the images of all sensations separately, and they can be recalled at will without the things themselves.
260. 10.14In memory Augustine finds the world, himself, and the materials for planning the future.
261. 10.15The mind cannot contain itself; men marvel at the world but not at the memory that holds it.
262. 10.16Memory holds the contents of the liberal arts themselves, not merely their images.
263. 10.17Some things in memory entered by no bodily sense; we recognize them as true because they were already within.
264. 10.18To learn such things is to gather together what memory already holds scattered; hence cogitare, "to think."
265. 10.19Memory contains the laws of number and measure, which no sense impressed on it.
266. 10.20Memory holds even the remembering and understanding of things, and remembers its own remembering.
267. 10.21Memory holds past feelings without feeling them, like a stomach holding food it cannot taste.
268. 10.22We can discuss the four passions without feeling them, because memory holds notions of them.
269. 10.23Some things are present to memory by images, others, like numbers, by themselves; how is memory present to itself?
270. 10.24How can forgetfulness, the absence of memory, be remembered?
271. 10.25Augustine has become a hard field to himself: he is certain he remembers forgetfulness but cannot explain how.
272. 10.26Memory is boundless, yet God is beyond it; how can Augustine find God if he does not remember him?
273. 10.27Like the woman with the lost coin, we can find only what we remember.
274. 10.28When memory loses something, we seek it in memory itself; what is wholly forgotten cannot even be sought.
275. 10.29To seek God is to seek the happy life, which everyone desires and must therefore somehow know.
276. 10.30The happy life is remembered not like a place, numbers, or eloquence, but perhaps like joy.
277. 10.31All agree that they want to be happy, meaning that they want joy, which all have experienced.
278. 10.32The happy life is joy in God, which the ungodly do not have.
279. 10.33The happy life is joy in the truth, which is God; all love truth, but other things occupy them.
280. 10.34Men love truth when it shines on them but hate it when it exposes them.
281. 10.35Augustine finds God in his memory, since he has not forgotten God since learning him.
282. 10.36God is not in any part of memory as an image, feeling, or the mind itself, yet he dwells in memory.
283. 10.37Augustine found God in God himself, above him; the best servant wants what he hears from God.
284. 10.38"Late have I loved you": God was within while Augustine sought him outside, until God called and touched him.
285. 10.39Not yet full of God, Augustine finds life a constant trial in both prosperity and adversity.
286. 10.40"Give what you command, and command what you will": continence is God's gift.
287. 10.41Though he has renounced sexual relations, Augustine confesses that sexual images still trouble him in dreams.
288. 10.42Augustine prays that God's grace will free him even from consent to lust in sleep.
289. 10.43Eating and drinking are necessary, but their pleasure must be fought daily by fasting.
290. 10.44The pleasure of eating slips in behind the need for health and disguises itself as necessity.
291. 10.45Augustine is free of drunkenness but not always of overeating; continence is God's gift, as Scripture shows.
292. 10.46No food is unclean; what defiles is desire, as the examples of Scripture show.
293. 10.47Eating cannot be given up like sex, only moderated; Augustine relies on Christ's intercession.
294. 10.48Augustine seems indifferent to scents, but distrusts his own self-knowledge.
295. 10.49Augustine confesses that the beauty of sung psalms can draw him more than the words themselves.
296. 10.50Augustine wavers between banning church music and approving it for its power to move the weak to devotion.
297. 10.51The eyes delight in beautiful forms and colors and above all in light, which is always present.
298. 10.52The true light was seen by blind Tobit, Isaac, and Jacob; the bodily light must be used for praise, not ensnarement.
299. 10.53Human art multiplies the allurements of the eyes; true beauty comes from God, who rescues Augustine from its snares.
300. 10.54Curiosity, the "lust of the eyes," is a desire to experience and know through the senses.
301. 10.55Curiosity drives people to gruesome sights, shows, useless research, magic, and demands for miracles.
302. 10.56Augustine has renounced theaters, astrology, and necromancy, but the enemy still tempts him to seek signs.
303. 10.57Curiosity about trivial things, a hare hunted or a spider with flies, distracts Augustine even at prayer.
304. 10.58Hope rests on God's mercy, which has healed Augustine's desire for revenge and tamed him to Christ's light yoke.
305. 10.59The third temptation, the desire to be loved and feared by men, is a snare of the devil; praise must be referred to God.
306. 10.60Augustine cannot test his love of praise, since he cannot give it up without giving up a good life.
307. 10.61Augustine is pleased by praise and wonders whether his pleasure is for his neighbor's good or his own.
308. 10.62Augustine questions whether he truly seeks his neighbor's benefit, since insults to himself sting him more.
309. 10.63Love of praise tempts even those who condemn it, who then boast of their contempt for vainglory.
310. 10.64Self-satisfaction, even over God's gifts, is a further form of pride.
311. 10.65Augustine reviews his search through the world and memory; only in God is his soul safe, but habit drags him back.
312. 10.66Augustine lost God by wanting to possess a lie along with the Truth.
313. 10.67Those who sought purification through angels and magic found only the devil, a false mediator who shares men's sin.
314. 10.68Christ is the true Mediator, mortal with men and just with God; as man he mediates, as Word he is equal to God.
315. 10.69The Father's love is shown in the Son, victor and victim, priest and sacrifice, whose incarnation gives hope.
316. 10.70Augustine gave up a flight into solitude to live for Christ, who redeemed him; he feeds on his ransom.
317. 11.1God knows all; Augustine confesses to stir up love, his own and his readers', toward God.
318. 11.2Augustine has no time to tell everything; he wants to spend his free hours meditating on Scripture.
319. 11.3Augustine prays for understanding of the hidden depths of Scripture, from the creation to the heavenly city.
320. 11.4Augustine prays through Christ, the mediator, to understand Scripture, which speaks of Christ.
321. 11.5Augustine cannot question Moses, but inner Truth, which spoke through Moses, can teach him.
322. 11.6Heaven and earth proclaim that they were made by God, who alone truly is, beautiful and good.
323. 11.7God did not create as a craftsman does, from existing material; he spoke, and made all things in his Word.
324. 11.8God did not create by spoken words, which pass in time and would need a body to sound in before creation.
325. 11.9God's Word is eternal and speaks all things at once, yet the things made by it are not eternal.
326. 11.10The eternal Word is the Beginning, who teaches us inwardly and to whom we return from error.
327. 11.11God made heaven and earth in the Beginning, his Word and Wisdom, which shines on Augustine's heart.
328. 11.12Some ask: what was God doing before creation, and why is creation not eternal if his will is eternal?
329. 11.13Those who ask this do not understand eternity, which is wholly present and stands still while time passes.
330. 11.14Augustine rejects a joking answer and says plainly that before creating heaven and earth God made nothing.
331. 11.15There was no time before creation, since God made time itself; so there was no "then" in which God was idle.
332. 11.16God precedes all times not in time but in eternity, an ever-present today.
333. 11.17"What is time? If no one asks me, I know": past and future do not exist, and the present exists only by passing away.
334. 11.18Past time cannot be long, since it no longer exists; only a present time could have been long.
335. 11.19A hundred years, a year, or a month cannot be present as a whole; at most one day is.
336. 11.20Even a day and an hour divide into past and future; the present has no extent, so no time can be long.
337. 11.21We do measure time, but only while it passes, since past and future do not exist.
338. 11.22Prophets see the future and historians the past; so in some way past and future exist.
339. 11.23Wherever past and future are, they are present: the past as images in memory, the future as present plans.
340. 11.24The future is foretold from present signs and images, as the dawn foretells the sunrise.
341. 11.25How God taught the prophets the future is beyond Augustine's understanding.
342. 11.26Properly there are three presents in the soul: memory of the past, attention to the present, expectation of the future.
343. 11.27Time passes from the future, which is not, through the present, which has no extent, into the past, which is not; how then is it measured?
344. 11.28Augustine prays for understanding of time, which is both perfectly familiar and utterly obscure.
345. 11.29Time is not simply the motion of the heavenly bodies; a potter's wheel would also turn in time.
346. 11.30When the sun stood still for Joshua, time went on; time is a kind of distension, not the motion of bodies.
347. 11.31We measure both motion and rest by time; so time is not the motion of a body.
348. 11.32Augustine confesses that he knows he speaks in time but still does not know what time is.
349. 11.33Measuring lines and syllables gives no fixed measure; time seems to be a distension, perhaps of the mind itself.
350. 11.34A sound can be measured neither before, during, nor after it sounds; yet we do measure times.
351. 11.35In measuring the syllables of a verse, Augustine measures not the sounds, which are gone, but something fixed in memory.
352. 11.36Times are measured in the mind, as impressions that remain after things pass.
353. 11.37The mind expects, attends, and remembers; a long future or past is a long expectation or memory.
354. 11.38Reciting a psalm shows expectation passing through attention into memory; so too with a whole life and all history.
355. 11.39Augustine's life is a distension among times; through Christ he hopes to be gathered into the One and to press on toward God.
356. 11.40There is no "never" without time and no time without creation; God, eternal, is before all times.
357. 11.41God knows past and future not as a singer knows a song, with expectation and memory, but unchangeably and eternally.
358. 12.1Seeking to understand Scripture, Augustine trusts Christ's promise that those who seek will find.
359. 12.2Besides the visible heaven there is "the heaven of heaven," compared with which the whole visible world is earth.
360. 12.3"Darkness over the abyss" means the absence of light; before God gave form, there was a formlessness that was not quite nothing.
361. 12.4Formless matter was called "earth" and "abyss" because these are the least beautiful things.
362. 12.5Formless matter can only be known, if at all, by a kind of knowing ignorance.
363. 12.6Augustine once imagined formless matter as ugly forms; he came to see it as the changeableness beneath all change, a formless near-nothing.
364. 12.7God, the Trinity, made heaven and earth from nothing, not from himself, in his Wisdom, the Son.
365. 12.8God made formless matter before any day, and from it made the visible heaven and earth, in which change and time appear.
366. 12.9The heaven of heaven, an intellectual creation cleaving to God, and formless matter are both outside the days and times.
367. 12.10Augustine turns from his darkness to God, the fountain of life, and listens to God's voice within.
368. 12.11God is eternal and unchangeable; he made all that exists, and sin, a turning away from him, is not from him.
369. 12.12The heaven of heaven is God's house, a pure created mind that clings to God without change.
370. 12.13God's house, which never left him, suffers no change of times; the wandering soul longs to dwell there.
371. 12.14Pure formlessness could not show the succession of time, since time requires change of form.
372. 12.15Two things were made outside time: the heaven of heaven, fully formed, and formless matter; the rest were made in days.
373. 12.16Genesis mentions no day for the first creation because it means the timeless heaven of heaven and formless matter.
374. 12.17Scripture's depth is wonderful; Augustine turns to answer those who accept Genesis but interpret it differently.
375. 12.18God's will and knowledge are eternal and unchanging; creation came from no new will in God.
376. 12.19The objectors grant that there is a spiritual creation, God's house, which cleaves to him without change though it was made.
377. 12.20The created wisdom, the heavenly city, was made before time, but the Creator's eternity precedes it.
378. 12.21God's house is not the Selfsame but never turns from God's face; Augustine longs to be carried back to it.
379. 12.22The objectors also grant that formless matter, an almost-nothing without time, came from God.
380. 12.23Leaving deniers aside, Augustine longs for the heavenly Jerusalem and turns to those who accept Scripture but differ in interpretation.
381. 12.24Some say that "heaven and earth" in Gen 1:1 means the whole visible world, told simply for a rough people.
382. 12.25Others read "heaven and earth" as formless matter, or as the whole creation, with "earth" and "abyss" as bodily and spiritual matter.
383. 12.26Another reading takes "heaven and earth" as the still formless matter in which both creations were present confusedly.
384. 12.27If a reader finds a true meaning in Scripture that the author did not intend, no harm is done, as long as it is true and serves love.
385. 12.28Augustine lists the truths about creation on which all the interpretations agree.
386. 12.29Five true interpretations of Gen 1:1 can be drawn from these agreed truths.
387. 12.30Five interpretations of Gen 1:2, "the earth was invisible and unformed."
388. 12.31Genesis does not mention the making of formless matter, as it does not mention the angels or the waters; yet God made all these from nothing.
389. 12.32Disagreements are either about the truth of things or about the author's intention; Augustine seeks God's intention through Moses'.
390. 12.33Augustine is certain what is true but not which true meaning Moses intended.
391. 12.34Those who insist that only their reading is Moses' meaning love their own opinion, not the truth, which belongs to all.
392. 12.35Both readers see the truth in God, not in each other's minds; quarrels over Moses' intention offend the love for which he wrote.
393. 12.36Augustine would have wished, as author of Genesis, to write so that every true meaning could be found in his words; he credits Moses with this gift.
394. 12.37Genesis is like a small spring feeding many streams; simple readers are nourished by its plain sense as chicks in a nest.
395. 12.38Mature readers see in Genesis God's eternity and his creation of all things from nothing, formed through his likeness.
396. 12.39Readers variously take "beginning" as Wisdom or as "first," and "heaven and earth" in several senses.
397. 12.40Formless matter is prior to formed things not in time but in origin, as sound is prior to song.
398. 12.41Augustine does not know which true meaning Moses intended, but asks that all who see the truth love one another and honor Moses.
399. 12.42Why not grant that Moses meant every true sense, since God tempered Scripture for many readers?
400. 12.43The Spirit knew every true meaning; Augustine will now more briefly choose one true meaning, aiming at Moses' own.
401. 13.1Augustine calls on God, whose grace went before all his merits and who needs nothing from him.
402. 13.2Creation came from God's overflowing goodness, not from any merit of its own.
403. 13.3Neither matter nor spirit merited existence; spirit becomes light only by turning to God's Word, as we too must.
404. 13.4"Let there be light" refers to the spiritual creation, enlightened by grace when it turned to God.
405. 13.5God, lacking nothing, made creation from goodness; his Spirit was borne over the waters, not supported by them.
406. 13.6In Genesis 1:1-2 Augustine finds the Trinity: God the Father, the Beginning (the Son), and the Spirit over the waters.
407. 13.7Why is the Spirit named only after the waters? Because he had to be described as "borne over" something.
408. 13.8The Spirit borne over the waters is love, which lifts us up as desire weighs us down.
409. 13.9Fallen angels and souls show that nothing less than God can satisfy a rational creature; Augustine asks for God himself.
410. 13.10The Spirit is God's gift, in whom we rest; "my weight is my love," carrying us upward to God.
411. 13.11The blessed spiritual creation was enlightened at once, without the interval of time we experience.
412. 13.12Being, knowing, and willing in the human mind offer a distant analogy for the Trinity, which surpasses all understanding.
413. 13.13Augustine reads Genesis 1 of the church: the call to repentance is the "let there be light" of the new creation in baptism.
414. 13.14We live by faith, not sight; Paul, as the Bridegroom's friend, calls the church to hope and purity until we see God as he is.
415. 13.15Still partly an abyss, the soul hopes in God until the night passes and it becomes wholly light.
416. 13.16The firmament is Scripture, stretched over us like a skin, its authority heightened by the death of its human authors.
417. 13.17No other books so destroy pride and move the heart to confession as Scripture.
418. 13.18The angels above the firmament read God's will directly; we read it in Scripture until we see God as he is.
419. 13.19God alone knows himself as he is; the soul, like dry earth, cannot enlighten or satisfy itself.
420. 13.20The sea is human society embittered by earthly desires, which God gathers and restrains within limits.
421. 13.21Souls set apart from the sea bear the fruit of works of mercy, small and great, like plants and trees.
422. 13.22The works of mercy lead on to contemplation; the spiritual shine as lights in the firmament of Scripture.
423. 13.23The gifts of the Spirit are like sun, moon, and stars: wisdom for the mature, knowledge and other gifts for the weaker.
424. 13.24Repentance and keeping the commandments make the dry land appear; the rich young man's thorns choked the word.
425. 13.25The apostles, who left all to follow Christ, are the lights in the firmament, set on fire at Pentecost.
426. 13.26The creatures of the sea are the sacraments, miracles, and preachers that spread the gospel among the nations.
427. 13.27Knowledge in the firmament is one, but its bodily expressions are many, brought forth by the needs of estranged peoples.
428. 13.28Because of Adam's fall, humanity became a restless sea needing bodily sacraments, which must lead on to spiritual life.
429. 13.29The faithful, the dry land, no longer need baptism or signs; they bring forth the "living soul" of a life restrained from the world.
430. 13.30Ministers should now teach by example; the living soul tames the beasts of pride, lust, and curiosity.
431. 13.31The living soul imitates the imitators of Christ; its beasts, cattle, and serpents become gentleness, moderation, and prudence.
432. 13.32Man is made in God's image, not "according to kind"; the renewed mind learns directly from God and sees the Trinity.
433. 13.33The spiritual, men and women, rulers and subjects, judge spiritually, but not Scripture, nor the hidden state of souls, nor outsiders.
434. 13.34The spiritual judge the church's sacraments, preaching, and the conduct of the faithful, over which they have power to correct.
435. 13.35Why is the blessing "increase and multiply" given only to sea creatures, birds, and humans?
436. 13.36The blessing signifies that one meaning is expressed in many signs, and one text understood in many true ways.
437. 13.37Taken figuratively, the blessing means the power to express one truth in many signs and to understand one text in many ways.
438. 13.38The plants given as food are works of mercy owed to ministers of the word, as Onesiphorus and the Macedonians gave to Paul.
439. 13.39Paul rejoices in the Philippians' gift not because it relieved him but because their good work flourished again.
440. 13.40Paul is fed by joy that the Philippians did well, not by the relief of his own need.
441. 13.41What matters is not the gift but the fruit, the good will of the giver, as with the widow who fed Elijah.
442. 13.42Gifts from unbelievers who do not know why they give bear no fruit; the fish of the sea do not eat the earth's food.
443. 13.43Each work was good; all together they are very good, as a body is more beautiful than its members.
444. 13.44God tells Augustine that Scripture speaks in time, but God sees and speaks eternally.
445. 13.45The Manichees, who say creation was made from conquered enemies or by a hostile power, do not see God's works through his Spirit.
446. 13.46When we see creation's goodness through the Spirit, God sees it in us, and we love God in what he made.
447. 13.47Augustine surveys the whole of creation in the order of Genesis 1 and sees it all very good.
448. 13.48Creatures have beginning and end; they were made from nothing, matter and form together without interval.
449. 13.49The six days figure the history of salvation and the formation of the church, predestined in the Word.
450. 13.50Augustine prays for the peace of the sabbath without evening, since this world will pass away.
451. 13.51The seventh day has no evening; God's rest foretells our rest in him in the sabbath of eternal life.
452. 13.52God, always working and always at rest, will rest in us as he now works in us.
453. 13.53Things exist because God sees them; our rest will be in him, and understanding must be asked, sought, and knocked for from God alone.