Confessions 10.59–11.11

But, Lord, you who alone rule without pride, because you alone are the true Lord, who have no lord: has this third kind of temptation also ceased from me, or can it cease in this whole life, the wish to be feared and loved by men, for no other reason than that there may be a joy from it which is no joy? It is a miserable life and a foul boasting. From this especially comes not loving you and not fearing you chastely; and therefore "you resist the proud but give grace to the humble," and you thunder upon the ambitions of the world, "and the foundations of the mountains tremble." So, because certain duties of human society make it necessary for us to be loved and feared by men, the adversary of our true happiness presses upon us, scattering everywhere in his snares "Well done, well done," so that while we eagerly gather them up we may be caught unawares, and may take our joy away from the truth and place it in men's deceit, and be pleased to be loved and feared not for your sake but in your place; and so, having made us like himself, he may have us with him, not for the concord of love but for fellowship in punishment, he who resolved to set his throne in the north, so that dark and cold men might serve him as he imitates you in a perverse and twisted way. But we, Lord, see, we are your "little flock"; possess us. Stretch out your wings, and let us flee under them. Be our glory; let us be loved and feared in ourselves for your sake. Whoever wants to be praised by men when you blame will not be defended by men when you judge, nor rescued when you condemn. But when it is not "the sinner who is praised in the desires of his soul, nor he who does wickedly who is blessed," but a man is praised for some gift you have given him, and he rejoices more in being praised than in having the gift for which he is praised, he too is praised while you blame him; and the one who praised is better than the one who was praised. For the one was pleased by the gift of God in a man, the other was more pleased by the gift of man than by that of God.

We are tempted by these temptations every day, Lord; we are tempted without ceasing. Our daily furnace is the human tongue. In this kind too you command us to be continent: give what you command, and command what you will. You know the groaning of my heart to you about this, and the rivers of my eyes. For I cannot easily gather how far I am cleansed of this plague, and I greatly fear my hidden faults, which your eyes know, but mine do not. For in other kinds of temptation I have some means of examining myself; in this one, almost none. For with regard to the pleasures of the flesh and to superfluous curiosity for knowing, I see how far I have succeeded in being able to rein in my mind when I do without those things, either by choice or when they are absent. For then I ask myself how much more or less it troubles me not to have them. Riches, too, which are sought in order to serve one or two or all three of these desires, can be given up, if the mind cannot perceive whether it despises them while having them, so that it may test itself. But in order to do without praise and test in this what we can do, must we live badly, so wickedly and monstrously that no one knows us without detesting us? What greater madness can be said or thought? But if praise usually and properly accompanies a good life and good works, we ought not to abandon its company any more than the good life itself. Yet I do not perceive whether I can do without something calmly or with difficulty unless it is absent.

What, then, do I confess to you, Lord, in this kind of temptation? What, but that I am delighted by praise? But more by the truth itself than by praise. For if I were offered the choice whether I would rather be praised by all men while mad or in error in everything, or be blamed by all men while steadfast and most certain in the truth, I see which I would choose. Yet I would not want the approval of another's mouth even to increase my joy in any good of mine. But it does increase it, I confess; and not only that, but blame diminishes it. And when I am troubled by this misery of mine, an excuse slips in, and what kind it is you know, God, for it makes me uncertain. For since you have commanded us not only continence, that is, from what things to hold back our love, but also justice, that is, on what to bestow it, and have willed not only yourself to be loved by us but also our neighbor, I often seem to myself to be delighted at the progress or promise of my neighbor when I am delighted by the praise of one who understands well; and again to be saddened at his fault when I hear him blame what he does not understand or what is good. For I am sometimes saddened by my own praises, either when things are praised in me that displease me in myself, or even when lesser and slight goods are valued more than they should be. But again, how do I know whether I am affected in this way because I do not want the one who praises me to disagree with me about myself, not because I am moved by his benefit, but because the same good things that please me in myself are more pleasant to me when they please another too? For in a way it is not I who am praised when my judgment of myself is not praised, since either things are praised that displease me, or things are praised more that please me less. Am I, then, uncertain of myself in this?

See, in you, O Truth, I see that I ought to be moved by my praises not for my own sake but for my neighbor's benefit. And whether I am so, I do not know. I know less of myself in this matter than you do. I beseech you, my God, show me myself too, so that I may confess to my brothers who will pray for me what I find wounded in me. Let me question myself again more carefully. If I am moved by my neighbor's benefit in my praises, why am I less moved if someone else is unjustly blamed than if I am? Why am I more stung by an insult cast at me than by one cast at another with the same injustice in my presence? Do I not know this too? Or does it remain that I deceive myself and do not do the truth before you in my heart and tongue? Put this madness far from me, Lord, lest my own mouth be "the oil of the sinner to anoint my head."

"I am needy and poor," and better when in secret groaning I am displeased with myself and seek your mercy, until my lack is repaired and made whole, even to the peace which the eye of the arrogant does not know. But speech coming from the mouth, and deeds that become known to men, carry a most dangerous temptation from the love of praise, which gathers votes begged from others for a kind of private distinction. It tempts me even when I rebuke it in myself, by the very fact that I rebuke it; and often a man boasts more vainly of his very contempt for vainglory, and so no longer boasts of his contempt for glory; for he does not despise it when he boasts.

Within too, within, there is another evil in the same kind of temptation, by which those become empty who are pleased with themselves, even though they do not please others, or displease them, and do not try to please the rest. But those who please themselves greatly displease you, not only by taking pleasure in things not good as if they were good, but also in your good things as if they were their own; or even as yours, but as if by their own merits; or even as from your grace, yet not rejoicing in fellowship with others, but envying it to others. In all these and similar dangers and labors you see the trembling of my heart; and I feel that my wounds are healed by you again and again rather than not inflicted on me.

Where have you not walked with me, O Truth, teaching me what to beware of and what to seek, when I referred to you what I could see down here, and consulted you? I surveyed the world outside with my senses as I could, and I observed the life my body has from me, and my senses themselves. From there I entered the recesses of my memory, manifold spaces wonderfully full of countless riches; and I considered them and was awed, and I could discern none of them without you, and I found that none of them was you. Nor was I myself the discoverer, I who went through all these things and tried to distinguish them and value each according to its worth, receiving some through the reporting senses and questioning them, perceiving others mixed with myself, distinguishing and numbering the messengers themselves, and in the broad wealth of memory handling some things, storing others, digging out others: neither I myself, when I did this, that is, my power by which I did it, nor was that power you; for you are the abiding light which I consulted about all these things, whether they were, what they were, and how much they were to be valued; and I heard you teaching and commanding. And I often do this; it delights me, and whenever I can be released from necessary business, I take refuge in this pleasure. Yet in all these things that I run through consulting you, I find no safe place for my soul except in you, where my scattered parts may be gathered and nothing of me may depart from you. And sometimes you let me into a feeling very unusual, within, into a sweetness I know not what, which, if it were brought to completion in me, would be something I know not what, which this life will not be. But I fall back into these things with miserable weights, and I am swallowed up again by the usual things, and held, and I weep much, but I am held much. So great is the burden of habit! Here I am able to be, but do not want to; there I want to be, but am not able; wretched in both.

And so I have considered the diseases of my sins in the threefold lust, and I have called upon your right hand for my salvation. For I saw your splendor with a wounded heart, and beaten back I said: "Who can reach there? I am cast out from the sight of your eyes." You are the Truth presiding over all. But I, in my greed, did not want to lose you, but wanted to possess a lie together with you, just as no one wants to say what is false in such a way that he himself does not know what is true. And so I lost you, because you do not deign to be possessed together with a lie.

Whom could I find to reconcile me to you? Should I have sought the help of angels? By what prayer? By what rites? Many, trying to return to you and not able by themselves, have tried these things, as I hear, and have fallen into a desire for curious visions and have been found worthy of delusions. For they sought you in their pride, puffing out their chests in the arrogance of learning rather than beating them, and by likeness of heart they drew to themselves "the powers of this air" as accomplices and allies of their pride, by whom they were deceived through magical powers; they sought a mediator through whom they might be purified, and there was none. For it was the devil, "transforming himself into an angel of light." And it greatly enticed proud flesh that he himself was not in a fleshly body. For they were mortal and sinners, but you, Lord, to whom they wanted to be reconciled, are immortal and without sin. But a mediator between God and men had to have something like God and something like men, lest, being like men in both, he be far from God, or, being like God in both, he be far from men, and so not be a mediator. So that deceitful mediator, by whom, through your secret judgments, pride deserves to be deceived, has one thing in common with men, namely sin, and wants to seem to have another in common with God, so that, because he is not clothed with the mortality of flesh, he may show himself off as immortal. But because "the wages of sin is death," he has this in common with men, for which he is condemned to death together with them.

But the true Mediator, whom in your secret mercy you have shown to men and sent, so that by his example they might learn humility itself, that "mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus," appeared between mortal sinners and the immortal Just One, mortal with men, just with God; so that, since the wages of justice is life and peace, by the justice joined to God he might make void the death of the ungodly who are justified, the death which he willed to have in common with them. He was shown to the saints of old, so that they might be saved through faith in his future passion, as we are through faith in his passion that is past. For insofar as he is man, he is Mediator; but insofar as he is the Word, he is not in the middle, because he is equal to God, God with God, and together one God.

How you have loved us, good Father, who "did not spare your only Son, but delivered him up" for us ungodly! How you have loved us, for whom he, "who thought it not robbery to be equal" with you, "became subject even to the death of the cross"; he alone "free among the dead," "having power to lay down his life and power to take it up again"; for us both victor and victim before you, and victor because victim; for us both priest and sacrifice before you, and priest because sacrifice; making us, from slaves, sons to you, by being born of you and serving you. Rightly is my hope strong in him, that you will heal all my diseases through him who "sits at your right hand and intercedes for us"; otherwise I would despair. For many and great are those diseases, many and great; but your medicine is greater. We might have thought that your Word was far from union with man, and despaired of ourselves, if he had not "become flesh and dwelt among us."

Terrified by my sins and the weight of my misery, I had turned over in my heart and pondered a flight into solitude; but you forbade me and strengthened me, saying: "Therefore Christ died for all, that those who live may no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for all." See, Lord, "I cast my care upon you," that I may live, and "I will consider the wonders of your law." You know my ignorance and my weakness: teach me and heal me. Your only Son, "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," has redeemed me with his blood. "Let not the proud slander me," because I think of my ransom, and I eat and drink it and distribute it, and, poor, I desire to be filled from it among those who "eat and are filled: and they shall praise the Lord who seek him."

Lord, since eternity is yours, are you ignorant of what I say to you, or do you see in time what happens in time? Why, then, do I set before you such an account of so many things? Certainly not so that you may learn them through me, but I stir up my own love toward you, and that of those who read these things, so that we may all say, "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised." I have said it already and I will say it again: I do this for love of your love. For we pray too, and yet the Truth says, "Your Father knows what you need before you ask him." So we lay open our love to you by confessing to you our miseries and your mercies upon us, so that you may free us completely, since you have begun, that we may cease to be miserable in ourselves and be made happy in you; since you have called us to be poor in spirit, and meek, and mourners, and hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and merciful, and pure in heart, and peacemakers. See, I have told you many things, as I could and as I wished, because you first willed that I should confess to you, the Lord my God, "for you are good, for your mercy endures for ever."

But when am I able, with the tongue of my pen, to tell all your exhortations and all your terrors, consolations, and guidance, by which you led me to preach your word and dispense your sacrament to your people? And even if I were able to tell these things in order, the drops of time are costly to me. And for a long time now I have been burning to meditate on your law, and to confess to you in it my knowledge and my ignorance, the beginnings of your enlightenment and the remains of my darkness, until weakness is swallowed up by strength. And I do not want the hours to flow away into anything else which I find free from the needs of refreshing the body and of mental effort and of the service we owe to men, and that which we do not owe and yet render.

Lord my God, "attend to my prayer," and let your mercy hear my desire, since it burns not for myself alone but wants to be of use to brotherly love; and you see in my heart that it is so. Let me sacrifice to you the service of my thought and my tongue, and give me what I may offer you. For "I am needy and poor," "you are rich toward all who call upon you," and, free from care, you take care of us. Circumcise from all rashness and all lying my inner and outer self, my lips. Let your Scriptures be my chaste delights; let me not be deceived in them nor deceive others from them. Lord, attend and have mercy, Lord my God, light of the blind and strength of the weak, and also light of those who see and strength of the strong; attend to my soul and hear it crying "out of the depths." For unless your ears are present in the depths too, where shall we go? To whom shall we cry? "Yours is the day and yours the night"; at your nod the moments fly by. Grant from them room for our meditations on the hidden things of your law, and do not close it against those who knock. For not in vain have you willed that the dark secrets of so many pages be written; nor do those forests lack their deer, which take refuge in them and recover there, walk and feed, lie down and chew the cud. O Lord, perfect me and reveal them to me. See, your voice is my joy; your voice is above an abundance of pleasures. Give what I love: for I do love; and this too you have given. Do not forsake your gifts, nor despise your grass that thirsts. Let me confess to you whatever I find in your books, and "hear the voice of praise," and drink you, and "consider the wonders of your law" from the very beginning, in which you made heaven and earth, to the everlasting kingdom of your holy city with you.

Lord, have mercy on me and hear my desire. For I think it is not of the earth, not for gold and silver and precious stones, or fine clothes, or honors and powers, or pleasures of the flesh, nor for things necessary for the body and for this life of our pilgrimage; all of which "are added to us who seek your kingdom and your righteousness." See, my God, where my desire comes from. "The wicked have told me of delights, but not as your law, Lord." See, that is where my desire comes from. See, Father, look and see and approve, and let it be pleasing in the sight of your mercy that I find grace before you, so that the inner meaning of your words may be opened to me when I knock. I beseech you by our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, "the man of your right hand, the son of man, whom you have made strong for yourself" as your mediator and ours, through whom you sought us when we were not seeking you, and sought us so that we might seek you; your Word, through whom you made all things, among them me too; your only Son, through whom you called to adoption the people of believers, among them me too: I beseech you through him who "sits at your right hand and intercedes for us," "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." These are what I seek in your books. "Moses wrote of him": he himself says this; the Truth says this.

Let me hear and understand how "in the beginning you made heaven and earth." Moses wrote this; he wrote it and went away; he passed from here, from you to you, and he is not now before me. For if he were, I would take hold of him and ask him and beg him by you to explain these things to me, and I would lend the ears of my body to the sounds bursting from his mouth; and if he spoke in Hebrew, it would strike my senses in vain and nothing of it would touch my mind; but if in Latin, I would know what he said. But how would I know whether he spoke the truth? And if I knew this too, would I know it from him? Surely within me, within in the dwelling of thought, truth, neither Hebrew nor Greek nor Latin nor barbarian, without organs of mouth and tongue, without the noise of syllables, would say, "He speaks the truth," and I, at once certain, would say confidently to that man of yours, "You speak the truth." Since, then, I cannot question him, I ask you, O Truth, by whom he was filled when he spoke true things; I ask you, my God: spare my sins, and you who gave that servant of yours to say these things, grant me also to understand them.

See, heaven and earth exist; they cry out that they were made; for they change and vary. But whatever was not made and yet exists has nothing in it that was not there before; and that is what it is to change and vary. They cry out too that they did not make themselves: "We exist because we were made; so we did not exist before we existed, so as to be able to be made by ourselves." And the voice of those who speak is their very evidence. You, then, Lord, made them, you who are beautiful, for they are beautiful; you who are good, for they are good; you who are, for they are. Yet they are not so beautiful, nor so good, nor do they so exist, as you their maker, compared with whom they are neither beautiful nor good nor exist. We know this, thanks be to you; and our knowledge compared with your knowledge is ignorance.

But how did you make heaven and earth, and what was the instrument of so great a work of yours? For you did not do it as a human craftsman, who forms a body from a body at the will of a soul able to impose in some way a form which it sees within itself with the inner eye (and how would it be able to do this unless you had made it?), and he imposes the form on something that already exists and has being, such as earth or stone or wood or gold or anything of that kind. And how would these exist unless you had established them? You made the craftsman's body, you made the soul that commands his limbs, you made the material from which he makes something, you made the talent by which he grasps his art and sees within what he makes outside, you made the bodily sense, by which as an interpreter he conveys from his mind to his material what he makes, and reports back to his mind what has been made, so that the mind may consult within the truth that presides over it whether it has been made well. All these praise you, the Creator of all. But how do you make them? How, God, did you make heaven and earth? Certainly you did not make heaven and earth in heaven or on earth, nor in the air or in the waters, since these too belong to heaven and earth; nor did you make the whole world in the whole world, because there was nowhere for it to be made before it was made to exist. Nor did you hold anything in your hand from which to make heaven and earth. For where would you get something you had not made, from which to make something? For what exists, except because you exist? So "you spoke and they were made," and in your Word you made them.

But how did you speak? Was it in the way that the voice came from the cloud saying, "This is my beloved Son"? For that voice was uttered and passed away; it began and ended. The syllables sounded and passed away, the second after the first, the third after the second, and so on in order, until the last after the others, and silence after the last. From this it is clear and evident that the movement of a creature expressed it, itself temporal, serving your eternal will. And these words of yours, made for a time, the outer ear reported to the understanding mind, whose inner ear is set toward your eternal Word. But the mind compared these words sounding in time with your Word, eternal in its silence, and said: "It is different, far different. These are far below me, and they do not even exist, because they flee and pass away; but the Word of my God abides above me for ever." If, then, you spoke with words that sounded and passed away, saying that heaven and earth should be made, and so made heaven and earth, there was already a bodily creature before heaven and earth, by whose temporal movements that voice ran its course in time. But there was no body before heaven and earth; or if there was, you had certainly made it without a passing voice, so as to make from it a passing voice by which to say that heaven and earth should be made. For whatever that was from which such a voice was made, unless it had been made by you, it would not exist at all. So, that a body might be made from which these words could be made, by what word was it spoken by you?

So you call us to understand the Word, God with you, God, which is spoken eternally, and by which all things are spoken eternally. For what was being spoken does not come to an end, and another thing is then spoken, so that all things may be spoken; but all things are spoken at once and eternally; otherwise there would already be time and change, and not true eternity or true immortality. This I know, my God, and I give thanks. I know it, I confess to you, Lord God, and whoever is not ungrateful to sure truth knows it with me and blesses you. For we know, Lord, we know that insofar as anything is not what it was and is what it was not, to that extent it dies and arises. So nothing of your Word gives way or follows on, since it is truly immortal and eternal. And so by the Word coeternal with you, you say at once and eternally all that you say, and whatever you say should be made is made; and you make it in no other way than by saying it. And yet not all the things you make by saying are made at once and eternally.

Why so, I ask, Lord my God? In some way I see it, but how to express it I do not know, except that everything that begins to be and ceases to be begins and ceases when it is known in the eternal Reason that it ought to have begun or ceased, where nothing either begins or ceases. That is your Word, which is also "the Beginning, because it also speaks to us." So in the gospel he speaks through the flesh, and this sounded outwardly in men's ears, so that he might be believed and sought within and found in the eternal Truth, where the good and only Teacher teaches all his disciples. There I hear your voice, Lord, saying to me that he speaks to us who teaches us; but he who does not teach us, even if he speaks, does not speak to us. Who, then, teaches us but the unchanging Truth? For even when we are admonished through a changeable creature, we are led to the unchanging Truth, where we truly learn when we stand and hear him, and "rejoice greatly because of the bridegroom's voice," giving ourselves back to him from whom we are. And therefore he is the Beginning, because if he did not remain when we went astray, there would be nowhere for us to return. But when we return from error, we certainly return by knowing; and so that we may know, he teaches us, because he is the Beginning and speaks to us.

In this Beginning, God, you made heaven and earth, in your Word, in your Son, in your Power, in your Wisdom, in your Truth, speaking in a wonderful way and making in a wonderful way. Who will grasp it? Who will tell it? What is that which shines through to me and strikes my heart without wounding it? I shudder and I burn: I shudder insofar as I am unlike it, I burn insofar as I am like it. It is Wisdom, Wisdom itself, that shines through to me, parting my cloud, which covers me again as I fall away from it under the fog and heap of my punishments; for my strength is so weakened in need that I cannot bear my own good, until you, Lord, who have been gracious to all my iniquities, also "heal all my diseases"; for you will also "redeem my life from corruption, and crown me with pity and mercy, and satisfy my desire with good things," since "my youth will be renewed like the eagle's." "For in hope we have been saved," and "we wait with patience" for your promises. Let him who can hear you speaking within; I will cry out confidently from your oracle: "How magnified are your works, Lord! In wisdom you have made them all." And Wisdom is the Beginning, and in that Beginning you made heaven and earth.